The Nest of Time - Year 2034 in New York City: (I am currently adding drafts).

Chapter VI (Twilight) could redeem me from any accusation of inconsistency (desultoriness) from the”underlying thread” (the Skein of Destiny) of my journey with Shanti.

The Hudson River may represent the “web of time,” or Nest of Time.

The scenes and characters have been steeped deep into the spiritual realm of dreams, visions, epiphanies and omens.

​Unlike Artificial Intelligence’s limited scope to touching contiguity with a web of dreams, I have these wondrous scenes unfolding as though sojourning through a twilight.

The skiff (boat’s prow) could be emblematic of human consciousness, sentience and divinity, because, like the Pegasus Horse, we can even rise to the twinkling stars, the abode of the gods (John 10:34).

Only humans can navigate the non-spatial, immeasurable conceptualization of time and space.

Good news is AI can neither enter a twilight of being, nor awake in the “deeper realms of self-cognizance” let alone be able to enter a web of dreams.

Of course, those who invent robotic machines, as they have an eye on making profits, just as those who duped us into purchasing the Moog Synthesizer (back in the 1970s), as a better investment than a Steinway piano, so would these scientists try to convince us that such thinking machines AI (ChatGPT) can write better books than Goethe or Henry D. Thoreau.

True! AI (artificial intelligence) may ferry back and forth in the web of time (the Internet), but mind you: “Fate, Meaning and Consciousness” are human, all-too-human anthological constructs.
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Without a guide at the helm of the skiff’s ever-eddying prow (consciousness) in the on-goin-journey of the human experience, our lives would be meaningless, a waste of time, and to speak of past, present and future, would be quite pointless.

Human life, without a stable moral compass (God, gods, Mother Nature, a zodiac, or the guiding stars) would be but a grandiose, colossal failure, and like past civilizations (e.g., Mayan ruins today buried under the tangles of furze, lianas, brambles and creepers) our current, fossil-fueled generation, a.k.a., black-eyed kids, could commit suicide in masses.

True. We have ceased to sacrificing virgins to the gods of yore, but I am not sure whether King Nihilo and Lilith would agree with us?

Chapter VI could be said to be a “short interlude” to the horrors of Hell (civilized society going soulless, robotic, phlegmatic, dead) as found at the end of Chapter V: the Trinity Cemetery. “God is dead” (quoting F. Nietzsche) and the masses have committed suicide…if you don’t believe me it is because you are already dead, or at least, half-dead.

But let us assume we are more than just ghosts, would you say that the automaton of post-modern society, “legion” (the law of the greater number of humans mass-produced) could ever suspect that he or she is already prodded with the mark of the beast, 666?

Chapter VI: It is fair to say that its lighter content is simply a propitious “keel-over” into the soothing waters of the Hudson River.

The boat has for ballast four wonderful mariners: a Prince-Philosopher (an atheist), a frisky Squirrel (Parsifal, a pantheist but a rationalist), a Phoenix Bird (a wonderful Christian) and the weightless ghost of Señora Ana S. Manson (a penitent Catholic soul but a marvelous immigrant from Puerto Rico).

At this point, the crew’s drooping spirit is assuaged by Ana S. Man-Son’s precious memories of her youthful days in New York.

By the Hudson River’s ever-stretching pall of haze and twilight mists, they are met with an ominous omen among the clouds, which is symbolic of Madam Fate’s mysterious guises: History’s unceasing lust for wars and inequality for the human race, but also the advent of a child of perdition.

As though decreed by the Righteousness of God, Josh Manson’s unhappy ending is vindicated by the tragic end of that incorrigible coquettish woman, Mary Barnes (Symbolic of the decline of my beloved lady of yore, the holy maid).

By the Hudson’s distending waters and fogs, Mary Barnes’ ghost appears in the semblance of a stranded mermaid.

Her beloved child, a mutant from hell, a monster of nihilism, became her woodworms, and it is only now a matter of conjectures, whether the mischievous child we saw in the Trinity Cemetery’s graveyard, giggling, sniveling and tittering, is her creepy toddler —-the legendary black-eyed child haunting Post-America— an abortive failure in the last throes of childbirth?

Ever cankering her heart, these hellish hornets would ultimately make Mary Barnes suicidal, crazy, maniacal, paranoid, apoplectic, phlegmatic —a deranged woman, on and off, complaining that her innocent persona had been the victim of a hex: “I am cursed.”

Thus, her pernicious jilting-leanings and play-games of love, became her fallout from God’s grace. Her Homunculus-child, the quintessential misanthrope, may have murdered his own mother.

True. Mary Barnes’ death could not be explained but as the outcome of a curse, a pernicious brush-stroke with things supernatural, paranormal, insidious —bad luck in the last moments of her life?

I would leave it up to you, my dear reader, to ponder in your heart whether that hideous child was not but the Son of Satan, the Antichrist? (2 Thessalonians Chapter 2).

Concerning my strength to unrolling these last mishaps, without the help of Muse, my goodness, I am bound to admit, my soul’s drooping pinions would have already been shorn-off from ever reaching further episodic chapters in the dusk of my life.

My inspiration, has not, as yet, deserted me, my former self, year 2010, when the soul of Shanti (peace in Sanskrit) first breathed her healing ambrosia of good morning’s dews within me. And thanks to that great human being, I am still in love with the inner fabrics of such exalted ideas of beauty, perfection and chastity.

So many years have gone by, so many missing pages have elapsed between then and now, but I am still activated by the same love of such great a human being!

Now, I must say, with due humility, that my description of Hell (end of chapter V) from a literary perspective, may not merit anything new or original, but my stabs at the Trinity Cemetery (the Wailing Woman, la Llorona) could perhaps beat the crap of a less competent former writer back in 2010.

The wailing woman, Rosalina, beautiful woman, is still a ghost to be reckoned with in the Purgatory: Chapter V.

I can assure you that Chapter VI, a riveting voyage around the Isle of Manhattan, is a healing dose of wellbeing!

Eddie Beato, October 24, New York City,
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Shanti-Chapter VI: Twilight
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Phoenix: “No sooner we reached the little vessel when gentler winds started to assuage our drooping spirit.

This ineffable music I could only compare it to the far-echoed singing of angels…a choir from heaven. I thought about Maria Stader’s most moving rendition of Kyrie Eleison by W. A. Mozart, or the Ave Maria of Franz Schubert,

The soothing splashes lapping the time-eddying prow of the little boat, as though applying a poultice (a band, a cure) to a wounded soldier, little by little, would heal our souls’ deeply entrenched griefs and fears.

The agitated winds, now abating to a gentle whispering whistle, then lulling to a hushing breeze or a lullaby, delicately cherished my face with swelling thrills as yet unplumbed within my heart.

A this point, I felt impelled to expressing deepest gratitude to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ! Reverence, fears, humility and gratefulness transfixed me deeply for the journeying-experience of life.

​My God! Thank you so much! I am still alive, safe and hale. La Llorona (the wailing woman) did not beat the crap out of me.

Then I fixed my lingering eyes on the ever-rippling glacous waters, and my soul, my goodness, still in full-gear, on and off, would fret, back and forth in the little confinement of this time-stricken skiff (boat).

For, I could not stop pondering and brooding the irrefutable truths as expressed in the New Testament: Hell is real!

Nevertheless, my heart was still pounding deep at the incredible things we had just witnessed at the Trinity Cemetery: ghosts are real, they are not the stuff of benighted times and superstition, and, most importantly, some are trapped in the Nest of Time (the Purgatory)

The Pit of Hell is indeed a place of indescribable sadness and gloom. And I implore Thee, my Lord Jesus, that my mom’s soul is to be found in Heaven.

Upon my saying ‘mother,’ suddenly, la Señora Ana resumed her soul-stricken conversations, and thank goodness, the ghost, at least for now, just wanted to give free outlets to her precious, meandering memories of the old days in New York.

Ana S. Manson Gathers the Autumnal Leaves of the Olden Days in New York City, 1940-2000s).

Ana S. Man-Son.

“…While living in Washington Heights, I have no clue why some people, especially those old timers living reclusive or lonely lives, but admirable loners in possession of wonderful stories embosomed in their heart, would become so important to me, and I felt a kindred sympathy as though finding a ‘hidden treasure of human existence’ asking for a writer the diligence of an archeologist, yet one willing to dig out the other sites of Washington Heights' soulful mines entrenched in the collective psyche of former immigrants.

However conscientiously aware of every person's life but as a living book, some daily acquaintances, whether young or old, did not leave such lasting an impression in my mind, and so I shall not concern myself with that general crowd of vulgarity and noise, but rather of some neighbors' remarkable mental fortitude to coping with life's existential challenges, and perhaps be able to find an exceptional soul, the virtuous one, the strong soul, whose probity and moral caliber would convince me of the legendary Indian Lotus blossoming amidst the mud of human society.

Some neighbors just died or probably moved on elsewhere, and it took me some time to make up for their absence: their presence and lives, nonetheless, these souls were (perhaps) anymore necessary than the fleeting faces of passers-by or onlooking strangers across my path.

Indeed, of so little importance to my immediate surroundings were these neighbors, that l shall forgo speaking about them, and if I did say something about these folks, the convict or the hooligan, the chaste woman or the hussy, it was only to maximize the contrast between virtue and vice.

As some neighbors never spoke to me a word, so did their presence drift away like a stealthy mist flitting into the deeper quarters of my memories; or, like transitory shadows silently scurrying away into the background of our lives, so did some neighbors receded back into ‘an incomprehensible blur’ between reality and a web of dreams.

Hence why some neighbors impressed me but as living ghosts in the roomy expanses of my mind.

Nevertheless, these ‘neighbors of cool-detachment and aloofness,’ fleeting acquaintances in the unrolling scrolls of our lives, only added a somber aspect to the ever-flowing river of time.

Afterwards, I seemed to inwardly stare at their faces anymore real than those ghosts or phantoms, whose nearly-felt presence would add so much meaning to the comprehension of my own existence.

From such phantasmagoria, my dear friends, I was able to gather enough thought-material to speak, in earnest, about my spiritually-charged experiences while living in Washington Heights (1940s-2016).

In some cases, I met a neighbor but only once, and thence one would never see each other again, but it was very likely that we would meet in the thoroughfares of dreams, or perhaps, in the recurrent unfolding chapters of coincidence and fate, perhaps in the ever-journeying stations of our lives, one would come across that ‘long-time-no-see’ neighbor of my yesteryears.

