She opens the back window of the car. She holds the edge of the condom out the window as the car races down the highway at sixty mph. The condom inflates like a windsock at an airport.

The other four kids in the car explode into laughter, as the condom balloons to three feet long, flapping in the wind. James has his arms around Sandy’s waist and his head on her abdomen, as half her body is out the window. Blond hair is whipping around her smiling face. In the reflection of her mirrored sunglasses is Hector hanging out the front passenger’s window videoing the whole thing. The condom flies out of her hand as she rolls back into the laps of James, Helen and Sialia crammed into the back seat. Ryan is driving and looking around, and over corrects; the car jerks and changes lane. All falls silent for a second, then everyone bursts out into boisterous laughter again.

James yells out, “Hurry, I can’t be late. Park in Africa, don’t look for a closer spot. We’ll run from there.” Africa is the kids name for the far dirt parking lot at school.  

The gang parks the car; laughing and giggling, they enter school and proceed down the hallway with a stream of other students.  

One kid yells out, “Dude, nice,” as he looks up from his phone at the video posting.

“Yo, Mali. Totally outrage man. Yeah.”

“Mr. Malachite,” the principal formally addresses him.  

James turns to face his fate. “So, you’re playing soccer today.  Good luck.”

“Ah, thanks Dr. Stufa.”

“Now, let’s get a move on.”

The group disperses down to the junction of the hallways as teachers bark out, “Ladies let’s get to class now.”

Helen and Sandy, arm in arm giggling, split down separate hallways. Sialia rolls on to art class. James glides down the hallway empty handed, snatching a pencil off the ground as he jumps into his classroom. A lone kid is left in the now nearly empty hall as he kicks his locker that is stuck half open. Teachers are closing doors in every direction. Exasperated, he kicks the door one more time, turns and runs for his class.

Sialia Torres sits in a lounge chair in the corner of the art room at Elysium Hills High School. Outside the afternoon light is illuminating the school on the bench-like hill, as traffic flows by on the highway down the hill. In the corner of the art room is a large soft chair with padded armrests. The air duct vent, in the ceiling, is immediately above the chair. Hot or cold, the air duct hums with a slight clanking rattle. The chair is partially hemmed in by a low bookshelf. Paint brushes by the handful sit on paper plates stained by water and pigments. Large oversized art books are stacked, leaning to one side. Sialia sits cross-legged in the chair with a giant book in her lap. It is here the world unfolds, blazing color, violence, some story she does not know. A chosen place. She reaches out and touches the color on the page with her fingertip. She sighs and leans back and stares out the window to the north. And so, we look at a journey that goes nowhere in place, but so very far within.   

The elegant, smooth hand of Sialia turns the pages of the art book. The large-format book lies heavy upon her lap. Flipping and skimming these pages deep in the book reveals subtitles such as: 16th-Century Art, Northern Europe; within these sections there are old maps, woodcuts, visionary imagery during Reformation, divergent views, shrines and gilded panels from far off lands from a time long ago.

The line and form of her thin wrist show her tendons pushing against the purple embroidered bracelet tied in a knot, a bright contrast to her golden-brown skin and pink painted nails. There on the left-hand page, Sialia’s right hand falls heavy with her forearm across the entire book. At the top left is Quinten Matsys’s Money-Changer and His Wife, 1514. Oil on panel. She stops flipping pages, lets gravity take her hand and arm so that they lie still across the pages.

Strange and odd are the clothes of the man and woman in the painting. But that is not what captivates Sialia. No, it is the gaze of the woman, so transfixed looking at the money in the balance scale and in her husband’s hand next to her. Gold and silver coins lie on the green table top. Golden standards of weights and a small pile of pearls on velvet also lie there.

Sialia’s head is cocked to the side, and the lines of muscle are taut in her neck showing down to her exposed collar bone. She breathes softly but does not blink. The thick jet-black braid of her hair hangs across her right shoulder as she leans to her right and looks intently down to her left.

The woman in the painting has both hands on the Bible. The painting depicts her flipping the page, but distracted, she holds the page still. It could fall either way, barely held by the tips of her fingers. The money is there; you can hear the coins clink and ring as they fall through the man’s deft, thin hands. The pious biblical words are silent on the pages. Also, on the table is a small round mirror-like orb reflecting a window to the outside world. Within the mirror is an entire other painting, so small as to seem an insignificant image within the painting. Dark and mystical—the dream of haunting thick green black oil flows underneath, caught in the edges of the reflection. Money, the balance, the Good Book, transfixed with eyes on one thing, mind elsewhere. Silent; but for the metallic sound of coins dropping.

At that moment, the entire school spins a hundred and eighty degrees upon the green slick oil underneath and zooms in to a back conference room. There, Principal Dr. Jonathan Stufa, an educational consultant, the superintendent, and two school board members sit around a long scratched-up wood table. The table is almost too big for the room, so that once seated, each individual is pinned between the wall and the table. Projected on the whiteboard on the wall is the school’s Mission Statement. It is projected as an overlay to a shadow of weakly erased words that were hastily wiped away. The room, even with the shades drawn and closed, is too bright, and the projection is weak and almost confusing. A strange reflected sheen bounces off the whiteboard making it difficult to look at the words projected.

Stufa’s hands are holding the paper copy of the Mission Statement. But his eyes are on the consultant, Joel Haustoria, as Stufa speaks. The reason they are here is for a presentation by Haustoria about the new curriculum adoption. The Spring Forward curriculum put out by Bradmoor Publishing is aligned to the new state standards and standardized tests. Stufa has just purchased a new car for his wife and is staying in a large well-furnished home on the golf course. In the hollow wall behind the screen a mouse deftly scurries along the top of a copper pipe. Pipes and wires thread their way behind the walls, under the concrete and in the space above the drop ceiling.

The pipes and wires, behind and underneath the school, lead to the science room of Zack Tyndall. There on his desk is a cluttered array of piled papers, science magazines, shiny rocks, old bones and a feather or two. There is a fist-sized piece of green-black obsidian reflecting the light. Within the shiny rock is a dream-like image of shadowy dark thick hands moving erratically. Black oil flows underneath. Blood drips red over the edge of a white stone table, red and bright, squirting in long rhythmic spurts from a slit throat. Large towering stone pyramids with iconic monster heads jut out from the sidewalls. These images dance within the rock like a tiny painting within a painting, then they disappear with the blink of an eye.

