Chapter 9: Fermented Mare's Milk

Only moments before, the ancient Russian Lada taxi I rode in had been swerving along a mountainside, pocked with trees in their death throes, smelling of musty wool and the driver's stale cologne poured on in a vain attempt at odor cover-up. We had jolted to a stop upon my request for a picture,  and our exhaust caught up to us as I unfolded myself out of the car. I squinted into Uzbekistan's southeastern desert, wind and life together disappearing beyond the horizon in Tajikistan's frontier, and sighed.

It wouldn't be long now, I thought, rounding the car and avoiding tasting the metallic stench of baked sun coming off the hood. Carefully watching for truck drivers intent on running down pedestrians in the baked back hills of Samarqand, I approached a worker's insanity. Cross-leg seated below tables centimeters off rocky soil, clothed in a multitude of cotton patterns flapping weakly in the limp breeze, five ladies and a teenage boy were selling what can only be described as dried yogurt balls. Drizzled and dried over a fine mesh screen, this yogurt was then collected by hand, rolled and glued together with a touch of water to create the world's saltiest snack.

I looked down at the women, whose only portion of skin showing was an eye slit in the turban rolled around their heads, two eyes basking in the only shade for 300 km, then back up at the horizon, where land cracked and crumbled like a lizard two days dead in the sun, and shook my head. "Insane," I muttered, "why this spot? Why now?" Shuffling between tables, my head and shoulders bent awkwardly forwards to accommodate the angle of sale necessary to talk with them, I bought three yogurt balls, a tiny glistening black crystal to lower blood pressure, a bag of withered tea leaves to pacify anger, and a small glass of kumiss, fermented mare's milk. The people of the Asian central steppes do not advise drinking this kumiss later, so I downed as much as my constricted throat would allow without gagging. The locals watched me carefully beneath their scarves and turbans, silent laughter hidden beneath glittering eyes older than sand; laughter whipped away by a rising wind. One of the ladies gestured for me to eat the yogurt ball next, and I dutifully popped the mini golf ball sized treat into my mouth. I teared up instantly as my mouth screamed for water, while the orb happily jolted salt through my body in waves and waves of skin-crinkling grimaces. "Rrrr..ahhma...t," I garbled in an attempt to say thank you, with my cheek popping in and out like a squirrel gone crazy for nuts.

I walked slowly over the edge behind where they sat, a ravine slinking downwards at a crazy grade for at least 250 meters, and gently nudged the ball out of my mouth, into my sweaty palm and over the edge. Its bounce down and out of sight reminded me of when heads were thrown at the feet of the defeated in medieval times. The staggering view held me entranced for a few minutes, and I stood subdued, small and insignificant compared to the reaches of sand cresting and rolling downwards and outwards, halting only a few miles in their march towards the horizon by a small lapis-lazuli shaded lake in the shape of a chopped-up leaf. With the women's small bursts of noise behind me, and the sweat from a piercing overhead sun crawling lazily down my spine, I felt almost at peace. Almost to a content memory coated in sea-brine and drowned salt gods. Almost.

--

The stone and cable suspension bridge linking solid land to the lighthouse perched on a thick chunk of rock sliding 300 meters out of the eastern Atlantic ocean, on Mizen Head's point in Southwestern Ireland, is terrifying.

This does not mean I do not stop in the middle to feel the bridge's slight sway in the face of relentless winds, or close my eyes to the gigantic pieces of rock the color and shape of broken knuckles on a bruised fist, continuously slammed by vicious waves. No. In fact, I stop and stick my head through a gap in the spiderweb of cables and stare straight down, wishing every boy's fantasy of flight, birdsong and sharp fish-catching talons. I could tell the guard's voice at the other end was telling me to stop, but I let the wind whip and whistle his cautions away as I popped my head backwards and continued to the other end. I mused as to why they would caution me on the bridge, when to arrive at this same bridge one had to cling to a cliff-side "path" with a feeble one meter tall "fence" bordering the left side sheer drop into a salty oblivion. I have talked to myself for years, and now was no different, as I stated aloud to nobody in particular that it's the dizzying heights that make everything come into focus for me.