What an outburst of heartiest feelings at the unexpected sight of that great soul greeting me from afar!

The joy was mutual, because we both experienced a strange delight, ‘an inexplicable candor and affection,’ while tickled by the rosy-fingered surprises of fate.

I met some old timers, Cubans, Irishmen, Jews, Dominicans, Italians and some Greeks whose ancestors had moved in before Second World War, and I was diligent to inquiring on their past experiences and circumstances, their best or worst times in New York, and thus be able to invest my present outlook with a better comprehension of my surroundings.

But even most importantly, I truly developed a deeply-felt compassion for some neighbors, and at times, our help came propitious, especially during the long winters of the early 1960s, the super-man and I would shovel away the mounting snows along the sidewalks or at the building's main-entrance, all these monotonous drudgeries and chores while warming up with jest and heartiest conversations about our stay in New York.

With these hard-working immigrants, there was always a romantic hankering for a Paradise Lost, a deep-seated longing for a homeward return to our spiritual homeland, La Belle, Latin America, still bathed with the ambrosia of dewy mornings and the fragrant roses of innocence and safety.

And during some bright days, while the sunlight thawed the snow into loveliest rivulets of joy and cheers meandering along the sidewalks' lovely running sluices, I experienced an elation of wellbeing comparable to a mystical experience.

And I have to tell you, such conversations fed and nourished my soul like the finest sermon on the meaning of life.

Now, in the hereafter, I can recognize some dear old timers of fortitude, true soldiers of life, carrying their bodies, dragging their feet round the same square of yesteryears, hopeful to escaping this circle in the hereafter: the Nest of Time.”

Phoenix Bird: “While keeping an eye on Ana Manson’s desultory stories, begging for cohesiveness and chronology, I could not always succeed in deciphering the omens of Madam Fate, fortunes and misfortunes, whose whimsical appearances and disappearances —perhaps now speaking to me in the gentle countenance of this Old Lady — would leave me but much disappointed on the meaning of life for the greater lot of the human race.

The river was unfolding like an ever-rolling pall stretched far into this fantastic world and the other. The ethereal elements of haze and fogs have lent themselves each other’s mutual embraces, both water and dun air have blurred any sharp edges —except for our boat’s rimming lines and time-webbing prow, and so everything merges into each other indistinguishable.

The zest-exhalation soon would infuse my spirit with greater impetus for the difficult task of life.

The sensation was one of exhilaration and gloomy delight, for our mind seem to waft freer, nay, attuned to the breath-taking creative potencies of Mother Nature’s erratic veils.

Like a web of dreams, so we let ourselves be lured by these haunting figments as though sojourning apace with the stories of La Señora Ana.

A Glorious Vision - The Riddle of Madam Fate and the Decline of Post-America
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High above, hovering amidst formless clouds, there appeared, an Old Woman with sunken-cheeks, flaccid facial features, deep-set hollow eyes.

The sullen matron was carrying a beautiful innocent turtle dove, its feathers were alike delicate and immaculate white. The downy bird, perched like an eagle on a mid-air-hanging eyrie, was roosting atop a slightly lifted right hand: trust, solidarity and loyalty.

The clouds then arrayed themselves in majestic files of colossal columns, pillars, pavilions and high-tapering obelisks, skyscrapers, high-rising steeples and spires. For a brief moment, they all glittered celestial gold in sparkling radiance and splendor, the polished temples and courts aglow with a sleek although very short-lived flash of glorious orange-light.

The thunderclaps had transfixed the heavens with awe-inspiring scenes of grandest things right here on Earth.

Patches of errant clouds were half-lit with a golden hue of most beautiful splendor, their spectrum had, imperiously, claimed powers and dominions on the abode of the gods!

We were amazed at the glorious sight, and then, we made out an archangel standing high, monumental, defiant like the Colossus of Rhodes.

The bulky clouds, once again, as though seeking meaning and congeniality with this twilight, disbanded themselves into heroic masses of awe-inspiring cherubs and seraphs, their squadrons receding into an all-encompassing pall (curtail) of twilight and hazy distance.

And then, as we were still marveling at the grandeur of such divine a vision, the turbid cumulus clouds reassumed their former shapes of a sullen Old Woman carrying a dove and a serpent on either sides of her loin.

Philosopher: “What an imponderable majestic sight! Is this Old Woman an omen?”

Parsifal: “This may be an augery (omen). There are times when goodness, peace and justice may prevail against the evils of inequities, poverty and ignorance, but Madam Fate cannot keep up a fickle hand upward anymore lasting than the other going downward, and hence, she is thus condemned to go around with uneasy steps along the perilous zigzagging paths of existence.”

Phoenix Bird: “So said the master, and we set out to crack this Old Woman’s riddle.

Enclasped into each other's tight embraces, ‘distrust and betrayal,’ we made out a multi-colored snake of most frightening aspect. The snake was in full possession of the Old Woman’s left hand.

Her multiple folds and tangles, cocky head rising menacing towards us, would set my limbs loose.

From the lower base of the scrawny wrist, up to a shaggy thatch of disheveled hairs growing prodigiously (like blades of grass, furze, brambles, liana, creepers, thorns and thistles) under her armpit, the horrible animal was in full possession of Madam Fate's left bony hand: Anarchy, Injustice, Inequity, Poverty.

By any stretch of contraction, emancipation or recoiling, at time she would appear civil (the Rise of Civilizations) and other times, the Old Lady, a.k.a., History, turned out to be a savage woman Anarchy (the Fall and Decline of Civilizations) with the least regards for a large swath of humankind.

Nonetheless, day and night, Madam Fate would not allow the snake to finally eat the dove, perched atop her right hand, which, once conquered, could ultimately threaten to swallow whole any remaining goodness from the surface of the earth.

Nevertheless, I am bound to admit that, in spite of every effort to keeping the dove safe from the ancient serpent’s baneful brunt, Satan has the greater sway in this world: this is a fact of life:

Tentatively, I could not tell whether a dangerous hand or a poisonous snake were welded together in unison, or perhaps bifurcated (separated) as two distinct phenomena, two hideous sisters, yet born from the same awful womb, so that any differentiation between the two (discrepancy and inequality) could prove to be a most difficult incomprehensible undertaking.

Then I understood that good and evil are so imbedded in the collective psyche of the masses, that one cannot speak of virtues without an outcry to the invisible evils lurking in the corner of any civilized society.

But I think it would be worth the efforts to finding the strength, integrity and diligence of a great human being to coping with poverty, losses and rejection without succumbing to the subversive machine of post-modern civilized society.”

The Ghost of Mary Barnes - Josh Manson’s Limerence

Phoenix: “Dear Madam Ana Manson, upon entering this twilight-zone, we met your son, Josh Manson going around the Isle of Manhattan on bare foot, and, amidst the evanescent shimmering haze, he left with a heavy heart, still lamenting the sad circumstance of his life.

He had felt in love with a beautiful woman, but it seemed she was cajoled by another audacious man.

Ana S. Manson: “I remember Mary Barnes, and her latter years among the living dead, as you may find out, were indistinguishable from the pains of childbirth.

In the year 2030, as I am informed here in the Nest of Time, Mary Barnes had lost her house, became homeless, a wretched lady —her self-respect and dignity went down the gutter —went down the toilet, excuse my post-American slang.

It seemed as though she had become the recipient of a fateful Karma, and, as much as she tried hard to pull herself up to a more honorable, serviceable existence, could not secure a dwelling home for her miscreant toddler.

Shipwrecked, she could scarcely carry on. To no avail, she had lashed herself unto the ship’s weathered mast, but, the raging winds, had overpowered her indomitable spirit, and like an albatross amidst the sea-storms, so she was tossed headlong into the baneful waters of perdition (the Styx River from Greek Mythology).

Phoenix Bird: “At this point, we held silence. La Señora Ana’s countenance, though creased by the conspicuous chicken-skin of aging, assumed a turkey-like aspect of self-unconscious albeit self-stilted satisfaction, a wicked delight for the ensuing calamities befalling upon the lot of Ms. Mary Barnes’ latter days.

Ana S. Manson; “Rains, storms, disappointments, betrayals, would finally shatter her iron-will, and like my dear son, Josh Manson, so she would finally bring herself to an ignominious end.

She had made my son’s life miserable, and so, a bad spell (as prepared by my pal Carmen Sanchez) had been cast upon Mary’s unfolding days and nights.

​She suffered from insomnia, dispepsia and, much to her dismay and embarrassment, of late in the night, the poor lady would wriggle, squiggle and fart unremittingly.

Bad Luck, glum mistress of woe, gloom and doom, was always haunting at her rear, and day and night, swarms of hellish hornets were always buzzing, whirring, piercing her witless head their mortal share of afflictions. Thus, her mind became a house of unclean spirits.

Phoenix: “Ana Manson had scarcely finished when lo, in view there appeared a very beautiful if perhaps bedraggled blond woman.

The ghost of Mary Barnes was hovering above the heaving currents, like a sibylline nymph, a fairytale mermaid, her blond tresses swaying to and fro amidst a dim shimmering gleam.
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Amidst filaments of misty droplets, Ms. Mary Barnes, came forward to speak her heart with the sad music of these bee-like whistling winds.”

Ms. Mary Barnes: “O you wayfarers! Hearken to my story.

​—Do you know where I come from?

I am a storm-battered American lady, whose tears could fill this river with the sorrows of a widow.

Sunny Days and Rainy Days:

I was born in 1993 to Irish Immigrants, and like a great American family, seeking new seashores —the flashy horizon of opportunities— we pursued our dreams, enjoyed the boisterous parties at home, and the land of opportunities was always burgeoning prosperous for my family.

In 1999, my dad bought us a new house, on the outskirts of a little village-town, a splendid, grove-ringed bungalow as befitting a middle-class family of the noblest rustic type. In the sequestered rural areas of Texas, surrounded by loveliest bucolic scenes of family conviviality, I spent my childhood with my dear parents, but the temptations of New York City lured me heedless to a crooked path of perdition. Licentiousness and permissiveness took grasp of my soul, and so Satan tied his baneful knots around my neck.

As you can see, I am cursed. I lost my path to heaven, the subversive city-virus had worked calamitous in my soul, and its pernicious effects would eventually send me headlong into a most ruinous end.”

Phoenix Bird: “While she recited her ‘where-I-come-from,’ all of a sudden, the ghost of Mary Barnes broke into tears, rendered her hearty speech doleful by a pent-up outburst of mixed feelings of pity, shame, embarrassment and indignation.