The coins and pearls slide through the fingers. The pearls slide and roll onto a black velvet cloth. Papers slide and roll off printing presses. Uniform sized boxes slide down rollers into boxcars that are then attached to semi-trucks that roll down highways like a mouse running on a pipe. Traffic sits frozen at a red light, commuters look down and read texts, a mother looks in the rear-view mirror at the infant in the seat facing backwards. It all flows by.

The balance of the scales. To load one side and then add to the other. Sway, sway down, swing up, rock back-and-forth. Does it balance? Can one good deed balance out the bad action? The mind with its own rationalization is pulled by actions and real consequences. Mystic forces run underneath, weigh heavily on the mind in the tearing agony of sleeplessness uncompromised in the brightness of the day.

Youthful beauty gazes at an image of a painting. Clear, bright and strong, straight limbs, impressionable and naïve; lost in a world of dreamy thoughts. So free from the scales that weigh us all. So capable—capable of seeing, rational, wise, a royal gift of insight, a blessing for one who can truly see. Set upon the path.

 

3

COMMUTE IN

The inexplicable moment between being awake and asleep is when the dream is most vivid. At the forge, the heated iron is hit by a hammer. Orange-red sparks fly from the hot metal and bounce on the floor. They float and zip on a layer of air at the interface of the floor. Propelled by the heat they generate and the gases that rise. Each spark is a tiny suspended piece of steel, like a raft on a swift stream.

The machinist stands at the machine press. His hands are stained along the ripped seam of his torn leather gloves. His legs are spread wide as he leans into the press. His right foot pivots as he pushes the steel plate through the jaws of the machine. It is a downward push to his left. There are two worn depressions, crater-like in the wood floor. One well-worn crater for each foot, the right one slightly off center and deeper. Each foot-shaped imprint is a testament of years of men standing at this machine and pushing, and pivoting, as each 10” x 10” steel plate is forced into the press. The finished cog assembly falls into a pushcart with a harsh clanking sound.

A flash of orange-red streaks along the floor as Zach Tyndall is jolted awake by the alarm at 5:45 am. Shower, make coffee, feed the dog; he opens the back door to let the pup out. The house is quiet, he pours boiled water through the open cone into a travel mug. NPR is on the radio; intro music is playing as the commentary begins with an overview about the state budget.

After the news report about the budget, there is an excerpt about a street poet that scribes poems as graffiti. Most of the poems are reflections of famous paintings. The poet’s name is supposedly Georgie Bruno. No one knows the real identity of the poet. Georgie does not even post works online; a diligent band of admirers takes photos of the works and uploads them to social media. He or she has a huge following around the world. The reporter goes on to read a poem painted on the side of a train boxcar:

 

The Gulf Stream

The mast is broken

Stoic acceptance

Shift your weight

And right the broken ship

The main ship is on the horizon

Predators at reach

The monetary mandates,

even further out of sight

—G.B.

 

It is signed “G.B.” Next to it, on another boxcar, is a graffiti-style painting of the famous painting.

Tyndall half listens to the report as he makes a toasted bagel with cream cheese and a turkey sandwich that he slides into a Baggie, then into his shoulder bag. The cream cheese bagel sits on a paper towel next to the coffee mug with the steaming cone on top of it. He grabs the keys, Yogi the dog instantly goes from slumbering to raging beast ready to go. He runs to the door and spins to his right and then to his left; he is in the way of Tyndall trying to pry the door open. Tyndall fetches the dog with a tennis ball. He throws the ball through a gap in the side flower garden into his neighbor’s yard. Then he turns, jumps in the truck and starts it. The dog barks. Tyndall jumps out of the truck, which is parked on the street and warming up. “Don’t bark, people are asleep,” he says. “Here, bring the ball closer,” he taps the ground at his feet. The dog obliges and flicks his head to toss the ball forward as he backs up looking intently at the ball and then up at Tyndall’s face. There is a chill in the air, and the grass is wet from the morning dew. It will frost in a week or so he thinks. The apples on his tree will taste their best then.

Another school year has begun. Thank God those wretched meetings are over, he thought. There was so much anxiety and contention. Teachers had fits over the new schedule, wrought with disruptions from testing. Some teachers cried; the newbies just sat there and tried to figure out who was who and what was what. Most of them still don’t have keys to their rooms or the building, even though it is now three weeks into the madness. The veterans were sitting back and waiting to get the last word in.

He remembers after leaving the meeting he walked down the hall with Scott Jay, the other science teacher. “Man, just a little honesty and a functioning infrastructure would go a long way.”

Jay responded, “Yeah, we didn’t even talk nuts and bolts for more than an hour.”

“Five days of meetings, and that’s it.”

Maggie Gunter, the math teacher, walking behind them, interjected, “Yeah, at least you guys aren’t changing your curriculum for the fourth time in ten years. It’s the first week, and I’m already shopping for a new job.”

Now the drive unfolds before his eyes. Pastoral, and open, just a few miles before the expressway, traffic and lights. Pink Floyd’s “Have a Cigar” plays on the radio; Tyndall turns up the volume. Bump bump pa bump pa thumps the bass line; “Riding the gravy train…” moans the lyrics. He pulls the sun visor down and puts on his sunglasses. In the crisp autumn light, a giant water cannon irrigates a horse pasture to his left. The pivot head interrupts the stream in a rhythmic way. Water blasts hundreds of feet out and over two stories high. The perspective of the ranch house and the scattered horses adds a surreal feel. It is all backlit, white against the dark green grass and horses. In the near pasture, next to the road, is a small corral of dirt and two horses. They look with envy out to the larger pasture, grass and all. The guitar screams; he pulls the shade down further and sits up straight to block the light.

With his bag on his shoulder, hanging heavy, Tyndall unlocks the back door to the school. Sialia, Helen and James run over even before he gets the door open. Descending on him, they start to harry. “Do you have them?” Sialia says.  

“Can we do it now?” Helen adds.

Fumbling with his keys and coffee mug, he tosses the keys to one of the boys. “It’s the square one. I don’t think there’s enough time,” he says, hounded.

“There’s ten minutes. Come on,” James says.

“Okay here.” He sighs. “Cleanup and make sure the little one gets some.” He hands Sialia a white styrofoam container with a symbol of fish on it and big red letters that say “EARTHWORMS.” The kids scramble around the long aquarium with five large motionless frogs floating in the green water. There is a poster of stone-head statues on Easter Island to the side of the aquarium. James removes the aquarium top and the frogs start darting and lunging toward the surface.