Safely climbing the rocky crag connecting bridge to foundation stone, I continued the story stream in my mind of what it would have been like to build such a lighthouse in 1854, and how many men fell while they worked, screaming or silent into a watery grave. Weaving my way around a few bedraggled tourists trying to keep their hats on in the howling winds, I finally made the lighthouse, squeezed through a few dusty rooms with ancient newspapers describing Fresnel lenses in more depth than I cared to ever know about, and exited onto the final jutting point of Mizen Head's rocky insanity. This outpost, easily 200 meters straight up from the turbulent surf far, far below me, welcomed roaring sea-winds from three directions, producing such a violent gale of noise, sea-salt air, and brine-soaked mist it nearly knocked me over the slim railing connecting the rock to the adjacent lighthouse building.

Holding fast to this same rail with one hand, I attempted to shield my eyes enough in order to actually see the ceaseless blue, the angry blue, the siren blue that pulls you downwards. I imagined a worker's curses thrown furiously from one crude scaffolding to another, the shrieking, pinging, clanging, groaning work of erecting such a lighthouse on the edge of an ocean that deems the importance of your survival nominal at best. I imagined again the false grab, scrabbling, slip and fall of a man's fingers clinging to only air. I wondered if they felt peace as they fell. I wondered how my feet had come to rest back on land, ignoring the ugly glances from security as I crunched on small pebbles back to my rental car. I wondered, before closing the door and barring sound, where the crashing and tumbling of what I had just seen would lodge itself forever in a corner of my mind. I never imagined it could have found partners in deserts and steppes, and how peace can seep into you at the loneliest moments.

--

The Lada protested loudly as it was cranked into third gear, grinding up under the merciless heel of my taxi driver. I looked back through the grimy rear window, just in time to catch a glimpse of one of the women's scarves flap and shake violently in a gust of wind, as I absently thumbed the crystal rock in my hand. It had unrolled itself halfway before it thought better and whipped back, covering her face just as the sharp turn of our car obscured my vision with an unending picture of dark and light browns sliced only with the fading blue of my day.

Ascent (Poem)

The castle itself you couldn't quite make out,

nestled and jutting from the dark spine halfway up the mountain.

Formidable, hidden and looming came to mind

as my feet crunched up the half-hour's walk of beat down snow

and red pines rising a hundred feet straight up,

sentinels to my solitude.

People chattered, pushed, slid and wrenched their ways

incongruously up the path,

anomalies on my landscape,

mistakes from a painter's unsteady hand.

They were headed to this fortress,

hunched on a rock hundreds of meters ahead,

yet seemed to make no progress, while I,

smoothly and almost sanguinely

glided further up to where an entryway stood with its gaping jaw open.

Strangely though,

where once there had been freedom to pass

a guard now protected the blackness behind.

Was this predictable?

Did this now match the protests of a few girls,

who had somehow made it to the top unseen by me?

Who now stepped forward to force a pass

and were punched downwards by the guard,

crumpled to the snow.

He seemed unfazed, powerfully old

and I crunched closer only to realize he had no eyes.

More closely now,

surrounded now by towers soaring into the Bavarian sky.

He still had made no move to block me

and I passed within a panicked inch,

near enough to smell the strength taken from those he had finished.

Suddenly, surprisingly, simply,

I was inside. I was alone.

A stillness descended down upon me like a play's curtain

and I turned to see the guard,

now facing me,

his back to a sunlight that punched its way

around his shoulders yet never reached me,

silhouetting his eyeless face.

I turned quickly,

and began ascending the stairs smothered in silence.

Untitled (Poem)

He leaned quietly into his roan horse's worn saddle,

arched his back with that slow stiffness morning frost brings,

and closed his eyes briefly.

Thoughts rattled around his head like gravel being shoveled,

and assembled themselves one by one,

as his troops gleamed in the dawn,

bayonets glinting off and on like golden chattering teeth.