Mary Barnes:

“Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

​Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death.

Amen.”

Parsifal: “Poor lady, her unfortunate train of circumstances could break the heart of any mother.”

Phoenix Bird: “So said the Master, and then we cast a glance at Mary’s once beautiful countenance, but here in the Spirit Realm, she appeared like a frightful sprite (a phantom), her dim visage as though corroded by the bee-stinging winds of the Nest of Time, her shipwrecked humanity scarier than a hapless mermaid dashed hard against the sea-shore’s jutting rocks, jabbed stones and crags.

My goodness, Mary’s latter days seemed to have been occasioned by a fair retribution of divine justice, for what she sowed in Josh’ heart, she would eventually reap in a life marked by tragedies and bad luck.

Thus, the woodworms of hell, depression and insomnia, did not cease to canker deep into her soul’s remotest crevices.

Her fatherless brat child, a mutant of solitude, ever sulking in cabalistic reclusiveness, denied his mother the reciprocal love. And so, this mother’s latter days became a living hell.

—But who would care for her life?

Philosopher: (turning his face towards us) “What a strange breed of beautiful human beings, so spoiled and ruinous in the quarters of civilized society, whose personal book of life would ultimately be buried in the graveyard of oblivion.”

Phoenix: “Blue-eyed Mary, as today, is probably reaching the dusky years of her late 40-wintery sighs and alas here in the Nest of Time.

The bloom of her former pretty face is gone. Her teeth are falling out, but her side-glanced inwardness, her far-off gaze —worthy of a noble muse in the Elysian lands for anachronistic souls— has not yet forsaken her.

(Phoenix, Philosopher, and Parsifal in unison:)

“Dear soul, do you still believe in God?”

Phoenix: “So we asked Mary while fixing our eyes upon some gorgeous strands of ash-blond hair falling luxuriously on her agreeably arching forehead and temples.

And, after some thoughtful reflections on the possibility of God's existence, in spite of so wretched a life for a human in rags and tatters, headlong teetering into the hands of death, the homeless ghost, nevertheless, would finally nod an affirmative yes: ‘I believe in God.’

Mary Barnes: “Please, implore your God to find me a place of peace amidst the happy spirits, for here, in this ashen-watered river, I am found roaming, back and forth, like a wretched mermaid.”

Phoenix Bird: “O my dear reader! Mary Barnes’ blue eyes could not stop sluicing their tears of sorrows with this river, and, on and off, we grappled for words —our sincerest condolences— to conveying our deepest empathy for her irretrievable losses.”

Parsifal: “Ay Mary! So fair a daughter of a pedigree sylvan past! Don't let people humiliate thee. Thine natural gifts and beauty may bear witness to thy former glory. Be strong my dear, and claim thy true place with those who value ye!”

Phoenix: “ Just before she disappeared amidst the hazy air, we encouraged Mary to seek God’s mercies. And then her ghost spoke this wise saying:

‘Indeed, the happiest moments in our lives, as Merry-Christmas, may have their heartiest cheers but in conviviality, in sharing our gifts, in the obsequious presents of a family united, aglow with the sweet candles of love and hope. In the midst of this lovely gathering, one may harken to the Jingle Bells. Ode to joy!

—What child is this!’

Parsifal (with far-gazed countenance) “I too sincerely wish the boisterous party of life could last forever. Enkindled with that warm chimney of brotherly love, life would be a lot more tolerable, but alas, how difficult to gather those who once made us happy. Nursed by the caring hands of such great a mother, the children would be happier, but where is the Holy Family today?”

The Dream of a Mother’s Tomb:

Phoenix Bird: “True! The greatest blow to our heart would be the departure of that great human being, once so vital and indispensable to our happiness. When I saw my mother in a wooden coffin, I knew in my heart, that my only consolation would be to seek her in the Spirit Realm.

Luckily, three months later, October of 2011, I had an encounter with her in a dream. In this dream, I felt the presence of a person of gentlest nature, had fastened her nursing hands around my loin (neck and shoulders), and when I turned around to seek her near, my mother playfully kept herself behind my back. At that moment, I thought of that former child so fond of sweetest pranks!

Knowing my mom had a twisted finger, I simply grasped hold of her hands, and much to my surprise, oh dear! the haunting spirit happened to be that of my beloved mother. Then she looked at me smiling, and by her joyous countenance, I understood that her here-after was among the happy spirits!

My goodness! The dream was so real, so tangible that I simply refused to call it a dream or a vision. But, alas, it was a dream, and all I could do was to console myself with the possibility that her soul was doing much better in the here-after.

My mom, after a long battle with cancer, had endured much pain, but now she was letting me know her joy in this dream.”

Philosopher-Prince “Real or Unreal? Those who have lived the score of four decades, could well understand this truth: that our lives' fleeting episodes, for most of us, could be well construed but as a phantasmagoria, an illusion, and for the most part, our experiences, however charged with the vivid memories of our endearing recollections, are soon to strike kindred with the Spirit Realm.

There are days when my heart seems to harbor feelings of sweetest wellbeing, especially when I am lying supine on my bed, ‘half-sleep,’ some inexplainable joys, as those of a happy child, seem to surge aloft from the bottomless depth of my soul.

At this moment, my consciousness, as though activated by a propelling will, a rapt buoyancy, could bring me to a completely different frame of mind.

This blessing, fueled by these sporadic instances of wellbeing, has visited me every now and then, but by what reasons or merit are as yet unknown to me. Occasionally, we all may experience moments of tremendous heightened spirituality and actuality.

--Oh my goodness! I feel so real today!

Nevertheless, these transient bits of joy seem to appear and disappear apace with my heartbeats, like a filament of wisp, or dewy mist pulsed by gentlest winds, thus leaving behind an uncanny sense that perhaps the journey of life ought to be pursued inwardly!

Perhaps this is the meaning of a mother's tomb?

Parsifal: “Hither and thither, ye may come across abandoned places once bustling with the stirs and clangors of human activities, the sweet home of children, but now they appear totally razed to the ground as though by furious winds.

The wood was wanting of visitors, and I could hardly stay there without a human being. Such habitations, like the Mayan cities, are now abandoned, forsaken, their somber aspect gave me the chills, and I was forced to leave the dreary scene as a man overcome with fear and apprehensions.

Today, instead of people and the sweet carols of children playing their games, one would encounter the indecipherable trails of former inhabitants, their existence now lost in the flux of time…

Harken! In the background, one may fancy to hear the wailing children decrying the meaning of existence. Thus the scenes of human conviviality appeared to me like a fleeting dream. Overtime, such dreamy scenes have become a living cemetery.

Some peasants relate stories of night-walking entities, but perhaps, like urban citizens in New York, these poor people are prey to their own fears and delusions.”

Ana S. Manson: “These poor peasants, like the destitute children of Madam Fate, have left behind their lovely woods, Latin America’s paradisiacal lands for the high-walled cities of the North. “

Parsifal: “Who understands humanity? Either in the woods or in the high-walled city of steel and stones, humans are hard to satisfy, and some would deem it a paradise to retreat back to the wilderness.”

Philosopher: “Civilization is the pinnacle of human achievement.”

Parsifal-Squirrel (scratching his head) Thy fossil-fueled civilization became one of the worst experiments and metastasis in the womb of Mother Nature. Thy former dream, a mother’s tomb, may be prophetic of an old woman lamenting these hellish black-eyed children (the oligarchs of fossil fuels) of civilization.”

Ana S. Manson:

“…Some may say that the debris of the Tragedy of 911, 2001, has forever left their indelible marks upon the roofs and gutters of some old buildings in New York City.

Some old buildings, today cracking, tilting, creaking and begging for demolition, are said to be the congenial habitation of strangest phenomena.

Countless immigrants, as I was told, have found lodging in some of these dwelling holes of civilization: Irish, Cubans, Jews, Armenians, Italians, Greeks, Blacks, Puertorriqueños, Dominicans, and now, we are witnessing a neighborhood teeming with white folks once thought to have been relegated to the graveyard of oblivion in the Trinity Cemetery.

True, some buildings, especially by the affluent residential enclave of the Jews Community (near the end of the Isle of Manhattan), are still in excellent conditions, but some grotesque gargoyles are still grimed with the pervasive soot of times.

The good news is that these old buildings are now being demolished or reconstructed from their own decaying framing infrastructures, but back in the heydays of the 1990s, I pensively sauntered amidst the shadows of some ghastly buildings, but also chanced my speedy steps through drab alleys, byways and crime-ridden streets smacking of desolation, defeat, segregation, marginalization, and death. Down there, at the foot of the Infamous Hill of Washington Heights, lo and behold!

Some corners were strewn with withering, good-bye flowers and garlands for the hapless drug-dealer, whose life, as I was informed by the onlooking neighbors, was prematurely plucked short from the crooked paths of perdition along the all-stretching notorious avenues of the former Dutch settlers: Broadway, Amsterdam, Audubon and St. Nicholas, would shake and quake with the dins and peals of hell.

Parsifal: “But who would separate the weed from the chaff in the social weltering of humanity?”

Ana S. Manson: “O my! That’s a difficult task. My hood, nevertheless, was peopled by a motley crowd of humans well acquainted into each other's social differences, morals, provenance, and status, for some folks enjoyed the enclaved areas for the well-educated and the well-to-do.

Occasionally, the old and the new, the well-mannered and the downright uncouth, would cross paths in the market places, or in the ever-roomy bodegas, or in the open squares, the food vendors, the bazaars and flea markets, whose items, for the most part sold at very affordable prices, could bridge, at least for the moment, the gap between the poor and the bourgeoisie.

These multitudes created a variegated social tapestry, a multifariousness, a multiplicity of the most interesting types.

But in that sloping path for the needy, for the destitute, for the orphan and the widow, there was a heart-wrenching scene of revolting discrepancies and inequities: humans beings flitting, trudging, and roaming here and there, like lost sheep, whose precarious existence could send my blood throbbing to my head with quivering thoughts of fear and apprehension.

It is just incredible how the pool-flow of humanity, ‘the survival of the fittest,’ continues to ripple into the jam-packed quarters of New York!

Alas, against these inner strivings, there are countless hurdles for the ‘very-poor,’ and the cumbersome load of sufferings may dash some unfortunate immigrants against the high walls of a hard reality: it is indeed an outcry to the meaning of existence.

