Shanti Chapter V ~ Speaking to the Dead (Jeremiah: 17.09) by the Hudson River
The Tragic Death of Josh Man-Son, Señor Sebastian Cornelio, Ana S. Man-Son and The Decline of Western Values:
‘The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure —who can understand it
(Jeremiah 17:09).’
Synopsis and Prefatory Notes to Chapter V:
An Owl Hooting:
“Who are the ghosts suspended in the midnight of history?
O my! See the Autumnal Leaves! How they tinge the footpath...resembling lost souls, wretched spirits whom couldn't find the way out of this wild wood —out of the dangers of civilized society, or, perhaps these ghosts could not stand The Hour!” (quoting from Shanti, Chapter I, the Human Heart, Europe, Highlands of Transylvania, Wednesday 16, Year 448)
Chapter V: The notion that civilized society could be as dangerous as the wild wood in Transylvania may be the gist of this chapter.
The state machine, the Civic Court, especially under the serious threat of duress and punishment, could keep its citizens within the bounds of respect and decency, but corruption and lawlessness, nonetheless, may still creep their ugly, warty heads.
According to Parsifal (Chapter I and Chapter VI), we, Homo sapiens, are, first and foremost, social animals.
And so by 2010, the Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes, had already awakened me from my slumbers —from my naïveté— from my self-delusional idyllic chimeras when approaching my fellow citizens.
Parts of Chapter V and VI, were written in the winter of 2010, but I have been adding more lines, characters, nays and yeas. It easy reading
Like Chapter I, in the wild wood of Transylvania, for the most part, the latter is a fulfillment of the former, with the soul-wracking stuff of the human heart but in the milieu of urban society: the Church and the Civic Court of New York City, would still require the Righteousness of God, for King Nihilo, along with his wife, Lilith, has finally reduced the human species (Chapter VI) to the status of mammals and reptiles: “odious vermin.”
Confronted with the tragic love stories of three ghosts, the Prince-Philosopher, Parsifal, and the Phoenix are taxed to tarry longer while inquiring upon the heartbreaking past of these unfortunate phantoms, Josh Manson, Don Sebastian Cornelio and Ana S. Manson (a former witch), now condemned to live inconsolable and hopeless in the Nest of Time, a.k.a., the Purgatory.
Herein, you may relish the love-stories of witless Josh Manson, a drug addict, and Don Sebastian Cornelio, a composer, belletrist (a man of letters) culture and an aesthete. Both men became stones through the insidious, hypnotic, bewitching powers of Lilith, a.k.a., Medusa.
With the ubiquitous influence of the internet, it is fair to say that we are now living half-dead (absent-minded), or, whether we would admit it or not, most of us are under the spells of fleeting things and entities (e.g., the Internet, the iPhones’ far-reaching hooks and tight knots) no less than ghosts, all trapped in the Nest of Time.
A millennial, Josh Manson (symbolic of the decline of Western values) is a beautiful although melancholic youth, has little by little become disillusioned with post-modern city-life, and set up to immersing himself in the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri.
By shirking his livelihood, he becomes a maverick verging on homelessness, but does not relinquish his deep-seated passion for classical literature.
J. Manson self-taught himself by reading the Bible and the Divine Comedy of Dante. Unfortunately young people are often seized by formidable surges of both inspiration and testosterone-levels, and like relentless bulls, their book-dreamy-footing in the world can lead them to their own demise, and so, Josh Manson’s fantastical limerence became his own undoing.
Finding himself homeless, and unable to come to terms with a hard, callous, materialistic world, he commits suicide on Thanksgiving Day.
Dante Alighieri’s platonic ideas of women led the chump (a fool) to go around seeking his angel, but she happened to be a minx, pert and a hussy: the lost daughter of Lilith.
He is to be followed by Señor Sebastian Cornelio, a composer and freelancer (symbolic of Platonic Love) becomes an alcoholic, loses his salvation in exchange for mundane fame.
For years he had immersed himself in the Dr. Faust of Goethe, the Sorrows of Young Werther, the World as Will and Idea by Arthur Schopenhauer, and like Josh Manson, his book-footing in the world, Don Quixote, by Miguel Cervantes Saavedra, became a delusional enterprise: chivalric love.
Although he is a man of honor and probity, finds himself afoul in a web of false accusations, intrigue and debts culminating his life with a heart-attack.
His girlfriend-wife, Rosalinda, put the horns on him, ripped-him off, accused him of inappropriate advances, and then threatened to put him in jail for the rest of his life.
Can you read Nihilo’s raging eyes behind the Judge’s final verdict (Civic Court) and Lilith, the snake, behind Rosalina’s crocodile tears against Don Sebastian Cornelio?
I wish to give an entry-ticket to a former neighbor Ana S. Manson (Josh Manson’s mother) a prodigious consumer of cigarettes and cigars, the old lady died of a lethal bacteria gnawing at her guts (the death of her beloved son by suicide).
While I had in my mind’s far-echoed chambers the heart-rending story of Ms. Ana S. Manson, suddenly, a mad ruckus-tussle had ensued between two men: Charlie Jone-Stones, a staunch xenophobic American citizen against an audacious Dominican immigrant, Juan D’ Los Palos, a former member of the Catholic Church, or at least, he professed to have been reared by a devout Catholic aunt from Sabana Iglesia, Dominican Republic.
Juan D’ Los Palos, as we recall Josh Manson’s love-story and shocking betrayal, was believed to have been the main culprit behind the romantic fool’s tragic end on that fateful Thanksgiving Day of 2017.
A staunch admirer and secret disciple of renown although notorious playboy and lecherous Porfirio Rubirosa, Juan D’ Los Palos’ dark side, was believed to have struck a pact with Satan for supernatural powers.
The Dominican cloven-hoofed goat became renown, even in Hell, for his formidable libido prowess, and he is to be counted among this crowd.
Due to the rapid-fired surges of our time, one is compelled to being concise, lucid and pithy like the British people.
Most dishearteningly of all, I was compelled to blotting out a substantial section on homelessness, on chivalric, courtly love, on the shackles of civilized society and so on.
As I peruse my meditations on the Hudson River, I had to delete countless sentences (mostly dealing with bawdy material) as unworthy of the self-esteem of a writer who still subscribes to the wise meditations of Henry D. Thoreau’s Chapter On Reading, The Walden Pond.
Today, I donned a fancy suit, and with princely mien, I stepped out for fresh air, and I asked God to infuse in me that same conviction which led a simple squirrel to win a major victory against the Lynx.
It is now propitious to say that every chapter tackles the equation of life from a different perspective. Therefore, it is, in earnest, a philosophic treatise on the meaning of life.
Hence every character may express a worldview: from atheism to theism, from paganism to the soothing promise of Christianity (1 Corinthians Chapter 12:53) you are free to choosing your path.
Atch! Some of my readers told me that Shanti can be a difficult read, but if you go slowly, then they are as legible as they are “comprehensible,” and hence, enjoyable.
Most importantly, your life would unfold as though unveiled, free from the illusion of Maya, you would awake in the early morning, as though dawning to a “new glorious aspect of your own existence,” and perhaps you would not fall victim to the hexes of Lilith…ha, ha, ha!
If you are fond of writing your thoughts in a novel format, then you are simply vicariously projecting yourself in the heart and human nature of your imaginative characters.
Most strikingly to me is the fact that Josh Man-Son is symbolic of the death of the American Society.
His mother Ana S. Manson, now living as a ghost in the Spirit Realm, is still inconsolable upon learning that her beloved son, an American citizen, had become homeless in New York’s raging winters, and as such, had committed suicide on that fateful Thanksgiving Day, year 2017.
On the other hand, we may come across Don Sebastian Cornelio, a man of culture, may represent the decline of Romantic Latinism and Courtly Love in Latin America: Rosalina’s Greco-Romanesque physique and exquisite refinement: “Her porcelain-like delicate complexion could invoke alike feelings of flawless perfection and chastity.”
Prudently, I have been careful when projecting myself in the hagridden heart of Josh Man-Son, and thank goodness! when the fool commits suicide I have simply let your mind fill-in the lacunae (gap). No, thank you!
I may have to wait for the Almighty’s help to undertaking such perilous paths into things nihilistic, destructive and hellish. I may attempt it again, but I have to be careful, lest my mind fall headlong into the forewarnings of the Squirrel Parsifal (beginning of Chapter V).
Mind you, Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice became a harbinger for the author’s unfolding tragedies: some of his children, writers themselves in their own right, committed suicide, and the great writer had hinted at Doktor Faustus‘ darkest passages (Adrian Leverkuhn’s Pact with Satan) for his ongoing battle with cancer in the last days of his life.
Therefore, thoughts, feelings, “déjà vu,” can become “crystalized,“ and I wish to forgo such floodgates of hell wreaking havoc within my soul.
Today, Oct. 14, 2024, I went on to spill my still running blood in the Faustian heart of Don Sebastian Cornelio’s youth (1970s-1996), and so I inserted some exuberant, indeed, youthful lines where he speaks about the transformative powers of classical music, Mass in C minor by Mozart, and how he loses his wits to a beautiful mermaid from Spain, Rosalinda, a.k.a., Selena, is indeed heartbreaking.
Rosalinda, Selena, the mermaid, seems to be symbolic of the best of the Latin people, the Mediterranean people, and so I now understand why Don Sebastian’s head-scratching sick-love for Rosalina was but a mad conflation of Greco-Roman ideas embodied in that smashingly beautiful but baneful woman.
Don Sebastian’s torments were perhaps redoubled when seeing his most cherished ideas, Rosalinda, Ancient Greece (Melina), being cajoled and hence debased by a contemptible man, a wizard, shameful man, Juan D’ Los Palos.
Chapter V ends with the shocking confessions of three former witches, Madam Ana S. Manson, Carmen Sanchez, and Mercedes Spinal, stunningly beautiful Latinas, had had their binges of promiscuity during their youthful, exuberant orgies with Juan D’ Los Palos.
Once self-avowed haters of mankind, may have dabbled with the occults, witchcraft, and it seems that Satan was unwilling to recognize their unwarranted freedom.
When writing with the blood-meandering heart of your imaginative characters, you are impelled to breathing-in and out the same air, nay, would need to infuse yourself with the same feverish feelings, and even put on their same shoes, even flesh-out yourself with the same skin…to really squeezing and “wimbling deep” into any remaining relics of human nature: the deepest recesses of the human heart.
Therefore, do not write stiltedly (mechanically, perfunctorily), but rather, let your inner scribe cull and arrange the time-stricken writings from the personal depository of your carefully-dated and punctiliously-reamed journals, diaries, epistolary letters, emails, and, of course, perhaps you, as a smith, have modeled your writings after the great masters of humankind. If you have a diary, then, your life would unfold like a sonata!
Josh Man-Son, Don Sebastian Cornelio, both avid readers of classic literatures, have much in common, they did not enjoy civilized modern society, which they felt to be callous, soulless, suicidal, a prison-cell, a machine, a madhouse.
Affectionately,
Eddie Beato (Monday Oct. 17th, 2024, NYC)
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Shanti Chapter V: The Tragic Death of Josh Man-Son, Señor Sebastian Cornelio, Ana S. Man-Son and The Decline of Western Values:
Squirrel-Parsifal:
"The time is at hand to sound the hollow heart its fortitude. Come nigh so ye don't get lost in crooked ways of delusion and skepticism, for, down this Woody Hill, there are many zig-zag precipices, erroneous labyrinths, tobogganing pathways that could send a careless soul swirling headlong to destruction.
Across this gnarled tree, there are the hard boulders and rough cliffs' ribs, the downward ways that could make any soul shudder with fright.
If we don't drop off either by a pitching budge, the many erroneous steps on these cruel slabs' faults and beetling brinks, or that cruel protuberance of a stumbling stone athwart our track, then we should be able to meet the staid Scribes of Millennia.
Temper thy guts to confront the Sentinels of Yesterday, hapless souls whose disfigured visages, however eroded by the merciless blasts of time's wrath, may bear witness to posterity; albeit aghast and silent, they forever sealed the history of thy past generation: the mad History of Homo Sapiens."
Philosopher: “Speak clearly to me. Your words are a puzzle.
Why so anachronistically?
What time are we now?"
Parsifal: “Believe it or not, ye just entered the threshold of a twilight. It is now Wednesday, October 13 in the year 2034 A.D. Many things are long past, and many others are made new under the moon's haggard brow.
Why speak so laconically clear on Homo sapiens' sad chronicles?"
Philosopher: (frowning dubious) “Are you saying it is now a thousand years later, from the perspective of Shanti, that is, it is now the year 2034 in the latter days of my sacred books and history?
O my goodness! This has to be a fantasy, a dream. Have I eyes?
This cannot be true.
What happened to the destiny of those seven billion souls?"
Parsifal: “Take heart and be strong, because ye will hear and see the other pallid shades whimpering and weeping to their wit’s ends, ranging back and forth the desolated wolds, knobs and dales, the many sneaky caves perforating the beloved Isle's nether world: New York City, Manhattan,
Now some human feelings remain aloof, diffident, timorous to those who may dare fetch them near.
By the banks of the Hudson River, there are the other wordless stories that beg attentive ears, nay, an iron-fortitude to embolden the human heart undismayed.
Now some ghosts, former citizens, are hovering, sauntering and perambulating, to and fro, the Isle Manhattan. Unfriendly, like leopards or hyenas, haunting at the foot of this hills, these ghosts are said to be trapped in the Nest of Time.
Sometimes they would stay their feet briefly, to slake their thirst in the ashen sour water of the filthy river. When some one is nearby, the beasts would turn their heads slowly, to observe the wayfarer while contorting their grim visage; but soon they would retreat backward, receding like a mist to yonder spot; and from there, they would stick out their tongues to lick their muzzles.
If we win their trust, some ghosts would trail in light steps the muggy ground of Human Ingratitude and Callousness, to interchange a silent conversation —the steady stare could melt even the gut of Achilles.
Approach them not so substantial, because resisting, they already had opposed the very fires unleashed from heaven's vault.
Ye would not negate these hellish truths, however terrible, creeping and clutching the slimy cliffs from the precipitous navel of the Pit of Hell. For, only the warty cocky head of Satan would convince them otherwise —that they are already dead— to cease drinking the Sour Water of Ingratitude, but only for this bargain and ludicrous gains: the other swaps of suffering, pains and ennui.
Do not dare touch their chink-features, nor keep thy sight too steady in their wormed-out-cankered orifices; nor quickly erase from thy mind those lying lips twisting in distorted odious faces, because ye will never efface, nor limn, however describing or recollecting, the grotesque grimace of those invincible foes, Homo sapiens, at war with themselves.
—Are they the ugly indescribable expression of time?
Like ghosts, or insensitive rocks discarded by an unknown architect, so they haunt the threshold of thy sad history.
By the drafty ford of the stygian river (Hudson River) we will find them roaming, strolling, shuffling and dragging their clumsy gait towards the rough Pavement of Insensitivity, thy once beloved city, Manhattan, beautiful gem, which now is but wreckage, wracks and ruins helter skelter.
Phoenix Bird: “Only God knows the grievous moments I had to endure for my kin. May I blame Dante for these lofty ideas in the woman of his delight?
Divine poet who thus forged his inspiration with opposite natures.
From the fatal hexes of Medusa and her sister Lilith, the bard of yore would then nurse my wounded bosom with the sweet tenderness of a loving woman so holy as Mary, so faithful as Beatrice.
O dear reader! Take heart at these love-stories, for every time I read them, my weeping eyes are overcome with the sad tears of Selena, the Mermaid.
It is the real struggle of life, and how frightening to see human beings of the finest caliber finally destroyed by that dreadful spirit. And the grim fiend knows that need, like necessity and weakness, has the face of heresy —needs know not law.
The pain of losing a mother is indeed unbearable, but the sight of Selena, now a phantom haunting the waste lands of the purgatory, could rend my heart to pieces.
The history of the Latin people in the United States, seems to get lost in the oblivious waters of the Lethe River (the stream of forgetfulness).
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The Ghost of Josh Manson (the Fall of the American Society).
Phoenix: “A brave soul, showing me his blister-stricken soles, has claimed to have gone around the Isle of Manhattan, like a pilgrim, thrice the circle of his heartbreaking penitence.
On certain occasions, just before the gloaming hours, strange watery figments seemed to form the hideous image of Minos (Divine Comedy of Dante in Hell). The monster, like a shark, appeared to be trawling the fetid currents of the Hudson River.
Swaddled in sheets, like a mummy, I had often seen a young white man laying his tired head on the hard ground by the corner of 181st Street and Fort Washington Avenue.
I wonder how would a good sensitive, caring, loving mother react to beholding her beautiful child, the prodigal son, abandoned in such disheartening circumstances?
—Fall of 2017, as I was exiting the A train station, I caught sight of Mr. Josh Manson. The handsome man was couched on the ground like a jackal licking his forepaws.
On many a cold day, like a stray quadruped overcome by the toiling drudgeries and chores of a monotonous existence, I often saw the young man idly sprawling on the hard ground of necessities and negligence.
Covered in sheets and comforters due to a bone-chilling winter, Josh's life is durable thanks to his unquenchable passions for science-fiction literature, the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, but also of much motivation was his hope to finally settle with a beautiful woman, a wife, and thus realize the dream of his life.
Despite his humble educational background, the American dude could hold intellectual conversations to great effects, charisma and an easy token of amicability with passers-by.
In a city where physical beauty could rank no less than a college degree, wealth or success, Josh's smashing physique could still attract the single ladies in queue by the subways of New York City, and occasionally he would enjoy a first-class treat to a fine bistro restaurant.
And so he fell in love with a beautiful woman. Now that his heart was throbbing and swelling with the butterflies of love, he made greater efforts to rise up to a more respectable existence, to find himself a job, even as a courier or as a porter in downtown Manhattan, because the pinions of love, especially in the prime of youth, could raise us all above adversities.
Propelled by the twinkles of a beautiful woman, Mr. Josh Manson, despite his present circumstances could fly aloft into rapt moments of limerence, reveries and happiness.
And so Josh's physical appearance would soon look dapper, smarter, neat, trim and clean for days on. The young man had finally found an amazing reason to live for: a strikingly beautiful white woman, whose bewitching charms he could not resist!
Caught up with recurrent inexplicable paroxysms of self-propelling thoughts of the most fantastical otherworldliness and unearthliness, Josh Manson would rise up early in the morning.
At daybreaks, he would have a most meaningful walk by the Fort Tryon Park. Lost in paradisiac instances of strangest longings and love, Josh Manson would fix his dreamy eyes on the leeway trails of those languishing autumnal leaves in yonder path.
The lonely path was lined with some leafless trees already yielding to the chilly breezes of November, but the promenade was soon warming up with loveliest shafts of glorious sunlight casting their glorious beams upon the partially shaded veils of Mother Nature's nuptial gowns. Chinks of lovely morning lights were filtering through the branches, and he could not be happier!
In the midst of this garden, Josh Manson, so entranced by this Garden of Eden, el loco chico fancied to see his will-be-wife Eve, a woman of palest skin, a nymph of mesmerizing beauty hiding her pretty face behind those enchanting bushes and purple shrubs.
The bride-to-be, wearing a crown of twisted twigs, roses and drooping leaves smooching her countenance, was standing in an open-gated arbor.
The olden gothic structure was covered with loviest greeneries interspersed with gently-toned browns, half-lit penumbras of emerald greens and foliage of daintiest hues, thus creating an ideal background for a nuptial ceremony.
Meanwhile, Josh Manson would fancy to see his angel slowly coming unto his wide-open arms.
The bride was so embellished with her wedding trousseau of immaculate roses and tulips, such red flowers, dolphins and goldfish, so smug for recognition, were placidly couched in sybaritic beds and pillows of purest greens!
Such flowers, still unscathed by the falling autumnal leaves, would soon flaunt their delicate, petalled pretty faces to greet the groom along his path.
The scenic landscape could grant the lover an incredible mystical nexus, a Jacob's Ladder, a dreamscape between the expanses of heaven and the uncharted unfettered woods of this absolutely ravishing wilderness (Inwood Hill Park).
Thus, every morning, like a hermit, like a mystic, like a recluse, he would visit the same terraced cliff overlooking the Hudson River, but his high-flown dreams could not become a reality any more than those bright castles built in mid air; or, those gold-gilt, fabulous temples cushioned in the scudding clouds' pillows for an obtuse lover.
Nevertheless, Josh Manson, a legendary unicorn ever-trotting into the unfettered paths of limerence, was a diehard romantic man.
He would not let go the idea. While fixed in deepest thoughts for a concealed truth behind those blue eyes, he would stretch out his widespread hands unto that looming-promising-rainbow in the imagination of a fool.
‘—Perhaps she loves me.’
What an idiotic infatuation, and yet he loved the idea! The possibility of love proved to be tempting and irresistible!
‘Am I out of my wit?’ Thus he would say every morning. Indeed! Mr. Josh Manson loved that Ineffable woman!
Spellbound by her pretty face, day and night, with the tips of his fingers, ever assuming the shape of mythical steeds galloping up into the vault of heaven, Mr. Manson would reach out to that beautiful rainbow of flying colors.
Such charming smiles, such flirtatious twinkles, such tacit suggestions, amorously receding, ever-soaring into the haze of distance...were so promising to his heart.
Indeed, the pretty woman was driving him nuts:
’O God! How much I love that woman, she is my inspiration. If you answer my prayers, I shall go to church every Sunday.’
Unfortunately the flight of days passed on quickly, inexorably, and his efforts, his self-will and determination, were not advancing him a whit to any foreseeable prospect of reciprocal love in the flashy horizon of tomorrow.
His high-flown dreams, for so they seemed to be so unbelievably chimerical, were ever-wafting, ever-receding, ever-disappearing far into the immeasurableness of the boundless sky, and his touch with concrete reality, little by little, became an embarrassing self-delusional enterprise, una divina locura, the epiphany for a madman, a hard-to embrace self-realization that perhaps, in spite of his self-denial, such divine a fabulous creature was meant for another man.
By heaven's sake, he really longed to reach that twinkling daystar of his heart, but the angel was inaccessible. The bombshell blond was meant to be destined for another man's hugs and kisses.
Thus, as much as he tried to raise himself up to a more serviceable, worthy, honorable existence, the tight bound of Fate had been fastened around his neck. Madam Fate has decreed his destiny: an incorrigible romantic fool, and the joy of his sweetheart deserted him as a pitiable man.
November, Thanksgiving Day, year 2017
A cloudy day had cast a drab pall upon the once beautiful sky of Josh Manson's prospective days.
Squatted in a corner, like a dog, the good-hearted soul appeared so frowsy, bedraggled, unkempt, neglected and forlorn. It seemed, as I later found out, that a passer-by woman, a striking beautiful blond ballerina from Texas, had not reciprocated his love, and the jilt, as bitter as woodworms, hurt his feelings to the core.