Never a stiller calm, he thought,

absently finding his fingers entwined in the mare's rough mane,

and raising his hand to his mouth,

tasted days old musket powder,

stained with tobacco, pride and rich trampled dirt.

Never a stiller calm, he thought again,

raising this same scarred saber hand,

sending a tiny ocean forward to death or glory.

The world before T (Poem)

Slapping stifling smoky storms–

serene slumber suffocates sadness

so?

Sandy shores surprise stubby starfish.

slowly stand, slip, slump.

Soar skyward shiny star!

Stomp sexy Sunday sunflowers,

Secretly sifting seeds – sensual slender slippery skin.

Snakes, stars, sneakily slide, slither, sense… 

seers see sudden silky smiles.

Surely Saturdays she sleeps,

surely she sleeps.

Chapter 8: The teacher chronicles

It wouldn't be fair, in fact, it would be a damn shame to say I never saw that rare spark in the back of student's eyes as the synonyms and antonyms, homophones and homonyms, tumbling around, came to a halt with understanding. Then the gears, where moments before they had been whirling around like the sodden clothing in a washing machine's tumbler would click smoothly into place and justify my two-hour one-way commute into a cracked and crumbled community surrendering itself to AIDS and fast food. It also wouldn't be fair to say all teacher beginnings are jaded, short of life and battered by reasons too plentiful to jot down in this stumbling story. Yet, it is fair to say my teaching years began with one person: Ruben Carmenate. It is also fair to say that the words "yellow chicken" have never meant so much to me as they did then, on the first day teaching a veritable army of 35 bilingual, special education kindergarteners in the heart of the Bronx.

 I remember hearing his screaming, or talking (they were the same for him either way) as our pathologically nice school counselor brought him and his "mom" down the lengthy corridor of my sunken school, towards the last door on the right. Mine.

There were moments during that first year, when I sat on my favorite chair. Its back came no higher than my knee, and I would eat my lunch in sheer silence, wondering if they had placed me in that specific room as a cruel twist to the dumping ground my class had become for any kid between four and six and a half years old, each with an even half-dozen psychological and physiological major malfunctions as an added bonus. Aside from what I termed the "angel pack" of half-dozen girls that lit up my day with their smiles, learning-lit eyes and a few "Mr. Davis you are the best teacher in the world!" comments, this comprised my class. Ruben, all silly puns aside, made the already formidable list of students look like child's play.

"A HA HA HA yellow chicken, chicken yellow, juice!? Were approximately the first few words I heard Ruben scream and garble while on his way down the hallway to my classroom. My students, at this point a few months into the year, were petrified of doing anything I did not approve of, like or deem necessary in my quest to turn them into regular functioning individuals of society. This does not mean they didn't engage in some ridiculous shit, like boys opening their pants during rug time to show the girl next to him his "algo especial" or another boy saying he wanted to imitate the sounds his mommy made with all her boyfriends, in the mornings coming back from work. Yet, wide their eyes went when Ruben came to the door, cackling and yelling about yellow chicken from behind his green-filmed teeth. As a lovely addition, were you to suddenly drop acid and stare boggle-eyed at a demented rhinoceros with a shock of hair like a soaked mess of palm leaves mixed with ivy instead of a horn, a voice like pebbles being scraped across obsidian and a lonely cloud of smoke odor rapidly trying to catch up in the hallway, his mother appeared.

"Wher da fuck you takin' me muchacha?" came the melodious voice of Ruben's mother.

And so begin the chronicles of a Bronx teacher.

Chapter 7: Boundaries and Waters

And a family of loons came to me in my dream and spoke in hooded whispers like a quivering wail that floats over shrouded hills. They told me stories of fog that had rolled onto waters still as polished mirrors, and how this fog spilled into my mind, mixing sanity with insanity in a turbid mess of thoughts.  - b.c.d.

Dreams had riddled my night as they always did. I awoke to the comforting campfire smells and sounds of the sizzle and snap of bacon fat, rough coffee grounds swirling in their heated aluminum cups, and an eerie chorus of mallards and loons gliding over glass-smooth Minnesota waters. For a moment I couldn't place the calls in reality or in my dreams, but the impossibly cheerful face of my father poking through the front tent flaps convinced me quickly that I was indeed awake; that another day of endless paddling and dusk flavored hot cocoa was in store. 