Voraciously the African clawed frogs grab the worms and manipulate them in their large mouths with their tiny forelimbs in spastic motions. Two frogs grab one worm and tug each other around the tank. Two kids kneel on the counter while two others stand. Sialia has her hand on the back shoulder of her friend, Helen. Their heads pull back simultaneously, as the frogs devour worms in a violent, inefficient way. The frogs never blink, sit so still they seem inanimate, then they lunge powerfully, grasping for any quarry. One grabs the leg of another frog and won’t let go. The struggle for what to them seems fleeting and brief. Another boy grabs a toy snake, made out of divided slatted wood, and startles Helen kneeling on the countertop. She screams, then rolls her eyes. Tyndall calmly looks on and smiles.

Once class has started and the kids are settled in, Tyndall—or as the kids call him, “Tynd”—explains the week’s schedule to the blank faces staring back at him. He knows most of their names by now, but still has to peek at his seating chart to make sure he’s right. He looks over to his right at the countertop next to the frog aquarium. It is a mess of black dirt, a dumped over white styrofoam container and a toy snake. The frogs float silently at the surface of the water, never blinking. He explains the testing this week. The kids moan and groan. The frogs stare on motionlessly, adrift. Water tumbles out of the filter, and the frogs float at the surface. They require more oxygen after such a big meal. Their small round eyes with small round pupils never blink; they breathe rhythmically in and out.

The frogs float at the surface, green and striped on top and pale white beneath. Their back legs are powerful and muscular all splayed out, webbing between their toes. Their mouths are huge, with a slight never-changing smirk, almost a smile. They never blink. Their white bellies and sides are distended and bloated. They would probably eat themselves to death, unable to come to the surface for air. If you look closely, you can see the worms withering in their guts, pushing to one side or the other. Occasionally a frog regurgitates a worm, fumbles it around in its small arms and devours it again. They float, adrift, never blinking. So full they can scarcely move.

 

4

AND SO IT BEGINS

The three senior boys—Hector, Ryan, and James—sit in Tyndall’s room during River Watch class and remember the first day of school freshman year. They are loud and boisterous, almost obnoxious in their tone. Ryan and Hector plop down at the big table as James cruises to the back table to pick up his notebook that he cached the class before. Cussing and laughing, “No, no, no, the best was Mali and Ryan on the bus that first day,” Hector says overtaking the others. James confidently walks back over to the table, tall and muscular now as a senior, a far cry from the scrawny little guy he was as a freshman.  

James exclaims as he is sitting down and slamming his hand flat on the table, “Oh. That was so fucked up.”

Tyndall pipes up, “Easy boys, I don’t need to hear this,” half as a statement and half as a question.

“No, this one’s okay Tynd, you’ll like it,” James says, laughing and pushing his light-brown curly hair back.

Tyndall quickly adds, “Yeah right, Lord have mercy.”

Sialia and Sandy from the table next to them drone out almost singing, “Oh yeah, what a great start.”

Sandy sits there with all her materials out in front of her, the reading packet about aquatic insects, a picture book, a mayfly specimen in a petri dish, a hand lens, and a myriad of colored pencils all sharped to a fine exact point. “I wasn’t there, but Sialia was pissed off that day when she got off the bus,” she says.

Tyndall, sitting at his desk grading papers with his feet propped up says, “You boys impressing the ladies again, ay.”

The girls laugh nodding in unison. “Oh yeah, oh so, so impressive,” they say with a sassy overtone.

Tyndall, interested now, stops grading papers at his desk. He kicks and rolls his desk chair with wheels over to the table. He has a handful of almonds in one hand and coffee, now cold, in the other. “An inauspicious start to your journey here, imagine that,” he says.

The boys start off all vying for position and talking at the same time and laughing so much no one can finish a sentence. James finally takes command of the story: “Yeah I get on the bus and Ryan is in one of the back seats. We’ve never gone to school together before, even though we’ve been friends since we were in Cub Scouts back in third grade. I remember it was humid and warm in the bus, and it smelled like vinyl.” Pointing at Ryan he continues, “I sit down and you got this funny smirk on your face. High school here we go—then you pull out a bottle rocket from under your shirt.”

James continues, “Me and Ryan talk it over. Ryan says to me, ‘We’ll light the fuse and you’ll launch the bottle rocket out the window at traffic when we cross the light at Ogden Avenue.’” Ryan opens the window wide open, and the bus driver barks that he should put it halfway open. We argue that we can’t do it now, ’cause the bus driver has us on his radar. I’m sitting there and Ryan’s flicking the lighter sitting next to the window. I have a bottle rocket in my hand. The wind keeps blowing the lighter out. So, we lower the whole operation down below the seat. The fuse is lit and I’m trying to lunge over Ryan to cast it out the window. I’m fumbling away with it as it smokes a white acrid smoke, way more smoke than I anticipated. It wasn’t going out the window and the stick breaks, not completely but is hanging there limp and the fuse is sparking away all this white smoke. And finally, we panic and try to extinguish the firework. I’m frantically stamping away on the bottle rocket on the bottom of the bus floor. There was this quick swishing sound and the bottle rocket flies straight up the aisle of the bus, slams into the front windshield and explodes.”

And so it begins. Untethered and cast in the eddies and vortices of what may come—and here it comes. Sialia Torres is also there on the bus, sitting up front and flipping through an art book when she comes to Nocturne in Black and Gold—Falling Rocket by James Whistler. All at the very moment of sparks flying orange and radiating out against the inside bus window in a frozen moment of abstract time. They float there, floating suspended, orange and red, white smoke, blue, green and yellow on a bleak black-scape of the imagination; and then a startling bang. There is left of boom and then there is right of boom. And again, time begins anew, the slate was clean for only minutes; panta rhei.

The room is full of laughter and energy. James nodding his head, saying, “We were such little fucking punks then,” smiling a big grin.

Ryan adds, “How’d we ever get out of that?”

Tyndall is laughing, rubbing his hair with his hand and his eyes are closed. Not a loud fall-down laugh, but a continuous low clacking sound. Sialia chimes in, “Oh it was so loud, and we were all coughing, and my clothes smelled all day.”

“What punks,” Ryan says. “Yeah we rode our bikes to school until Christmas that year. Then we got a new bus driver after break.”

“Whatever happened?” Sandy asks.

“I don’t know, we talked a lot with the driver, just talking away, asking forgiveness, tellin’ him we wouldn’t do it again. The guy said, ‘Here’s the deal. Don’t show up on this bus again—and I won’t report this.’ He let us off the bus right there and we walked to school the rest of the way. Yeah, never got reported—I guess. We got a new bus driver after Christmas, anyway.”