The hard ground could make our body ache with nightlong pains, but these thorns would be but minor afflictions when compared to the sharp twinges of unrequited love.
Rejection is one of the hardest blow to our precious self-esteem. Poor man Josh Manson!
Who would caulk his aching heart from the constant bleeding of love?
The raging winter, which, by the way, could reach temperatures below zero, could take a toll on some people's lives, and Josh's youthful attractive appearance: fine-chiseled facial symmetries, brown eyes, impressive aquiline nose and enameled-white teeth were little by little wearing off.
The elements were taking a toll in the heart and physical appearance of this romantic fool, and the fragile shards of greatness were falling, piece by piece, on the floor.
’Apollo was razed to the ground in New York, and with him, I hit the ground like a loser.’
Almost on the fray, his once beautiful countenance, thick eyebrows, calm and yet vivid visage full of effulgence, candor and passions, were already showing unequivocal signs of internal uneasiness, dejection, unsteadiness, defeat and despair.
Eventually the young man would lose the mincing gait, el divino tesoro of the happy youth, and with unstable steps, he trudged on, like a lamb into the hands of uncertainties, perhaps hellbent into the slaughterhouse of post-modern society.
True, I never suspected Josh of any grudge or seed of resentment for an unfair life, but the rutted path of forgiveness may test his goodness, his character and integrity, always edging on the fringe of necessity and needs.
By any assessment of natural beauty, a human being's vulnerable possession, Josh Manson was a very handsome man, intelligent and, perhaps, a person of probity, but it seemed that he had no close friends or family in New York.
For years, Josh had been seen sleeping, lying and squatting in that corner of post-modern society...like a missing sheep.
A few months ago, he had complained of awful conditions in the basement of a local Church, the Good Samaritan Church, and it seemed he had few choices but to lay down his head on that hard ground for losers.
True. Josh Manson's limerence became his own undoing and nightmare, but even through the Pit of Hell in Washington Heights, he would not desist from living under the spells of love, whose quasi-numinous effects could grant his soul pinions for things mythical, fantastic, otherworldly.
Nevertheless, I still shudder when musing on the heart's unfathomable reaches, its resilience, its endurance, its amazing obstinacy, for I cannot believe that after all these years, it is the same silly thing, foolish, immature.
The heart is always the same silly thing --a romantic fool. Just look at that old man, Don Sebastian Cornelio, the plaything of that saucy chick, Rosalinda.
Josh Manson was perhaps born in the wrong time, in the wrong society, and his constant retreat to the Fort Tryon Park was perhaps a psychological reaction to a modern world ever-going callous, cold, unnatural, a valley of dry bones.
And how much we blame poor Josh Manson for lagging behind modern society, a failure, I am inclined to sympathize with his revolt against the machines of our time.
I doubt whether any human being could speak of life and love in earnest, ‘I have lived,’ without those inevitable thorns and thistles. Love, therefore, should be the gist of our lives, even when loving may entail some share of sufferings.
O dear! My heart almost broke into pieces at the sight of a lovely maid, a virgin, in the likeness of Mary, was nearing too close to the troubled waters of the Hudson River. This woman, Josh Manson’ limerence, was being devoured by an impudent demon: Don Juan D’ Los Palos.
The holy maid, whose stunning beautiful face was that of a heavenly mermaid, came to grips with a horrendous sea-monster. The monster, doubling down, dragged her into that river of fetid waters.
At this frightful sight, I almost swooned with astonishment and disbelief. Like a grim shark taking possession of the seal, whose fragile fins could not match the claws of a bigger beast, so the dreadful demon, all of a sudden set his lurid eyes on me, and making an indecent gesture with his middle finger, forthwith, amidst the impetuous dark currents of perdition, took the hapless victim, la belle Selena, as his rightful property.
At this, Squirrel Parsifal, warns us to quickly clad our heart with the breastplate of integrity, foresight and wisdom, and his warnings on the dangers of the Internet, Facebook, the iPhone — texting strangers recklessly— could make my heart contract with fear and apprehension.
‘For the most part, these blood-sucking leeches live on the immeasurable ocean of deceit, lies, infidelity, treachery, mischief and deception.’
In this manner the master compares the Internet to an ocean of unfathomable depths and dangerous Leviathans.
‘Therein, you may find huge monstrous things, insatiable piranhas, voracious leeches and sharks, whose fangs and mouthful grasp could swallow even ladies the likes of Mary and Marta.
From now on, avoid trawling the fetid waters of those devils, because the Internet is fraught with demonic beings. Be mindful, these entities could pull you in, and quickly fasting tight knots around your neck, down to the Pit of Hell they would drag you perforce...to the starless night of Hades. And there shall be the weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
The Ghost of Don Señor Sebastián Cornelio (Winter of 1996-1997) - the Death of Courtly Love:
Phoenix Bird:
“At this point, a Latin man with a swarthy complexion, of a rather short stature, wearing a short-sleeves white shirt and blue jeans, had a corpulent body, but with very gracious manners, every now and then adjusting his eyeglasses atop his protuberant nose, assumed the air of an important personage, an intellectual of the first order, a great artist, Avant Garde, a writer and freelancer.
Though he never went beyond the mere dilettantish and amateurish, he had placed himself alongside Van Gough, Salvador Dali and Picasso.
Nevertheless, friends and critics alike, would demote Don Sebastian Cornelio’s self-conceited high-regards of himself, as a pretentious charlatan, a buffoon, a wanna-be,’ but he would defend himself with an acrimonious diatribe against his detractors and foes.
He went around with the short alias Señor Sebastian (eponymous hero to his great admiration for Johann Sebastian Bach)
a composer and organist-pianist by trade, made his meager incomes by playing at local churches, senior home centers for the elderly in New York City, or by writing simple, easy-listening music for commercials, movies, jingles, et al., he was able to secure a tolerable if perhaps a rough existence plagued with debts and subpoenas from shady ladies, alleging eye-rolling cases of sexual harassment against him.
Nevertheless, he had won for himself a tolerable existence, indeed, not deprived of the high places reserved for those who, enjoying the high leisures of a privileged mind with a penchant for the arts and literature, had the gated-doors of downtown Manhattan’s posh restaurants, art-galleries, museums and ritzy theaters flung wide-opened for him.
As a man of letters and culture, he was a cordially-welcome guest to a string of upper-crusty cliques and claques in Manhattan’s elite schools, and thanks to his knack for high society, could enjoy an entry-ticket to the affluent residential areas of the upper classes.
Despite his humble income and a shoddy apartment in the crime-ridden residential area of Washington Heights, Don Sebastian Cornelio presented himself as well-traveled, first-class, urbane citizen of the world.
And indeed, he exuded an air of grandiose which is often associated with people of high birth and nobility.
Don Sebastian’s main purpose in life was —though he would not admit it— a lifelong commitment to finally becoming famous and renown among the living dead.”
Don Señor Sebastian Cornelio: “Dear gentlemen, Josh Manson’s love story moved me deeply to come forward, and here with you, lay my heart bare, express my sincerest condolences for such tragic an end.
When I preen myself as a Latin man, fountains of living waters would gush forth through the arteries of my heart, and something authentic within me would quiver at the chilly thoughts and sights of that frightful river of forgetfulness (the Lethe River in Greek Mythology).
—Year 1993, as though predestined by the Skein of Destiny, among my old cassettes, books, time-stricken letters, paraphernalia and souvenirs of the 90s, I came across the absolutely beautiful recording of Mass in C minor, as conducted by maestro Ferenc Fricsay, escorted with the incomparable voices of Hertha Töpper and Maria Stader · Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin ℗ 1960 Deutsche Grammophon Gmbh Hamburg.
Maestro Ferenc Fricsay was to Mozart's Mass in C minor, what C. W. Ceram (a.k.a., Kurt Wilhelm Marek) was to the fascinating stories and sagas of archeology (Gods, Graves and Scholars).
Like Heinrich Schliemann, we ought to take pick and spade to unearth the finest pearls, gems and treasures from the crumbles and nihilism of the Twentieth Century.
Among these priceless finds, there was to be found a beautiful woman from another dreamtime, a mermaid from Greek mythology, the siren of Odysseus: soprano Maria Stader, whose divine voice could probably have the power to lead astray Odysseus and his crew, when these, captivated by the uncanny strains of loveliest nymphs, the adventurous mariners almost lost their homeward way. But Maria, with her mellifluous voice, has rather assuaged the heart of many a wayfarer.
How many hours I whiled away listening the dolce voce of this goddess singing Kyrie, Eleison?
I gasp, her cantanbile lines, at times, would make me breathe, sigh, that I was perhaps before the presence of an angel: a remarkable woman of extraordinary sensitiveness. I am mesmerized by her beautiful voice.
During these years (1989-1992), I experienced some mystical raptures, nay, numinous experiences and epiphanies in this solemn Mass by W. Amadeus Mozart.
It was during this time when I convinced myself that, our transient moments and circumstances, as though eddying and bursting forth in the flux and spate of things —like wafting foamy bubbles in the turbulent impetuous sea of existence— may rather find their source of origin in a Divine Power; whence, as though activated by recurrent dynamics, these ever-swirling thoughts may constantly emerge, interweave, interlace and then disperse, poco a poco rit, in this ever-rolling scroll of our destiny: the placid seashore of that experienced seafarer who knew how to mark his seaports in the riveting voyage of life.
Whether these forces be divine or blind, I dare not say, but rather, herein, I would keep silence and reverence.
Thus, getting older seemed to be a blessing. As I turned thirty-three, year 1993, I received this present-gift for my soul, Mass in C minor, Kyrie Eleison, as sung by these two divine sirens: Maria Stader and Hertha Töpper.
These two angels would sing me back to my proper place among the beauteous spirits.
Their mission, divine and propitious: to revive my soul from the valley of dry bones in New York City, to infuse my bosom with those awesome feelings, wonderful fleeting moments of a melancholic youth, an adventurous musician, a romantic, who once made me so gloomily happy, cheerful, dreadful, terrific.
If you believe in God, then you must admit the purifying power of classical music.
Back in the 80s, it was believed, at least among some people in Latin America, that classical music had a binding nexus with things divine and godly, and in our search for God, such music would exert a tremendous influence and spirituality.
Retreating back to solitary places, amidst the dread of the wilderness, through impervious passages in bosky woods and endless cul de sacs, like Dante Alighieri in his Divine Comedy, we all dare ask questions about the meaning of life.
I asked for no less, but to imbibe the soul of Werther (the Sorrows of Young Werther of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe), and thus inquire whether I have lived or not.
For these reasons, from the year 1992 onwards, I would search me in sequestered places, whereat, perhaps, I could say that I had lived and descried the depth, width and length of human existence.
At times, the mysteries of existence stirred me up in deep reverence for the meaning of life: this sense of higher spirituality in the music of Mozart, Skryabin, Schubert, Beethoven, would turn me into a mystic, sometimes a hermit, and even a silent scribe would whisper in my ears amazing stories of wonderlands and people (1988-1989).
True, when I consider the beauty, perfection and divinity of this supernal music, I am inclined to accept the religion of Plato, Aristotle, and Spinoza, as kindred to the Elective Affinity of Goethe: we ought to choose what is congenial to our peculiar nature.
Find the ideal music and places where you are at home with your embosomed thoughts and feelings.
Perhaps the Will-to-Exist by German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (the World as Will and Idea), may have destined us all to a life, which viewed from the intervening lapses of time, could probably find coherence, wholeness, cohesiveness, which, I fain say, it is indeed meaningful and fascinating for those who are fond of introspective recollections, medications and reflections.
In this manner, we gather those autumnal leaves, however mottled with warmest reveries, and pensively, we seem to hold our precious memories the most endearing in the comprehension of our times through this earth.
It is here when we all feel like pilgrims, wayfarers, whose mossy paths and trails, seem to speak most boldly and meaningfully to the interpretation of life.
Be of a cheerful heart! With music, rhythm, and joy, let us quaff some enravishing zest in the sweet welkin above.
Tell me of that youth, oh boy! whom out of his wit, would not venture into those untamed woods and madness with the Nordic people?
Of course, there were times when I made up my mind to sound the depth of those terrible thinkers, but my temperament and nature, essentially of a warmer clime, made me hanker for my beloved motherland, Colombia, with new impetus and yearnings.
Almost a hundred years ago, Ferdinand Ossendowski in his Magnus Opus, Men, Beasts and Gods, had already prophesied a disheartening dangerous time, total destruction of psyche, when people would have neither feelings nor reverence or awe for things sublime and divine. It is, indeed, a frightening time when few souls could have ears and hearts for the Mass in C minor of Mozart.
The ineffable voice of Maria Stader...what dare I say?
Is it possible to find such beauty and grace thus embodied in one soul?
I am still moved by the power of this music, and she will always have special place in my heart.
Between the years of 1976-1993, the gloomy spirit of Goethe haunts me in his Doctor Faust. I seemed to be drawn to a fantastic world of magic and fascination.
Unfathomable thoughts visited me in the inscrutable questions of life, mysteries, religion, metaphysics, seemed so real to me, that I simply lived as though straddling two worlds, contiguous but in my mind, my meditations.
The sweet candle's flame joyfully flickers at the happy news of more evenings nearing nigh, more eventides and vespers in the celebration of these holy communion with things so beautiful.
And all these experiences, and even more, seemed to reconnect me with superior worlds, though unseen, I am totally entranced by what greater things may hold things from beyond?
Indeed, these mystical experienced impelled my pinions aloft in the promise of new victories, new revelations and fascination in my personal walk with God.
This feverish verve for mysteries, ecstasies, quests, revelations, epiphanies, religion, books, inspiration, and even the tempting atheism of Frederick Nietzsche, with all these nays and yeas, sometimes I felt like a morbid symptom of rebellion against the destructive power of a civilization gone wild, callous and unspiritual.
All these ideas, however paradoxical, turned me into a human possessed as though with a fantastic exaggerated, however distorted view of the world.
The world, outside, may resemble a city of steel, which frankly speaking, seems to be the more stranger to a man, or a woman, endowed with pedigreed sentiments of sylvan times, bucolic settings whereat we feel snug with feverish passions and ardor for God.
We may blame books for a wrong footing in the world, but at least, like Don Quixote, we rather live in an idealized world. If people call us nuts, perhaps we may reach the old age when we finally learn to live nonchalant to every personal attack.
Thank goodness, I was able to dodge the arrows of Cupid, but as a composer, I have to confess my absolute dependence and devotion to that turtle-dove, a beautiful chic, whose honey-distilling lips, a beautiful Soprano, could grant me the loveliest melodious moments and inspiration.”
Philosopher. “How come a man of your caliber would end up living among this rabble?”
Don Sebastian Cornelio: “Like Josh Manson, I had stupidly imbued my mind with the mystification of Helen, a divine Minerva, a charming Rosalinda Conception, whose yo no se que (uncanny veils) could drive me nuts for the wide-opened arms of Venus.
Without such exalted ideas, I am bound to admit, my art, my life, would be but a dead horse, lackadaisical, boring, meaningless”
Philosopher: “And who was that woman of your perdition?”
Don Sebastian Cornelio: “La Señorita Rosalinda, a Spanish ballerina, a beautiful brunette, a nymph, a mermaid of mesmerizing beauty, Selena, whose whims and prettiness would drive me nuts, became my woodworms, bitter as gall, and I resigned life as an alcoholic.
The bats of jealousy, day and night, were gnawing at my guts, but I was in denial.
Every day I would gush plenty of booze to my heart-content, but in so doing so, I was digging my own grave, plunging myself, headlong into the Pit of Hell.
Nevertheless, she was the true author of such dramatic output of musical inventiveness, artworks verging on the macabre, the chaotic, the demonic, the brilliance of a genius —a monster of creativeness.
La Señorita, however an inspiring Venus, was not a good girl as I later learned. On and off, she would have her secreted tryst with a bad boy. Secretly, the punk had conquered her heart, and by so doing, had also grubbed a good chunk of my marriage.
Silly I, continued giving her plentiful, obsequious gifts, and unbeknownst to me, she was squandering all my savings with that roue, low-life, a good-for nothing scoundrel.
Thus I ended up living as a roommate for countless winters on the verge of homelessness.
Just for a few weeks, I lived in an enclaved residential area on the upper west side of Washington Heights, a few blocks away from the famous Fort Tryon Park, whereat I had, on certain unforgettable Springs (1995-1996), heart-rending conversations with Holocaust Survivors still bearing the infamous marks of the genocide in the bleeding trenches of their souls and bodies.
Such Jewish survivors are probably dead by this time.
Their stories still throw my mind in state of fear and apprehension. In the year 1995, an olden Jewish man (probably in his late 70s) showed me his arm still prodded with the mark of a slave in a concentration camp.
His wife reprimanded him for confessing such inhumanities and cruelties, but he went on telling me that Russian Jews were routinely hung by the Nazis. At this point, his wife, a Polish-looking woman with a rather stern voice, asked him to stop.
At her behest, I simply departed with a heavy heart, and on my pensive ways, alongside lovely beds of jazmines and hyacinths exuding their luscious fragrance, I noticed another old couple in yonder spot, probably Jews from Poland, quietly brooding under the shades of a gnarled tree.
I realized that these old people were perhaps Eastern Europeans, or Holocaust survivors. Their flaccid faces gave me chills. Nevertheless, the couples’ enduring love would me make me think about my wife, alas, and how much I wished to live long alongside a faithful companion, and perhaps reach the old age of an oak-tree.
O boy! How I loved that minx to my own outdoing.
Now, unfaithful Rosalina, in cahoots with her secret lover, a gigolo of high society, sought to do me harm, and she fabricated a serious, malicious, false accusation against me.
—December, 1996: My heart almost melted when I got a certified letter, a subpoena against me. Therein, a shady lady alleges that, while playing Chopin’s Nocturne in E flat Major on the piano, I have inappropriately touched her cleavage and buttock.
Though the case was dismissed for lack of substantial evidence, the cunning hussy then sought to kick me out of my apartment by bringing another serious indictment against me.
Nevertheless, my patience and nerves were tested to the boiling limits, and we wound up fighting in the Civil Court.
Over the years, like a punctilious lawyer, I had amassed a veritable mountain of dossiers and carefully-dated papers attesting to my legal rights as a tenant of probity and a law-abiding citizen.
As much as we all need to back any right with a competent lawyer, I actually dislike fighting in court, even the best of ethical principles are often compromised by our stubborn attachment to material things, but the heavy load of ill-feelings could rarely compensate for the wounding gash of fractured relationships, broken homes and a sense of betrayal to one's sense of dignity and respect.
The Civic Court:
Squirrel Parsifal: (with a most serious visage, interrupted Don Sebastian’s love story to warn us about the dangers of civilized society):
“From the wild woods in Transylvania (The Forest, year 448,), we are now back to New York’s civil society, and much to our surprise, people could still be as aggressive (litigious) no less than the Lynx, the Asp-Snake (Lilith) or the grizzly bear —these folks are all savages spruced-up as decent citizens of civility.
If you aim for a high office position, reading Baltasar Gracián, the Art of Worldly Wisdom, would make you wealthier than ‘Diddy’ the famed rapper, and wiser than Eric Adams, the big guy of New York’s high skyscrapers.
The latest indictments against some famous public figures, ‘celebrities,’ have left me speechless.
Whenever there is a slight brush with the law, or a serious indictment to be reckoned with in New York City’s judicial system, there is always a tense atmosphere in the court, but when the lawsuit or indictment involves a major political figure, such as was the case of the Mayor of New York (year 2024), Eric Adams, we are the more disappointed.
Society is, on closer scrutiny but a jungle, and that’s why we have to be mindful of our business: seal your personals with three layers of safety. Learn to be alike trusting and cautious, but above all —be sharp as a tack.
Keep records of your personals as a lawyer of the first order. Most importantly, if you are to fare well with society, do not neglect yourself the knowledge, mien and healthy activities (go to church on Sunday) of a person of integrity and character.
Phoenix Bird: “Maestro, I am simply pondering on Don Sebastian’s heartbreaking legal issues, the modus operandi of some lawyers, a.k.a., profiteers, good and bad ones, and why it is so difficult to becoming an affluent lawyer if you are a law-abiding Christian.”
Parsifal-Squirrel: “True! The most successful lawyers, of course, with the few exceptions winning the fair cases, are said to be
‘incisive,’ shrewd, and I may add ‘beyond good or evil.
The Lady Is Beyond Impunity:
Even today, in cities so complex like New York or Paris —with such tightly-hewn judicial system, replete with laws and edicts almost for everything— when understanding the jurisprudence of men, their laws, their astonishing undoing methods and stratagems, woman is, and has been through-out history ‘the lady beyond impunity,’ and she has much power in abstractus.
Such woman, Lilith, would be the more effective provided she could be escorted with two lawyers, the Devil's Advocate and Asmodeus; and with few doubts, one of the most effective ways to destroying a man's character and career, and by extension his life, with laser-like precision, would be with the piercing arrow of a feminine accuser.
The Colossal Man of Integrity is thus reduced to smothering rubbles and smuts and smoke. Even if in the accusing intent, for whatever reason, happens to be retracted, rebutted or annulled, the poor victim would have a slight smear staining the latter nature of his actions; and so Bill Clinton, however noble and great his actions and deeds, would forever be haunted by the ghost of that tell-all woman of his weaknesses. The spectrum of his society has forever cast something morally suspicious on the aura and character of King David.
The Bible continues to amaze us due to its universal truths and relevance in the unfathomable trenches of Human Nature. And the psychological subtlety of the ancient prophets was but the wisdom of ages, the wise sayings of sages; their appraisal of human society was indeed divorced of any silly conjecture, religious sentimentality or bias; the events and circumstances are marvelously presented with the objectivity, transparency and shocking reality of life.
The Three Furies of Hell Alecto, Tisiphone and Megaera:
In the German society and their jurisprudence, so cautious in their dealing with the explosive stuff of human nature, and this could have been due to the popularity of Parsifal by Wagner as a succinct recapitulation of Goethe's Faust's tobogganing insights on such array of complicated ethical issues: betrayals, feuds, vendetta, the gripes of suspiciousness, jealousy and infidelity.
Nevertheless, it was, as it is today in certain places in Germany, and even in some Asiatic cultures, very unmanly to resort to finding an accuser to tarnishing a man of good character such as Don Sebastian Cornelio.
And one may say, the apparent circumspection and distrust among some German people, are not to mar their excellent ideas of friendship as tested by the furnace of time and circumstances: once one wins their trust, one would come to value it as rare pearl of exquisite glint.
The concrete power and reliability of a man of steel is the shimmering sparks of reason, his wit, his sanity, his self-respect, but once a man loses his head for a Lilith or a Cleopatra, he would have fallen under the sneer and contempt of any decent society.