"The perfect day!" he said animatedly, grabbing my ankle and shaking it for extra emphasis. "Up and at 'em!"

"Uhhhhgggh," I responded eloquently to no one in particular. My sleeping bag still held me in its warm cocoon embrace, and the way my father's breath still lingered in my tent after his disembodied head disappeared outside told me there was no rush to get up. In fact, getting up seemed pretty overrated at the moment, and I rolled over in an attempt to slip back into my dreams...their cries echoed in ripples of rapture across the lake in my brain and it was not until I felt the curling icy fingers of these waters slip around my ankles and hold firm that I realized it was only a dream, and I heard the sirens smooth laughter as they receded into depths I cannot understand...

Fully awake now, I could see the hard V of my tent's vinyl roof ruffle slightly in the rising morning's wind. I didn't know whether to be more stunned that I had survived the siren's song another night, or that my dad had let me sleep an extra half hour. "Incredible," I muttered to myself, unwillingly unzipping the sleeping bag in a reluctant gesture that let out my snug warmth and dreams simultaneously. A burst of sound, flurry of movement and explosion of energy found my brother in the tent suddenly, yelling,"A bear, a bear! It came to our campsite last night, did you hear it? Did it bump into your tent like it did to ours?!" 

"Uh, something else visited me," I responded, half-awake still and oblivious to the startled mouth of my brother stopped mid-sentence. "Their fingers were freezing and songs warm," I mumbled while I got dressed, ignoring my brother's "whatever" as he back out into the thin morning sunlight, heading eagerly to chop wood for the campfire.Outside, one of my cousins had already begun the careful process of extracting a leech caught from an early morning swim, my brother swung a hatchet happily over hapless pieces of pine-wood, and my father sang hymns softly to himself while turning pieces of crisp bacon and popping morning sausage. The air, notes playing through trees like a soft woodwind symphony, and tinged with moss, thin smoke, and tree-sap came and swirled around my head in a perfect good morning tune. I saw strong sunshine seep and wink through thousands of branches from oak, maple and pine trees, leaping into areas previously covered in darkness. I saw our family's four eight foot long canoes resting upside down against each other a little above the water line like a jumbled group of yellow slices of watermelon. I sensed rather than understood, the tranquility of these waters with their ripples expanding out wider and wider as I dipped my feet in a shallow part clear and slick with river slime. I was not to know until much later how violent peace can be.

It came languidly, the way a depressing day slouches towards you and before you realize it are locked in a firm embrace with sadness. We had been paddling for four hours, hat brim jammed down low to shade the wrinkles formed from squinting into a blazing day reflected in a million dancing stars winking at me from the water. Sunscreen, now baked and old, gave the sweat on my arms a tangy smell, and occasionally I rested the paddle between my legs and dipped my arms up to my elbows into the cool surface of the lake to stay sane. We were strung out like an army line formation gone wrong, crooked and out of place, with my father and I "bringing up the rear" as he would call it. It was because of this position in line that I kept looking backwards or down at the sides, expecting someone or something to be following us. Did sirens attack the lost, sick or old, like lions to a stray wildebeest? Did you hear their songs before or after you're swept downwards into the water? Was their beauty as ravishing under the water as above? I could not answer these questions, and despite an unhealthy amount of imaginative curiosity for someone my age, did not want to find out. Too young for the anchor position, I had been placed in the front of the canoe, and glancing back for the eighth time to reassure myself there were no fins dipping in and out of the now slightly nervous waters, it was then my jaw went slack. My father is a man of extreme wisdom, and I credit him even now with not saying a panicked word to me as he quickly double-checked what had surprised me, and began to untie the strapped down ponchos, tossing mine into trembling hands. Where before the sky had been painted an extreme shade of lapis lazuli, it now frothed and churned itself into the same color I saw when raking out dead ashes from our fireplace at home. A few hundred meters ahead, I saw the rest of our two families pulling in their paddles post-haste as they heeded the warning calls from my dad bellowing above the rising wind. 