However living in the land of opportunities, the distances between people and people's moral fabrics, are sidereal, and the good quality is not to be gauged either by an intellectual culture or by the glossy social veneer of education, but something uncanny in the bosom of a great human being, in the healthiest sense of the word, may resist and defy the mechanization, dehumanization, robotization, automatism of the human cattle.”

Parsifal: “Dear Old Lady! I would rather prefer to be a savage with freedom of thoughts than an automaton with the shackles of modern civilization.”

Where is the missing lacuna to understanding the chasmic discrepancy of the human soul?

Ana S. Manson: “1940s: Ever since I dared set foot in the ghettos of New York, this huddling together of crowds from the far corners of the world, day and night jamming and jostling the ever-rolling locomotives of a hectic society, like canned sardines carried away in heavy-laden barges, such diverse hordes of the human stock, ever-heaving up and drifting away by the tidal waves of immigration, racism and discrimination, at times, was indeed a jittery scene of much tension and collision, because here, in Washington Heights, one could find the good and the bad folks, the well-mannered and the downright vulgar living together, side by side and in tandem.”

Parsifal: “O dame! I have learned of these people’s background and provenance, could survive under the most inhabitable circumstances, amidst muddy lands, by the river-banks, or even at the foot of some volcano, but rarely would these hapless folks build their shanties in the caving-holes of civilization to inhale and exhale the pernicious soot of that fateful day, September 11, 2001.”

Philosopher: “Don't these peasants hanker back to their former pristine bucolic existence?

And, perhaps the lovely woods are still redolent of unspoiled human innocence and internal beauty.”

Ana S. Manson: “Well, Washington Heights, at least in the 1990s, was populated by a new people whom had lived, all their lifelong, a kind of peripheral existence.

But as previously stated, among these group, there were to be found wonderful cases of probity and virtue, even cases of geniuses and saints, and if we inspect the matter closely, some of the best people I ever met —like the fabulous Indian lotus— are often found in the simplicity of a tolerable existence, poor, indeed, but perhaps rich and even blessed when life is reduced to the priceless essentials and vital.

In the slums of New York, nevertheless, hither and thither, one may find the old abandoned buildings, forlorn churches, time-stricken places by some byways, quite often rife with the other mammal-denizens of our conviviality, thus attesting to an unfortunate generation somehow devoured by the horrific ghouls of decadence, poverty and dehumanization.
​
In every civilized society, therefore, there are the mysterious pervasive forces which could sag down and stunt a generation unable to keep pace with the challenge of mechanization, gentrification, specialization and the survival of the fittest.

Where once was the healthy stir and bustle of life in industrious activities, one now finds a downcast people...

Let my serious reader know that I am not exhuming these spooky neighbors because I find them desirable, or because they are affirmative existential entities to winning my sympathy. My curiosity is purely a psychological one: I wonder what kind of souls could dwell in those bodies?

How do they find answers to the serious music of existence?

True, some ghosts, dear former neighbors, especially those unfortunate souls who might have suffered an unhappy ending, are said to be the most commonly reported by solitary areas congenial to ghosts, specters, outcasts, destitute souls, bums on the verge of madness and succumbing to the lower instincts of the beast.

Countless criminals are born in every city, but here, in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, you may find the saint, the thug, the virtuous, the hooligan and the convict, forced to live side by side in the jam-packed hoods of Washington Heights.
​
Some souls are said to be willing to haunt the places of their personal attachment. But once those buildings get demolished, where would they eke out the nature of their innermost feelings and reciprocity?

Who would build a dwelling place in the hereafter?

Accordingly, the specter is somehow bound and attracted to those material things which, while alive in the physical body, might have had a personal value or significance. “

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Trawling the Collective Psyche of Our Ancestry:

Herein, trawling the unconscious swamps of people and their myths and fears (zeitgeist), you may find a syncretism verging on metaphysics, religion, archeology, superstition, history and philosophy.

Yes. Everything here is symbolic. For instance, the legendary black-eyed kids, among other scary goblins, may represent the hubris of our generation: fossil fuels and soots and smog are damaging the once pristine, primeval paradisiacal landscapes of America, the Beautiful.

At this round, La Señora Mercedes Espinal touches upon the collective psyche of the Dominican people, and how the spirit of our ancestry, The Conquistadors, are still haunting us, right here in New York. In fact, we have simply extrapolated the high mountains to the semblance of buildings and skyscrapers.

We took off from the Trinity Cemetery, and then we would go around: from the gloom of the starless realm of the dead and doomed, to the other side of the Island to meeting some lucky souls: Natasha Blavatsky, Harold Camping, Carlos Devares, among other friends of my youth.

Of course, since we are traveling as though through a dream, a twilight, the oarsman, the Prince, will ferry us backward across the ages with the Hudson River. The more we travel back in time (Colonial Time with Spain) the more La Señora Ana Manson seems to age.

At the behest of Parsifal, La Señora Ana Manson conjures up the ghost of Mercedes Espinal (symbolic of Colonial Times) and so we enjoy a riveting jaunt into the North Coast of the Dominican Republic’s paradisiacal highlands: La Cumbre (the Peak) Amazing! Madam Fate has interwoven the pages of history, right here in New York, in the most ironic twists for the children of Los Conquistadores…

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Phoenix Bird: “Dear reader, at this point we are sailing southwards, alongside the doughty oarsman. The Prince-Philosopher of our journey, has ferried us past the New Jersey’s Palisades.

The river’s swelling waters have become part and parcel of the surrounding exhalations, and we seem to be sailing upward and upward —a blissful buoyancy into the ominous welkin (sky), like the legendary Pegasus Horse, betwixt the all-engulfing clouds and the disembodied voices of the drafty winds.

This agreeable uplifting-sensation would soon temper ourselves to becoming inured to the inclement elements, and we seem to be set free from the mortal constraints of time and space.

Like a cozy chimney, a homely, snug gathering of kindred souls, so the dearly-loved stories of childhood have warmed us up to enduring the gloom of this world with a chilly delight. True, it was cold, but we seem to be activated, nay, hardened and schooled by the tough journeying-experiences of life.

The raging winds have only toughened our guts, and we were willing to come to grips with the other spirits of our dread.

The ghost of La Señora Ana Man-Son was sitting on the opposite side of the Prince, and her aspect was alike prophetic and apocalyptic, and so we steered our skiff (boat) headlong into the unknown, into the past, present and future of this terrible woman.

Her pallid but inexpressive countenance, appeared to be unrolling apace with the filament of fogs, rolling up like jinns, thus revealing other meanings to this river.

Indeed! Her protruding aquiline nose, however ghastly and macabre, like a hag (witch) from medieval time, seemed to partake much of the boat’s time-stricken coursing prow, back to Latin America’s flitting shadows stretching far into the corners of history.

As a seasoned mariner, she appeared to be at the helm of this awful journey through the Nest of Time, and we could not but marvel at her penchant for creepy stories.”

Ana S. Man-Son: “In the swelling womb of impregnable night, especially when rambling through solitary places, abandoned houses in the nook and crannies of human conviviality, once the hub and bustle of human activities, there is to be found an uncanny sense of spiritual communication, a seance, however telepathic, with lingering energies that seems to strike rapport with the Spirit Realm.

In big cities, like New York, after all these years of stirs and bustle, and in the drifting flows of human society with every generation, there are the places, and even whole neighborhood seems to exhume the most creepy sentiments on the illusion of time, whose physical appearance may smack of things spooky and tenebrous.

For those who think that the world is always a wonderful carousel of goodness, innocence and safety, let me remind you of the black-eyed kids haunting the desolate streets of United States of America, whose gracious, beautiful faces, ‘so cute,’ could be the finest recommendation of courtesy, amicability and hospitality to a stranger for a final doom.

Once inside of your house, you would let out a scream.

These creepy entitles are believed to be found solely in USA, for I never heard of such impish children in Latin America. We certainly have the legend of the long-legged kid riding a horse, ‘a Colonial goblin,’ but from the unconscious swamps of our native lands, we have not, as yet, encountered such demonic an entity resembling the black-eyed kids of the Anglo Saxon people.

The Caucasian people, well-known for their penchant for the wilderness, have bequeathed to us a frightening list of goblins and phantoms still sleeping in the collective unconscious reaches of their progeny.”

Philosopher: “We may assume such elusive figments, i. e., Skin-Walker, Werewolf, Sasquatch, as existing but in relation to the beholder's peculiar ‘psychological make-up,’ which, as previously stated, is said to be molded by the attendant circumstances of sacred religious beliefs, or customs vis-a-vis milieu and clime.

Mind you, we all tend to project ourselves' inner-world, our childhood, into the outer pictures and motley tapestry of human experience. At any rate, one cannot deny a collective consciousness in the interpretation of paranormal transient phenomena.”
​
Phoenix Bird: “Why would evil spirits assume the innocent face of an innocent child to win our trust and benevolence?”

Parsifal: “I don’t know. Just be careful, those eyes are said to be black as pitch: the iris, pupil and cornea, according to some witnesses, seem to have no discernible differentiation, nor boundary, nor lines.

Without any room for privacy, thy belongings could be stolen, in-rushing problems could just break-in through the main-entrance door. Please, lock the main entrance- door, such devils could maim and mangle thy body into the quarters of hell.

I assure thee, once these kids are inside of thy house, thou would let out a scream. Some trouble could take away thy peace, thy sleepless night could be turned into a nightmare. For a vigilant sentinel, one ought to be alert, watchful, sober and ready for the task of life.

Those creepy eyes, as though gouged-out, may appear like two prominent black holes hanging loose on a pale face. I know this is frightening, but so it is a silly person who is too trusting and sheepish.

I know some souls to be cautious when coming to grips with one of these frightening entities: strangers of the night.”

Phoenix Bird: “At this point, Parsifal asked Ana Manson to summon the ghost of Mercedes Espinal, a former Dominican santera (witch) and perhaps fill-in some missing lacunae concerning the sad ending of Ms. Mary Barnes, whose beautiful soul, as I said earlier, was ensnared into the baneful waters of perdition by the spirit of our dread.”

Parsifal: “Old Woman of yore, I command thee to conjure up the ghost of thy pal, Mercedes Espinal, if she is to be found here among the dead.”

Ana S. Manson: “Sure. Your words shall be fulfilled, for we are bound for the hereafter as though tranced in a web of dreams or a seance.”

Phoenix: “So said the Old Woman, and from the impregnable mists, there appeared a crone attired in medieval costumes.