Therefore, it would have been better to such silly a man, that is to say, if he is neither a dog nor a wolf wagging his tail —yelping, howling and barking all nightlong, to mitigate his carnal desires in the mad writings of Nietzsche or Henry D. Thoreau, the Walden Pond, Solitude.”
Phoenix Bird: “My master assumes that a great man of character and integrity would follow suit on the heels of Heinrich Schliemann’s quest for the legendary Hellen of Homer’s Iliad, because, a man of honor would never forget the past wrongs committed to his persona.
Certainly, he may forgive seven times, but he would not forget, because he would end up barking like a dog trying to bite his tail.
And here lies the difference, a precipitous chasm, a lacuna between man and man, woman and woman.
There are the divine Sophias and Helenes and Marias, but there are also the hellish Liliths and Alectoes!”
Don Sebastian Cornelio: “My dear friends, thank you for your soothing but belated advice among these ghosts, the aftermaths of those who lost their ways to heaven.
I was shocked by the hypocrisy and circumspect comportment of the clever opponents, but even more disappointed was the occasional though silent interjection of a cursing word (f-ck) to rectifying the cases.
The lawyer against me, as I observed the proceeding protocol as befitting his discipline, was a polite, Italian-looking middle-aged man with a rather Brooklynite English.
Mr. Marino Botticelli, his last name, reminded me of the renown Cuomo family, but his lighter complexion was that of Northern European ancestry.
His face already showed the legal toils of his profession, a lawyer, which reminded me of those two-faced Janus statues from the early Roman period.
His manners were rather perfunctory, nonchalant, soft-spoken but incisive and apt to worming out secrets from his opponents.
He trims himself as a dapper man of high society, but most of his clients, as I later learned, are couples embroiled in serious legal marital disputes for a fair share, i.e., properties, assets and finances, et el., you name it, and let there be any other trifling issue requiring further court appearances and affidavits.
Upon completing the time-consuming rigmarole, the lawyer would seek to grab some goodly substantial share of the settlement and divorce. After all, he makes his living as a lawyer, and as such, he is not stranger to the art of rhetorics and persuasiveness.
Bereft of qualms or conscience, some are said to be money-grubbing licensed profiteers anymore than a businessman or a gambler of fortunes.
Of course, there are good lawyers out there, whose probity and uprightness may win my approval, but unfair profitable gains can crook the heart of the finest for the works of darkness (Satan).
Between these extremes, nonetheless, one may come across an affable lawyer, a philanthropist, man of culture and high society, a notable citizen who has mastered the crook and the righteous in the face of Janus.
True! There is something Machiavellian about some lawyers, because sometimes they are hired to defend shocking cases of downright wickedness and corruption.
As long as there is some big cash-cow for the kill, some lawyers, as though beyond good and evil, would go to great length to defending a patently obvious notorious case of human weakness, corruption and depravity.
I am not a psychologist, but duplicity was already creasing Mr. Marino Botticelli’s forehead with rugged furrows, and two conspicuous lines of aging and sullenness were likewise leaving their indelible marks around his nose and thin-lipped mouth.
His English lilt at first amused me as rather hilarious for an Attorney at Law in New York City, but I knew he was just acting his cool-side to kick me out of my previous apartment with little vexation or confrontation.
True! The lawyer against me, a natural psychologist by the rigor of constant close scrutinies on his opponents' moral fabrics, had perhaps perceived in me some head-scratching ambivalence, torn-apart by the moral duty of an upright person fighting his way out of this rabbit hole.
—Was I silly?
‘So, when would you like to vacate the apartment Señor Cornelio?’
True, at times I felt like a dog licking his paws, and a piercing feeling of psychological displacement pressed on me with unexplainable bouts of uncertainties, forebodings, unquietness and silent rage.
Rosalinda, the adorable turtle-dove, assuming a remarkable counterfeit of pitiable victimization, put on on a doe-face of the innocent turtle-dove shedding crocodile tears, and much to my outrage, was able to win her pleas attentive and approved by the staid judge’s final verdict.
At this, my lawyer got short shrift from the infuriated judge, and impugning my character and integrity, as ‘flawed and lecherous’ sternly asked my useless attorney to keep his mouth shut.
‘Keep your big mouth shut.’
Without further ado or ceremony, the judge, always acting peremptorily, his eyes flashed with both rage and indignation against me, gaveled the case in favor of the snake’s crafty guiles and lies.
Thus I had no chance of winning a legal fight against such an implacable unfaithful wife.
My lawyer, keenly aware of the injustice committed unto my innocent persona, advised me to surrender the premises.
—Indeed, ths possibility of being beaten by a lethal mamba snake was not an overstatement.
Attorney at Law to Don Senor Sebastian Cornelio:
“Dear Joe, by heaven’s sake, haul your ass out of that dangerous situation as soon as possible, lest all the fires of hell be unleashed upon you.
The wailing woman (La Llorona) can beat the crap out of you.”
Don Cornelio (making long faces): “And so I lost my apartment to a devil in human form, who, not only had surreptitiously cheated on me for years long, had also ruined my finances to the nadir-point of bankruptcy, and even threatened to put me in jail for the rest of my life.”
Phoenix Bird: “My dear reader, at these last words, we almost fainted to the ground like a dead man.
A few weeks later, Don Sebastian died of a heart attack. Some of his closest friends speculated that he still loved that audacious chic, and that perhaps the cruel dagger of infidelity, ever rubbing anew his bleeding heart with the thorny twinges of unrequited love, worsened by the ensuing litigations, endless court appearances, had forever left a ghastly gash in the trenches of his soul.
Lonely he died, of a heart-attack on that cold winter of December 23, of the year 1996, just one day prior to Christmas.
I wish I could write a fitting panegyric to Don Sebastian, because his funeral was scarcely attended by some family members.
As a man of solitude, he had very few friends, and by some ironic arbitrariness of life’s unfolding scroll of circumstances, some critics and friends alike learned of his death but fortuitously, at a latter point —much later, that’s to say, in the Spring of 1997 (Resurrection Day).
A good friend of his, who happened to be a writer for a local newspaper, albeit belatedly, had written a most moving although short obituary. And thanks to his faithful friend, who preferred to remain anonymous, in those moving lines we learn of Don Sebastian’s lifetime’s achievements and oeuvre.
His few extant quaintly tonal compositions, amounting to a few simple songs, ballads and preludes for the organ, were later published posthumously, but the ethos of his time had changed, and hence, are, as today, for the most part, relegated to the shelves of oblivion.
All the same, Don Sebastian, a hardy man known for his effusive persnickety personality, had left strict orders for his remains to be cremated, but, out of religious feelings, his pleas were ignored by his devout Catholic older brother, Dr. Mario Jose Maria Cornelio.
As a man of faith and honor, Don Mario took on the responsibility of paying all his brother’s debts and funerary expenditures, and thus felt beneath his conscience, sense of dignity and respect to incinerating whatever was left of that poor man or devil.
His remains were taken back to Bogota Colombia, the end of 1996, to be interred alongside his beloved parents. On the capstone, an epitaph was written with most conspicuous characters. There we read:
‘Aquí descansan los restos de Don Sebastián Cornelio.’
In this manner we left behind Don Sebastián Cornelio, now a haunting phantom in the hereafter. Roaming aimlessly, back and forth the same circumference of his heartbreaking strains, he is hopeful to escaping this starless place of so much gloom and unspeakable sadness.
We then cast a glance around us, and made out some ghosts, now ambling in yonder spot, and then lumbering most pensively behind our back, like sleepwalkers, were very busy with their restless drudgeries and hurly-burly in the hereafter.
Just as they did when they lived among the living-dead, so they are here, forever and ever, repeating the same painful, tedious cycles for the human species.”
Parsifal: “Stupid people, though ye try to convince them of their delusional enterprises, don’t even know that they are already dead.
‘Leave the dead bury their own dead.’ (Luke 9:60)
Nihilo and Lilith already killed them, but they have little bearings of their former state of existence and the latter one amidst the dead.
Indeed, changes in human consciousness are as subtle and unnoticeable as are the grievous wounds of a drunkard: Don Sebastian.
Inebriated or tipsy by the effects of alcohol, humans are scarcely aware of themselves, but for these hapless ghosts, their former phantasmagoria may still be as palpable and real as are the load of their personal sufferings.
Philosopher: “My illustrious master, I can’t wait to reach the time-stricken skiff (boat) upon which you have promised to ferry me around Manhattan, but this crowd, however worth our caring ears attentive, have tarried our journeying experience.”
Parsifal: “My good friend! By all means, this is quality time!!!
We are not wasting precious time by coming across these former neighbors. So good to meet them here! Let us continue further, and as we go along, we may finally reach our destination.
—Can ye recognize any neighbor here?”
Phoenix Bird: “The Prince-Philosopher was about to open his mouth, when all of a sudden, we were shaken beyond our wits by a mad hubbub at our rear. An altercation has broken out, in full-swing, between two full-fledged hawkish men.
These two mortal foes were embroiled in a most serious bickering of what appeared to be a lamentable cultural, political, religious or racial clash.
My goodness! We were caught off guard at this astonishing juncture, and I felt this episodic chapter, however verging on things bawdy, uncouth, salacious, sleazy, devilish and downright vulgar, to be but in stark contrast to our high regards for some former neighbors, whose exemplary, virtuous lives deserve our due reverence and respect.
While we had in my mind’s far-echoed chambers the heart-rending story of a former neighbor, Ana S. Manson, a mad confrontation had ensued between a staunch xenophobic American citizen and lawyer, Charlie Jone-Stones, a ‘WASP,’ against an audacious, womanizer, clever Dominican fellow: Don Juan D’ Los Palos, a.k.a., ‘Rubirosa’ by nickname.
A former member of the Catholic Church, or at least —from what we later gather from his love-story— Don Juan professes to have been reared by a devout Catholic aunt from Sabana Iglesia, Dominican Republic.
Juan D’ Los Palos, as we recall Josh Manson’s love-story and shocking betrayal, was believed to have been the main culprit behind the romantic fool’s tragic end on that fateful Thanksgiving Day of 2017.
A staunch admirer and secret disciple of renown although notorious playboy and lecherous Porfirio Rubirosa, Juan D’ Los Palos’ dark side, was believed to have struck a pact with Satan for supernatural powers.
In 1969, it was reported, in Sabana Iglesia, Santiago, DR, that a mild, gentle man of good manners named Juan D’ Los Palos, would not accept any goodly victual given to him during daytime, but later, in the night, the soft-spoken man would show up in the guise of a dog wagging his tail; and thus, in such animal form, he would devour the few remaining crumbs strewn on the floor.
The infamous case and practice, came to the attention of an old lady named Nina Diaz, who suspicious of Juan D’ Los Palos' erratic behavior, had the curious idea to strike the night-roaming cur on his flanks with a hard broom.
Don Juan, who, neither as a dog, nor as a good man, henceforth lived on in human form, stopped visiting Nina Diaz’ house, was reported to have suffered broken ribs, sudden convulsion of inexplicable wriggles and twinging pains for many months on end.
With tempting schemes, Don Juan, already a geezer, had also cajoled beautiful Rosalinda from her vows of eternal fealty to her husband, Don Sebastian Cornelio.
Thus, the Dominican cloven-hoofed goat became renown, even in Hell, for his formidable libido prowess, and he is to be counted among this crowd.”
Squirrel: “Dear fellows, what the heck is going on between ye twain.?”
Don Juan D’ Los Palos: “ While strolling by the Hudson River's banks, a defiant hound had been watching me with suspicion, and following my spoors (footprints) the distrustful creature pursued me as though sensing a convict, a hooligan, an outcast.
I retreated back to a propitious stripe of narrow woody lands unfolding into a maze of downhills and hillocks, which, as I continued treading and skittering along the edgy curves of jagged stones, dangerous slabs, all these mad pathways sometimes would steep into precipitous, perilous ravines of distrust, suspiciousness, unfriendliness.
A German dog, a beast of most frightening aspect, property of an American fellow, Charlie Jone-Stones, was not pleased at the irregular pace of my clumsy gait, which he felt was absolutely alien to his culture, and deemed me an unwanted fellow in his own territory: a natural distrust, which frankly speaking, could be very embarrassing for any humanist who believes in the intrinsic goodness of mankind.
Sniffing me, and leering at my face with disconcerting curiosity, the outlandish dog growled, grumbled and encircled himself around my feet, and then hunkered down quietly on his angular rump to muse about my unstable gait.
With lurid eyes ever fixed on me, he suddenly addressed me this wise saying:”
Charlie Jone-Stones: “Tell me the truth. By God's sake, are you Dominican?
—And what the heck are you doing here in this neighborhood?"
Don Juan D’ Los Palos: “Yes Sir! I am Dominican, Catholic background.
I was born in a small Island, Hispaniola, La Española, named after the adventurous Spaniard conquistadores. In 1492, Christopher Columbus beached his ships, La Pinta, La Niña, y La Santa María, along the splendid seashores of this lovely Island, Quisquella.
The Spaniards were completely captivated by this virgin world of innocence, beauty, pasture, naturalism.
By contrast, the Spanish crew consisted of an entourage of unkempt criminals, convicts, lowlifes, that have entrusted their fate to an adventurous mariner.
Christopher Columbus, was a clever jew, and he was known for being a fearless navigator, would eventuallly win the friendship of an antisemite Spanish Queen: Reina Isabela.
The inhabitants of this Island, Taínos, though small, were a very beautiful people. Fond of nudity and simplicity, they would daub their cinamon-colored skin with coco oil to ward off the stings of mosquitos.
The beautiful Taina girls, innocent, natural, so we are told, would soon fall prey to the all-clutching fingers of these devils in human form.
El Diablo (Satan) tiene su interés en la República Dominicana (the Devil is very interested in the Dominican Republic), for he knows that the history of America would be incomplete without the genocide of the Taínos, and from these atrocities, coupled with every conceivable crime against humanity, slavery, rapes, pillaging, dehumanization and piracy, galore, the biological frosty stuff of history would finally produce a remarkable species called ‘Dominicanos.’
Dominican people, therefore, are the sum total of every possible interbreeding among the various races during colonial times, hence, why it is so difficult to classify us within the bracketing of any conventional racial terminology or category.
Every Dominican person, more than other races, is lavishly bestowed with the generic traits of the whole of the human race.
Some philosophers, if they are to seek interesting cases of human experiments in the ever spawning womb of history, would have a great supply of biological types among the gene-pool of the Dominican people.
On closer inspection, nevertheless, we are bound to admit, that contrary to the churchy views and baseless prejudice associated with race-mixing in some parts of the world, there are people, whose physical constitution and musical sensitiveness, would make them more suitable for the equation of existence in the dissonantly jarring chord of pain, boredom and struggle...
The History of Colonialism, its crimes, genocide of the Aborigines, cannot be expiated by simply relocating this hapless progeny to the lands of North America, and thus would Fate write her unutterable pages in the ever-rolling bloody Sea of History.
The Devil has left his destination-signature across the blood-tinged waters of el Canal de la Mona, a few miles off the Capital of the Dominican Republic: Santo Domingo.
The crimes of our ancestors pursue us even unto this day. The disheartening screams and plaintive signs of those hapless Taina mothers, raped and then humiliated, could still still be heard in the heart of the Dominican Community in Washington Heights.
Of course, any intelligent person would admit good and bad people among any group of people; that some have exceeded more than others in the bad reputation that goes along with the hard reality of hardships, eviction, drug-trafficking, adaptation, assimilation, et al., I cannot think of any immigrants, or migrants, that did not have to fight their way up to a more civil society.”
Phoenix Bird: “When Don Juan D’ Los Palos finished this succinct account on the Dominican Republic's infamous past and the extermination of the aborigines, Charlie Jone-Stones, while curbing his dog, held silence for a moment, but was soon most willing to dispel his doubts by drilling Don Juan with other queries.
He smelled something fishy about Don Juan’s love-stories about the Catholics of Santo Domingo (Holy Sunday) and was not yet persuaded about the origin of the prefixed adjective "Dominican" to its religious connotation and provenance.”
Charlie Jone-Stones: "Are Dominican people really Christian?"
Don Juan: “Dear friend, I would like to explain myself in religious terms, but your dog, my goodness! is now bent on smelling my limbs, my torso, my buttock.”
Charlie Jone-Stones’s Dog: (Ever inquiring on this incomprensible ambiguity between the religious order and the eponymous patrimony of the Dominican heritage or nationality, went on to mutter to his boss):
"Hmmm, is this true?”
Don Juan: “At this, I felt somehow decomposed at such close scrutiny and inspection; perhaps the dog was suspecting me of some mischief, duplicity, cowardice, treachery, embezzlement, fraud, hypocrisy, rascality, deception, impertinence, uncleanliness, corruption, humbug, foolishness?
A ghost in sotto voce: (“after some closer examination and inspection, the hound seems to have been pleased at Don Juan’s moral constitution. The playboy, Rubirosa, then resumes his love-story of the Dominican Republic”):
“…Gawking at me in disbelief, this upper-crusty dog, a former lawyer, a profiteer, is somewhat surprised at my love-stories of Santo Domingo (Holy Sunday), capital of the Dominican Republic, for I have displayed a level of shrewdness and irresistible charms that would challenge previously-held theories on the detrimental effects of a simple menu of crops and ‘mondongo’ (e.g., trite, viz., the guts of goats and cows), which, are believed to undermine the immune system. If truth were told, their aphrodisiac effects cannot be overstated.”
Phoenix Bird: “Originally from Chicago, Charlie Jone-Stones, was a staunch xenophobic American citizen —an attorney at law!
His build was of a rather stocky frame, and as I stared at his finely dapper presence, the dude was not a night-roaming cur like Don Juan, but rather a pedigree of noble European stock.
He wore a shaggy, fur coat of an upper-crusty intellectual living in a residential area, and it seemed that Don Juan’s detailed accounts on the devils (Conquistadores) of colonialism in La Hispaniola, their crimes, their fiendish atrocities against the Aborigines, had only confirmed his views: that most nations are founded upon the ruins of wars, rapes, genocides, bloodshed and miscegenation.”
Philosopher: “Don Juan, as I reconstruct your love-stories, very unhappy ending for Don Sebastian, my heart contracts within me for some missing lacunae.
It is believed that you were the one who seduced Josh Manson’s adorable turtle-dove, and story has it, that you, most shamefully, had also slept with Don Sebastian’s wife?
Tell us something about Rosalina, that heavenly maid of his heart-ache and twinges?”
Don Juan: “Dear friends, I did pay my final respects and adieu to that great composer at his funeral, R. G. Ortiz Funeral Home INC, located at 190th Street and Broadway Avenue in NYC.
We were always in friendliest terms, and if it wasn’t me the one to attend his wife’s wildest dreams. another man would have done it anyway.
Of course, I knew he was struggling with the sharp pricks of unrequited love, but it was not my fault, Rosalina, own her account, simply dumped him for another puma.
While married to Don Sebastian, right in front of her husband, she had ogled another man in the prayer-room, thus further tormenting her saint to be wretched till he became an alcoholic.
His friend and priest, Rev. Freddy Montez, time and time again, would ask him to forgive his ex-wife, but the mortal dagger of infidelity had cut deep into his heart. His wound was always bleeding profusely.”
Philosopher: “How did he fall in-love with that saucy pert, a minx?”
Don Juan: “It was a lovely spring of 1993, while strolling by the Hudson River's banks, I saw the couple wholeheartedly enchained into each other’s arms, thus enjoying the sweet butterflies of passion, love and reciprocity.
O darling! I love thee!
Mi amor! Te amo.
Back then, Don Sebastian Cornelio could not be happier. Break-days unfolded with the sweet twinkles of a heavenly maid.
During that time, it was all heaven on earth my dear. Like a good Latina nerd, the bride-to-be, Rosalinda, was a Spanish Cleopatra bestowed with very delicate olive skin, svelte, torso and flanks fashioned with amazing guitar-like curves, and gracious hips ending in well-rounded voluptuous shapeliness at her rear.
Her nose, Romanesque, was perched up there like a statue of Venus in her beautiful face.
Indeed, she had outward qualities to send any man a-rocking. Her porcelain-like delicate complexion could invoke alike feelings of flawless perfection and chastity. Even a saint could be swallowed whole by Rosalinda.
As I recall now, at a Christian meeting, I heard the good man, Don Sebastian, muttering in sotto voice, ‘gratia plenas señore,’ gracias Señor, for this heavenly gift, and he even wept his tears for that adorable woman.
‘Gracias plenas mi Señor por esta chica tan fenomenal!’
At this, his wife kept silent and politely received the compliments out of courtesy.”
Philosopher: “ How about her countenance?
Don Juan: “ Ah! The bride's face, was stamped with some inexplicable feminine enigma: a mystifying beauty conceals the Mona-Lisa reservation in her innermost being: a human being designed to make silly men easy prey.
Her bewitching eye-to-eye looks captivated the heart-buttered sensations of the young man, such eyes, such lady, my goodness, could even melt the god Sun.
In her expression, every now and then, there were the gentle smiles, the slightly-given turns and nods which some men, however grown-up romantic fools, may try to decipher in endless delightful reveries and dreams.
Indeed, Rosslinda, was the source of much joy-giving and inspiration for Don Sebastian. In their fore-head, as in the silvery face of the moon, I saw written the high-flown hieroglyphics of Marriage and Felicidad Infinita: the Love of Eternity transfixed their hearts!
Matrimonio y Felicidad!”
Phoenix Bird: “Don Juan D’ Los Palos was about to say another word on courtly, chivalric love, but Charlie Jone-Stones’ dog, all of a sudden, fell in a fit of frantic behavior, and soon started barking at us with such hideously ugly grimaces, ferocity and peals that we were compelled to run away from such devil a man.”
Squirrel: (Set his eyes on the Philosopher’s) “Dammed this scoundrel Don Juan D’ Los Palos, Son of Satan.
Time is of essence, let us seek that time-stricken vessel, which, of yore, is believed to be docked just a stone-throw from the Trinity Cemetery.
Let us go thither, for it is appointed to us a twilight with the spirits of our dread, and may Fate lead us further safely along the perilous path of trust, unanimity and integrity.
We would not blaze the trail on the heels of that shameful scoundrel (Juan D’ Los Palos) but rather, let us seek Ana S. Man-Son’s virtuous life, whose graveyard is said to be a sacred place to meeting the dead with better deeds and memories, and may the ghost come aboard.
Phoenix Bird: “So said the master, and we follow suit.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Trinity Cemetery in New York City
As they approach the Trinity Cemetery’s outskirts in search of the time-stricken (boat) to go around the Isle of Manhattan, Parsifal, the Prince-Philosopher and the Phoenix Bird are met with the ghosts of Ana S. Man-Son, and her counterpart, Madam Jumel, the dreadful spirit, after all these centuries, is believed to be haunting the Morris Jumel Mansion in Washington Heights.