That morning, the bus continues to school. Immersed in her art book, Sialia slowly turns the page and looks at the abstract painting Animal Destinies by Franz Marc glowing vividly as the boys trudge toward school. Chaotic, distorted and contorted, blazing in movement and color; they tumble toward a fate that awaits them.

 

10

SIALIA’S FIRST DAY

On a humid spring morning in 1954, photographer Fan Ho is walking the streets of the Causeway Bay area of Hong Kong. He stops in the shade of a building to load 120 Tri-X black and white film into his Rolleiflex twin reflex camera. Looking down the viewfinder he sees the inverse upside-down image; he takes a couple of shots of the geometric lines of buildings. The lines are exquisite and the light is fantastic, giving him an exhilarating feeling. But despite the beautiful light and the various shadows on the walls something is missing—it needs a subject. Some opposite, a woman, form and beauty—yes. Ah, a woman, to stand in the light. Geometry and human form. He continues shooting, twelve shots at a time, before having to reload the camera with new film. The next morning, after preconceiving the shot, he meets his cousin and has her stand in the corner at the junction of two imposing walls. The walls rise, smoothly painted, with the left wall in the bright tropical morning light. She stands there in a black dress, erect and tall, with her head looking slightly down and her arms folded in back of her.  

The next day in the darkroom Fan Ho makes the first test print. He sets the timer for a burst of light for two seconds while holding a piece of stiff paper over the photographic print paper.  Then he slides the paper two inches to the right and does another two-second exposure. He continues until the entire eight-by-ten–inch print paper is exposed. What he ends up with is a test print with five bands of different exposures. He chooses the correct exposure of eight seconds. Then he lines up the square negative and crops out the left wall to make a rectangular print. After exposing the print paper, he drops the paper into the developing solution and rocks the tray with the liquid and the paper back and forth; in the soft red light he watches the image magically appear. All the while he is keeping an eye on the clock, then he drops it in the stop bath and into the fixer.

He emerges from the darkroom and drops the wet print into a tray in the sink and runs water on the print. His eyes adjust to the light as the water runs over the final print and the test print below it in the same tray. He lights a cigarette and watches the prints dance in the bubbles under the flowing water. After ten minutes he places both prints on the table and wipes the excess water away with a squeegee. In the silence of the room he stares out the window and takes the last draw of his cigarette. He looks back down at the prints, and smiles. A playful thought echoes through his mind and he reenters the darkroom.

The actual final print, titled Approaching Shadow, has a diagonal “shadow” line cutting it in half, with the young lady in the corner of light with the other half a perfect triangle of shadow. All added imaginatively in the darkroom. But to the viewer it is imposing, frozen time, held in a geometric space. Is the shadow moving in to engulf the woman, or is it moving out? Sun and shade upon the imagination, a captive soul held in a human space, projected upon the mind’s eye, looking at it, out from within.

The yellow school bus pulls up to the designated stop on the east side of Elysium Hills High School. Sialia steps off the bus. She stands there on the sidewalk, in the cool morning, and looks down at her phone. Helen and Sandy come walking up as Sialia undoes her braided hair and reties it. She wears a printed shirt with loose long sleeves and a tall collar with her midriff slightly showing. Around her neck is a plastic beaded rosary with a bone white plastic crucifix. The girls stand and talk as Sialia again unties her braid and pulls her hair through her fingers. Her jet-black hair, wavy from being in a braid, hangs across half her face. The sun reflects off her hair as streaks of dazzling silver in the bright morning light.

As they walk up Helen says, “We just saw James and Ryan walking way back on Madison Street.”

“Oh, you should’ve been there. Those shits lit a firecracker or something. Smell my hair; ah, I hate those guys!”

“Yeah I saw a posted photo of the bus driver talking to them outside the bus.”

Two senior boys walk up in their letter jackets. “Hi Helen; we’d be glad to show you around.” The girls, looking down, laugh in unison, rolling their eyes. Sialia and Sandy look back up at Helen.

“No, no I’m fine, I’ll see you around.”

“Senior boys, already Helen?” Sandy says.

“What’s your schedule?” Helen says, looking at her phone and pulling up her schedule. They walk outside, around to the huge gilded front doors and pull on the handles. A breeze, almost a gust of wind, blows out from the building. They step in.

Sialia sees a smoky vision of a thousand large spools of thread all lined up and stacked at six feet off the ground stretching down the length of the hallway. Below each a long thread of fiber stretches to the moving loom pumping up and down in long twenty-foot stretches. Large brass plates pack the elongated threads into a woven pattern of cloth, each spool spins clockwise one-half rotation, six inches of thread is pulled down, machine parts move in rhythmic thumping unison, slam down, slide, down the dusty hallway, girls in sooty gray dresses adjust knobs and replace empty spools of thread. The noise is deafening from the racket of steel and brass plates clanking together. The thread spools out as parts slide and produce pallets of coarse gray cotton sheets folded on scaffolding below the machine loom stretching down the hallway as far as the eye can see. Along the opposite wall young boys and girls open metal lockers that are full of stacked spools of thread, each spool is about eight inches tall with a six-inch circumference. The children grab the spools and pass them to a line of workers loading the massive loom stretching down the long hallway. Spools turn, sheets of gray cloth are folded, a rhythmic thumping symphony of sound bangs out resonating in the cavity of the mind, people stand shoulder to shoulder in small groups looking out as the girls walk by. A look and a thought. Processions of kids shuffle down the long hallway to a junction of another set of hallways to the left and right, so many looking on, looking from the side, all eyes, the weight of the gaze upon the mind, the girls turn left to numbered lockers and drop their packs and books in the lockers and each pulls out a giant spool of gray thread. Sialia holds the spool in her hand and looks down at the concentric overlaying layers of thread. In one section a bright sky-blue length of thread emerges from the monotonous overlay of gray threads. She smiles and looks down the hall at the room numbers by the doors of different classrooms.

“We’re here: 122, Ms. Crowley, English Composition,” she says. The girls smile at each other, enter and stand right next to each other, shoulders touching. Sialia drops the gray spool to the ground; the spool rolls away out the door, with a bright sky-blue thread extending out from her hand. She looks out at the classroom with 25 or so students in a big circle with the teacher standing in the middle orchestrating some first day activity. She thinks about the start of her day.

