I was waiting in the spa the other day. Abuelita was finishing up her birthday facial. I was planted in a seat at the cross roads of two long, lightly, lumpily plastered cream corridors that resembled the tunnels of a well polished cave. From the Bose speakers in the ceiling emanated a soft string of sound,,,a kind of underwater celtic theme. Here the thermal waters pumped from below lure the "Iam Worthits" and the "I Deservits" for an array of exotic treatments available only to Kings and Queens a few centuries ago. Sanus Per Aquam (SPA). Health through water.
An unlikely pair, of contrary ages emerged from the roman baths with broad knowing smiles cleaned inside and out. Spa workers passed by robed like pharmacists treading on soft white thickly soled shoes. A parade cloaked in almost perfect silence, only given up by the brushing of their white garments. An elderly couple wrapped in wrinkled multi pocketed khaki garments and porting searching glances wandered. They looked like eccentric birdwatchers.
I pondered the tiled floor for a bit.There was an occaisional block of 25 softened burnt orange tiles with an aztec motif that broke the creamy monotony. I focused on a crack that ran transversely across the floor and cut one of the aztec figures in two. Was it poor construction or a result of the many earthquakes in the region? Probobly it was the forces of nature that always nag at all constuctions,,,,of human origin, and those formed by nature herself. The same day the first batch of cement is setting whatever you are building begins deteriorating. We sit upon giant thick scales floating on the surface of the spinning Earth which soars through the sky with no particular destination in mind. The crack provoked me to speculate that I might be atop a grand fault in the shifting mantle of my planet. This speculation lead to calculation. The crack was about two millimeters wide. If it were indeed a crack in motion, moving a millimeter each year,,,then in just the geological breath of 1,000,000 years one half the aztec figure on the burnt orange tile would rest on the edge of a chasm over 300 feet wide.
Lately I have thought of my father.Thoughts of him always coincide with our family corner of trimmed lawn in "Gates Of Heaven" cemetery. Cemeteries in the U.S. are like ball fields. It is a reflection of the unimaginably grand green space that exists there. I cannot help but conjur up his corpse, arms softly crossed, the skin that remains tight to the bone. Then I see him as he was and our eyes meet. Did his eyes see like mine? I am more like my father than my mother. That is all I am able to say. She saw the world from below,,,as a pyramid of competition for the prized chrome trophy, that, when it could be held, one was illuminated for just a bit,,for all the world to see,,,,finally,,,and tempoarily, recognized, for having leveraged the system to arrive there. Her life long frustration came from not really knowing how to advance. She was forever relegated to battle among the other pretenders at the base of the structure,,, a true motley crew.
My father didn't always focus his eyes aloft,,,more in the horizontal towards down, in order to check where he was, or upon what he might be treading. I fancy that we had the same tint to our vision,,,we just arrived at our destinations from different routes. He must have caught the same vignettes in his visual net. Selective "seeing" motivated by something we had in common. However, "seeing" is all in the processing through our baleen of accumulated prejudices,,yet he and I must have picked out some similar signals.
He was not a fighter,,, outside of a football field or a basketball court. In those fields of behavior he was intensely focused. There is a simple cause,,,try to win this one,,under established rules with referees. The social court was too ill-defined for him, I believe. He didn't even like the people in the arena with whom my mother threw him. He couldn't explain it, probobly never thought about it,,yet he seemed to know. What value is knowing however without the conciousness that you are peering inside. As a sense of wonder, however weak, is the baby step,,,reflection is the leap. I don't ever think he ventured much beyond the baby step. Somehow he suspected the prize that might be gleaned from social maneuvering was just not worth it. Ironically, one could write a play inhabited by a world of characters who lack reflection,,,the playwright will do the reflecting for them, turning their actions, just a bit paled, into something more colorful. It's a twentieth century phenomena to consider the penny stinkers as fodder for the theme of a play. It is one credit to the bloodiest century. The arts of the twentieth began the exaltation of the myriad classes of humanity.
And so I float upon my tectonic scale 4125 miles south of Gates Of Heaven pondering the cracks in the universe.
An unlikely pair, of contrary ages emerged from the roman baths with broad knowing smiles cleaned inside and out. Spa workers passed by robed like pharmacists treading on soft white thickly soled shoes. A parade cloaked in almost perfect silence, only given up by the brushing of their white garments. An elderly couple wrapped in wrinkled multi pocketed khaki garments and porting searching glances wandered. They looked like eccentric birdwatchers.
I pondered the tiled floor for a bit.There was an occaisional block of 25 softened burnt orange tiles with an aztec motif that broke the creamy monotony. I focused on a crack that ran transversely across the floor and cut one of the aztec figures in two. Was it poor construction or a result of the many earthquakes in the region? Probobly it was the forces of nature that always nag at all constuctions,,,,of human origin, and those formed by nature herself. The same day the first batch of cement is setting whatever you are building begins deteriorating. We sit upon giant thick scales floating on the surface of the spinning Earth which soars through the sky with no particular destination in mind. The crack provoked me to speculate that I might be atop a grand fault in the shifting mantle of my planet. This speculation lead to calculation. The crack was about two millimeters wide. If it were indeed a crack in motion, moving a millimeter each year,,,then in just the geological breath of 1,000,000 years one half the aztec figure on the burnt orange tile would rest on the edge of a chasm over 300 feet wide.
Lately I have thought of my father.Thoughts of him always coincide with our family corner of trimmed lawn in "Gates Of Heaven" cemetery. Cemeteries in the U.S. are like ball fields. It is a reflection of the unimaginably grand green space that exists there. I cannot help but conjur up his corpse, arms softly crossed, the skin that remains tight to the bone. Then I see him as he was and our eyes meet. Did his eyes see like mine? I am more like my father than my mother. That is all I am able to say. She saw the world from below,,,as a pyramid of competition for the prized chrome trophy, that, when it could be held, one was illuminated for just a bit,,for all the world to see,,,,finally,,,and tempoarily, recognized, for having leveraged the system to arrive there. Her life long frustration came from not really knowing how to advance. She was forever relegated to battle among the other pretenders at the base of the structure,,, a true motley crew.
My father didn't always focus his eyes aloft,,,more in the horizontal towards down, in order to check where he was, or upon what he might be treading. I fancy that we had the same tint to our vision,,,we just arrived at our destinations from different routes. He must have caught the same vignettes in his visual net. Selective "seeing" motivated by something we had in common. However, "seeing" is all in the processing through our baleen of accumulated prejudices,,yet he and I must have picked out some similar signals.
He was not a fighter,,, outside of a football field or a basketball court. In those fields of behavior he was intensely focused. There is a simple cause,,,try to win this one,,under established rules with referees. The social court was too ill-defined for him, I believe. He didn't even like the people in the arena with whom my mother threw him. He couldn't explain it, probobly never thought about it,,yet he seemed to know. What value is knowing however without the conciousness that you are peering inside. As a sense of wonder, however weak, is the baby step,,,reflection is the leap. I don't ever think he ventured much beyond the baby step. Somehow he suspected the prize that might be gleaned from social maneuvering was just not worth it. Ironically, one could write a play inhabited by a world of characters who lack reflection,,,the playwright will do the reflecting for them, turning their actions, just a bit paled, into something more colorful. It's a twentieth century phenomena to consider the penny stinkers as fodder for the theme of a play. It is one credit to the bloodiest century. The arts of the twentieth began the exaltation of the myriad classes of humanity.
And so I float upon my tectonic scale 4125 miles south of Gates Of Heaven pondering the cracks in the universe.
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