As a special guest, Madam Ana S. Manson will accompany them around the desolated city, Manhattan, and, at the behest of the Prince-Philosopher, she will fill-in some lacunae (missing puzzles) apropos of the Wailing Lady (La Llorona, Rosalinda) whose frightening stories could make my back hairs (hackles) stand on end.
Much to my surprise, Ana S. Man-Son knew the beautiful blond (America the Beautiful, Mary Barnes) of her son’s witless decision to committing suicide on that fateful Thanksgiving Day.
And much to our gloomy delight, the Old Lady gives a succinct if perhaps very moving description of Mary Barnes’ beautiful countenance, which is symbolic or emblematic of the Decline and Fall of the Anglo-Saxon people. At this, I cannot but let out a few tears.
Even more incredible, Ana S. Manson will also touch upon the supernatural powers of Don Juan D’ Los Palos, a shape-shifting demon from colonial times, but even more frightening is her chilly story of a Cuban Night-Hag, una santera, “una bruja,” whose acquaintances she made through her dying friends Carmen Sanchez and Mercedes Espinal.
Both witches, Carmen and Mercedes could not depart to the Spirit Realm till they have confessed their infamous practices to a Catholic priest, Fr. Freddy Montez.
On the same train of thoughts, the Squirrel-Parsifal speaks about psychic energies, and how they may linger on in the hereafter.
All this and more as we go around Manhattan, oaring with the rows of our little time-stricken skiff (boat) with the ghost of Ana S. Manson aboard.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Phoenix Bird: “The spacious habitation of the dead is replete with tombs (epitaphs dating back to the eighteenth century) some unvisited by any kith or kin in the long intervals of time.
Hither and thither, there were to be found the crisscrossed solitary pathways, and lo! In yonder spot, the deceptive impression of a human being, a specter hovering near her resting place.”
Parsifal; “Behold! That’s Ana S. Manson!”
Phoenix Bird: “What an outburst of heartiest feelings at the unexpected sight of that great soul greeting me from afar!
The thrill was mutual, because we both experienced a soothing consolation, ‘an inexplicable candor and affection,’ while tickled by the rosy-fingered surprises of fate —it is as though reliving with a dear friend memories long gone in the ever-ebbing river of time.
Forthwith, my master beckoned her to join us around the Isle of Manhattan, but the ghost was somewhat diffident, standoffish, and remained silent for a few moments, as though she was still recovering from a great loss: Josh Manson’s suicide on that fateful Thanksgiving Day, year 2017. I think she is in the purgatory or hell because of a lamentable rift with her dear son.
And indeed, she seemed to be pondering in cogitation deep the profoundest sorrows, and her aspect was that of a grief-stricken mother who has lost her dear child, day and night, would weep her tears, and could not find any solace or condolence in the hereafter.
In this manner, the soul's profoundest feelings are convicted, nay, brought up to a higher pitch, a more vivid reality in the conscience of his-her personal life with the question of good and evil.
At times, we may experience this unusual sense of resurrecting (resurrective) powers in the threshold of our consciousness, and some dreams may touch a remarkable level of contiguity with our daily experiences.
Those who have seen a person dying on the deathbed could confirm these solemn words: the grave aspect of the surrounding aura, the most piercing feeling of judgment-day, but also, a spiritual rapport in doleful intervals of silence and contrition may be deeply felt... This is what we mean by sincere condolence.
If the said person was a good soul, then there is no need to be anxious, or to be pangs-stricken when entering the ashen gates of the Spirit Realm. But if the said human being was a devil, then watch out, the bed is a-rocking, shaking, trembling, because underneath lies a shaggy dog panting and growling...
Just a few yards from Ana S. Manson’s graveyard, we made out the ghost of Madam Jumel: the Morris Jumel Mansion, located in Washington Heights, is believed to be haunted by some tormented ghosts, whom, according to a reputable psychic, may have suffered betrayal —for hell has no fury like a scorned woman— Madam Jumel, there is no haggling our debts with this horrible woman: a former prostitute.
Her sunken-cheeks, flaccid facial features, deep-set hollow eyes reminded us of Madam Fate in her other mysterious guises.
Squirrel-Parsifal: “Mind you, some passions as though drawn by the compelling forces of both magnetism and kinetic energy, could not remain static, but they seem to eke out, they seem to look out, here and there, the proper object-matter of their reciprocity and affinity.
These unresolved passions are now the haunting ghosts, which condemned to live with such junk of negative psychic energy, are believed to roam the boundless expanses of the will-net-work of Albert Einstein's multi-dimensional universe: the Nest of Time.
Who would rescue these hapless entities thus trapped in the Nest of Time?
The intimate experience, however of the most personal value and significance, may find its true life and meaning but in the cozy sanctuary of our recollections, our rapport, and with due reverence, we come humbly before the Altar of Spirit Apparitions.
Therefore, our intimate experiences with ghosts are hopelessly relegated to the purview and ‘register of our consciousness’ in a greater thoroughfare (community) with other sentient beings.
Rightly so! That's why haunting-cases like the ghost of Madam Jumel at the hoary Morris Mansion, may capture the fascination of a devoted audience out there, because the beauty-lady, a former prostitute, seems to defy even the world of Newton's physics and even our judicial system!
Finally, when explaining the spirit realm of unresolved passions, betrayal, revenge and many other baffling phenomena pertaining to the bottomlessness of the human heart, these tragic love-stories, like the ones herein inquired, are very helpful to explaining how psychic energy may linger on after we cease to live with our current physical bodies.
These kinetic forces may, somehow, continue active, yet suspended in another co-existing dimension, sort of speak, they haunt us while we live next to them —side by side.
That's why, during the Autumn Season, few birds may dare visit the Morris-Jumel Mansion at a midnight-walk; thereat we are received by the alluring sounds of jingling bells, and some feeble shades may hide behind the eerie groves of yore, and the chilly feeling of intuitive perceptions may shake us off equanimity!
And like Virgil to Dante, we may look back at the august Mansion of bygone happy days saying: ‘Look out! Look out! Look out! The Ghost of Ana S. Man-Son’.
An Owl Hooting:
—"Who are the ghosts suspended in the midnight of history?
—Who is there?”
Phoenix Bird: “So said the Illustrious Master, and we cast a glance at the Old Lady dragging herself around like a haunting ghost, her personal experiences buried in the living social cemetery for countless people relegated to oblivion.
Suddenly, we heard a dishearteningly lamenting voice ensuing from the far-echoed-chamber:
‘...You must come to terms with these ghosts if you wish to reach your goals.’
Puerto Rican Ana Man-Son is descendant of a Spaniard Catalan (father), Russian (grandfather), English (mother’s side background).
Just I remember my beloved 1980s as fresh as yesterday, likewise Ana S. Man-Son, recalled her past (1950s) with remarkable vivid details and the most moving stories of travails and challenges for former immigrants.
La Señora Ana S. Manson came to New York when she was a seventeen-year old immigrant, and was able to keep her ship afloat through the most difficult windstorms and challenges.
With remarkable mental fortitude, despite her humble level of formal education, she had held herself fast unto the storm-stricken mast of her barque (ship) and was able to reach old age with fondest memories of the olden days in New York City. Indeed, her life is a treasured book of experiences and travails for former immigrants.
Puerto Rican immigrants went through a lot of daunting challenges, constantly clashing with the Italians (West-Side Stories), and along with the Jews, Blacks and other socially discriminated people, they would pave the way for greater social justice for all. Dominican people, whom complain about inequity and racism, did not live through these tough years of segregation and hardships.
In her last years among the living-dead, as a great human being, who always wanted the best for other people, she had been taking care of two other hapless old ladies living their last chapters in the bed of affliction, but little was she aware of a lethal bacteria sucking the last strength of her nicotine-stricken lungs.
While Ana related to us her heartbreaking stories in the cold winters of the 1960s, the stench of her Marlboro cigarettes almost choked us. But we endured much with her precious memories, because the beautiful soul is perfumed with the virtues of mental fortitude, endurance and dogged-tenacity.
Ana S. Man-Son’s nursing heart, no less than a chaperone, had been entrusted to the care of two of her best friends, Carmen Sanchez and Mercedes Espinal. Back in the 1960s, in the prime of youth, these old ladies were much into dancing and partying.
Former Santeras (witches ) back in the 1990s, later on in life, year 2016, upon meeting the hour of death, could not vacate their bodies till they have confessed their infamous practices: hexes, potions made out of nauseous substances, but also the reading of tarot, ouija, and the quackery concoction of nostrums, galore, made out of the entrails of frogs, snakes, tortoises, spiders, insects, and tarantulas, and even ‘salves’ for a jilted lover, have cast a persistent curse upon the latter days of these poor ladies, wretched hooting owls, self-avowed men-haters:
‘Most men are dogs, and we have practiced countless hexes against many a lover.’
As a devout Catholic, Ana Man-Son, afraid of losing her salvation, had to seek the help of a friend priest, Rev. Freddy Montez, an exorcist, because though these hags had converted to Catholicism, Satan has not, as yet, recognized the unwarranted freedom of these former witches: embittered women to the core.
Their former marriage to the Prince of Darkness could not so easily be annulled…for, what the Devil has joined together no one can put asunder.
Ana S. Manson: “ In 1995, not that far from where I lived, a Cuban woman, una Santera, a night-hag, Clarissa Rodriguez, was reported to have dangerously tampered with the other spirits of our dread.
For many days and nights, a rancid, putrid odor coming from her apartment, led the perplexed tenants to call the authorities.
The hapless woman was found dead amidst her infamous practices and hideous objects, among which, there were chicken's carcasses and entrails, dry bones, blood-splotches and other organic substances besmirching the floor and walls.
The stench of her apartment was so repugnant and indescribably hellish, that for a long time, some of her neighboring tenants reported to have suffered from nightmare and dizziness...
In the 90s, Latinos Evangelical churches were overwhelmingly jam-packed with people looking for help. Our neighborhoods and endless squalid slums were stricken with drugs, dysfunctional homes, unwanted pregnancy, witchcraft, obesity, superstition, segregation.
The government did little to improve the condition of the minority community, and so, scores of hapless people gave themselves either to the mysterious forces of Satan or to the caring hands of Jesus Christ.
Under such dire circumstances, certainly, there was not a better place to be than in a nearby church; therein, in the snug sanctuary, tenderly illumined by a few rays of hope, we would cry out to God for help,
—-God, Help Us.
Thus, the three of us were summoned by Fr. Montez for a confession session, and it is reported that Carmen Sanchez, while laying on her deathbed, on and off, like a premonition-stricken cow, sticking out her long-forked tongue, in a fit of panic and dread, would complain the low growling of a black, shaggy hound hiding under the mattress.
‘Do you hear that? And who is that dog ceaselessly growling under my bed.’
So would say Mercedes Espinal to her pal Carmen Sanchez, and the two hapless hags, while blubbering, weeping and whimpering to their wit’s ends, in a mournful duet, would viscerally lament, unconsolably disheartening, their former covenant with Satan, because they were afraid of the Gates of Hell.
‘Ay, ay, ay! Dios mío, ayúdame.’ So expressed her guts Señora Espinal, ‘I don’t want to lose my soul to Satan.’
‘We are afraid of the Gates of Hell.’
Thus we would plead our case to Father Montez, and the stone-faced priest, while imploring God for mercy, Kyrie Eleison, Kyrie Eleison, Kyrie Eleison, making the sign of the cross, would sprinkle holy waters upon us three.
‘El Señor te reprenda Satanás.’
So said the priest in a husky voice, and a nearby candle’s flame started to waver languishingly back and forth, as though agitated by a sudden gust of air.
A haunting spirit of sadness, contrition and regret, deeply seated in the pit of my stomach, seemed to pierce the thick atmosphere with the lingering forebodings of death at our rear.
Our last days were to be spent in the deathbed of affliction and contrition. Two weeks later, sometime in August of 2016, after endless prayers, confessions and fasting, Carmen Sanchez and Mercedes Espinal would pass on to the Spirit Realm, a few months later, in November, I followed suit.”
Phoenix Bird. “At this point, Parsifal ordered the Prince-Philosopher to unfasten the tight knot docking the skiff (boat) by the river bank, and let set sail round Manhattan.
Parsifal: “Time is hand to test thy heart, and see if ye have the gut to confronting the haunting sprits of our dread.
The skiff is just a few yards from here, and it should carry us forward with little efforts.”
Phoenix Bird: “Now, when the Prince readied himself to seek the boat, the wailing winds started to buffet a nearby sepulcher’s half-open lid, for it seemed that some bandits had either desecrated it, robbed whatever valuables they found therein, or else, the dead within it has broken loose from the Pit of Hell.
All on a sudden, errant filaments of haze and fogs engulfed the cemetery’s backyard and tombs overlooking the river banks, and chilly winds seemed to wail and cry in quasi-human voices.”
The Prince-Philosopher: “Hearken that awful choir? These daunting ethereal sounds could bring the lost wayfarer to standstill.”
Parsifal “Pay heeds at those wailing gales, in quasi-human voices and despair, they are at pain to joining this awful chorus of lost souls, and perhaps make headways through unspeakable mossy moors of suffering and destruction, hither and thither, roaring, bemoaning, and cursing the most breath-taking music ever heard in the baffling outcries of Mother Nature’s unfathomable wombs. (peruse Faust by Goethe, Part 1, Walpurgis Night)...”
Phoenix Bird: “At this point, an unspeakable nostalgia and dread took possession of us all. The wailing winds, more and more, like a pack of wolves howling, ranging furiously amidst the midnight history of humanity, were bent on smiting and scourging the crisscrossed pathways of the Trinity Cemetery.
Now, our mettle was further tested to the core upon hearing a series of returning thuds, all commingling with the heart-wrenching snarling of a wild animal.
We could not make the origination of such daunting gruesome uproars?
Beast-like, the deeply-throated sounds reminded me of the hideous Sphinx squatting in the waste lands of Egypt. At this point, we heard the uncanny swarming-buzz of stinging bees or hornets scooting from a sore cavity.
The unbearable stench of rotten human remains is indeed a sobering experience. Forthwith, my heart contracted within me, and I prayed and prayed for God’s protection.
O Lord! Our heartbeats pounded and raced at pace with these premonitions: putrified carcasses have perhaps drawn nigh some hellish drones from the Pit of Hell.
The hellish crew were whirling and whirling around a corpse. The execrable carrion of a young man, sprawling on the ground, ripe for the voracious vultures of post-modern civilization, reminded us of Josh Manson’s tragic death on that fateful Thanksgiving Day. He had quit life with an overdose of cocaine mixed with cyanide.
Parsifal: “They are the dire warnings of a woman’s indescribable pains at childbirth.”
Phoenix: “Bodiless voices seemed to haunt the thick atmosphere, and from the unfathomable womb of impregnated night, there came a bone-chilling laughter, a malicious, mischievous child (an urchin) Son of Satan, was heard tittering and sniveling as though making fun of us.
‘You fools! You are dead, ha, ha, ha.’
Do you think to escape the Sting of Death?
Then we heard the creaking sound of a cord or knot being loosened for some serious matters (peruse the Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe, page 110, year 2006).
Parsifal: “Time is of essence, let us go thither to undock the skiff so we set sail around the Isle of Manhattan.”
Phoenix; “At this, the air was filled with the uncanny echoes, buzzing crowding and clamors of countless piteous souls.
These haunting ghosts, however grisly and spooky, as though trapped in a sanatorium, would make us aware of their prowling presence, and so, from one of those yawning tombs, we heard a frightening thud, then a bang as though coming from a hellbent vindictive spirit.
Briefly, there was a suspensive silence, scarcely interrupted by the buzzing stinging bees amidst the wailing winds, when suddenly, we heard three disheartening hollow thuds —-tad, tad, tad!
In yonder spot, lo and behold! there appeared a bride-to-be. She was attired in quaint costumes, a white tulle (wearing a creepy negligée), suddenly hid herself from view in a hoary graveyard.
‘Someone is rapping hard against a hollow slab.’
Philosopher “Is that Madam Jumel, or maybe another ghost?”
Phoenix: “We understood that this was not a friendly ghost.
Suddenly, the backdoor was flung ajar, and the Prince, infusing himself with the courage of his master, went on to seek the boat. But no sooner he reached the lych-gate when, lo in view, there appeared a frightening woman dressed in white, her pitch-black hair, thrown frontwards, covered her face as though wearing a mourning veil for years long.
Parsifal: (with commanding voice) “Watch out, watch out! That’s the wailing woman, La Llorona, Rosalinda, now a ghost hellbent on destroying men.
At this, the Prince touched the embosoming Shanti-Necklace with trembling hands: ‘O my goodness, protect me.’
The ghostly woman appeared shortly in front of us, her pale countenance expressing neither joy nor pain. The mysterious spirit, staying motionless in yonder spot, for a little while by the backdoor, retreated backward and backward amidst the sibylline fogs, and was soon lost from sight in the imposing spacious residence of uncreated night.
My heart almost melted when Anna S. Manson informed us that the said mysterious woman had been seen by former neighbors back in the early 2000s, and that for many years, the frightening story of this beauty-ghost-haunting, Rosalina, was further confirmed by passers-by of the most trust-worthiness and reliability.
Ana Manson: ‘Rosalina passed on in the year 1999. Her soul does not rest in peace. Poor woman, has nothing to do in the hereafter, but to go around scaring people. And who knows for how long?’
So said Ana. And the Prince, however cautious, exited the Trinity Cemetery, and we followed him.
Down the hill, by the river bank we found the time-stricken boat. The tight knot docking the old skiff was unfastened, and alongside the Prince as an oarsman, we set sail around Manhattan.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Phoenix Bird’s Impression of the Purgatory and Hell:
With the caring hands of a faithful scribe, I have, herein, attempted to fill-in some missing lacunae in the last days of my dear former neighbor, Anna S. Manson, whose death (Autumn Season of 2016),was to be revealed to me in a dream (Valley of Shadow) thus corroborating my insightful observations: that our lives' sequels and circumstances ought to be construed but in this transcendent contiguity between dreams and reality, but also in the early intuitive perceptions of our infancy.
How you react to this dream would determine your spiritual strength to coping with the undeniable reality of death for all of us.
This dream, could be the peculiar fancies of my mind afraid of one thousand real facts for all of us: perhaps this dream is the influence and confluence of one thousand impressions coinciding in the unconscious reaches of our mind's deepest forebodings: the reality of death for all of us.
In this dream, I saw what appeared to be a mother's tomb, a gravestone, the capstone was as real as I write these notes. I can recall the epitaph, the smooth surface of the marble stone, and other details appeared to me as real as my heart pounding and beating with strangest feelings of sadness and loss.
The scenic aspect of this crowding of ghosts suddenly changed into a bleak world filled with dread, foreboding and horror.
Some horrific spirits, ever rambling and gyrating this gloomy circle of cursed ghosts in the Purgatory, caught sight of me, but I was able to fly away to a safer place.
Meanwhile, the shadows of our dread fixed their cold stares on me.
—Look at those spirits!
They seemed to be at pains to catch me by some other stratagems. As I glanced around me, a steel-cold fear pierced my heart like a sheet of ice slowly melting in my bosom. I tried to escape this futuristic world as one who had sensed something demonic, fatale and gruesome.
All of a sudden, as I stood in mid air, floating, suspended, and rising above the spirits of my dread, further in view, lo! I saw what appeared to be a Deep Valley of Shadows (Psalm 23).
It was a dreadful valley, somber and engulfed with grey filaments of formless haze resembling hovering specters or ghosts.
Enveloped in thick fogs, scarcely mollifying the disheartening, raging, wailing of cold winds ravaging and buffeting the sore gullets of those throaty crags, I was overwhelmed by this "sense of in-falling-depth" into the unfathomable reaches of my poor soul's labyrinths.
The Valley of Shadow was not the Pit of Hell, but its yawning maw, its spacious, throaty, spiraling descent, was indeed filled with inexplicable sadness, dejection, cacophonous voices, disheartening whimpering and shrieks amidst the starless night of one thousand frightening figments. This has to be Hell!
Listening to the Secret Scribe's Sotto Voce - Visiting my Previous Neighborhood Again (Year 2016)
A few days later, and still grappling with the disturbing figments of my dream on the Valley of Shadow, the Spirit urged me to go back to my previous neighborhood: Washington Heights. I had not visited the dearly loved neighborhood for a few months now (end of the year 2015 to the beginning of the year 2016) but a chain of circumstances would place us in direct connection with the most personal chapters of our lives' sequels: our intimate episodes, our dear neighbors, our very life and surroundings are all intertwined in the flickering waning candle's flames of our destiny.
Such sweet candle’s flame waved and wavered unto me with strangest forebodings, but I have this gut-feeling that God is in control of my unfolding days.
Mind you, the Secret Scribe of our personal life is always at our rear, and sometimes, we just simply feel this incomprehensible urge to obeying this most mysterious of intuitions, forebodings, pre-sentiments.
On my way back home, lo and behold! My beloved neighbor, La Señora Ana S. Manson, was quietly brooding at Carrot Top, a trendy bakery located between 164th and 165th and Broadway avenue.
She was alone, and seating on most pensively by the glassy windowed walls. As I passed by, all of a sudden, we both caught sight of each other.
‘My dear!’ So greeted me the old lady, with downcast, heavy-lidded eyes, expressed her difficult days, conveyed to me her soul-wracking angst with what appeared to be a malign bacteria gnawing at her gut.
My goodness! My suggestion was to seek a doctor as soon as possible, and to take antibiotics, or intake some cloves of pungent garlic --and chew them raw before going to sleep— for the aging body is the more prone to sickness at the octogenarian age.
Interpretation of My Dream and Sensing the Voices of the Spirit Realm: the Death of Ana S. Manson
Beyond my mind, beyond my all too-human strength and efforts, I have had some spiritual experiences with the Spirit Realm: these are my best gleanings to the meaning of life!
I have to say that I have found Grace in the revelation and interpretation of Dreams.
Such dreamy experiences would become meaningful but in the episodic sequels of our lives. In it, I saw a tombstone bearing an epitaph, a headstone made of sleek marble, whereupon, all of a sudden, I found myself aloft, as though flying above this horrific scene of so much dread.
Down there, I saw what appeared to be the presence of wandering, hellbent vindictive spirits roaming back and forth. The bleak scene reminded of the Valley of Shadows mentioned in Psalm 23.
I had mistakenly related this dream to be that of my mother's soul, that perhaps she was in the Purgatory, and that she was probably asking me for prayers.
But now, it is clear to me that the tomb of my dream belongs to my neighbor La Señora Ana S. Manson, whose soul, while still with us in this world, was perhaps reaching out to me, urging me to write the last final notes of her farewell adieu into the Spirit Realm.