“Sialia, get some cereal out for your sister,” her mom said.

“Yeah, yeah, I got it.”

“So, get your sister to her stop, make sure she gets on the right bus.”

“But mamma… can’t you drive us?”

“No, no—we talked about this. Come on.”

“But…”

“No—I’ve got work, and now you girls are on different buses.”

“Yeah, yeah mamma, I got this—it’s okay.”

Sialia’s thoughts are broken as the teacher starts up. “Okay, everyone have a seat, I’ll assign seats next class, let’s just get started here.…I’m Ms. Crowley, and this is English composition….” It is the usual dos and don’ts, and the reading of the syllabus. The teacher proceeds to some inane, convoluted grading system. “So, the Spring Forward rubric…”

Sialia is quick to interject, “I don’t understand, so if a kid hands in a paper late, then he or she gets graded as sixty-six percent, but if they then rewrite that paper they can get one hundred percent of the grade?”

“Yes, that’s how it works.”

“But why?”

“To motivate those students.”

“And how’s that fair to the kid who handed it in on time? Anyways, when does motivation become manipulation?” Sialia says.  

The teacher, aghast, stands there frozen for a minute, with a perturbed look on her face. Then she proceeds, “Okay, now we’re going to stand up and form a circle, then we’ll break into groups for this introductory exercise.” The teacher breaks them into groups of four students. Sialia thinks—no, no, not with those guys, no—fucking Salvadorans. What are they doing here? They can’t even speak Spanish or English. I hate them. It’s hard enough here, being Mexican, and they have to ruin it. She and the other three students stand in a small circle, avoiding eye contact. Sialia stands there with her arms folded in front of her. She thinks, My friends are over there. I should be with them—that’s where I belong. When does this class end?

James walks in a half hour late. “Now, who are you? Why are you late?” the teacher says. Pointing, she says, “Now go join that group.”

“Well, ah, some bus problems.”

The kids laugh and Sialia smiles and shakes her head. She looks over at Sandy and silently mouths, “I told you.” As James walks by, she puts her hand on his shoulder and smiles.

James walks by and smiles back and then joins Hector in a group standing in the corner. “Man, you made it,” Hector says. “Are you in trouble?”

“No, nothing—yet.”

Sialia looks down at the pattern in the carpet and in a daydream, she sees a bright painting dancing before her eyes. Marc Chagall’s I Am the Village dances at her feet. A bright smiling goat is eye to eye with a smiling man holding a shining glittery tree of hope and peace; there is a circle of red over a green triangle, houses and people. I like cows and goats and the lines of small houses, it reminds me of being a little girl in Mexico, before we all left…so, so long ago, a circle within the circle, hand tools working the land, and everybody walked. I’m friends with animals.…She looks across the room at Helen smiling and laughing with three boys vying for her attention. Helen stands there, tall, elegant and poised with straight arms clasping her crossed hands together, pinkie fingers up in front of her. She leans back and flashes a smile, as if she were standing in front of a calm ocean shining backlit; an expanse of water and sky with billowing clouds. In her mind’s eye, Sialia can see the small church with the cross on the steeple atop the hill. She remembers walking hand-in-hand with her grandmother and her explaining, in soft musical Spanish, the history of the buildings on that street. I hope my little sister is having fun in second grade. Wow, that was my first year here, that’s when I made friends with Sandy and Helen. We had fun then. Now all this.

Sialia turns to the group in back of her and says, “Hi, JR. Did you have a good summer break?”

“Ah, hi, ah yeah,” JR says, looking down at his phone smiling.

“Hey, do you have art today? I have it third block.”

“Yeah, I’ll see you there. Hope the teacher is cool.”

“Yeah, we’ll see.”

JR’s cool. Such a little guy. His straight brown hair hangs down to his eyes in a flat greasy way. No one likes him, kind of weird, but he’s nice, doesn’t act like a jerk. He was nice to me back in grade school. Looking across the room, she smiles looking at James and Hector. Both of them are on the floor having a one arm push-up contest, cussing and swearing. Those guys, always goofing off, having fun, they don’t even care who is looking. They just tumble along. I don’t know why, but they’re okay for such spazzes.

Here it comes—the teacher, obviously annoyed, starts up—“What are you boys doing?”

Hector falls to the ground and lies there absolutely still, like a mouse under the gaze of a hawk. His head is on the floor with his cheek smashed against the carpet and he starts talking with his mouth in the carpet—something about a push-up contest. The whole class erupts in laughter. Arms splayed out, body absolutely frozen, Hector continues to mumble away face down. “Ah, we were just like doin’ pushups. Ya know, it’s important to stay in shape.”  

Smiling, Sialia stares out the window at three bluebirds on the split rail fence. She can see the half circle of green grass where the lawn sprinkler water hits, with an arc of brown grass enclosing it where the water misses. One of the bluebirds alights at the interface, grabs an insect and flies back up to the fence rail by its friends.

 

19

EL SALVADOR I

Juan Miguel Lopez and his twelve-year-old son Miguel Angel stand on a steep hillside in the mountains forty kilometers northeast of the city of Santa Ana, El Salvador. It is the dry season; fires burn and smoke hugs the hillsides. The sound of a machete resounds on hard tropical wood. The first swing of the machete exposes the white wood under the green acacia bark, burned black on the outside. Another couple of swings exposes the red heartwood. A giant ceiba tree, a hundred and twenty feet tall, stands sentinel, overlooking a semi-pastoral landscape. The tree is sacred in the minds of the local people. It has stood for millennia watching the forest landscape grow, burned and plowed, and then back again. Looking to the west, the valley rolls in a broken landscape of agriculture and small towns. It eventually gives way to a sea of roofed houses; all one story with angry electrical lines crisscrossing red and gray corrugated metal roofs. The sun is shining through a dirty-crimson ring of smoke and dust.

Juan has brown muscular arms and a weathered red brown face. He is wearing rubber boots and holds a machete. The machete falls hard at a downward angle on the yagrumo tree trunk. Half the tree’s branches and leaves are charred; the other half is still alive and green. The large palmate leaves are like a weather vane, which lets you know how the wind is blowing. The leaves lift and blow as the first wind of the day begins. The leaves are dark green on the top side and silver-white on the bottom. They flap and wave, alternating in the wind from green to silver-white. The tree falls, twisting from the uneven weight of burned and living branches. Life weighs so much more. The green and silver leaves lie on the ground like folded flags. His son, Miguel Angel, stands uphill wiping his face with a rag. The hillside vegetation is now cleared; exposing the view of the valley and the town below. On a rounded hillside facing the town is the cemetery.