"Cinch the straps tight as they go!" he yelled, his paddle making small cyclones in the water as he shot our canoe forwards, strong angles meant for movement and not finesse. I could see my sister's scared eyes, and my mom's hair now clinging to her neck from the fine mist preceding the boiling mess behind us. "Head for that island at two o'clock" he roared to my uncle in the front of our line, miserably holding small ground as the wind began swirling in different directions like the times I watched my mom's spatula spinning and mixing cookie dough. Except this was black dough, and we were in the bowl. My brother's small yet strong frame leaned into the pull of the paddle, making inches of headway even as the wind pushed him a few more back. Our own canoe made small headway, yet we inched forwards even as the winds went still, and it was then I heard the singing. Locked into a rowing positing, fighting the current and feeling raindrops the size of small black beetles hit the back of my neck, I looked down and saw them. Sinuous shapes coiling and uncoiling beneath the surface, flicking and flipping their way around and below our canoes. I thought I had gone crazy, even as the storm broke into its full fury, unleashing walls of rain so thick I could only see ten feet in front of me. The island my father had pointed out moments earlier now seemed a distant dream, while beneath me reality spun and swam its way closer to the surface, melodies intertwining themselves skillfully between the rain, thunder and thunk of my paddle ceaselessly moving to pull us forwards. At least I thought I was paddling, though my dad later on told me, under a pine tree's branches heavy with rain, that he saw me, incredibly calm, reach my hand into the water as if to grab something that had sunk just out reach. My half-hooded eyes belied the maelstrom and panic around me, seduced by something he could not understand. 

The landing jarred me, throwing me and the clump of sea-grass clenched tightly in my hand onto the sand swiftly turning to mud below our canoe. Leaping forwards, over plastic-wrapped canvas bags and tightly rolled tents, my father came down beside me and helped me up from where I had fallen, back on the shore, legs bent over the gunwale in weird angles. I stared intently at the grass I held tightly in my fist, whispering "I almost had them, gorgeous songs, emerald-green hair..." My father half-dragged me and the canoe up the shore, abandoning me and my mutterings to help the others fight their way onto an embankment quickly disappearing.

They came again that night. Later this time, deeper. My sub-conscious slaved itself to their songs, and I sank further into her warmth.

---

Last night  in my dreams my wrinkled palm opened. Slowly 

inching towards loss in a nameless way; I saw her –

absorbed in an ash-gray house –

charcoal and green vines.smoke.stones.

drifting quietly across my blind nightmares...  

she found my nightmares laughable,

crinkled her eyes in mirth

"no matter for the morning queen,” teasing

            - stepping into the midnight house.

swirling into an eternity lasting seconds in my embrace.

Now I'm a widow to this swirling mass, witness to an exquisite universe spiraling in my wrinkled palm.

So vast, so vast my morning storm. 

A Clinging Angel (Poem)

I collapsed onto my knees,

jolting my skin into pain,

watching small streams of blood begin to seep.

The room where I knelt held no light,

save the luminous sheen of a myriad of feathers,

strewn haphazardly from corner to corner, a blanket of sad white.

Handful after handful I picked up,

shoving the quills so obviously plucked with pain

down my throat,

the taste of blood from when it was wrenched  a metallic red on my tongue.

Startling tears gained the edge of my mouth as I gazed upwards while eating,

and saw,

clinging to the ceiling, a wingless angel.

She stared down at me intently as I ate hundreds of plucked feathers,

her pacific eyes spoke of limitless sadness,

her naked form, etched with a deity's certainty,

caught the pallid glow of the feathers in a light-less room,

and threw it to unbidden corners that howled under its beauty.

Her arms, dancing in ink, stretched towards my bent form,

each finger a different shade of silence beckoning me upwards.

Now standing,

Now numb arms pulling her down,

Now dry lips closing over an ocean.

Happiness shredding my body open,

as feathers seeped out of my skin and reassembled on her wings,

magnificent flight from a darkened room.