(Shanti, In Process)
Eddie Beato, Oct. 22, NYC
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To be continued (wait for Chapter VI, as yet in process).
www.eddiebeato.com/shanti-chapter-vi---going-around-the-isle-of-manhattan-with-ana-s-man-son.html
‘The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure —who can understand it
(Jeremiah 17:09).’
Synopsis and Prefatory Notes to Chapter V:
An Owl Hooting:
“Who are the ghosts suspended in the midnight of history?
O my! See the Autumnal Leaves! How they tinge the footpath...resembling lost souls, wretched spirits whom couldn't find the way out of this wild wood —out of the dangers of civilized society, or, perhaps these ghosts could not stand The Hour!” (quoting from Shanti, Chapter I, the Human Heart, Europe, Highlands of Transylvania, Wednesday 16, Year 448)
Chapter V: The notion that civilized society could be as dangerous as the wild wood in Transylvania may be the gist of this chapter.
The state machine, the Civic Court, especially under the serious threat of duress and punishment, could keep its citizens within the bounds of respect and decency, but corruption and lawlessness, nonetheless, may still creep their ugly, warty heads.
According to Parsifal (Chapter I and Chapter VI), we, Homo sapiens, are, first and foremost, social animals.
And so by 2010, the Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes, had already awakened me from my slumbers —from my naïveté— from my self-delusional idyllic chimeras when approaching my fellow citizens.
Parts of Chapter V and VI, were written in the winter of 2010, but I have been adding more lines, characters, nays and yeas. It easy reading
Like Chapter I, in the wild wood of Transylvania, for the most part, the latter is a fulfillment of the former, with the soul-wracking stuff of the human heart but in the milieu of urban society: the Church and the Civic Court of New York City, would still require the Righteousness of God, for King Nihilo, along with his wife, Lilith, has finally reduced the human species (Chapter VI) to the status of mammals and reptiles: “odious vermin.”
Confronted with the tragic love stories of three ghosts, the Prince-Philosopher, Parsifal, and the Phoenix are taxed to tarry longer while inquiring upon the heartbreaking past of these unfortunate phantoms, Josh Manson, Don Sebastian Cornelio and Ana S. Manson (a former witch), now condemned to live inconsolable and hopeless in the Nest of Time, a.k.a., the Purgatory.
Herein, you may relish the love-stories of witless Josh Manson, a drug addict, and Don Sebastian Cornelio, a composer, belletrist (a man of letters) culture and an aesthete. Both men became stones through the insidious, hypnotic, bewitching powers of Lilith, a.k.a., Medusa.
With the ubiquitous influence of the internet, it is fair to say that we are now living half-dead (absent-minded), or, whether we would admit it or not, most of us are under the spells of fleeting things and entities (e.g., the Internet, the iPhones’ far-reaching hooks and tight knots) no less than ghosts, all trapped in the Nest of Time.
A millennial, Josh Manson (symbolic of the decline of Western values) is a beautiful although melancholic youth, has little by little become disillusioned with post-modern city-life, and set up to immersing himself in the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri.
By shirking his livelihood, he becomes a maverick verging on homelessness, but does not relinquish his deep-seated passion for classical literature.
J. Manson self-taught himself by reading the Bible and the Divine Comedy of Dante. Unfortunately young people are often seized by formidable surges of both inspiration and testosterone-levels, and like relentless bulls, their book-dreamy-footing in the world can lead them to their own demise, and so, Josh Manson’s fantastical limerence became his own undoing.
Finding himself homeless, and unable to come to terms with a hard, callous, materialistic world, he commits suicide on Thanksgiving Day.
Dante Alighieri’s platonic ideas of women led the chump (a fool) to go around seeking his angel, but she happened to be a minx, pert and a hussy: the lost daughter of Lilith.
He is to be followed by Señor Sebastian Cornelio, a composer and freelancer (symbolic of Platonic Love) becomes an alcoholic, loses his salvation in exchange for mundane fame.
For years he had immersed himself in the Dr. Faust of Goethe, the Sorrows of Young Werther, the World as Will and Idea by Arthur Schopenhauer, and like Josh Manson, his book-footing in the world, Don Quixote, by Miguel Cervantes Saavedra, became a delusional enterprise: chivalric love.
Although he is a man of honor and probity, finds himself afoul in a web of false accusations, intrigue and debts culminating his life with a heart-attack.
His girlfriend-wife, Rosalinda, put the horns on him, ripped-him off, accused him of inappropriate advances, and then threatened to put him in jail for the rest of his life.
Can you read Nihilo’s raging eyes behind the Judge’s final verdict (Civic Court) and Lilith, the snake, behind Rosalina’s crocodile tears against Don Sebastian Cornelio?
I wish to give an entry-ticket to a former neighbor Ana S. Manson (Josh Manson’s mother) a prodigious consumer of cigarettes and cigars, the old lady died of a lethal bacteria gnawing at her guts (the death of her beloved son by suicide).
While I had in my mind’s far-echoed chambers the heart-rending story of Ms. Ana S. Manson, suddenly, a mad ruckus-tussle had ensued between two men: Charlie Jone-Stones, a staunch xenophobic American citizen against an audacious Dominican immigrant, Juan D’ Los Palos, a former member of the Catholic Church, or at least, he professed to have been reared by a devout Catholic aunt from Sabana Iglesia, Dominican Republic.
Juan D’ Los Palos, as we recall Josh Manson’s love-story and shocking betrayal, was believed to have been the main culprit behind the romantic fool’s tragic end on that fateful Thanksgiving Day of 2017.
A staunch admirer and secret disciple of renown although notorious playboy and lecherous Porfirio Rubirosa, Juan D’ Los Palos’ dark side, was believed to have struck a pact with Satan for supernatural powers.
The Dominican cloven-hoofed goat became renown, even in Hell, for his formidable libido prowess, and he is to be counted among this crowd.
Due to the rapid-fired surges of our time, one is compelled to being concise, lucid and pithy like the British people.
Most dishearteningly of all, I was compelled to blotting out a substantial section on homelessness, on chivalric, courtly love, on the shackles of civilized society and so on.
As I peruse my meditations on the Hudson River, I had to delete countless sentences (mostly dealing with bawdy material) as unworthy of the self-esteem of a writer who still subscribes to the wise meditations of Henry D. Thoreau’s Chapter On Reading, The Walden Pond.
Today, I donned a fancy suit, and with princely mien, I stepped out for fresh air, and I asked God to infuse in me that same conviction which led a simple squirrel to win a major victory against the Lynx.
It is now propitious to say that every chapter tackles the equation of life from a different perspective. Therefore, it is, in earnest, a philosophic treatise on the meaning of life.
Hence every character may express a worldview: from atheism to theism, from paganism to the soothing promise of Christianity (1 Corinthians Chapter 12:53) you are free to choosing your path.
Atch! Some of my readers told me that Shanti can be a difficult read, but if you go slowly, then they are as legible as they are “comprehensible,” and hence, enjoyable.
Most importantly, your life would unfold as though unveiled, free from the illusion of Maya, you would awake in the early morning, as though dawning to a “new glorious aspect of your own existence,” and perhaps you would not fall victim to the hexes of Lilith…ha, ha, ha!
If you are fond of writing your thoughts in a novel format, then you are simply vicariously projecting yourself in the heart and human nature of your imaginative characters.
Most strikingly to me is the fact that Josh Man-Son is symbolic of the death of the American Society.
His mother Ana S. Manson, now living as a ghost in the Spirit Realm, is still inconsolable upon learning that her beloved son, an American citizen, had become homeless in New York’s raging winters, and as such, had committed suicide on that fateful Thanksgiving Day, year 2017.
On the other hand, we may come across Don Sebastian Cornelio, a man of culture, may represent the decline of Romantic Latinism and Courtly Love in Latin America: Rosalina’s Greco-Romanesque physique and exquisite refinement: “Her porcelain-like delicate complexion could invoke alike feelings of flawless perfection and chastity.”
Prudently, I have been careful when projecting myself in the hagridden heart of Josh Man-Son, and thank goodness! when the fool commits suicide I have simply let your mind fill-in the lacunae (gap). No, thank you!
I may have to wait for the Almighty’s help to undertaking such perilous paths into things nihilistic, destructive and hellish. I may attempt it again, but I have to be careful, lest my mind fall headlong into the forewarnings of the Squirrel Parsifal (beginning of Chapter V).
Mind you, Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice became a harbinger for the author’s unfolding tragedies: some of his children, writers themselves in their own right, committed suicide, and the great writer had hinted at Doktor Faustus‘ darkest passages (Adrian Leverkuhn’s Pact with Satan) for his ongoing battle with cancer in the last days of his life.
Therefore, thoughts, feelings, “déjà vu,” can become “crystalized,“ and I wish to forgo such floodgates of hell wreaking havoc within my soul.
Today, Oct. 14, 2024, I went on to spill my still running blood in the Faustian heart of Don Sebastian Cornelio’s youth (1970s-1996), and so I inserted some exuberant, indeed, youthful lines where he speaks about the transformative powers of classical music, Mass in C minor by Mozart, and how he loses his wits to a beautiful mermaid from Spain, Rosalinda, a.k.a., Selena, is indeed heartbreaking.
Rosalinda, Selena, the mermaid, seems to be symbolic of the best of the Latin people, the Mediterranean people, and so I now understand why Don Sebastian’s head-scratching sick-love for Rosalina was but a mad conflation of Greco-Roman ideas embodied in that smashingly beautiful but baneful woman.
Don Sebastian’s torments were perhaps redoubled when seeing his most cherished ideas, Rosalinda, Ancient Greece (Melina), being cajoled and hence debased by a contemptible man, a wizard, shameful man, Juan D’ Los Palos.
Chapter V ends with the shocking confessions of three former witches, Madam Ana S. Manson, Carmen Sanchez, and Mercedes Spinal, stunningly beautiful Latinas, had had their binges of promiscuity during their youthful, exuberant orgies with Juan D’ Los Palos.
Once self-avowed haters of mankind, may have dabbled with the occults, witchcraft, and it seems that Satan was unwilling to recognize their unwarranted freedom.
When writing with the blood-meandering heart of your imaginative characters, you are impelled to breathing-in and out the same air, nay, would need to infuse yourself with the same feverish feelings, and even put on their same shoes, even flesh-out yourself with the same skin…to really squeezing and “wimbling deep” into any remaining relics of human nature: the deepest recesses of the human heart.
Therefore, do not write stiltedly (mechanically, perfunctorily), but rather, let your inner scribe cull and arrange the time-stricken writings from the personal depository of your carefully-dated and punctiliously-reamed journals, diaries, epistolary letters, emails, and, of course, perhaps you, as a smith, have modeled your writings after the great masters of humankind. If you have a diary, then, your life would unfold like a sonata!
Josh Man-Son, Don Sebastian Cornelio, both avid readers of classic literatures, have much in common, they did not enjoy civilized modern society, which they felt to be callous, soulless, suicidal, a prison-cell, a machine, a madhouse.
Affectionately,
Eddie Beato (Monday Oct. 17th, 2024, NYC)
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Shanti Chapter V: The Tragic Death of Josh Man-Son, Señor Sebastian Cornelio, Ana S. Man-Son and The Decline of Western Values:
Squirrel-Parsifal:
"The time is at hand to sound the hollow heart its fortitude. Come nigh so ye don't get lost in crooked ways of delusion and skepticism, for, down this Woody Hill, there are many zig-zag precipices, erroneous labyrinths, tobogganing pathways that could send a careless soul swirling headlong to destruction.
Across this gnarled tree, there are the hard boulders and rough cliffs' ribs, the downward ways that could make any soul shudder with fright.
If we don't drop off either by a pitching budge, the many erroneous steps on these cruel slabs' faults and beetling brinks, or that cruel protuberance of a stumbling stone athwart our track, then we should be able to meet the staid Scribes of Millennia.
Temper thy guts to confront the Sentinels of Yesterday, hapless souls whose disfigured visages, however eroded by the merciless blasts of time's wrath, may bear witness to posterity; albeit aghast and silent, they forever sealed the history of thy past generation: the mad History of Homo Sapiens."
Philosopher: “Speak clearly to me. Your words are a puzzle.
Why so anachronistically?
What time are we now?"
Parsifal: “Believe it or not, ye just entered the threshold of a twilight. It is now Wednesday, October 13 in the year 2034 A.D. Many things are long past, and many others are made new under the moon's haggard brow.
Why speak so laconically clear on Homo sapiens' sad chronicles?"
Philosopher: (frowning dubious) “Are you saying it is now a thousand years later, from the perspective of Shanti, that is, it is now the year 2034 in the latter days of my sacred books and history?
O my goodness! This has to be a fantasy, a dream. Have I eyes?
This cannot be true.
What happened to the destiny of those seven billion souls?"
Parsifal: “Take heart and be strong, because ye will hear and see the other pallid shades whimpering and weeping to their wit’s ends, ranging back and forth the desolated wolds, knobs and dales, the many sneaky caves perforating the beloved Isle's nether world: New York City, Manhattan,
Now some human feelings remain aloof, diffident, timorous to those who may dare fetch them near.
By the banks of the Hudson River, there are the other wordless stories that beg attentive ears, nay, an iron-fortitude to embolden the human heart undismayed.
Now some ghosts, former citizens, are hovering, sauntering and perambulating, to and fro, the Isle Manhattan. Unfriendly, like leopards or hyenas, haunting at the foot of this hills, these ghosts are said to be trapped in the Nest of Time.
Sometimes they would stay their feet briefly, to slake their thirst in the ashen sour water of the filthy river. When some one is nearby, the beasts would turn their heads slowly, to observe the wayfarer while contorting their grim visage; but soon they would retreat backward, receding like a mist to yonder spot; and from there, they would stick out their tongues to lick their muzzles.
If we win their trust, some ghosts would trail in light steps the muggy ground of Human Ingratitude and Callousness, to interchange a silent conversation —the steady stare could melt even the gut of Achilles.
Approach them not so substantial, because resisting, they already had opposed the very fires unleashed from heaven's vault.
Ye would not negate these hellish truths, however terrible, creeping and clutching the slimy cliffs from the precipitous navel of the Pit of Hell. For, only the warty cocky head of Satan would convince them otherwise —that they are already dead— to cease drinking the Sour Water of Ingratitude, but only for this bargain and ludicrous gains: the other swaps of suffering, pains and ennui.
Do not dare touch their chink-features, nor keep thy sight too steady in their wormed-out-cankered orifices; nor quickly erase from thy mind those lying lips twisting in distorted odious faces, because ye will never efface, nor limn, however describing or recollecting, the grotesque grimace of those invincible foes, Homo sapiens, at war with themselves.
—Are they the ugly indescribable expression of time?
Like ghosts, or insensitive rocks discarded by an unknown architect, so they haunt the threshold of thy sad history.
By the drafty ford of the stygian river (Hudson River) we will find them roaming, strolling, shuffling and dragging their clumsy gait towards the rough Pavement of Insensitivity, thy once beloved city, Manhattan, beautiful gem, which now is but wreckage, wracks and ruins helter skelter.
Phoenix Bird: “Only God knows the grievous moments I had to endure for my kin. May I blame Dante for these lofty ideas in the woman of his delight?
Divine poet who thus forged his inspiration with opposite natures.
From the fatal hexes of Medusa and her sister Lilith, the bard of yore would then nurse my wounded bosom with the sweet tenderness of a loving woman so holy as Mary, so faithful as Beatrice.
O dear reader! Take heart at these love-stories, for every time I read them, my weeping eyes are overcome with the sad tears of Selena, the Mermaid.
It is the real struggle of life, and how frightening to see human beings of the finest caliber finally destroyed by that dreadful spirit. And the grim fiend knows that need, like necessity and weakness, has the face of heresy —needs know not law.
The pain of losing a mother is indeed unbearable, but the sight of Selena, now a phantom haunting the waste lands of the purgatory, could rend my heart to pieces.
The history of the Latin people in the United States, seems to get lost in the oblivious waters of the Lethe River (the stream of forgetfulness).
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The Ghost of Josh Manson (the Fall of the American Society).
Phoenix: “A brave soul, showing me his blister-stricken soles, has claimed to have gone around the Isle of Manhattan, like a pilgrim, thrice the circle of his heartbreaking penitence.
On certain occasions, just before the gloaming hours, strange watery figments seemed to form the hideous image of Minos (Divine Comedy of Dante in Hell). The monster, like a shark, appeared to be trawling the fetid currents of the Hudson River.
Swaddled in sheets, like a mummy, I had often seen a young white man laying his tired head on the hard ground by the corner of 181st Street and Fort Washington Avenue.
I wonder how would a good sensitive, caring, loving mother react to beholding her beautiful child, the prodigal son, abandoned in such disheartening circumstances?
—Fall of 2017, as I was exiting the A train station, I caught sight of Mr. Josh Manson. The handsome man was couched on the ground like a jackal licking his forepaws.
On many a cold day, like a stray quadruped overcome by the toiling drudgeries and chores of a monotonous existence, I often saw the young man idly sprawling on the hard ground of necessities and negligence.
Covered in sheets and comforters due to a bone-chilling winter, Josh's life is durable thanks to his unquenchable passions for science-fiction literature, the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, but also of much motivation was his hope to finally settle with a beautiful woman, a wife, and thus realize the dream of his life.
Despite his humble educational background, the American dude could hold intellectual conversations to great effects, charisma and an easy token of amicability with passers-by.
In a city where physical beauty could rank no less than a college degree, wealth or success, Josh's smashing physique could still attract the single ladies in queue by the subways of New York City, and occasionally he would enjoy a first-class treat to a fine bistro restaurant.
And so he fell in love with a beautiful woman. Now that his heart was throbbing and swelling with the butterflies of love, he made greater efforts to rise up to a more respectable existence, to find himself a job, even as a courier or as a porter in downtown Manhattan, because the pinions of love, especially in the prime of youth, could raise us all above adversities.
Propelled by the twinkles of a beautiful woman, Mr. Josh Manson, despite his present circumstances could fly aloft into rapt moments of limerence, reveries and happiness.
And so Josh's physical appearance would soon look dapper, smarter, neat, trim and clean for days on. The young man had finally found an amazing reason to live for: a strikingly beautiful white woman, whose bewitching charms he could not resist!
Caught up with recurrent inexplicable paroxysms of self-propelling thoughts of the most fantastical otherworldliness and unearthliness, Josh Manson would rise up early in the morning.
At daybreaks, he would have a most meaningful walk by the Fort Tryon Park. Lost in paradisiac instances of strangest longings and love, Josh Manson would fix his dreamy eyes on the leeway trails of those languishing autumnal leaves in yonder path.
The lonely path was lined with some leafless trees already yielding to the chilly breezes of November, but the promenade was soon warming up with loveliest shafts of glorious sunlight casting their glorious beams upon the partially shaded veils of Mother Nature's nuptial gowns. Chinks of lovely morning lights were filtering through the branches, and he could not be happier!
In the midst of this garden, Josh Manson, so entranced by this Garden of Eden, el loco chico fancied to see his will-be-wife Eve, a woman of palest skin, a nymph of mesmerizing beauty hiding her pretty face behind those enchanting bushes and purple shrubs.
The bride-to-be, wearing a crown of twisted twigs, roses and drooping leaves smooching her countenance, was standing in an open-gated arbor.
The olden gothic structure was covered with loviest greeneries interspersed with gently-toned browns, half-lit penumbras of emerald greens and foliage of daintiest hues, thus creating an ideal background for a nuptial ceremony.
Meanwhile, Josh Manson would fancy to see his angel slowly coming unto his wide-open arms.
The bride was so embellished with her wedding trousseau of immaculate roses and tulips, such red flowers, dolphins and goldfish, so smug for recognition, were placidly couched in sybaritic beds and pillows of purest greens!
Such flowers, still unscathed by the falling autumnal leaves, would soon flaunt their delicate, petalled pretty faces to greet the groom along his path.
The scenic landscape could grant the lover an incredible mystical nexus, a Jacob's Ladder, a dreamscape between the expanses of heaven and the uncharted unfettered woods of this absolutely ravishing wilderness (Inwood Hill Park).
Thus, every morning, like a hermit, like a mystic, like a recluse, he would visit the same terraced cliff overlooking the Hudson River, but his high-flown dreams could not become a reality any more than those bright castles built in mid air; or, those gold-gilt, fabulous temples cushioned in the scudding clouds' pillows for an obtuse lover.
Nevertheless, Josh Manson, a legendary unicorn ever-trotting into the unfettered paths of limerence, was a diehard romantic man.
He would not let go the idea. While fixed in deepest thoughts for a concealed truth behind those blue eyes, he would stretch out his widespread hands unto that looming-promising-rainbow in the imagination of a fool.
‘—Perhaps she loves me.’
What an idiotic infatuation, and yet he loved the idea! The possibility of love proved to be tempting and irresistible!
‘Am I out of my wit?’ Thus he would say every morning. Indeed! Mr. Josh Manson loved that Ineffable woman!
Spellbound by her pretty face, day and night, with the tips of his fingers, ever assuming the shape of mythical steeds galloping up into the vault of heaven, Mr. Manson would reach out to that beautiful rainbow of flying colors.
Such charming smiles, such flirtatious twinkles, such tacit suggestions, amorously receding, ever-soaring into the haze of distance...were so promising to his heart.
Indeed, the pretty woman was driving him nuts:
’O God! How much I love that woman, she is my inspiration. If you answer my prayers, I shall go to church every Sunday.’
Unfortunately the flight of days passed on quickly, inexorably, and his efforts, his self-will and determination, were not advancing him a whit to any foreseeable prospect of reciprocal love in the flashy horizon of tomorrow.
His high-flown dreams, for so they seemed to be so unbelievably chimerical, were ever-wafting, ever-receding, ever-disappearing far into the immeasurableness of the boundless sky, and his touch with concrete reality, little by little, became an embarrassing self-delusional enterprise, una divina locura, the epiphany for a madman, a hard-to embrace self-realization that perhaps, in spite of his self-denial, such divine a fabulous creature was meant for another man.
By heaven's sake, he really longed to reach that twinkling daystar of his heart, but the angel was inaccessible. The bombshell blond was meant to be destined for another man's hugs and kisses.
Thus, as much as he tried to raise himself up to a more serviceable, worthy, honorable existence, the tight bound of Fate had been fastened around his neck. Madam Fate has decreed his destiny: an incorrigible romantic fool, and the joy of his sweetheart deserted him as a pitiable man.
November, Thanksgiving Day, year 2017
A cloudy day had cast a drab pall upon the once beautiful sky of Josh Manson's prospective days.
Squatted in a corner, like a dog, the good-hearted soul appeared so frowsy, bedraggled, unkempt, neglected and forlorn. It seemed, as I later found out, that a passer-by woman, a striking beautiful blond ballerina from Texas, had not reciprocated his love, and the jilt, as bitter as woodworms, hurt his feelings to the core.
The hard ground could make our body ache with nightlong pains, but these thorns would be but minor afflictions when compared to the sharp twinges of unrequited love.