Miguel Angel remembers standing in the cemetery just the week before. How his family and his uncles and aunts all talked about leaving. He could see the cemetery, the gated steel fence, the rusted cross, the white dress his sister was wearing. There were the boys selling water. Also, someone was selling bright pink cotton candy wrapped in clear shiny cellophane.

“Papa, why is the big tree there?” Miguel Angel says pointing to the big tree left standing while all the others had been cut down.

“It is a ceiba tree. What is left from long before—left over from—the old indigenous ones say the roots are connected deep to all that lives and was. To remove the tree, would cut the tether that holds us all to the earth and keeps us alive. Even if the tree dies, it is left in place. Do not cut the branches until they fall—then you make fence posts out of them.”

Miguel Angel interjects, “You mean the Indios that sit on the steps of the church and speak the native language?”

“Do not use that term to describe them. Their fate is their own; they are born into it.”

“Sorry, Papa.”

“The tree is there so that we never forget and remain connected. It is our past.”

Miguel Angel stares out down the broken hillside to the lone ceiba tree, then continues his gaze on down to the cemetery. He swings the machete in his hand with unexpected force; the ash around the tree trunk flies upward and chokes him. His eyes water.

Miguel Angel opens his eyes and looks up at the white board in his English II class. He has been in the United States now for four years. He is perplexed at the lesson and is struggling to understand what is going on. The teacher is going on about something related to some Hero’s Journey and Star Wars. He knows Star Wars is a movie and that’s about it.

Mr. Klinger is clearing his throat as he often does. “So, we are here with the example of Luke Skywalker meeting Yoda. Now what is the relationship of this modern story to classical Greek stories?”

Sialia looks over at Miguel, sees that he is lost and reaches over and turns the outline page for him and points, “Aqui.”  

Sandy raises her hand and goes on about the classic Greek stories that have some guru type that emerges to help the hero in their journey.

“Excellent, so what is the role of Yoda with Luke Skywalker?”

Mr. Klinger calls on Miguel Angel.  

“Ah, he needs guidance, so Yoda helps him.”  

“How so?”

Sialia helps Miguel Angel, “Like ya know, he teaches him The Force.”

Class continues and Klinger is writing an essay prompt on the board.

Sialia raises her hand. “No, no this is unrealistic and bullshit. Where is this Little Green Guy with big ears? Seen him, I have not!”

“Now Sialia, don’t use language like that. He is The Guru who guides The Hero.”

Sialia is quick to respond, “But we have no guide in the real world. Here and now it does not work that way—so it is bullshit.”

Klinger continues, “He teaches Luke Skywalker The Force.”

“But really? Come on; there is no magic. There are no gurus.”

 

25

CORTEZ’S SPEECH

 

Stufa, Combe and Haustoria are walking around in the hallway, talking and looking into various classrooms. As they pass by Tyndall’s science room, the obsidian on his desk flickers as light scatters within the dark volcanic glass; it shines for a brief second. Shimmering waves of color, emitted in pure optical resonance bouncing off the darkness.

In Mexico, at the conquistador’s beach encampment, stands a young native slave, Cualli. He is under the watchful eyes of the oldest Spaniard, Fernando, and the youngest, Salvador. Sal beats him at regular intervals, the lowest ranking individual always being the cruelest. Here, at camp, he does as he is ordered to do by individuals too old or young to participate in the battles. Most of the time he is not bound and shadows Sal in his duties.      

For a week now, Captain Cortez was retired either in his tent cabana on the shore or on one ship. His slave girl interpreter was nowhere to be seen. The monks were scattered about. Food was brought only to that ship. No servants stayed, nor the working soldiers; only the captain and a handful of officers. On the shore the regular soldiers observed in silence how the officers and captain would not speak to each other. Only their eyes would meet; to them something was familiar and known. The orders that were given were utilitarian, busy, task-like, almost common place. Suddenly twenty-five Spanish soldiers and two officers were dispatched to that one ship. They sailed out with all the gold, twenty-five native slave men and twenty captive girls as concubines.

A pall fell heavily on the camp. The armaments were readied, the food amassed, slaves housed, fed and watered. All the slaves were bound to long lines of shackles, in open long houses with thatched roofs. No fires burned that entire day. The men stirred, gazed around, and fell silent. The sun set over the mountains, the bay was still, a deeper blue-green with a slight hint of orange. Clouds far off on the horizon started to turn orange against the purple-blue sky.

The order was called out, “Light the central fire and call the men. Leave the slaves; all must come.” The horses shuffled and Cualli stood next to Sal and Fernando. He kept looking at them. Fernando gazed back screaming silently with his eyes to have them both be still and quiet. The moment had come.

El Capitan strode out of his tent. He was in full battle regalia, sword at his side. His officers followed him. On the beach, the central fire was lit; it began to glow underneath the pyre. It started orange-red underneath, with the flames snaking around the wood. Four rowboats went out to the remaining four ships; each with one Spaniard and two slaves rowing. A deepening purple sky hung over the bay. The rhythmic sound of the small waves came at the stroke of each oar. The central beach fire crackled. The men shifted their weight from foot to foot. All stood, silent, and waited. Salvador kept looking at Fernando. “Be still you fool, or I’ll run you through myself,” Fernando said under his breath. His hand was out from his side with fingers gesturing—be still and silent.

Cortez spoke. “We have come in the name of Christ our Lord, the King and the Queen, and all their majesty for which we are good men of God and Spain. Our mission here is to save the savage infidels; free them by the hand of The Lord. As good Christians, all of you, and the blessed King our Majesty of Spain. We have come to secure these lands for New Spain. God has granted you Majesty over all these lands for the blessed crown of Spain. Your oath to God and country is to save all, and secure commerce for all of Spain. What awaits you is God’s glory, for her Majesty in Spain.”

The captain nodded to his officers, who then each waved a torch and threw it in the central fire. Silently they looked at each other, their eyes shifting left then to the right. Then each man stopped looking at the others around them and was transfixed by the fires burning before them. A torch lit the bow of each remaining ship anchored in the bay. At that moment the ships, all set afire, started to blaze. The men stirred, gasped, held their hands over their mouths. Cualli was standing next to Salvador. Salvador started to speak. Fernando grabbed him by the shoulder and dug his fingers into the boy’s collarbone, making him drop to his knees.