Mercedes Espinal was floating beside our skiff, but when we set our eyes on her face, she started circling around us in a rather ghostly fashion. Her gaunt sunken cheekbones, deep-set hollow eyes and flaccid jowl reminded me of Madam Jumel, but the former had a darker complexion.”

Back to Colonial Time with the Ghost of Mercedes Espinal - Dominican Republic

Mercedes Espinal: “Ay Ana! Why did you invoke me here among the dead?

See that my soul does not rest in peace, and I beseech you to implore God for mercies. I have long repented of my abominable practices, and yet King Minos has assigned me this fateful realm of gloom and doom.”

Ana S. Manson: “Ay Mercedes! I can scarcely recognize you, but your presence fills me with solace that I am not alone in this painful journey. The Skein of Fate has brought us back here by this old river, and though roaming aimlessly among the dead, we are still attached to our former places in Latin America.

The course of history is indeed unpalatable, and I wish to be ferried backward into the drifting river of time: Colonial Times!

Is there any amazing story worth our attentive ears?”

Mercedes Espinal: “Of course, embosomed within my heart I have a treasured book of precious memories. Within me you will find a baptized child, a good lass, still cradled in the past of my ancestry: the Spanish Conquistadors. It seems the Skein of Destiny would place me concomitant of my worries and concerns alongside these neighbors’ latter days.

Here, I have come across neighbors, long thought to have been dead, and their stories could fill my soul alike with wonder and wander. What of their latter days could break my heart.

The Dominican Republic, or, I should say La Hispaniola Island, ever since it was discovered, in 1492, has been the backyard for political refugees, pirates, adventurers, and hapless people looking for asylum and safety in Latin America.

Much to surprise, back in the 1970s, while exploring the Highlands of the Northern Coast, I met some Jews and Germans, Puerto Plata, some believed to have been former Nazis, but a sense of fraternity with local Dominicans, —escaping Trujillo's grim regime, spared the Germans any trouble by simply forgoing any probing on their unhappy chain of travails that led to such heartbreaking fate.

​The German family, lonely, aloof, standoffish, mysterious, never revealed their disheartening past in Germany. But here, in the Jungle of the Dominican Republic, they are better off than to bear the brunt of the Russians still seeking Nazis for justice...
​
Herr Barta El Aleman, as nick-named by the Dominican people (1945-2004) was believed to be a hapless stranded survivor of the Holocaust in Germany (1940s). The mysterious man passed on a few years ago in La Cumbre (the Heights, on the North Coast) carrying in his bosom a veritable treasured-book of personal experiences and travails.

Like some unfortunate German-Jews fleeing Nazi-Germany, with his wife and children, the Barta family would set foot in the ever-welcoming sea-coast of Puerto Plata, North Coast of the Dominican Republic, (perhaps in the early 40s), but would eventually settle in the highlands of La Cumbre (High Mountains or the Peak).

No one could explain why Barta el Alemán and his family would not settle in Sosua, Puerto Plata, with the other Austrian-Jewish immigrants?

Herr Barta had two adorable children, a daughter and a son. Like other peasant Dominican kids, they would quickly assimilate the Dominican archaic vernacular and culture.

​His wife, a classical trained pianist, unable to cope with the rough milieu of uncivilized society —the jungle of oblivion amidst uncharted pristine lands— would suffer bouts of madness, frantically chasing away any dark-skinned person coming near her cabin.

The pianist passed on in the 70s, her chapter thus sealed by the peculiar aloofness of the German-Jewish family. One of their children, Frau Ingrid, a doll-strawberry blond girl, eventually would move South-East to La Vega, and was able to move up quickly in the social caste of the Dominican Republic.

In keeping with the pride of the German people, Frau Ingrid tried to persuade her stubborn father to move to La Vega's urban society, but the German man was a proud barbarian soul at heart, he stubbornly refused to leave behind the feeble trails of his heart-breaking memories.

Herr Barta would rather surrender his soul in the highlands of La Cumbre: a wild world perhaps once descried by Christopher Columbus and his crew (1492), and at his behest, his body was to be interred in the local cemetery of oblivion.

In 1979, I had the opportunity to pay a visit to this abandoned graveyard, whose lonely footpath, canopied by imposing branches of groves of most somber aspect, could take a half-an-hour walk off the main road leading to Sousa, Puerto Plata.

Perched on the topmost crest of a woody hill, the graveyard of former inhabitants —replete with creepy, cross-bearing tombs painted in white— for weeks, and even months, was always wanting of visitors.

A piercing silence, scarcely interrupted by the incessant hushing winds, the sounds of birds, hooting owls, crickets chirping, and behind my pensive steps, an inexplicable rustling-feeling of a ghost haunting at my rear, could melt the stoutest heart.

​Overwhelmed by the indescribable strangeness of this world, I soon asked the local peasant to bring me back to the company of more congenial neighbors.

During the night, far-off, there were to be seen the candles' quivering flames dotting the sweet homes of the peasants. Stars-like, these spangled wavering flames added a somewhat mythical aspect to these rather darkly sceneries of so much joy, awe and eeriness.

Overfilled with a chilly delight, I soon chanced myself amidst some groves and bowers pregnant with puzzles, specters, shadows, ghosts, witchcrafts.

Like the abandoned cities of the Mayan people in Mexico, today almost obliterated by the bosky advances of Mother Nature, the footpaths of yore are now being reclaimed to their former pristine state.

​Rough places once trodden with boisterous people, Los Conquistadores, looking for meaning and total emancipation, today they only bear witness to a cruel existence of struggle and the survival of the fittest.

Back in the 1950s, countless hapless families fleeing the dictatorship of Raphael Leonidas Trujillo would retreat back inland, back into the wild woods, and La Cumbre (The Peak), ever since the Spaniard and French pirates explored it (Seventeenth Century), had caught the fascination of both natives and foreigners alike. Indeed, these sequestered highlands would be the ideal "heavenly-resort" to elope with an adorable Belle Dominican woman!

How to comprehend, either by any dint of human language or imagination, the beautiful things that only the power of these wailing winds could convey with poetic justice?

Here, unto these marvelous resorts —perhaps once descried by Christopher Columbus himself— fickle Madam Fate had interwoven the events and circumstances that would bring together many children, foes and friends alike, all embraced by the ever-rolling sea of love and hope.”

Ana S. Manson: “Admirable Dominican Catholic peasants, unlike the newly arrived rowdy hordes, spawned in the slummy outskirts of every city, are known for their meekness and time-tested loyalty to the religion of their ancestors: Catholicism.

Nevertheless, it was indeed heart-breaking to see some peasants, smashing beautiful Dominican women, of the finest moral caliber, Catholic, cohabiting with those hellish rabbles of promiscuity with the least regards for the bonds of commitment, integrity and loyalty.”

Mercedes Espinal: “O my pal! You know well that a bad girl may prefer a punk, and so it is not strange to see a silly lass, such as Mary Barnes, losing her wit for a cloven-hoofed man like Don Juan D’ Los Palos.”

Ana S. Manson: “Rumor has it that his irresistible charm over women had something verging on the paranormal.

How could a rather ordinary man conquer the heart of so many beautiful women?”

Mercedes Espinal: “Don Juan D’ Los Palos, as a blessed child of Los Conquistadores, could conquer women at will, and as you well know, like us, he had dabbled with the occult and witchcraft.

Like the legendary colonial goblin mounting a horse, a Knight from Medieval Time, it is believed that Don Juan could be alike a gentleman and a lecherous hound from hell.

Among different cultures and people, peasants and urban people alike, there are the stories of shape-shifting human beings. True, I only met Don Juan in his human form, but I was aware that he could wag his tail like a dog.”

Ana S. Manson: “No kidding! Like the Anglo people, we have a share of elusive beings haunting our lives.

Chupacabra (goat-sucker) in Puerto Rico, to this day, has not, as yet, been satisfactorily explained as simply the audacious drivels of profiteers looking to enrich themselves on the silly gullibility of the Latino people. The news became widespread all over the globe.

Mercedes Espinal: “Every country and people may have a dreadful story of strange entities or devils, however scary, rambling the forested woods of ‘animal magnetism’ and magic.

Puerto Rico has their ghastly Chupacabras, and the Dominican Republic, a country neighboring with Haiti, has their prodigious share of strange entities and stories of creepy people who may strike kindred with the Devil.

(La República Dominicana, como Haití, tienen hoy sus legiones de brujos, hechiceros, satanistas, y prácticas tan abominable como es la Santeria, el Voodoo, entre otras viles ofensas al Altísimo. El resultado ha sido catastrófico, porque bien se sabe que el Rey de las moscas, gusanos y lombrices, es el señor Mefistófeles, y este principe tiene su morada en el infierno bajo la orden de Satan el Emperador. República Dominicana, según me cuentan, ya los vientos de la Fe Cristiana soplan con menos vigor en el alma y divinidad de sus antepasados.)

In exchange for Maleficus Powers, so the stories go, the Devil would bestow the fiendish satanist with supernatural abilities to morph himself into an animal at will.

Stories abound of shady, night-rambling entities who seem to be impervious to either bullet or knife; and in some remarkable cases, the satanist could even impose his fatale will upon the hapless victim.

A Galipote, as it is called by the Dominican people, may still send shivers down our spine. The said demon-possessed individual, in conformity to his diabolical nature, during some nights, and making the most disheartening growls and rustles, would devour or rip-off the crops of the poor Dominican peasants.

The authority, unfortunately, cannot remain long enough into the night-watch to catch the monster of such savagery.

The Galipote, ‘un vaca,’ as it is reported by some witnesses, would even transform into new guises, subterfuges, and physiological contrivances resembling canines, or any mysterious onlooking stranger standing nearby; thus, incognito, sort of speak, the said individual, in his new docile appearance, would visit his adversaries at any time of the day; and quietly, would even inquire on anything said about him.

The form of a dog is generally more preferable —and highly more suitable, because, a dog, or a cat, better than a lion or a fox, can play the role of foe or friend without any misgiving!”

—Real or Unreal?

Philosopher: “Señora Espinal, your creepy stories smack of crackpot —paranormal gibberish— non-sense stuff for gullible fools.

I don’t believe everything you’ve said but as the product of some preternatural agency, devil or some shape-shifting Dominican Galipote (Don Juan D’ Los Palos) or the legendary Chupacabra (goat-sucker) anymore illusory than the skookum Sasquatch haunting the woods of North America. Such scary entities may spring from the collective psyche of your people.