Rejection is one of the hardest blow to our precious self-esteem. Poor man Josh Manson!
Who would caulk his aching heart from the constant bleeding of love?
The raging winter, which, by the way, could reach temperatures below zero, could take a toll on some people's lives, and Josh's youthful attractive appearance: fine-chiseled facial symmetries, brown eyes, impressive aquiline nose and enameled-white teeth were little by little wearing off.
The elements were taking a toll in the heart and physical appearance of this romantic fool, and the fragile shards of greatness were falling, piece by piece, on the floor.
’Apollo was razed to the ground in New York, and with him, I hit the ground like a loser.’
Almost on the fray, his once beautiful countenance, thick eyebrows, calm and yet vivid visage full of effulgence, candor and passions, were already showing unequivocal signs of internal uneasiness, dejection, unsteadiness, defeat and despair.
Eventually the young man would lose the mincing gait, el divino tesoro of the happy youth, and with unstable steps, he trudged on, like a lamb into the hands of uncertainties, perhaps hellbent into the slaughterhouse of post-modern society.
True, I never suspected Josh of any grudge or seed of resentment for an unfair life, but the rutted path of forgiveness may test his goodness, his character and integrity, always edging on the fringe of necessity and needs.
By any assessment of natural beauty, a human being's vulnerable possession, Josh Manson was a very handsome man, intelligent and, perhaps, a person of probity, but it seemed that he had no close friends or family in New York.
For years, Josh had been seen sleeping, lying and squatting in that corner of post-modern society...like a missing sheep.
A few months ago, he had complained of awful conditions in the basement of a local Church, the Good Samaritan Church, and it seemed he had few choices but to lay down his head on that hard ground for losers.
True. Josh Manson's limerence became his own undoing and nightmare, but even through the Pit of Hell in Washington Heights, he would not desist from living under the spells of love, whose quasi-numinous effects could grant his soul pinions for things mythical, fantastic, otherworldly.
Nevertheless, I still shudder when musing on the heart's unfathomable reaches, its resilience, its endurance, its amazing obstinacy, for I cannot believe that after all these years, it is the same silly thing, foolish, immature.
The heart is always the same silly thing --a romantic fool. Just look at that old man, Don Sebastian Cornelio, the plaything of that saucy chick, Rosalinda.
Josh Manson was perhaps born in the wrong time, in the wrong society, and his constant retreat to the Fort Tryon Park was perhaps a psychological reaction to a modern world ever-going callous, cold, unnatural, a valley of dry bones.
And how much we blame poor Josh Manson for lagging behind modern society, a failure, I am inclined to sympathize with his revolt against the machines of our time.
I doubt whether any human being could speak of life and love in earnest, ‘I have lived,’ without those inevitable thorns and thistles. Love, therefore, should be the gist of our lives, even when loving may entail some share of sufferings.
O dear! My heart almost broke into pieces at the sight of a lovely maid, a virgin, in the likeness of Mary, was nearing too close to the troubled waters of the Hudson River. This woman, Josh Manson’ limerence, was being devoured by an impudent demon: Don Juan D’ Los Palos.
The holy maid, whose stunning beautiful face was that of a heavenly mermaid, came to grips with a horrendous sea-monster. The monster, doubling down, dragged her into that river of fetid waters.
At this frightful sight, I almost swooned with astonishment and disbelief. Like a grim shark taking possession of the seal, whose fragile fins could not match the claws of a bigger beast, so the dreadful demon, all of a sudden set his lurid eyes on me, and making an indecent gesture with his middle finger, forthwith, amidst the impetuous dark currents of perdition, took the hapless victim, la belle Selena, as his rightful property.
At this, Squirrel Parsifal, warns us to quickly clad our heart with the breastplate of integrity, foresight and wisdom, and his warnings on the dangers of the Internet, Facebook, the iPhone — texting strangers recklessly— could make my heart contract with fear and apprehension.
‘For the most part, these blood-sucking leeches live on the immeasurable ocean of deceit, lies, infidelity, treachery, mischief and deception.’
In this manner the master compares the Internet to an ocean of unfathomable depths and dangerous Leviathans.
‘Therein, you may find huge monstrous things, insatiable piranhas, voracious leeches and sharks, whose fangs and mouthful grasp could swallow even ladies the likes of Mary and Marta.
From now on, avoid trawling the fetid waters of those devils, because the Internet is fraught with demonic beings. Be mindful, these entities could pull you in, and quickly fasting tight knots around your neck, down to the Pit of Hell they would drag you perforce...to the starless night of Hades. And there shall be the weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
The Ghost of Don Señor Sebastián Cornelio (Winter of 1996-1997) - the Death of Courtly Love:
Phoenix Bird:
“At this point, a Latin man with a swarthy complexion, of a rather short stature, wearing a short-sleeves white shirt and blue jeans, had a corpulent body, but with very gracious manners, every now and then adjusting his eyeglasses atop his protuberant nose, assumed the air of an important personage, an intellectual of the first order, a great artist, Avant Garde, a writer and freelancer.
Though he never went beyond the mere dilettantish and amateurish, he had placed himself alongside Van Gough, Salvador Dali and Picasso.
Nevertheless, friends and critics alike, would demote Don Sebastian Cornelio’s self-conceited high-regards of himself, as a pretentious charlatan, a buffoon, a wanna-be,’ but he would defend himself with an acrimonious diatribe against his detractors and foes.
He went around with the short alias Señor Sebastian (eponymous hero to his great admiration for Johann Sebastian Bach)
a composer and organist-pianist by trade, made his meager incomes by playing at local churches, senior home centers for the elderly in New York City, or by writing simple, easy-listening music for commercials, movies, jingles, et al., he was able to secure a tolerable if perhaps a rough existence plagued with debts and subpoenas from shady ladies, alleging eye-rolling cases of sexual harassment against him.
Nevertheless, he had won for himself a tolerable existence, indeed, not deprived of the high places reserved for those who, enjoying the high leisures of a privileged mind with a penchant for the arts and literature, had the gated-doors of downtown Manhattan’s posh restaurants, art-galleries, museums and ritzy theaters flung wide-opened for him.
As a man of letters and culture, he was a cordially-welcome guest to a string of upper-crusty cliques and claques in Manhattan’s elite schools, and thanks to his knack for high society, could enjoy an entry-ticket to the affluent residential areas of the upper classes.
Despite his humble income and a shoddy apartment in the crime-ridden residential area of Washington Heights, Don Sebastian Cornelio presented himself as well-traveled, first-class, urbane citizen of the world.
And indeed, he exuded an air of grandiose which is often associated with people of high birth and nobility.
Don Sebastian’s main purpose in life was —though he would not admit it— a lifelong commitment to finally becoming famous and renown among the living dead.”
Don Señor Sebastian Cornelio: “Dear gentlemen, Josh Manson’s love story moved me deeply to come forward, and here with you, lay my heart bare, express my sincerest condolences for such tragic an end.
When I preen myself as a Latin man, fountains of living waters would gush forth through the arteries of my heart, and something authentic within me would quiver at the chilly thoughts and sights of that frightful river of forgetfulness (the Lethe River in Greek Mythology).
—Year 1993, as though predestined by the Skein of Destiny, among my old cassettes, books, time-stricken letters, paraphernalia and souvenirs of the 90s, I came across the absolutely beautiful recording of Mass in C minor, as conducted by maestro Ferenc Fricsay, escorted with the incomparable voices of Hertha Töpper and Maria Stader · Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin ℗ 1960 Deutsche Grammophon Gmbh Hamburg.
Maestro Ferenc Fricsay was to Mozart's Mass in C minor, what C. W. Ceram (a.k.a., Kurt Wilhelm Marek) was to the fascinating stories and sagas of archeology (Gods, Graves and Scholars).
Like Heinrich Schliemann, we ought to take pick and spade to unearth the finest pearls, gems and treasures from the crumbles and nihilism of the Twentieth Century.
Among these priceless finds, there was to be found a beautiful woman from another dreamtime, a mermaid from Greek mythology, the siren of Odysseus: soprano Maria Stader, whose divine voice could probably have the power to lead astray Odysseus and his crew, when these, captivated by the uncanny strains of loveliest nymphs, the adventurous mariners almost lost their homeward way. But Maria, with her mellifluous voice, has rather assuaged the heart of many a wayfarer.
How many hours I whiled away listening the dolce voce of this goddess singing Kyrie, Eleison?
I gasp, her cantanbile lines, at times, would make me breathe, sigh, that I was perhaps before the presence of an angel: a remarkable woman of extraordinary sensitiveness. I am mesmerized by her beautiful voice.
During these years (1989-1992), I experienced some mystical raptures, nay, numinous experiences and epiphanies in this solemn Mass by W. Amadeus Mozart.
It was during this time when I convinced myself that, our transient moments and circumstances, as though eddying and bursting forth in the flux and spate of things —like wafting foamy bubbles in the turbulent impetuous sea of existence— may rather find their source of origin in a Divine Power; whence, as though activated by recurrent dynamics, these ever-swirling thoughts may constantly emerge, interweave, interlace and then disperse, poco a poco rit, in this ever-rolling scroll of our destiny: the placid seashore of that experienced seafarer who knew how to mark his seaports in the riveting voyage of life.
Whether these forces be divine or blind, I dare not say, but rather, herein, I would keep silence and reverence.
Thus, getting older seemed to be a blessing. As I turned thirty-three, year 1993, I received this present-gift for my soul, Mass in C minor, Kyrie Eleison, as sung by these two divine sirens: Maria Stader and Hertha Töpper.
These two angels would sing me back to my proper place among the beauteous spirits.
Their mission, divine and propitious: to revive my soul from the valley of dry bones in New York City, to infuse my bosom with those awesome feelings, wonderful fleeting moments of a melancholic youth, an adventurous musician, a romantic, who once made me so gloomily happy, cheerful, dreadful, terrific.
If you believe in God, then you must admit the purifying power of classical music.
Back in the 80s, it was believed, at least among some people in Latin America, that classical music had a binding nexus with things divine and godly, and in our search for God, such music would exert a tremendous influence and spirituality.
Retreating back to solitary places, amidst the dread of the wilderness, through impervious passages in bosky woods and endless cul de sacs, like Dante Alighieri in his Divine Comedy, we all dare ask questions about the meaning of life.
I asked for no less, but to imbibe the soul of Werther (the Sorrows of Young Werther of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe), and thus inquire whether I have lived or not.
For these reasons, from the year 1992 onwards, I would search me in sequestered places, whereat, perhaps, I could say that I had lived and descried the depth, width and length of human existence.
At times, the mysteries of existence stirred me up in deep reverence for the meaning of life: this sense of higher spirituality in the music of Mozart, Skryabin, Schubert, Beethoven, would turn me into a mystic, sometimes a hermit, and even a silent scribe would whisper in my ears amazing stories of wonderlands and people (1988-1989).
True, when I consider the beauty, perfection and divinity of this supernal music, I am inclined to accept the religion of Plato, Aristotle, and Spinoza, as kindred to the Elective Affinity of Goethe: we ought to choose what is congenial to our peculiar nature.
Find the ideal music and places where you are at home with your embosomed thoughts and feelings.
Perhaps the Will-to-Exist by German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (the World as Will and Idea), may have destined us all to a life, which viewed from the intervening lapses of time, could probably find coherence, wholeness, cohesiveness, which, I fain say, it is indeed meaningful and fascinating for those who are fond of introspective recollections, medications and reflections.
In this manner, we gather those autumnal leaves, however mottled with warmest reveries, and pensively, we seem to hold our precious memories the most endearing in the comprehension of our times through this earth.
It is here when we all feel like pilgrims, wayfarers, whose mossy paths and trails, seem to speak most boldly and meaningfully to the interpretation of life.
Be of a cheerful heart! With music, rhythm, and joy, let us quaff some enravishing zest in the sweet welkin above.
Tell me of that youth, oh boy! whom out of his wit, would not venture into those untamed woods and madness with the Nordic people?
Of course, there were times when I made up my mind to sound the depth of those terrible thinkers, but my temperament and nature, essentially of a warmer clime, made me hanker for my beloved motherland, Colombia, with new impetus and yearnings.
Almost a hundred years ago, Ferdinand Ossendowski in his Magnus Opus, Men, Beasts and Gods, had already prophesied a disheartening dangerous time, total destruction of psyche, when people would have neither feelings nor reverence or awe for things sublime and divine. It is, indeed, a frightening time when few souls could have ears and hearts for the Mass in C minor of Mozart.
The ineffable voice of Maria Stader...what dare I say?
Is it possible to find such beauty and grace thus embodied in one soul?
I am still moved by the power of this music, and she will always have special place in my heart.
Between the years of 1976-1993, the gloomy spirit of Goethe haunts me in his Doctor Faust. I seemed to be drawn to a fantastic world of magic and fascination.
Unfathomable thoughts visited me in the inscrutable questions of life, mysteries, religion, metaphysics, seemed so real to me, that I simply lived as though straddling two worlds, contiguous but in my mind, my meditations.
The sweet candle's flame joyfully flickers at the happy news of more evenings nearing nigh, more eventides and vespers in the celebration of these holy communion with things so beautiful.
And all these experiences, and even more, seemed to reconnect me with superior worlds, though unseen, I am totally entranced by what greater things may hold things from beyond?
Indeed, these mystical experienced impelled my pinions aloft in the promise of new victories, new revelations and fascination in my personal walk with God.
This feverish verve for mysteries, ecstasies, quests, revelations, epiphanies, religion, books, inspiration, and even the tempting atheism of Frederick Nietzsche, with all these nays and yeas, sometimes I felt like a morbid symptom of rebellion against the destructive power of a civilization gone wild, callous and unspiritual.
All these ideas, however paradoxical, turned me into a human possessed as though with a fantastic exaggerated, however distorted view of the world.
The world, outside, may resemble a city of steel, which frankly speaking, seems to be the more stranger to a man, or a woman, endowed with pedigreed sentiments of sylvan times, bucolic settings whereat we feel snug with feverish passions and ardor for God.
We may blame books for a wrong footing in the world, but at least, like Don Quixote, we rather live in an idealized world. If people call us nuts, perhaps we may reach the old age when we finally learn to live nonchalant to every personal attack.
Thank goodness, I was able to dodge the arrows of Cupid, but as a composer, I have to confess my absolute dependence and devotion to that turtle-dove, a beautiful chic, whose honey-distilling lips, a beautiful Soprano, could grant me the loveliest melodious moments and inspiration.”
Philosopher. “How come a man of your caliber would end up living among this rabble?”
Don Sebastian Cornelio: “Like Josh Manson, I had stupidly imbued my mind with the mystification of Helen, a divine Minerva, a charming Rosalinda Conception, whose yo no se que (uncanny veils) could drive me nuts for the wide-opened arms of Venus.
Without such exalted ideas, I am bound to admit, my art, my life, would be but a dead horse, lackadaisical, boring, meaningless”
Philosopher: “And who was that woman of your perdition?”
Don Sebastian Cornelio: “La Señorita Rosalinda, a Spanish ballerina, a beautiful brunette, a nymph, a mermaid of mesmerizing beauty, Selena, whose whims and prettiness would drive me nuts, became my woodworms, bitter as gall, and I resigned life as an alcoholic.
The bats of jealousy, day and night, were gnawing at my guts, but I was in denial.
Every day I would gush plenty of booze to my heart-content, but in so doing so, I was digging my own grave, plunging myself, headlong into the Pit of Hell.
Nevertheless, she was the true author of such dramatic output of musical inventiveness, artworks verging on the macabre, the chaotic, the demonic, the brilliance of a genius —a monster of creativeness.
La Señorita, however an inspiring Venus, was not a good girl as I later learned. On and off, she would have her secreted tryst with a bad boy. Secretly, the punk had conquered her heart, and by so doing, had also grubbed a good chunk of my marriage.
Silly I, continued giving her plentiful, obsequious gifts, and unbeknownst to me, she was squandering all my savings with that roue, low-life, a good-for nothing scoundrel.
Thus I ended up living as a roommate for countless winters on the verge of homelessness.
Just for a few weeks, I lived in an enclaved residential area on the upper west side of Washington Heights, a few blocks away from the famous Fort Tryon Park, whereat I had, on certain unforgettable Springs (1995-1996), heart-rending conversations with Holocaust Survivors still bearing the infamous marks of the genocide in the bleeding trenches of their souls and bodies.
Such Jewish survivors are probably dead by this time.
Their stories still throw my mind in state of fear and apprehension. In the year 1995, an olden Jewish man (probably in his late 70s) showed me his arm still prodded with the mark of a slave in a concentration camp.
His wife reprimanded him for confessing such inhumanities and cruelties, but he went on telling me that Russian Jews were routinely hung by the Nazis. At this point, his wife, a Polish-looking woman with a rather stern voice, asked him to stop.
At her behest, I simply departed with a heavy heart, and on my pensive ways, alongside lovely beds of jazmines and hyacinths exuding their luscious fragrance, I noticed another old couple in yonder spot, probably Jews from Poland, quietly brooding under the shades of a gnarled tree.
I realized that these old people were perhaps Eastern Europeans, or Holocaust survivors. Their flaccid faces gave me chills. Nevertheless, the couples’ enduring love would me make me think about my wife, alas, and how much I wished to live long alongside a faithful companion, and perhaps reach the old age of an oak-tree.
O boy! How I loved that minx to my own outdoing.
Now, unfaithful Rosalina, in cahoots with her secret lover, a gigolo of high society, sought to do me harm, and she fabricated a serious, malicious, false accusation against me.
—December, 1996: My heart almost melted when I got a certified letter, a subpoena against me. Therein, a shady lady alleges that, while playing Chopin’s Nocturne in E flat Major on the piano, I have inappropriately touched her cleavage and buttock.
Though the case was dismissed for lack of substantial evidence, the cunning hussy then sought to kick me out of my apartment by bringing another serious indictment against me.
Nevertheless, my patience and nerves were tested to the boiling limits, and we wound up fighting in the Civil Court.
Over the years, like a punctilious lawyer, I had amassed a veritable mountain of dossiers and carefully-dated papers attesting to my legal rights as a tenant of probity and a law-abiding citizen.
As much as we all need to back any right with a competent lawyer, I actually dislike fighting in court, even the best of ethical principles are often compromised by our stubborn attachment to material things, but the heavy load of ill-feelings could rarely compensate for the wounding gash of fractured relationships, broken homes and a sense of betrayal to one's sense of dignity and respect.
The Civic Court:
Squirrel Parsifal: (with a most serious visage, interrupted Don Sebastian’s love story to warn us about the dangers of civilized society):
“From the wild woods in Transylvania (The Forest, year 448,), we are now back to New York’s civil society, and much to our surprise, people could still be as aggressive (litigious) no less than the Lynx, the Asp-Snake (Lilith) or the grizzly bear —these folks are all savages spruced-up as decent citizens of civility.
If you aim for a high office position, reading Baltasar Gracián, the Art of Worldly Wisdom, would make you wealthier than ‘Diddy’ the famed rapper, and wiser than Eric Adams, the big guy of New York’s high skyscrapers.
The latest indictments against some famous public figures, ‘celebrities,’ have left me speechless.
Whenever there is a slight brush with the law, or a serious indictment to be reckoned with in New York City’s judicial system, there is always a tense atmosphere in the court, but when the lawsuit or indictment involves a major political figure, such as was the case of the Mayor of New York (year 2024), Eric Adams, we are the more disappointed.
Society is, on closer scrutiny but a jungle, and that’s why we have to be mindful of our business: seal your personals with three layers of safety. Learn to be alike trusting and cautious, but above all —be sharp as a tack.
Keep records of your personals as a lawyer of the first order. Most importantly, if you are to fare well with society, do not neglect yourself the knowledge, mien and healthy activities (go to church on Sunday) of a person of integrity and character.
Phoenix Bird: “Maestro, I am simply pondering on Don Sebastian’s heartbreaking legal issues, the modus operandi of some lawyers, a.k.a., profiteers, good and bad ones, and why it is so difficult to becoming an affluent lawyer if you are a law-abiding Christian.”
Parsifal-Squirrel: “True! The most successful lawyers, of course, with the few exceptions winning the fair cases, are said to be
‘incisive,’ shrewd, and I may add ‘beyond good or evil.
The Lady Is Beyond Impunity:
Even today, in cities so complex like New York or Paris —with such tightly-hewn judicial system, replete with laws and edicts almost for everything— when understanding the jurisprudence of men, their laws, their astonishing undoing methods and stratagems, woman is, and has been through-out history ‘the lady beyond impunity,’ and she has much power in abstractus.
Such woman, Lilith, would be the more effective provided she could be escorted with two lawyers, the Devil's Advocate and Asmodeus; and with few doubts, one of the most effective ways to destroying a man's character and career, and by extension his life, with laser-like precision, would be with the piercing arrow of a feminine accuser.
The Colossal Man of Integrity is thus reduced to smothering rubbles and smuts and smoke. Even if in the accusing intent, for whatever reason, happens to be retracted, rebutted or annulled, the poor victim would have a slight smear staining the latter nature of his actions; and so Bill Clinton, however noble and great his actions and deeds, would forever be haunted by the ghost of that tell-all woman of his weaknesses. The spectrum of his society has forever cast something morally suspicious on the aura and character of King David.
The Bible continues to amaze us due to its universal truths and relevance in the unfathomable trenches of Human Nature. And the psychological subtlety of the ancient prophets was but the wisdom of ages, the wise sayings of sages; their appraisal of human society was indeed divorced of any silly conjecture, religious sentimentality or bias; the events and circumstances are marvelously presented with the objectivity, transparency and shocking reality of life.
The Three Furies of Hell Alecto, Tisiphone and Megaera:
In the German society and their jurisprudence, so cautious in their dealing with the explosive stuff of human nature, and this could have been due to the popularity of Parsifal by Wagner as a succinct recapitulation of Goethe's Faust's tobogganing insights on such array of complicated ethical issues: betrayals, feuds, vendetta, the gripes of suspiciousness, jealousy and infidelity.
Nevertheless, it was, as it is today in certain places in Germany, and even in some Asiatic cultures, very unmanly to resort to finding an accuser to tarnishing a man of good character such as Don Sebastian Cornelio.
And one may say, the apparent circumspection and distrust among some German people, are not to mar their excellent ideas of friendship as tested by the furnace of time and circumstances: once one wins their trust, one would come to value it as rare pearl of exquisite glint.
The concrete power and reliability of a man of steel is the shimmering sparks of reason, his wit, his sanity, his self-respect, but once a man loses his head for a Lilith or a Cleopatra, he would have fallen under the sneer and contempt of any decent society.
Therefore, it would have been better to such silly a man, that is to say, if he is neither a dog nor a wolf wagging his tail —yelping, howling and barking all nightlong, to mitigate his carnal desires in the mad writings of Nietzsche or Henry D. Thoreau, the Walden Pond, Solitude.”