All watched with horror as the four ships burned, the small rowboats returning. Murmurs, then shouts, all quelled as El Capitan spoke again. “God and Spain have granted all of you this land to be secured. Lands so rich with people innumerable, all waiting for you.” At that moment Cortez threw the breastplate from the female warrior into the fire. The men watched the flames envelope the two large pointy breasts. The reflection of the dark bay, with the burning ships in their eyes. The golden tits gleamed in the flames, the female shape danced out. The last light of day illuminated the billowing orange clouds out on the horizon over the sea.

Cortez continued, “This, this is yours to have. Each of you, all that you can carry. All for God, the savages you will save in his name.” Reflected in their eyes was the gold breastplate glowing in the fire. Anger and fear welled up. “Each of you will stay as governor and ruler of more land and gold—all that is here. Here for you in the name of God.” The hammer falls on the stamp—a flash of light. The mind’s eye sees the ingot of gold. The seal of Spain flashes on the gold ingot in the red orange of the fire. A gold cross flashes on the next blow. A woman, naked, has one hand out to her side, open and inviting. A crucifix flashes; Christ, limp under his own earthly weight. The captain’s green eyes shine in the fire as a young girl drops her whole dress for him. The stamp reverberates; a clanging sound with pictures of roads and canal causeways, golden Native American icons melt and flow out. The cannons fire at the next hammer swing and the natives drop. The hammer strikes; the stone blades shatter. The gold ingots are stacked with a clanking sound as wooden shields, covered in bright green and blue feathers, crack in the arcing swing behind a steel blade.

The men stood still, frozen, tears flowed down their cheeks as the captain continued. “The path is forward in the New World. This is yours, all of it.” Round plump breasts lift, heave and arch up; the small of the back of a bronze woman lifts off the ground. A cross is waved over the fire. The hammer strikes the stamp; the moan of a woman. The weight of a gold ingot in the hand; muscles flexed in the forearm of the Spaniard, veins popping as the muscles contract at the sound. Flex. Smoldering flesh pops in the fire. The pox and pus of disease on the skin of a writhing native under an animal skin blanket. The clanking sound of metal, as the sweat pours off the face of the native gasping for air.

“On that plateau is El Dorado. All the gold, riches innumerable, gems the size of your fists.” The hammer strikes; the juice of tropical fruit spills down the face and over the pointy beard of a Spaniard. An obsidian blade slices a girl’s throat; as she silently succumbs, blood flows over the iconographic hieroglyphs on the gold platter-like altar. The hammer falls: The Royal Seal of Spain. The hammer falls; a spent Spaniard falls off to the side of a naked native girl. The breastplate melted into the fire. An orange glowing silhouette of breasts shimmered in the blazing coals. The hammer falls; spurs dig into the side of the horse. A cross flashes and native motifs of wood and plaster are burned. The hammer swings; a round stone grinds corn into bread that is baked on a flat stone by the fire. Brown hands, wrinkled and knotted, flip the corn flatbread. The bread is bitten into by the mouth of a scared face conquistador.

In terror, the eyes of the men stared on. Cualli dropped back, looking at the reflection of the burning ships in the bay, the central fire, and the Captain speaking. Conquistadors were dropping to their knees, crying. The men were shouting to the saints and God for salvation and courage to free this land. They pounded their chests with one hand, flogging themselves, for Christ, in his mercy to bless them in this new land.

Cualli continued to retreat. Silent and catlike he retreated into the vegetation. Why can’t they see me? Past rows of slaves, his own kind, tethered. He dropped the cotton-like dress given to him by the Spaniards. Naked, he retreated inland to the interior. Animal-like, he silently glided through the green tropical vegetation.

32

EASTER ISLAND

In art class, JR turns to Sialia and says, “Hey, what you painting?”

Sialia responds, “It’s the scene that we read about in biology last class, you know the National Geo article.”

“Oh yeah, the ancestor’s story of the island—ahh Easter Island.”

Ms. Rayleigh chimes in, “Now Sialia, aren’t you supposed to be working on your emulation painting?”

“Oh, don’t worry I can do these both.”

Rayleigh says, “You are just your own bird, you fly where you want.”

The copy of the magazine article is open next to Sialia as she paints. The article starts with these words: “Grandfather, tell me again the story of how the ancestors came here. I love that story.

“Ah, in the enormous outrigger canoes, each with all the extended families, sailed and paddled across the vast mother ocean. A face was carved into the front bow of the canoe, and the white waves spoke as a song in the rhythmic beat of the heart. The cry went out from the lead canoe, as Chief Apololan, pointed to a great gathering of porpoises. The families, one and all, grabbed their paddles and turned with the waves and wind in set pursuit.

“As they approached, the brother porpoises joined them and rode on the wave at the front of the boat. This brought such great joy that it was no longer a hunt, but a joined celebration of movement with the waves shining silver in the sun. And all leaned forward together on the paddles, and moved as one, with smiles deep in their hearts. For they had joined in union with their brothers. Never has a canoe moved with such speed, and every wave turned in front. And the great silver and white porpoises leapt high into the air, spinning and splashing water on the smiling faces. And when the festival of movement was done, the clouds on the horizon spoke of a green emerald in the ocean, under stars unknown. Rapa nui—home.”

Later that day, Tyndall stands in front of his tenth grade Biology class and goes over the lesson. “Alright guys, last class we read about and discussed two readings about Easter Island. So now why don’t you get those readings out, and we’ll review.”

A student raises his hand, “I wasn’t here.”

“Okay, here you go.” Tyndall says handing the kid the readings.

“So, anyone else absent last class?  Also, make sure you get the notes from another student.” After the normal herky-jerky start to it all, the day’s activities get outlined. “So, before we get started, someone give me a description of the environment today on Easter island.” Sandy is quick to raise her hand and he knows he’ll get a complete answer from her. She sits at her desk overly prepared: white water bottle with a black cap, floral pattern notebook open to a blank page, and a color pen set in a plastic case propped open with twelve colors arranged from yellow to black. He calls on Sandy.  

Sandy jumps right in with an exuberant presumptive tone, “Easter Island is super remote and has open grasslands with no trees, but there were once trees there.”

“Excellent—now what evidence do they have that there were once trees there?”

“Pollen records in mud from a lake.”

“Excellent, now someone explain the statues. Helen”?

“Well there are these huge statues.”

“And what are they called?” Helen fumbles through her papers and quickly says, moai.”

“And Johnny how big are they?”

Johnny says, “Ya know, um, big.” Everyone laughs.