In all likelihood, you have fallen prey to the collective figments of your people’s myths and superstition.

The same could be said of the tragic end of Mary Barnes. In the last throes of her suicidal mentality and substance abuse, she had fallen afoul in a web of conspiratorial theories verging on the supernatural: UFOs, Chupacabra, Reptilian Entities, Witchcraft and Aliens traveling back and forth from a multiverse.

There is not a shred of substantial evidence, whether in the realm of physics or the domain of our senses, to aver that such things exist in the real world.

By the way, there is a close-nit correlation between poverty, ignorance and superstition. Of course, I am not denying an essential element of dread and entertainment to all this phantasmagoria.

When the city-people grow bored of the high-walled goals and entertainments of civilized society, some would like to strike back to the wilderness, or, as it is with some Germans and British archeologists, ever-journeying wayfarers, to seek some meaningful remnants in the battlefields and wastelands of previous civilizations.

Señora Ana S. Man-Son: “My friend philosopher, do you think to exist in a real world?

Oh boy! There is more than meet the eyes.
​
How to explain the tragic end of Mary Barnes? But even more disheartening is the case of the Wailing Woman (La Llorona), Rosalinda, the dread of the Latino People.

These two women, however bound up by the Mother of us all, have an incomprehensible dislike for each other.”

Cracking the Riddle of La Llorona, the Veiled Lady, Ghostly Apparitions Among Different Cultures and Peoples:

Philosopher: “…On the heels of Carl Jung's insights into the collective psyche of people, let me explain the legend of La Llorona (the Wailing Lady), as perhaps the sublimation of the female aspect, the Holy Maid, Mother.

Such Mother, Mary, Maria, Virgen of the High Grace, may be a manifestation of our innermost yearnings to the meaning of existence: suffering, redemption, guilt, and the mystification of forces, as yet, unexplored in the embryonic development of the Mediterranean people.

Saints and angels are said to appear in the likeness of the beholder, but when I attempt to explain the mysterious apparitions of monsters in the United States, i.e., Sasquatch, Chupacabra, the Skin-walker, et al., and those weirdest ones roaming the mind of certain people, the paranormal encounters are often set in the thickest of fogs and shadows.

More than just representational ideas of our inner fears, premonitions, dread, longings, etc., they may have some form of existence in the phenomena of sentience and consciousness.

That these mental effigies, whether existing subjectively or objectively, could materialize by their own accord, is one of the greatest conundrums in all the phenomena of Mother Nature.

The mysterious apparitions of Virgin Mary, for instance, could be explained as the mystification of the nursing mother.

In-depth Analysis of the Weeping Woman (Llorona) in the Unrolling Scroll of History:

For those with a penchant for ghost-stories, after all these years of philosophical summersaults and sacred indulgences, we are still fumbling and groping for answers in the altar of our personal convictions.

Should I believe in the Purgatory?

Or, should I accept the version of the Protestant when confronting the unknown?

Yes, growing bored of modern society, nothing like ‘the thrill of dread in our heart.’ I invite thee to venture yourself through solitary places, abandoned houses, the wilderness, the cemetery of one thousand souls relegated to oblivion, and once there, ask yourself what is the meaning of life?

El anfiteatro de la existencia es mucho más interesante —es realmente mucho más fascínate— con estos testigos de nuestros asombros, escalofríos y espantos.

The amphitheater of existence is much interesting —it is really more fascinating— with these witnesses of our wonder, chills and dread.

No es que yo me deleite por estos lugares abandonados, tétricos o de atmósfera lúgubre, pero es que mi mente rehusa aceptar que mis pensamientos y emociones dejarán de existir el día de mi muerte.

It is not that I would delight while making headways through abandoned places, once the stirs and bustle of human existence, but so it seems that my mind refuses to accept that one day my thoughts will cease to exist.

When I hear the sighs and whimpering of a forlorn lady strolling late in the night, a bride-to-be swaddled in a white gown, I seem to hear the disheartening outcry of Mother Nature to the question of existence.

Such haunting echoes could pierce my heart with inexplicable feelings of sadness and dread.

Do you know some-one obsessed with bride-to-be gowns or white dresses?

The likelihood is that such person, though unaware of the causes, may have ‘bride-brain symptoms.’

Some people believe that such obsessions, as lingering kinetic energies, could still survive in the hereafter.

Later on, these psychic energies, as though incased in the mind of the person (usually a woman), could somehow appear in the Spirit Realm.

I learned about the ‘bride-brain-symptoms’ through a friend who is a staunch believer of ghostly apparitions as mere lingering psychic energies. In Latin America, we call such bride-to-be ghost “la Llorona.”


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The diary of Argentine journalist Ernesto Gutierrez who passed on in 2009 (find it down the scroll)

Philosopher:

“ Let us take a closer look at the haunting story of Sarah Evangelina Sanchez (Don't Cry For Me Argentina).

Year 2009: Buenos Aires, Argentina,

Frightening fate of Argentine journalist, Don Ernesto Gutierrez, who, while seeking explanations and correlations to the haunting of Sarah Evangelina Sanchez (passed on in the year 1982) somehow would fall sick-love to a beautiful lady dressed in a white gown (27 years later).

Mr. Gutierrez' death is still shrouded in mysteries. Informe policial
Comisaría de Santa Fe, Argentina

Twenty seven years later, that is in the year 2009, The Ghost of Sarah Evangelina Sanchez would strike again. Her victim, an Argentinian journalist, Don Ernesto Gutierrez, would fall prey to his own penchant to solving unexplained phenomena.

Late in the night, Sarah E. Sanchez found him by the lonely road of our dread, but hardly was he able to recognize her as the purported ghost of the fatal curve (La Curva Fatal).

Tentatively, I have parsed, squared and pared ‘watchwords,’ here and there, so as to unravel an underlying literary scheme of things behind the phantasmagoria of Mr. Ernesto Gutierrez’ mind.

However skeptical, when I paused, pensively, on the watchword ‘curve,’ it struck me as probably referring to woman's gracious hip, ‘guitar-like,’ or well-rounded shapeliness.

Ghost-thrillers are known to combine frightful oxymoronic elements to achieving their climatic effects, the absurd vs the farce, the grotesque vs the droll and so on, but in the case of Don Ernesto Gutierrez’ literary scheme, he has successfully kept the dignity of his ghost-story without resorting to the trite usage of hideous adjectives.

Hence, I was cautious to accepting Don Gutierrez’ story as a true encounter with a ghost.

Perhaps he had a tryst with a real woman of flesh and bones.

—Who knows?

Or, perhaps, like Josh Manson, he had an encounter with a beautiful lady resembling the ideal woman of his platonic limerence?

It was a gentle evening of 2009. While driving just before the all-covering pall of night, Señor Ernesto Gutierrez came across a striking beautiful woman dressed in white.

The beautiful lady of our dread, donned in her gorgeous white gown, beckoned him for a hitchhike to a place where, as we later learned from Don Gutierrez’ journals, was meant to meeting her beloved groom at a local church.

Charmed by the beauty of this lady, he cannot believe his eyes to be in the stunning presence of the same dama, ‘la muerta,’ Sara Evangelina Sanchez, believed to have been killed in a car accident twenty seven years earlier (1982).

My goodness! The lady looked so real to his touch, and as pretty as Nausicaa, the match for a Greek goddess, cannot be a ghost standing in front of me.

Eres una chica bellisima!
(You are very pretty)

Sarah E. Sanchez looks so real and warm to his touch and senses, that he simply refuses to admitting her as a haunting ghost.

She has to be real!

Indeed, her appearance, reminiscent of the ghost of Sarah (la chica del vestido blanco en Argentina) as reported by eye-witnesses, was perhaps sheer coincidence —this latter human being, ‘es una coincidencia.’ So reasoned Don Ernesto Gutiérrez while looking at her long beautiful white dress.

‘Su cara era cincelada con algo de virgen inmaculada, su mirada infundían algo inexplicable.’

Her countenance was in the likeness of a virgin. Immaculate conception, her visage conceals something unexplainable.

‘Su piel pálida pero delicada inspiraba admiración y miedo a la vez. Sus labios, como de doncella, sellaban un misterio.’

The pallor of her skin inspired both admiration and dread. Her lips, sealed as the silence of a heavenly maid, veiled a mystery. Misterios de misterios!

‘Por qué asustas a los hombres?’
Why do you chase men away?

Aware that this lady was dressed as a bride- to-be married, he could not but side-glance along her striking physical appearance, and thus he went on to congratulate the lucky guy, who has won the heart of this inefable señorita!

Sarah E. Sanchez, in 1982, if we believe the account to be reliable as stated in Don Gutierrez’ personal diary (the Informe policial Comisaría de Santa Fe, Argentina), was so madly in-love with a lover named Victor —a man that had been dead for sometime— that she decided to commit suicide so that her soul could be met with him in the Spirit Realm.

Much later, in the year 2009, Don Ernesto Gutierrez, a reputable journalist of trustworthiness, seeking answers to numerous reports of ghost-hauntings and fatal car-accidents at a notorious dangerous hill-road in Argentina, la Curva Fatal de La Mujer en Blanco, is somehow brought to a tragic end by a mysterious woman believed to be the ghost of Sarah Evangelina Sanchez herself.

This is ironic, but some of us may fall victims to our own figments and fears —the fancy of our fleeting dreams, sometimes, could lead us southwards, back to the haunting spirit (zeitgeist) of our predecessors.

This love-story could simply defy our comprehension. How can a man fall prey to the figments of his own imagination?

Don Gutierrez’ last moments with the ghost of Sarah survived in his diary.

His diary, as recovered and carefully analyzed by the local police authority in Argentina, would make us frown upon the implausibility of such love-stories, as perhaps the mumble-jumble of ingenuity, gibberish and tall tales.

Nevertheless, few journalists would deny the fact that Don Ernesto Gutierrez, as averred by the local authority, had a tragic car accident, and that the way he survived his last moments, could only make us wonder on the mysterious reasons surrounding his death:

‘Yo También Te Amo’ was spelled with his own blood.

The tragic end of Don Ernesto Gutierrez is alarmingly illustrative of the ineluctable forces of fate, and she seems to be viscerally interwoven in the mother’s womb, as the aforementioned Dream of the Mother’s Tomb, as the holy lady of our childhood, but also as the most exalted idea of beauty and chastity in the holy maid of Dante Alighieri, Beatrix.

These lofty ideas were once deeply imbedded in the Colletive Psyche of our people.