Phoenix Bird: “My master assumes that a great man of character and integrity would follow suit on the heels of Heinrich Schliemann’s quest for the legendary Hellen of Homer’s Iliad, because, a man of honor would never forget the past wrongs committed to his persona.
Certainly, he may forgive seven times, but he would not forget, because he would end up barking like a dog trying to bite his tail.
And here lies the difference, a precipitous chasm, a lacuna between man and man, woman and woman.
There are the divine Sophias and Helenes and Marias, but there are also the hellish Liliths and Alectoes!”
Don Sebastian Cornelio: “My dear friends, thank you for your soothing but belated advice among these ghosts, the aftermaths of those who lost their ways to heaven.
I was shocked by the hypocrisy and circumspect comportment of the clever opponents, but even more disappointed was the occasional though silent interjection of a cursing word (f-ck) to rectifying the cases.
The lawyer against me, as I observed the proceeding protocol as befitting his discipline, was a polite, Italian-looking middle-aged man with a rather Brooklynite English.
Mr. Marino Botticelli, his last name, reminded me of the renown Cuomo family, but his lighter complexion was that of Northern European ancestry.
His face already showed the legal toils of his profession, a lawyer, which reminded me of those two-faced Janus statues from the early Roman period.
His manners were rather perfunctory, nonchalant, soft-spoken but incisive and apt to worming out secrets from his opponents.
He trims himself as a dapper man of high society, but most of his clients, as I later learned, are couples embroiled in serious legal marital disputes for a fair share, i.e., properties, assets and finances, et el., you name it, and let there be any other trifling issue requiring further court appearances and affidavits.
Upon completing the time-consuming rigmarole, the lawyer would seek to grab some goodly substantial share of the settlement and divorce. After all, he makes his living as a lawyer, and as such, he is not stranger to the art of rhetorics and persuasiveness.
Bereft of qualms or conscience, some are said to be money-grubbing licensed profiteers anymore than a businessman or a gambler of fortunes.
Of course, there are good lawyers out there, whose probity and uprightness may win my approval, but unfair profitable gains can crook the heart of the finest for the works of darkness (Satan).
Between these extremes, nonetheless, one may come across an affable lawyer, a philanthropist, man of culture and high society, a notable citizen who has mastered the crook and the righteous in the face of Janus.
True! There is something Machiavellian about some lawyers, because sometimes they are hired to defend shocking cases of downright wickedness and corruption.
As long as there is some big cash-cow for the kill, some lawyers, as though beyond good and evil, would go to great length to defending a patently obvious notorious case of human weakness, corruption and depravity.
I am not a psychologist, but duplicity was already creasing Mr. Marino Botticelli’s forehead with rugged furrows, and two conspicuous lines of aging and sullenness were likewise leaving their indelible marks around his nose and thin-lipped mouth.
His English lilt at first amused me as rather hilarious for an Attorney at Law in New York City, but I knew he was just acting his cool-side to kick me out of my previous apartment with little vexation or confrontation.
True! The lawyer against me, a natural psychologist by the rigor of constant close scrutinies on his opponents' moral fabrics, had perhaps perceived in me some head-scratching ambivalence, torn-apart by the moral duty of an upright person fighting his way out of this rabbit hole.
—Was I silly?
‘So, when would you like to vacate the apartment Señor Cornelio?’
True, at times I felt like a dog licking his paws, and a piercing feeling of psychological displacement pressed on me with unexplainable bouts of uncertainties, forebodings, unquietness and silent rage.
Rosalinda, the adorable turtle-dove, assuming a remarkable counterfeit of pitiable victimization, put on on a doe-face of the innocent turtle-dove shedding crocodile tears, and much to my outrage, was able to win her pleas attentive and approved by the staid judge’s final verdict.
At this, my lawyer got short shrift from the infuriated judge, and impugning my character and integrity, as ‘flawed and lecherous’ sternly asked my useless attorney to keep his mouth shut.
‘Keep your big mouth shut.’
Without further ado or ceremony, the judge, always acting peremptorily, his eyes flashed with both rage and indignation against me, gaveled the case in favor of the snake’s crafty guiles and lies.
Thus I had no chance of winning a legal fight against such an implacable unfaithful wife.
My lawyer, keenly aware of the injustice committed unto my innocent persona, advised me to surrender the premises.
—Indeed, ths possibility of being beaten by a lethal mamba snake was not an overstatement.
Attorney at Law to Don Senor Sebastian Cornelio:
“Dear Joe, by heaven’s sake, haul your ass out of that dangerous situation as soon as possible, lest all the fires of hell be unleashed upon you.
The wailing woman (La Llorona) can beat the crap out of you.”
Don Cornelio (making long faces): “And so I lost my apartment to a devil in human form, who, not only had surreptitiously cheated on me for years long, had also ruined my finances to the nadir-point of bankruptcy, and even threatened to put me in jail for the rest of my life.”
Phoenix Bird: “My dear reader, at these last words, we almost fainted to the ground like a dead man.
A few weeks later, Don Sebastian died of a heart attack. Some of his closest friends speculated that he still loved that audacious chic, and that perhaps the cruel dagger of infidelity, ever rubbing anew his bleeding heart with the thorny twinges of unrequited love, worsened by the ensuing litigations, endless court appearances, had forever left a ghastly gash in the trenches of his soul.
Lonely he died, of a heart-attack on that cold winter of December 23, of the year 1996, just one day prior to Christmas.
I wish I could write a fitting panegyric to Don Sebastian, because his funeral was scarcely attended by some family members.
As a man of solitude, he had very few friends, and by some ironic arbitrariness of life’s unfolding scroll of circumstances, some critics and friends alike learned of his death but fortuitously, at a latter point —much later, that’s to say, in the Spring of 1997 (Resurrection Day).
A good friend of his, who happened to be a writer for a local newspaper, albeit belatedly, had written a most moving although short obituary. And thanks to his faithful friend, who preferred to remain anonymous, in those moving lines we learn of Don Sebastian’s lifetime’s achievements and oeuvre.
His few extant quaintly tonal compositions, amounting to a few simple songs, ballads and preludes for the organ, were later published posthumously, but the ethos of his time had changed, and hence, are, as today, for the most part, relegated to the shelves of oblivion.
All the same, Don Sebastian, a hardy man known for his effusive persnickety personality, had left strict orders for his remains to be cremated, but, out of religious feelings, his pleas were ignored by his devout Catholic older brother, Dr. Mario Jose Maria Cornelio.
As a man of faith and honor, Don Mario took on the responsibility of paying all his brother’s debts and funerary expenditures, and thus felt beneath his conscience, sense of dignity and respect to incinerating whatever was left of that poor man or devil.
His remains were taken back to Bogota Colombia, the end of 1996, to be interred alongside his beloved parents. On the capstone, an epitaph was written with most conspicuous characters. There we read:
‘Aquí descansan los restos de Don Sebastián Cornelio.’
In this manner we left behind Don Sebastián Cornelio, now a haunting phantom in the hereafter. Roaming aimlessly, back and forth the same circumference of his heartbreaking strains, he is hopeful to escaping this starless place of so much gloom and unspeakable sadness.
We then cast a glance around us, and made out some ghosts, now ambling in yonder spot, and then lumbering most pensively behind our back, like sleepwalkers, were very busy with their restless drudgeries and hurly-burly in the hereafter.
Just as they did when they lived among the living-dead, so they are here, forever and ever, repeating the same painful, tedious cycles for the human species.”
Parsifal: “Stupid people, though ye try to convince them of their delusional enterprises, don’t even know that they are already dead.
‘Leave the dead bury their own dead.’ (Luke 9:60)
Nihilo and Lilith already killed them, but they have little bearings of their former state of existence and the latter one amidst the dead.
Indeed, changes in human consciousness are as subtle and unnoticeable as are the grievous wounds of a drunkard: Don Sebastian.
Inebriated or tipsy by the effects of alcohol, humans are scarcely aware of themselves, but for these hapless ghosts, their former phantasmagoria may still be as palpable and real as are the load of their personal sufferings.
Philosopher: “My illustrious master, I can’t wait to reach the time-stricken skiff (boat) upon which you have promised to ferry me around Manhattan, but this crowd, however worth our caring ears attentive, have tarried our journeying experience.”
Parsifal: “My good friend! By all means, this is quality time!!!
We are not wasting precious time by coming across these former neighbors. So good to meet them here! Let us continue further, and as we go along, we may finally reach our destination.
—Can ye recognize any neighbor here?”
Phoenix Bird: “The Prince-Philosopher was about to open his mouth, when all of a sudden, we were shaken beyond our wits by a mad hubbub at our rear. An altercation has broken out, in full-swing, between two full-fledged hawkish men.
These two mortal foes were embroiled in a most serious bickering of what appeared to be a lamentable cultural, political, religious or racial clash.
My goodness! We were caught off guard at this astonishing juncture, and I felt this episodic chapter, however verging on things bawdy, uncouth, salacious, sleazy, devilish and downright vulgar, to be but in stark contrast to our high regards for some former neighbors, whose exemplary, virtuous lives deserve our due reverence and respect.
While we had in my mind’s far-echoed chambers the heart-rending story of a former neighbor, Ana S. Manson, a mad confrontation had ensued between a staunch xenophobic American citizen and lawyer, Charlie Jone-Stones, a ‘WASP,’ against an audacious, womanizer, clever Dominican fellow: Don Juan D’ Los Palos, a.k.a., ‘Rubirosa’ by nickname.
A former member of the Catholic Church, or at least —from what we later gather from his love-story— Don Juan professes to have been reared by a devout Catholic aunt from Sabana Iglesia, Dominican Republic.
Juan D’ Los Palos, as we recall Josh Manson’s love-story and shocking betrayal, was believed to have been the main culprit behind the romantic fool’s tragic end on that fateful Thanksgiving Day of 2017.
A staunch admirer and secret disciple of renown although notorious playboy and lecherous Porfirio Rubirosa, Juan D’ Los Palos’ dark side, was believed to have struck a pact with Satan for supernatural powers.
In 1969, it was reported, in Sabana Iglesia, Santiago, DR, that a mild, gentle man of good manners named Juan D’ Los Palos, would not accept any goodly victual given to him during daytime, but later, in the night, the soft-spoken man would show up in the guise of a dog wagging his tail; and thus, in such animal form, he would devour the few remaining crumbs strewn on the floor.
The infamous case and practice, came to the attention of an old lady named Nina Diaz, who suspicious of Juan D’ Los Palos' erratic behavior, had the curious idea to strike the night-roaming cur on his flanks with a hard broom.
Don Juan, who, neither as a dog, nor as a good man, henceforth lived on in human form, stopped visiting Nina Diaz’ house, was reported to have suffered broken ribs, sudden convulsion of inexplicable wriggles and twinging pains for many months on end.
With tempting schemes, Don Juan, already a geezer, had also cajoled beautiful Rosalinda from her vows of eternal fealty to her husband, Don Sebastian Cornelio.
Thus, the Dominican cloven-hoofed goat became renown, even in Hell, for his formidable libido prowess, and he is to be counted among this crowd.”
Squirrel: “Dear fellows, what the heck is going on between ye twain.?”
Don Juan D’ Los Palos: “ While strolling by the Hudson River's banks, a defiant hound had been watching me with suspicion, and following my spoors (footprints) the distrustful creature pursued me as though sensing a convict, a hooligan, an outcast.
I retreated back to a propitious stripe of narrow woody lands unfolding into a maze of downhills and hillocks, which, as I continued treading and skittering along the edgy curves of jagged stones, dangerous slabs, all these mad pathways sometimes would steep into precipitous, perilous ravines of distrust, suspiciousness, unfriendliness.
A German dog, a beast of most frightening aspect, property of an American fellow, Charlie Jone-Stones, was not pleased at the irregular pace of my clumsy gait, which he felt was absolutely alien to his culture, and deemed me an unwanted fellow in his own territory: a natural distrust, which frankly speaking, could be very embarrassing for any humanist who believes in the intrinsic goodness of mankind.
Sniffing me, and leering at my face with disconcerting curiosity, the outlandish dog growled, grumbled and encircled himself around my feet, and then hunkered down quietly on his angular rump to muse about my unstable gait.
With lurid eyes ever fixed on me, he suddenly addressed me this wise saying:”
Charlie Jone-Stones: “Tell me the truth. By God's sake, are you Dominican?
—And what the heck are you doing here in this neighborhood?"
Don Juan D’ Los Palos: “Yes Sir! I am Dominican, Catholic background.
I was born in a small Island, Hispaniola, La Española, named after the adventurous Spaniard conquistadores. In 1492, Christopher Columbus beached his ships, La Pinta, La Niña, y La Santa María, along the splendid seashores of this lovely Island, Quisquella.
The Spaniards were completely captivated by this virgin world of innocence, beauty, pasture, naturalism.
By contrast, the Spanish crew consisted of an entourage of unkempt criminals, convicts, lowlifes, that have entrusted their fate to an adventurous mariner.
Christopher Columbus, was a clever jew, and he was known for being a fearless navigator, would eventuallly win the friendship of an antisemite Spanish Queen: Reina Isabela.
The inhabitants of this Island, Taínos, though small, were a very beautiful people. Fond of nudity and simplicity, they would daub their cinamon-colored skin with coco oil to ward off the stings of mosquitos.
The beautiful Taina girls, innocent, natural, so we are told, would soon fall prey to the all-clutching fingers of these devils in human form.
El Diablo (Satan) tiene su interés en la República Dominicana (the Devil is very interested in the Dominican Republic), for he knows that the history of America would be incomplete without the genocide of the Taínos, and from these atrocities, coupled with every conceivable crime against humanity, slavery, rapes, pillaging, dehumanization and piracy, galore, the biological frosty stuff of history would finally produce a remarkable species called ‘Dominicanos.’
Dominican people, therefore, are the sum total of every possible interbreeding among the various races during colonial times, hence, why it is so difficult to classify us within the bracketing of any conventional racial terminology or category.
Every Dominican person, more than other races, is lavishly bestowed with the generic traits of the whole of the human race.
Some philosophers, if they are to seek interesting cases of human experiments in the ever spawning womb of history, would have a great supply of biological types among the gene-pool of the Dominican people.
On closer inspection, nevertheless, we are bound to admit, that contrary to the churchy views and baseless prejudice associated with race-mixing in some parts of the world, there are people, whose physical constitution and musical sensitiveness, would make them more suitable for the equation of existence in the dissonantly jarring chord of pain, boredom and struggle...
The History of Colonialism, its crimes, genocide of the Aborigines, cannot be expiated by simply relocating this hapless progeny to the lands of North America, and thus would Fate write her unutterable pages in the ever-rolling bloody Sea of History.
The Devil has left his destination-signature across the blood-tinged waters of el Canal de la Mona, a few miles off the Capital of the Dominican Republic: Santo Domingo.
The crimes of our ancestors pursue us even unto this day. The disheartening screams and plaintive signs of those hapless Taina mothers, raped and then humiliated, could still still be heard in the heart of the Dominican Community in Washington Heights.
Of course, any intelligent person would admit good and bad people among any group of people; that some have exceeded more than others in the bad reputation that goes along with the hard reality of hardships, eviction, drug-trafficking, adaptation, assimilation, et al., I cannot think of any immigrants, or migrants, that did not have to fight their way up to a more civil society.”
Phoenix Bird: “When Don Juan D’ Los Palos finished this succinct account on the Dominican Republic's infamous past and the extermination of the aborigines, Charlie Jone-Stones, while curbing his dog, held silence for a moment, but was soon most willing to dispel his doubts by drilling Don Juan with other queries.
He smelled something fishy about Don Juan’s love-stories about the Catholics of Santo Domingo (Holy Sunday) and was not yet persuaded about the origin of the prefixed adjective "Dominican" to its religious connotation and provenance.”
Charlie Jone-Stones: "Are Dominican people really Christian?"
Don Juan: “Dear friend, I would like to explain myself in religious terms, but your dog, my goodness! is now bent on smelling my limbs, my torso, my buttock.”
Charlie Jone-Stones’s Dog: (Ever inquiring on this incomprensible ambiguity between the religious order and the eponymous patrimony of the Dominican heritage or nationality, went on to mutter to his boss):
"Hmmm, is this true?”
Don Juan: “At this, I felt somehow decomposed at such close scrutiny and inspection; perhaps the dog was suspecting me of some mischief, duplicity, cowardice, treachery, embezzlement, fraud, hypocrisy, rascality, deception, impertinence, uncleanliness, corruption, humbug, foolishness?
A ghost in sotto voce: (“after some closer examination and inspection, the hound seems to have been pleased at Don Juan’s moral constitution. The playboy, Rubirosa, then resumes his love-story of the Dominican Republic”):
“…Gawking at me in disbelief, this upper-crusty dog, a former lawyer, a profiteer, is somewhat surprised at my love-stories of Santo Domingo (Holy Sunday), capital of the Dominican Republic, for I have displayed a level of shrewdness and irresistible charms that would challenge previously-held theories on the detrimental effects of a simple menu of crops and ‘mondongo’ (e.g., trite, viz., the guts of goats and cows), which, are believed to undermine the immune system. If truth were told, their aphrodisiac effects cannot be overstated.”
Phoenix Bird: “Originally from Chicago, Charlie Jone-Stones, was a staunch xenophobic American citizen —an attorney at law!
His build was of a rather stocky frame, and as I stared at his finely dapper presence, the dude was not a night-roaming cur like Don Juan, but rather a pedigree of noble European stock.
He wore a shaggy, fur coat of an upper-crusty intellectual living in a residential area, and it seemed that Don Juan’s detailed accounts on the devils (Conquistadores) of colonialism in La Hispaniola, their crimes, their fiendish atrocities against the Aborigines, had only confirmed his views: that most nations are founded upon the ruins of wars, rapes, genocides, bloodshed and miscegenation.”
Philosopher: “Don Juan, as I reconstruct your love-stories, very unhappy ending for Don Sebastian, my heart contracts within me for some missing lacunae.
It is believed that you were the one who seduced Josh Manson’s adorable turtle-dove, and story has it, that you, most shamefully, had also slept with Don Sebastian’s wife?
Tell us something about Rosalina, that heavenly maid of his heart-ache and twinges?”
Don Juan: “Dear friends, I did pay my final respects and adieu to that great composer at his funeral, R. G. Ortiz Funeral Home INC, located at 190th Street and Broadway Avenue in NYC.
We were always in friendliest terms, and if it wasn’t me the one to attend his wife’s wildest dreams. another man would have done it anyway.
Of course, I knew he was struggling with the sharp pricks of unrequited love, but it was not my fault, Rosalina, own her account, simply dumped him for another puma.
While married to Don Sebastian, right in front of her husband, she had ogled another man in the prayer-room, thus further tormenting her saint to be wretched till he became an alcoholic.
His friend and priest, Rev. Freddy Montez, time and time again, would ask him to forgive his ex-wife, but the mortal dagger of infidelity had cut deep into his heart. His wound was always bleeding profusely.”
Philosopher: “How did he fall in-love with that saucy pert, a minx?”
Don Juan: “It was a lovely spring of 1993, while strolling by the Hudson River's banks, I saw the couple wholeheartedly enchained into each other’s arms, thus enjoying the sweet butterflies of passion, love and reciprocity.
O darling! I love thee!
Mi amor! Te amo.
Back then, Don Sebastian Cornelio could not be happier. Break-days unfolded with the sweet twinkles of a heavenly maid.
During that time, it was all heaven on earth my dear. Like a good Latina nerd, the bride-to-be, Rosalinda, was a Spanish Cleopatra bestowed with very delicate olive skin, svelte, torso and flanks fashioned with amazing guitar-like curves, and gracious hips ending in well-rounded voluptuous shapeliness at her rear.
Her nose, Romanesque, was perched up there like a statue of Venus in her beautiful face.
Indeed, she had outward qualities to send any man a-rocking. Her porcelain-like delicate complexion could invoke alike feelings of flawless perfection and chastity. Even a saint could be swallowed whole by Rosalinda.
As I recall now, at a Christian meeting, I heard the good man, Don Sebastian, muttering in sotto voice, ‘gratia plenas señore,’ gracias Señor, for this heavenly gift, and he even wept his tears for that adorable woman.
‘Gracias plenas mi Señor por esta chica tan fenomenal!’
At this, his wife kept silent and politely received the compliments out of courtesy.”
Philosopher: “ How about her countenance?
Don Juan: “ Ah! The bride's face, was stamped with some inexplicable feminine enigma: a mystifying beauty conceals the Mona-Lisa reservation in her innermost being: a human being designed to make silly men easy prey.
Her bewitching eye-to-eye looks captivated the heart-buttered sensations of the young man, such eyes, such lady, my goodness, could even melt the god Sun.
In her expression, every now and then, there were the gentle smiles, the slightly-given turns and nods which some men, however grown-up romantic fools, may try to decipher in endless delightful reveries and dreams.
Indeed, Rosslinda, was the source of much joy-giving and inspiration for Don Sebastian. In their fore-head, as in the silvery face of the moon, I saw written the high-flown hieroglyphics of Marriage and Felicidad Infinita: the Love of Eternity transfixed their hearts!
Matrimonio y Felicidad!”
Phoenix Bird: “Don Juan D’ Los Palos was about to say another word on courtly, chivalric love, but Charlie Jone-Stones’ dog, all of a sudden, fell in a fit of frantic behavior, and soon started barking at us with such hideously ugly grimaces, ferocity and peals that we were compelled to run away from such devil a man.”
Squirrel: (Set his eyes on the Philosopher’s) “Dammed this scoundrel Don Juan D’ Los Palos, Son of Satan.
Time is of essence, let us seek that time-stricken vessel, which, of yore, is believed to be docked just a stone-throw from the Trinity Cemetery.
Let us go thither, for it is appointed to us a twilight with the spirits of our dread, and may Fate lead us further safely along the perilous path of trust, unanimity and integrity.
We would not blaze the trail on the heels of that shameful scoundrel (Juan D’ Los Palos) but rather, let us seek Ana S. Man-Son’s virtuous life, whose graveyard is said to be a sacred place to meeting the dead with better deeds and memories, and may the ghost come aboard.
Phoenix Bird: “So said the master, and we follow suit.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Trinity Cemetery in New York City
As they approach the Trinity Cemetery’s outskirts in search of the time-stricken (boat) to go around the Isle of Manhattan, Parsifal, the Prince-Philosopher and the Phoenix Bird are met with the ghosts of Ana S. Man-Son, and her counterpart, Madam Jumel, the dreadful spirit, after all these centuries, is believed to be haunting the Morris Jumel Mansion in Washington Heights.