“Come on.”

“Ah, like, um ya know, oh here—up to ninety metric tons.”

“Okay this is not directly in the reading. Do you think the statues required a lot of time, energy and resources?”

“Well, yeah.”

“How so?” Sandy is quick to raise her hand, but Tyndall does not call on her. The lesson continues. After teasing out the answers from the kids Tyndall turns around to the whiteboard and writes down: “(1) limited resources, (2) carrying capacity and (3) quarry, carve, and move.”

“Now, write that down. All right, we have our basic overview, so now we’ll do a lab activity.”

Sialia interjects, “But it’s more than just resources, it’s how they acted.”

“How so?”

“Yeah, they all started out cooperating, ya know, crossing the biggest chunk of ocean; then they used it all up and ruined it by being all tribal.”

“Ah, I hadn’t thought about it that way.”

Tyndall continues. “Excellent Sialia. We’ll get back to this after the lab. So, you’re goanna have finite resources and you have to choose what to do with these resources. Each group will get thirty goldfish crackers to ‘spend’. Now you can do several things with these. Trade them for a canoe. Or you can spend them building a statue. Or you can eat them. Or trade them for chickens or obtain weapons. I know from past labs, this is going to get kind of crazy and loud as all ten groups are at it. And don’t just shove these into your mouths, but actually follow along and trade and build and barter away. Also, for our little experiment, the island will have only a thousand trees in which to build canoes, make rope and move statues.” Tyndall hands out the goldfish to each group, steps back and says, “Go!”

“We don’t have to be fair or nice, right?”

“No.”

“We just have to get goldfish, trees, or statues to win, right?”

And with both hands in the air, sitting on the big front table Tyndall says—“Yeah go!”

He sits back and watches absolute mayhem unfold. Goldfish are flying, kids are arguing, scrambling, hoarding and cheating. He thinks to himself. Holy shit, I hate this lab and love it. Every time it just gets crazier; but the lessons of limited resources and expensive monuments plays out so well. After it is all done, Tyndall does his best to rein in the class and try to make some conclusions. “So, what did we end up with?”

“All the goldfish ended up in the hands of only a few groups, and all the trees are gone.”

Hector says, “Yeah now we all can pray to the statues for a juicy cheeseburger and fries.” He drops to his knees and pays homage to one of the groups with all the goldfish. “Oh, please may I have another.”

Sialia tosses a goldfish in the air and Hector catches it in his mouth while clapping his hands like a circus sea lion begging. Everyone laughs.

“So, what happens to the basics, like goldfish, if you build only statues?”

“Yeah end up with no trees and no goldfish—but a lot of statues.”

“I think you guys get the idea of limited resources, carrying capacity, in a closed environment. Now what I want you to do is log on to the following website to take a virtual tour of the island. Also, they show a new hypothesis for the way that the statues were moved from the quarry to their pedestals overlooking the ocean. One last thing to outline, now write this down: ‘The goldfish represent resources.’ Now let’s list out the resources, plus cultural things of value. Remember these are inextricably linked.” The class continues to outline things about food such as: fish, shellfish, porpoises, chickens, crops like sweet potato and bananas. They also list out trees, in particular the big palm trees. The list continues: Statues, shelter, water, and weapons.

“Another student adds: “Remember the rats that were introduced, and their impact on the palm trees.”

“Excellent. And what is the cost of a moai?” Time in years, labor, resources like trees for timber and rope.”

Sialia said, “But the statues cost the most in resources.”

“How so?” Then she answers, straining to convince others of what she can see and understand.

All for belief, a want and a desire; for peace, food, trees, a canoe, and water. It represented something in the mind, a mystical connection to a greater something. Why look out, look out at the sea, the vastness; a never-quiet place resonating with the sound of the surf, wind, and waves on the shore. As if waiting. Symbolic of a desire; to be in a clan, a group, and to place one’s belief in a stone—so literal, so definitive. To go out and look at it, look out at what it might see. To see through the eyes of a deity. To know something by mere representation, a sentinel looking, and to believe in the never-blinking eye in the mind of a stone; a lithic permanence, penetrating the horizon, a place you can never go, from where your ancestors came from, ever connected to the ancestors, and you know, know how from a boat they came, a boat more powerful, a tool, and the igneous rock face that can only look out. Something to float your desires upon, inside the gaze of a rock. The pounding waves, the ever- penetrating cold of the mist that cools the stone-face of the rock dripping wet.

Quarry, carve, and move. Look out and see. See through the eyes. Eyes that never blink. Eyes that always see. What was it like to patch up the last outrigger? The last vessel to obtain food from the ocean. The canoe must have become less and less utilitarian and more and more symbolic. The last canoe had a face carved into it. The front of the canoe was erected and then directed as an outreaching cry to the waves that would never touch it. And when the rain and wind, and warring clans commandeered the last of the wood. Only giant stone faces could withstand the elements and the cultural upheaval. A stronger mystical sediment in the derived mind of someone who could actually see. It’s all you got left. The inequalities created by the squeeze on the resources. The last rope. How they unwind all the broken little pieces of rope to try to make one last functional rope. The wet twisted fibers. To try and move the moai. The sound of the rope stretching, creaking, snapping. The sound of the moai. hitting the ground. The despair to leave it on the side of the road. How could it then look out? Lying there, on its side. There, in-between, and the empty rock pedestal with no face to place on it, no eyes to look out at the surf crashing and the mist rolling in. The cool droplets, barely perceivable, but for the chill in your bones as the incessant wind howls past the prostrate face that was once a rock. Sun, moon and stars, and in the pitch-black—staring out. Soundless, next to the ever-humming ocean vastness.

A multiplicity of determinants; actions and reactions. Imagined, contrived and pre-presented in the symbolic mind that supersedes the material world. So germane to some purpose within the dreamland with mystic undertones, to evoke a recognition of meaning. To perceive and express in hidden tribal platitudes that shaped the driving force of applied validity. A treasure in the soft tuff stone, an edifice, imposing, iconic, manifested in belief, stronger than reason, emerging from temporal things. Distinguishing itself within the very rock looking out.

And to sit with the moai, upon the rock pedestal, overlooking the ocean and see a pod of a thousand porpoises swimming by, as the statue and a lone observer watches, touching the stone, feeling a more complete whole; the silver water, white waves, the aerial breaching, splashing, spinning, moving unencumbered with powerful thrusts of the tail. And no canoe to join them, and swim, and fly and breach the surface and splash—to be free.