Herein lies the redeeming power in the Cult of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, for in her nursing bosom we seem to deposit our most sacred feelings in the sublimation and mystification of womanhood: the pure vessel of all our burdens and afflictions.

As we carefully read his last lines, next to a woman of striking physical beauty, Sarah Evangelina Sanchez, it is very plausible to surmise the chain of circumstances leading to Ernesto Gutierrez' tragic death, as the outcome of a man finally succumbing to his own figments and forebodings.

However bound up with the alluring, intoxicating powers of sick-love by an amorous man, perhaps a platonic fool par excellence, falling prey to such exalted ideas of beauty, the Fate of Don Gutierrez, Josh Manson, and Don Sebastian Cornelio have all much in common.

But I cannot blame Don Ernesto Gutierrez for such sibylline infatuation with a ghost of his own making, for such figments may spawn from the deepest recesses of our subconsciousness, our childhood, the haunting spirits of our past with the Greco-Roman people.

At any rate, the journalist has left a ghost-story, a masterpiece, so extraordinarily unique from a psychological perspective, that I wish to recast it in the writings of Carl Jung.

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Unravelling the Mind of Ernesto Gutierrez — The Cult of That Beautiful Woman.

I don't think Mr. Gutierrez suffered bouts of schizophrenia, or any serious mental illness. His writings are appallingly lucid, logical, objective. Find the story, verbatim, down the scroll (translated from the Spanish original).

The ghost of Sarah Evangelina Sanchez, was perhaps a projection of Don Gutierrez’ unconscious yearnings, ‘deepest inwardness,’ the cherished ideas of ‘beauty and perfection,’ as handled down by the religion of his upbringing in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In other words, he was haunted by the spirits of his past with Spain, Italy, Greece. Fate is thus interwoven, nay, sealed, and revealed with the haunting spirits of our ancestry.

Such is the journey of life, and like archeologists, we are often guided by the ‘sotto whisperings’ of our dreams, intuitions, or that ineradicable, indeed, uncanny nostalgia piercing our soul with gravest questions concerning the meaning of life.

The figments of our mind, however illusive and spun in the prolific night of our forebodings, may make their fleetingly recurrent appearances, every now and then, in the mazy crisscrossed pathways of fate and coincidence: dreams and circumstances may coincide beyond our personal choices.

If these friends cannot find us by the broad thoroughfares of reality, they would then find us in the ever-journeying episodic moments of our dreams!

Those who are able to recall their dreams may live their lives twofold: here and there, in the Spirit Realm.

Dreams, for those can decipher them, are not just the oneiric experiences of the subconscious touching contiguity with the conscious, but much to our surprise, they are said to be revelatory of events as yet sleeping, sort of speak, in the womb of time.

In some instances, a dream, as those antedating the amphitheater of reality, may have forewarned us the course of a specific although ineluctable train of events, and things happen with such astonishing accuracy, that we are simply left with the facts pressing hard against our skepticism.

What is even more striking when we replay the dream in the foreknowledge of the outcome, and yet, we are unable to act otherwise.

It is as though we, ourselves, are being moved by the invisible tethers of an invisible force, or, I dare say, a spirit, a providence, whose ‘Sovereign Will’ one may sumirse to be the ‘thus it is’ or ‘thus ought to be’ in the unfolding destiny for every human being, —all this, despite our finite scope of freedom to taking a course of action which may run counter to the metaphysical laws of fate.

When all is said, destiny, as though written by the mysterious laws of entelechy, is foreshadowed in the first blossoming buds of our coming to being and becoming: the first formative years of our childhood. In fact, childhood, is but an adumbration of our ensuing years in this short journeying experience, and if we are to understand the latter, one would better ‘wimble deep’ into the cradle and manger of our shared infancy with the haunting spirit of our past.

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I am not a staunch determinist, but when we cast a glance at the unpalatable pages of history, or when we carefully survey the lives of men and women, good or bad, virtuous or wicked, I am tempted to believe that most people are but puppets under the sway of the gods of yore.

Who would pull the strings for the divine comedy of our joys and woes?

True! In earnest, one would like to believe that we are under the control of the God of Issac, or the God of Abraham, but it is quite a disappointment when we witness this millennia-old feud among these children (Jews and Palestinians) acting out the same old story: wars and genocides without end.

As much as we are unwilling to admit, the unconscious, as steeped in the deepest recesses of our dreams, it is, nevertheless, the key-player and culprit behind most people’s ghostly apparitions. Hence, why we ought to keep the house clean!

Even in New York, I carry, though in my unconscious mind, a veritable storehouse of elusive beings haunting my existence.

True. When I bolt back to a secluded spot, alone with my thoughts, I am often overcome by goose-bumps reminiscent of a former child, a happy although entranced lad still in possession of rarest feelings smacking of reverence, dread, holiness, fascination for the enchanting mysteries of existence.

I cannot think of a more awesome experience than a riveting jaunt into the woods of our dread.

‘The silvery light of the moon was casting its beautifully holy glimmers upon the woods, and I felt so happy to be there.’

The aspect of the woods gave me chills.

The eeriness of those groves was quite a tract of unfathomable dread in the meaning of existence. When I set my eyes to comprehend the somber aspects of those bowers, therein emerged formless specters to the fancy of my mind.

They were so frightful to look at, but I experienced a gloomy delight so far superior to a man or a woman as yet uninitiated in these mysteries.

When I delve deep into my mind's inner sarcophagi, and thus try to cast a ray of comprehension into the riddles of ghostly apparitions, I cannot but seek me introspectively and retrospectively into the earliest years of my infancy.

—-We all live in a web of dreams!

Therefore, there is a kernel of truth in Spirit Seeing or Ghostly Apparitions, because we all tend to project our inner-world, our childhood, into the outer pictures of the objective world, the motley tapestry of human experiences.

At any rate, one cannot deny a Colletive Consciousness in the interpretation of transient phenomena.

Every people have their peculiar goblins, wraiths and specters:

The Bride-to-Be, dressed in a white gown, whether a Virgin or a Platonic Idea imbedded in the collective psyche (archetype) of the Latin people, may have, by the rarest train of circumstances, won a unique place in the interpretation of our lives.

The mystification of womanhood, Mary, may be as old as the adoration of Athena in Ancient Greece: the Cult of Mary may have sprung from the unconscious swamps of our primitive times in the maternal mangers of Mother Nature.

The mother goddess, whether we like it or not, is imbedded in the collective psyche of the Latin people.

The Lady, as today, whether La Virgen de la Altagracia, Virgen Maria, Virgen Guadalupe, or La Llorona, the Wailing Woman is weeping the loss of her children.

Returning to the tragic end of Don Ernesto Gutierrez, his ghost-story, on closer inspection, could be construed but as the ingenious commingling of facts and fiction.

That it has a moral lesson is undeniable, and one could gain the finest insightful gleanings in the trained mind of a first-rate journalist: objective, lucid and concise.

‘The thrill of dread,’ according to Goethe, is one of the most interesting conundrums in this existence.

This is the main reason why I love the USA! Here we may come across people, neighbors, entities, ghosts, characters, shadows, whose precious memories (phantasmagoria) could only survive but in my writings. But once I die, who will recall them?

Moreover, some ghost-stories ought to be accessed as affording some insights in the collective psyche of a people: that is to say, the peculiar cherished ideas that may mold our collective worldview and idiosyncrasy.

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The Ghosts (Zeitgeist) of Los Conquistadors

A true spiritual life seems to be one of precious memories among time-stricken places still exuding the ethos of the past.

When you meet a ghost, as scary as it is, we are confronted with the meaning of life from a far greater perspective.

Of course, coming from Latin America, and much acquainted with stories of ghosts haunting lonely roads and places, I have never felt a stronger hankering for that wonderful time, a former self, a child, that was at home but in the humble manger of my surroundings with woody hills, Spanish colonial houses.

These ghost stories could still make my heart contract at the thoughts of La Llorona.

That nocturnal wailing lady, beautifully donned in her white gown (or tulle negligee, or that veil of most delicate gauze), standing aloof in yonder spot, and asking for a hitchhike in the dropping hours of our history…could may my skin crawl.

Now, I may touch upon the question: how has New York City affected me in the recollection of the best gleanings when preening my heart for feelings long thought to be dead?

Two weeks ago, I searched me in the music of Spanish singer Camilo Sesto, Melina, and soon my eyes were overcome by the tears of such beautiful woman: Melina. Her signs became the loveliest echoes:

‘Has vuelto Melina, alza tus manos hacia Dios, que El escuche tu voz.’

Seville, Older Than New York: El Hospital de las Cinco Llagas

Reputable Spanish reporters, curators, security personnels working late in the night, and other first-hand eye-witnesses speak of their chilly experiences while surveilling the old historic landmark, El Hospital de Las Cincos Llagas, of the legendary city of Seville, Spain.

Seville, which is built upon the remains of past civilizations, is one of the most hauntingly beautiful cities in the world, but overtime, some its historic sites are said to be haunted, and rightly so, for its ashen history has been the bloody scenes of invasions, plagues, plundering, pillaging, famine and crimes against its own citizens.

Its medieval beauty blossomed during the rule of the Moorish Caliphs, and then, it bloomed again with greater beauty and splendor during the heydays of the Spanish Empire. Its walls and temples were decked out with shining gold brought from La Hispaniola (1500-1600s).

It is worth reminding ourselves the horrific abuses committed against the indigenous people by Los Conquistadores, as reported in Los Anales of Bartolome de Las Casas:

But while there is much to regret on the arrival of the Conquistadors in the virgin lands of la Hispaniola, we may forget those dark centuries when the Spanish people, living at closed squares in their populous cities, had to suffer widespread contagious diseases.

Some say that the indigenous people became extinct due to STDs (sexually transmitted diseases) brought about by the Spaniards, but I think the Taínos (aborígenes) simply mixed with other races, or perhaps their male population was greatly reduced by the forceful strains of abusive labors without proper sanitation, malnutrition and lack of adequate hygiene.

Taina women, becoming the maid-servants of Spanish men, soon stopped interbreeding with their Taino male-counterparts, and in a short period of time, this mysterious race, los Tainos, fell into a quick decline.

The Tainos are said to be related to the indigenous people of Venezuela, but to my eyes, their gracious form and shapeliness betray a striking similarity to the Hawaiian people or the Polynesians.

Taína women, with their gracious forms aesthetically appealing to the Conquistadores, would soon bear children of mixed marriages.