As a special guest, Madam Ana S. Manson will accompany them around the desolated city, Manhattan, and, at the behest of the Prince-Philosopher, she will fill-in some lacunae (missing puzzles) apropos of the Wailing Lady (La Llorona, Rosalinda) whose frightening stories could make my back hairs (hackles) stand on end.
Much to my surprise, Ana S. Man-Son knew the beautiful blond (America the Beautiful, Mary Barnes) of her son’s witless decision to committing suicide on that fateful Thanksgiving Day.
And much to our gloomy delight, the Old Lady gives a succinct if perhaps very moving description of Mary Barnes’ beautiful countenance, which is symbolic or emblematic of the Decline and Fall of the Anglo-Saxon people. At this, I cannot but let out a few tears.
Even more incredible, Ana S. Manson will also touch upon the supernatural powers of Don Juan D’ Los Palos, a shape-shifting demon from colonial times, but even more frightening is her chilly story of a Cuban Night-Hag, una santera, “una bruja,” whose acquaintances she made through her dying friends Carmen Sanchez and Mercedes Espinal.
Both witches, Carmen and Mercedes could not depart to the Spirit Realm till they have confessed their infamous practices to a Catholic priest, Fr. Freddy Montez.
On the same train of thoughts, the Squirrel-Parsifal speaks about psychic energies, and how they may linger on in the hereafter.
All this and more as we go around Manhattan, oaring with the rows of our little time-stricken skiff (boat) with the ghost of Ana S. Manson aboard.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Phoenix Bird: “The spacious habitation of the dead is replete with tombs (epitaphs dating back to the eighteenth century) some unvisited by any kith or kin in the long intervals of time.
Hither and thither, there were to be found the crisscrossed solitary pathways, and lo! In yonder spot, the deceptive impression of a human being, a specter hovering near her resting place.”
Parsifal; “Behold! That’s Ana S. Manson!”
Phoenix Bird: “What an outburst of heartiest feelings at the unexpected sight of that great soul greeting me from afar!
The thrill was mutual, because we both experienced a soothing consolation, ‘an inexplicable candor and affection,’ while tickled by the rosy-fingered surprises of fate —it is as though reliving with a dear friend memories long gone in the ever-ebbing river of time.
Forthwith, my master beckoned her to join us around the Isle of Manhattan, but the ghost was somewhat diffident, standoffish, and remained silent for a few moments, as though she was still recovering from a great loss: Josh Manson’s suicide on that fateful Thanksgiving Day, year 2017. I think she is in the purgatory or hell because of a lamentable rift with her dear son.
And indeed, she seemed to be pondering in cogitation deep the profoundest sorrows, and her aspect was that of a grief-stricken mother who has lost her dear child, day and night, would weep her tears, and could not find any solace or condolence in the hereafter.
In this manner, the soul's profoundest feelings are convicted, nay, brought up to a higher pitch, a more vivid reality in the conscience of his-her personal life with the question of good and evil.
At times, we may experience this unusual sense of resurrecting (resurrective) powers in the threshold of our consciousness, and some dreams may touch a remarkable level of contiguity with our daily experiences.
Those who have seen a person dying on the deathbed could confirm these solemn words: the grave aspect of the surrounding aura, the most piercing feeling of judgment-day, but also, a spiritual rapport in doleful intervals of silence and contrition may be deeply felt... This is what we mean by sincere condolence.
If the said person was a good soul, then there is no need to be anxious, or to be pangs-stricken when entering the ashen gates of the Spirit Realm. But if the said human being was a devil, then watch out, the bed is a-rocking, shaking, trembling, because underneath lies a shaggy dog panting and growling...
Just a few yards from Ana S. Manson’s graveyard, we made out the ghost of Madam Jumel: the Morris Jumel Mansion, located in Washington Heights, is believed to be haunted by some tormented ghosts, whom, according to a reputable psychic, may have suffered betrayal —for hell has no fury like a scorned woman— Madam Jumel, there is no haggling our debts with this horrible woman: a former prostitute.
Her sunken-cheeks, flaccid facial features, deep-set hollow eyes reminded us of Madam Fate in her other mysterious guises.
Squirrel-Parsifal: “Mind you, some passions as though drawn by the compelling forces of both magnetism and kinetic energy, could not remain static, but they seem to eke out, they seem to look out, here and there, the proper object-matter of their reciprocity and affinity.
These unresolved passions are now the haunting ghosts, which condemned to live with such junk of negative psychic energy, are believed to roam the boundless expanses of the will-net-work of Albert Einstein's multi-dimensional universe: the Nest of Time.
Who would rescue these hapless entities thus trapped in the Nest of Time?
The intimate experience, however of the most personal value and significance, may find its true life and meaning but in the cozy sanctuary of our recollections, our rapport, and with due reverence, we come humbly before the Altar of Spirit Apparitions.
Therefore, our intimate experiences with ghosts are hopelessly relegated to the purview and ‘register of our consciousness’ in a greater thoroughfare (community) with other sentient beings.
Rightly so! That's why haunting-cases like the ghost of Madam Jumel at the hoary Morris Mansion, may capture the fascination of a devoted audience out there, because the beauty-lady, a former prostitute, seems to defy even the world of Newton's physics and even our judicial system!
Finally, when explaining the spirit realm of unresolved passions, betrayal, revenge and many other baffling phenomena pertaining to the bottomlessness of the human heart, these tragic love-stories, like the ones herein inquired, are very helpful to explaining how psychic energy may linger on after we cease to live with our current physical bodies.
These kinetic forces may, somehow, continue active, yet suspended in another co-existing dimension, sort of speak, they haunt us while we live next to them —side by side.
That's why, during the Autumn Season, few birds may dare visit the Morris-Jumel Mansion at a midnight-walk; thereat we are received by the alluring sounds of jingling bells, and some feeble shades may hide behind the eerie groves of yore, and the chilly feeling of intuitive perceptions may shake us off equanimity!
And like Virgil to Dante, we may look back at the august Mansion of bygone happy days saying: ‘Look out! Look out! Look out! The Ghost of Ana S. Man-Son’.
An Owl Hooting:
—"Who are the ghosts suspended in the midnight of history?
—Who is there?”
Phoenix Bird: “So said the Illustrious Master, and we cast a glance at the Old Lady dragging herself around like a haunting ghost, her personal experiences buried in the living social cemetery for countless people relegated to oblivion.
Suddenly, we heard a dishearteningly lamenting voice ensuing from the far-echoed-chamber:
‘...You must come to terms with these ghosts if you wish to reach your goals.’
Puerto Rican Ana Man-Son is descendant of a Spaniard Catalan (father), Russian (grandfather), English (mother’s side background).
Just I remember my beloved 1980s as fresh as yesterday, likewise Ana S. Man-Son, recalled her past (1950s) with remarkable vivid details and the most moving stories of travails and challenges for former immigrants.
La Señora Ana S. Manson came to New York when she was a seventeen-year old immigrant, and was able to keep her ship afloat through the most difficult windstorms and challenges.
With remarkable mental fortitude, despite her humble level of formal education, she had held herself fast unto the storm-stricken mast of her barque (ship) and was able to reach old age with fondest memories of the olden days in New York City. Indeed, her life is a treasured book of experiences and travails for former immigrants.
Puerto Rican immigrants went through a lot of daunting challenges, constantly clashing with the Italians (West-Side Stories), and along with the Jews, Blacks and other socially discriminated people, they would pave the way for greater social justice for all. Dominican people, whom complain about inequity and racism, did not live through these tough years of segregation and hardships.
In her last years among the living-dead, as a great human being, who always wanted the best for other people, she had been taking care of two other hapless old ladies living their last chapters in the bed of affliction, but little was she aware of a lethal bacteria sucking the last strength of her nicotine-stricken lungs.
While Ana related to us her heartbreaking stories in the cold winters of the 1960s, the stench of her Marlboro cigarettes almost choked us. But we endured much with her precious memories, because the beautiful soul is perfumed with the virtues of mental fortitude, endurance and dogged-tenacity.
Ana S. Man-Son’s nursing heart, no less than a chaperone, had been entrusted to the care of two of her best friends, Carmen Sanchez and Mercedes Espinal. Back in the 1960s, in the prime of youth, these old ladies were much into dancing and partying.
Former Santeras (witches ) back in the 1990s, later on in life, year 2016, upon meeting the hour of death, could not vacate their bodies till they have confessed their infamous practices: hexes, potions made out of nauseous substances, but also the reading of tarot, ouija, and the quackery concoction of nostrums, galore, made out of the entrails of frogs, snakes, tortoises, spiders, insects, and tarantulas, and even ‘salves’ for a jilted lover, have cast a persistent curse upon the latter days of these poor ladies, wretched hooting owls, self-avowed men-haters:
‘Most men are dogs, and we have practiced countless hexes against many a lover.’
As a devout Catholic, Ana Man-Son, afraid of losing her salvation, had to seek the help of a friend priest, Rev. Freddy Montez, an exorcist, because though these hags had converted to Catholicism, Satan has not, as yet, recognized the unwarranted freedom of these former witches: embittered women to the core.
Their former marriage to the Prince of Darkness could not so easily be annulled…for, what the Devil has joined together no one can put asunder.
Ana S. Manson: “ In 1995, not that far from where I lived, a Cuban woman, una Santera, a night-hag, Clarissa Rodriguez, was reported to have dangerously tampered with the other spirits of our dread.
For many days and nights, a rancid, putrid odor coming from her apartment, led the perplexed tenants to call the authorities.
The hapless woman was found dead amidst her infamous practices and hideous objects, among which, there were chicken's carcasses and entrails, dry bones, blood-splotches and other organic substances besmirching the floor and walls.
The stench of her apartment was so repugnant and indescribably hellish, that for a long time, some of her neighboring tenants reported to have suffered from nightmare and dizziness...
In the 90s, Latinos Evangelical churches were overwhelmingly jam-packed with people looking for help. Our neighborhoods and endless squalid slums were stricken with drugs, dysfunctional homes, unwanted pregnancy, witchcraft, obesity, superstition, segregation.
The government did little to improve the condition of the minority community, and so, scores of hapless people gave themselves either to the mysterious forces of Satan or to the caring hands of Jesus Christ.
Under such dire circumstances, certainly, there was not a better place to be than in a nearby church; therein, in the snug sanctuary, tenderly illumined by a few rays of hope, we would cry out to God for help,
—-God, Help Us.
Thus, the three of us were summoned by Fr. Montez for a confession session, and it is reported that Carmen Sanchez, while laying on her deathbed, on and off, like a premonition-stricken cow, sticking out her long-forked tongue, in a fit of panic and dread, would complain the low growling of a black, shaggy hound hiding under the mattress.
‘Do you hear that? And who is that dog ceaselessly growling under my bed.’
So would say Mercedes Espinal to her pal Carmen Sanchez, and the two hapless hags, while blubbering, weeping and whimpering to their wit’s ends, in a mournful duet, would viscerally lament, unconsolably disheartening, their former covenant with Satan, because they were afraid of the Gates of Hell.
‘Ay, ay, ay! Dios mío, ayúdame.’ So expressed her guts Señora Espinal, ‘I don’t want to lose my soul to Satan.’
‘We are afraid of the Gates of Hell.’
Thus we would plead our case to Father Montez, and the stone-faced priest, while imploring God for mercy, Kyrie Eleison, Kyrie Eleison, Kyrie Eleison, making the sign of the cross, would sprinkle holy waters upon us three.
‘El Señor te reprenda Satanás.’
So said the priest in a husky voice, and a nearby candle’s flame started to waver languishingly back and forth, as though agitated by a sudden gust of air.
A haunting spirit of sadness, contrition and regret, deeply seated in the pit of my stomach, seemed to pierce the thick atmosphere with the lingering forebodings of death at our rear.
Our last days were to be spent in the deathbed of affliction and contrition. Two weeks later, sometime in August of 2016, after endless prayers, confessions and fasting, Carmen Sanchez and Mercedes Espinal would pass on to the Spirit Realm, a few months later, in November, I followed suit.”
Phoenix Bird. “At this point, Parsifal ordered the Prince-Philosopher to unfasten the tight knot docking the skiff (boat) by the river bank, and let set sail round Manhattan.
Parsifal: “Time is hand to test thy heart, and see if ye have the gut to confronting the haunting sprits of our dread.
The skiff is just a few yards from here, and it should carry us forward with little efforts.”
Phoenix Bird: “Now, when the Prince readied himself to seek the boat, the wailing winds started to buffet a nearby sepulcher’s half-open lid, for it seemed that some bandits had either desecrated it, robbed whatever valuables they found therein, or else, the dead within it has broken loose from the Pit of Hell.
All on a sudden, errant filaments of haze and fogs engulfed the cemetery’s backyard and tombs overlooking the river banks, and chilly winds seemed to wail and cry in quasi-human voices.”
The Prince-Philosopher: “Hearken that awful choir? These daunting ethereal sounds could bring the lost wayfarer to standstill.”
Parsifal “Pay heeds at those wailing gales, in quasi-human voices and despair, they are at pain to joining this awful chorus of lost souls, and perhaps make headways through unspeakable mossy moors of suffering and destruction, hither and thither, roaring, bemoaning, and cursing the most breath-taking music ever heard in the baffling outcries of Mother Nature’s unfathomable wombs. (peruse Faust by Goethe, Part 1, Walpurgis Night)...”
Phoenix Bird: “At this point, an unspeakable nostalgia and dread took possession of us all. The wailing winds, more and more, like a pack of wolves howling, ranging furiously amidst the midnight history of humanity, were bent on smiting and scourging the crisscrossed pathways of the Trinity Cemetery.
Now, our mettle was further tested to the core upon hearing a series of returning thuds, all commingling with the heart-wrenching snarling of a wild animal.
We could not make the origination of such daunting gruesome uproars?
Beast-like, the deeply-throated sounds reminded me of the hideous Sphinx squatting in the waste lands of Egypt. At this point, we heard the uncanny swarming-buzz of stinging bees or hornets scooting from a sore cavity.
The unbearable stench of rotten human remains is indeed a sobering experience. Forthwith, my heart contracted within me, and I prayed and prayed for God’s protection.
O Lord! Our heartbeats pounded and raced at pace with these premonitions: putrified carcasses have perhaps drawn nigh some hellish drones from the Pit of Hell.
The hellish crew were whirling and whirling around a corpse. The execrable carrion of a young man, sprawling on the ground, ripe for the voracious vultures of post-modern civilization, reminded us of Josh Manson’s tragic death on that fateful Thanksgiving Day. He had quit life with an overdose of cocaine mixed with cyanide.
Parsifal: “They are the dire warnings of a woman’s indescribable pains at childbirth.”
Phoenix: “Bodiless voices seemed to haunt the thick atmosphere, and from the unfathomable womb of impregnated night, there came a bone-chilling laughter, a malicious, mischievous child (an urchin) Son of Satan, was heard tittering and sniveling as though making fun of us.
‘You fools! You are dead, ha, ha, ha.’
Do you think to escape the Sting of Death?
Then we heard the creaking sound of a cord or knot being loosened for some serious matters (peruse the Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe, page 110, year 2006).
Parsifal: “Time is of essence, let us go thither to undock the skiff so we set sail around the Isle of Manhattan.”
Phoenix; “At this, the air was filled with the uncanny echoes, buzzing crowding and clamors of countless piteous souls.
These haunting ghosts, however grisly and spooky, as though trapped in a sanatorium, would make us aware of their prowling presence, and so, from one of those yawning tombs, we heard a frightening thud, then a bang as though coming from a hellbent vindictive spirit.
Briefly, there was a suspensive silence, scarcely interrupted by the buzzing stinging bees amidst the wailing winds, when suddenly, we heard three disheartening hollow thuds —-tad, tad, tad!
In yonder spot, lo and behold! there appeared a bride-to-be. She was attired in quaint costumes, a white tulle (wearing a creepy negligée), suddenly hid herself from view in a hoary graveyard.
‘Someone is rapping hard against a hollow slab.’
Philosopher “Is that Madam Jumel, or maybe another ghost?”
Phoenix: “We understood that this was not a friendly ghost.
Suddenly, the backdoor was flung ajar, and the Prince, infusing himself with the courage of his master, went on to seek the boat. But no sooner he reached the lych-gate when, lo in view, there appeared a frightening woman dressed in white, her pitch-black hair, thrown frontwards, covered her face as though wearing a mourning veil for years long.
Parsifal: (with commanding voice) “Watch out, watch out! That’s the wailing woman, La Llorona, Rosalinda, now a ghost hellbent on destroying men.
At this, the Prince touched the embosoming Shanti-Necklace with trembling hands: ‘O my goodness, protect me.’
The ghostly woman appeared shortly in front of us, her pale countenance expressing neither joy nor pain. The mysterious spirit, staying motionless in yonder spot, for a little while by the backdoor, retreated backward and backward amidst the sibylline fogs, and was soon lost from sight in the imposing spacious residence of uncreated night.
My heart almost melted when Anna S. Manson informed us that the said mysterious woman had been seen by former neighbors back in the early 2000s, and that for many years, the frightening story of this beauty-ghost-haunting, Rosalina, was further confirmed by passers-by of the most trust-worthiness and reliability.
Ana Manson: ‘Rosalina passed on in the year 1999. Her soul does not rest in peace. Poor woman, has nothing to do in the hereafter, but to go around scaring people. And who knows for how long?’
So said Ana. And the Prince, however cautious, exited the Trinity Cemetery, and we followed him.
Down the hill, by the river bank we found the time-stricken boat. The tight knot docking the old skiff was unfastened, and alongside the Prince as an oarsman, we set sail around Manhattan.
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Phoenix Bird’s Impression of the Purgatory and Hell:
With the caring hands of a faithful scribe, I have, herein, attempted to fill-in some missing lacunae in the last days of my dear former neighbor, Anna S. Manson, whose death (Autumn Season of 2016),was to be revealed to me in a dream (Valley of Shadow) thus corroborating my insightful observations: that our lives' sequels and circumstances ought to be construed but in this transcendent contiguity between dreams and reality, but also in the early intuitive perceptions of our infancy.
How you react to this dream would determine your spiritual strength to coping with the undeniable reality of death for all of us.
This dream, could be the peculiar fancies of my mind afraid of one thousand real facts for all of us: perhaps this dream is the influence and confluence of one thousand impressions coinciding in the unconscious reaches of our mind's deepest forebodings: the reality of death for all of us.
In this dream, I saw what appeared to be a mother's tomb, a gravestone, the capstone was as real as I write these notes. I can recall the epitaph, the smooth surface of the marble stone, and other details appeared to me as real as my heart pounding and beating with strangest feelings of sadness and loss.
The scenic aspect of this crowding of ghosts suddenly changed into a bleak world filled with dread, foreboding and horror.
Some horrific spirits, ever rambling and gyrating this gloomy circle of cursed ghosts in the Purgatory, caught sight of me, but I was able to fly away to a safer place.
Meanwhile, the shadows of our dread fixed their cold stares on me.
—Look at those spirits!
They seemed to be at pains to catch me by some other stratagems. As I glanced around me, a steel-cold fear pierced my heart like a sheet of ice slowly melting in my bosom. I tried to escape this futuristic world as one who had sensed something demonic, fatale and gruesome.
All of a sudden, as I stood in mid air, floating, suspended, and rising above the spirits of my dread, further in view, lo! I saw what appeared to be a Deep Valley of Shadows (Psalm 23).
It was a dreadful valley, somber and engulfed with grey filaments of formless haze resembling hovering specters or ghosts.
Enveloped in thick fogs, scarcely mollifying the disheartening, raging, wailing of cold winds ravaging and buffeting the sore gullets of those throaty crags, I was overwhelmed by this "sense of in-falling-depth" into the unfathomable reaches of my poor soul's labyrinths.
The Valley of Shadow was not the Pit of Hell, but its yawning maw, its spacious, throaty, spiraling descent, was indeed filled with inexplicable sadness, dejection, cacophonous voices, disheartening whimpering and shrieks amidst the starless night of one thousand frightening figments. This has to be Hell!
Listening to the Secret Scribe's Sotto Voce - Visiting my Previous Neighborhood Again (Year 2016)
A few days later, and still grappling with the disturbing figments of my dream on the Valley of Shadow, the Spirit urged me to go back to my previous neighborhood: Washington Heights. I had not visited the dearly loved neighborhood for a few months now (end of the year 2015 to the beginning of the year 2016) but a chain of circumstances would place us in direct connection with the most personal chapters of our lives' sequels: our intimate episodes, our dear neighbors, our very life and surroundings are all intertwined in the flickering waning candle's flames of our destiny.
Such sweet candle’s flame waved and wavered unto me with strangest forebodings, but I have this gut-feeling that God is in control of my unfolding days.
Mind you, the Secret Scribe of our personal life is always at our rear, and sometimes, we just simply feel this incomprehensible urge to obeying this most mysterious of intuitions, forebodings, pre-sentiments.
On my way back home, lo and behold! My beloved neighbor, La Señora Ana S. Manson, was quietly brooding at Carrot Top, a trendy bakery located between 164th and 165th and Broadway avenue.
She was alone, and seating on most pensively by the glassy windowed walls. As I passed by, all of a sudden, we both caught sight of each other.
‘My dear!’ So greeted me the old lady, with downcast, heavy-lidded eyes, expressed her difficult days, conveyed to me her soul-wracking angst with what appeared to be a malign bacteria gnawing at her gut.
My goodness! My suggestion was to seek a doctor as soon as possible, and to take antibiotics, or intake some cloves of pungent garlic --and chew them raw before going to sleep— for the aging body is the more prone to sickness at the octogenarian age.
Interpretation of My Dream and Sensing the Voices of the Spirit Realm: the Death of Ana S. Manson
Beyond my mind, beyond my all too-human strength and efforts, I have had some spiritual experiences with the Spirit Realm: these are my best gleanings to the meaning of life!
I have to say that I have found Grace in the revelation and interpretation of Dreams.
Such dreamy experiences would become meaningful but in the episodic sequels of our lives. In it, I saw a tombstone bearing an epitaph, a headstone made of sleek marble, whereupon, all of a sudden, I found myself aloft, as though flying above this horrific scene of so much dread.
Down there, I saw what appeared to be the presence of wandering, hellbent vindictive spirits roaming back and forth. The bleak scene reminded of the Valley of Shadows mentioned in Psalm 23.
I had mistakenly related this dream to be that of my mother's soul, that perhaps she was in the Purgatory, and that she was probably asking me for prayers.
But now, it is clear to me that the tomb of my dream belongs to my neighbor La Señora Ana S. Manson, whose soul, while still with us in this world, was perhaps reaching out to me, urging me to write the last final notes of her farewell adieu into the Spirit Realm.
(Shanti, In Process)
Eddie Beato, Oct. 22, NYC
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To be continued (wait for Chapter VI, as yet in process).
www.eddiebeato.com/shanti-chapter-vi---going-around-the-isle-of-manhattan-with-ana-s-man-son.html