Contrary to the widely-accepted opinion that the Spanish people settled in Latin America because it was preferable than the luxurious villas and splendid vistas of Spain, many people left Spain due to dearth and famines.

Regarding the exodus of the Jews to Latin America, inquisition shunted countless families to seek asylum in the new world.

Therefore, despite any antisemitism, Jewish blood is diluted in the gene-pool of some Hispanic people.

The poor Spanish peasants, even those enjoying the privilege of urban society, had to endure famine and air-born illnesses, galore, like tuberculosis, bronchitis, and other lethal epidemics were the dread of Spain without powerful antibiotics to combating la Peste Negra (black plague), which, as we are informed, made the streets of Seville a veritable cemetery. That's why Seville is still haunted.

But the main reason why so many Spaniards left Spain was la Hambruna (famine), which is something few of us would be willing to admit.

Of course, during the Inquisition, countless Sephardic Jews left Spain for la Hispaniola, and most of them settled in what is today called, the Dominican Republic. Back in the late 1930s, a new wave of Jews would settle in Sosua, Puerta Plata.

When the Haitians invaded the Dominican Republic (1800s), some lucky ones fled to Cuba and Puerto Rico.

Jewish people in New York could trace their genealogy back to the time of the Inquisition in Spain, and some Dominican people, if we carefully examine their phenotypes, aquiline noses and the etymology of their last names (e.g., Lopez, Perez, Bencosme, and so on) may bear a striking resemblance to the Semitic people living in Inwood in New York City.

Once again, let us touch upon the myth of La Mujer de Blanco (woman dressed in white)

To these ghost-stories, we shall not forthwith lend any credulity in the silly generosity of our gullibility, but what strikes me most, is the peculiar ‘psychic make-up of a people,’ which is then projected in the phenomena of spirit-apparitions.

True! We may say that just as our thoughts may partake of some bodily manifestation, in like manner, the will of a people, collectively speaking, through some strange train of events and circumstances, may act upon the subjective mind-world in the comprehension of our figments as limned down by the force of customs and religion.

Therefore, the manifestation of gods, ghosts, angels and other figments, as reported by most cultures and people, are often fashioned according to our local cultures, at least, and for the most part consistent with the metaphysical tapestry or psychic imagery in the unconscious lab of our spiritual experiences.

This spirit-world is often colored through the vehement passions of our religious beliefs.

Such spiritual experiences would work as photic representations (the internal studio of our peculiarities in the spirit of a people), could create or attract ghosts kindred to our own idiosyncrasy.

The physical realm, nonetheless, is indeed the metaphysical anvil whereupon we may mold and fashion our ideas of the spiritual realm: that is to say, most ghosts appear in the shapeliness of people's spiritual heritage.

Of course, I am not denying the fact that, through some striking phenomenal coincidences, these collective forces (psychic energies) may partake of some bodily manifestation.

At any rate, the phenomena of angelic apparitions, so common among the Jews and Christians, to the Northern European, may appear in the likeness of Caucasian features, whereas to the Asiatic mind, these spiritual entities may resemble the beholder's own personal phenotype or the fabric of his or her personal internal metaphysical constitution.

It would be silly to deny any confluence emerging from the spiritual to the physical, or those keenly deeply-felt affections as cherished in the altar of our personal religious beliefs, for most people would shape their ghostly stories according to the likeness of their immediate surroundings, kin and kith.

La Llorona (the Wailing Lady) is scary to most Latinos because she embodies ideas that seem to be in stark juxtaposition with the twilight of our Fate, yet veiled in a white gown, our high-flown aspirations in the subliminal syncretism of Catholicism: the underlying crypts and underground passages of Seville, our shared past with the ancient Phoenicians, the Greeks and the Romans with their penchant for ladies of such estirpe.

A veil has always shrouded the haunting enigma of a beautiful woman, and in Latin America, she has become a myth.

A beautiful woman with milky skin, hair blacker than pitch could be said to be scarier if seen late in the night.

A combination of all the psychic energies (archetypes, prototypes, kinetic psychic energies), constantly emanating from the unconscious collective mind of a people (the unconscious swamp of our earthly wanderings), in this case of the Latin races of Ancient Rome, may eventually come into existence in the phenomenon of la Llorona —in the pregnant womb of her motherland España— a phenomenal manifestation of our fears, beliefs, mystification, sublimations, in short, the quintessence of our idiosyncrasy.

Now, if we believe A. Schopenhauer's insights in the ‘Will in Nature,’ we shall reinterpret the wailing woman, "la mujer Llorona," as reported by Latinos through the Americas, as a bodily manifestation of our own collective mind: a syncretism of pagan ideas mixed with the Hebraic religions.

From this perspective, La Llorona, if we could combine the psychoanalysis of Carl Jung's ideas on the Colletive Psyche of a People, and the terribly profound ideas of A. Schopenhauer in the ‘Will-To-Exist,’ could be interpreted as the mournful soul of the Latin People in the struggle to exist, because a hapless woman donned in a white gown (black hair for veils) and somehow doomed to roam the wide earth in search of her lost children, would remind us the capricious twists, pitfalls and detours of great nations in the unpalatable pages of history. At this point, I would like to remind you the Latin poem: Carmina Burana.

This sombre view may hurt the pride of the Latin people, but where is the Latin Soul today (Carl Orff in his Carmina Burana: O Fortuna!).

Back in the eighteenth century, with the ignominious defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte's armies under the superior might of Fate, many artists and thinkers felt that the future of the Latin people, today but a ghost, the Melina Mercouri of Spanish singer Camilo Sesto, would be one of dread and disheartening wailings in the night of history: ‘llantos y pavores.’

I am here sharing with you an excerpt from the diary of Argentine journalist Don Ernesto Gutierrez who passed on in 2009.

As we carefully read his last lines, in the company of Sara, the ghost, it is plausible to surmise the chain of circumstances leading to his tragic death, as the outcome of a twisted mind finally succumbing to its own figments, self-induced fears and imagination.

This story, nonetheless, cannot be true, but like countless other ghost-stories, we would read it for the sake of fun!

Moreover, some ghost-stories ought to be accessed as affording some insights in the collective psychic forces of a people: that is to say, the peculiar cherished ideas that may mold our worldview and idiosyncrasy.

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Sharing some lines from the diary of Ernesto Gutierrez

I thought she was a bride-to-be going for a wedding.

It was midday, and due to the failures of my investigations, which, upon redaction, I was told to go back to Buenos Aires to report the inundations, and what was the state of the people.

And so around forenoon, I drove past the hostel by the road, where I had spent the night before inquiring on the purported appearance of a ghost.

A beautiful woman dressed in white, gorgeous lady, her countenance, nonetheless, appeared somewhat mournful, beckoned me to stop as she went past the hostel.

She begged me to take her to a local church were, as I later learned, was meant to be married, and that her car, had been damaged.

I thought all this to be an incredible coincidence, for, I still had fresh the story of a beauty-ghost-haunting, but I would not lose anything for giving her a hitchhike.

I asked her what was her name, and she told me: Sarah. At this, my blood ran cold. Seeing such beautiful a bride-to-be by the copilot, just as I had wished two days ago, was like a dream come true.

But, certain things seemed not to square with reality. She had opened the front-door with her right hand, nay, I had felt it warm to my touch, and since it was daytime, her body could cast shadows. Indeed! It appeared as though she was alive.

Dressed in her delicate white gown, I don’t think I had ever seen a more beautiful woman, more so because she had no make-up, or at least, ostensibly, she seemed not to be wearing any lipsticks or rouge.

—‘What a fortunate groom’ I told her without pressing the gas. No doubt, he must be waiting for you with butterflies in his heart.

‘Please, let’s go,’ she urged me. ‘I am late.’

—No worries, we shall arrive in five minutes, so I told her. Nevertheless, I could not start-off the car, for we would need to pass by La Curva Fatal (the Fatal Curve).

I stopped glancing at her sidelong, and I gassed the car, every now and then keeping an eye on her as we drove along the lonely road.

What a coincidence —it had to be, and my mind, on and off, refused to accept the idea that this beautiful woman was but a ghost. It cannot be her a ghost, and yet, if she was one, I wanted to be one alongside her.

Her face was perfect, and her far-off gaze seemed to be expressive of an uncanny sadness.

The automobile started-off and I endeavored to gear forward through the main road. The traffic was very congested, but we could still make headways through the narrow margen, as yet clear of any pedestrians. I thought this hectic traffic could possibly distract me.

We are about to pass by the curve, and all of sudden, I was seized by a thrilling curiosity, and was compelled to as ask her:

—Have you heard of the legend of that curve?

It is indeed weird to see you dressed as a bride-to-be, just as some report the elusive appearance of a ghost.

Suddenly, I turned my eyes to see her reaction, but she had disappeared in thin air. The fright was such that I lost control of my car, and I crashed, head-on, against some trees lying athwart our path.

I was surprised to find myself as yet still alive, the protective airbag was very efficient at the impact. The automobile had patterned itself against the bosky entangles, and like a multitude of dead souls, so the tree’s branches and roses had gathered themselves around the trunk.

So many flowers and branches had perhaps lessened the impact of the skidding car, hurtling headlong into the groves, and so I could live long enough to report the mishaps of my tragic end. Soon after, I realized one of my legs had been injured.

The car’s steer-wheel had lowered ten centimeters, and its hard plastic gear had clove itself skin-deep inside of my left thigh.

To no avail, I tried to remove it. At this point, it occurred to me to turn my face towards the road, someone may have seen the car skidding away, and perhaps could stop to rescue me out of this ordeal.

Unfortunately, the cranes and cars continued along their path, and no one would come to help me.

I did not fret. I still had my mobile, it was inside my pocket, but the broken plastic gear had nailed itself in my thigh, and had also broken the aforementioned device in half.

Fears took hold of me most presently and oppressively. For, I could not bring myself to accept the sudden twist of events in my life, and that there had to be a way to catch the attention of a passer-by.

Caught up in desperation, I honked the horn, but this one didn’t sound. The accident had damaged it.

I cried out for help, but the chugging machines of the traffic would simply defuse my calls unnoticed.

With great exertion, I tried hard to move my hands, and perhaps be able to rotate the wheel, but the latter didn’t move a whit.

I even sought to find me something to lean-on, a lever, a pivot, some pulleys, but nothing of the sort was within my reach.

At this point I was made aware of a slight fainting sensation, a sudden giddiness, and at this point, I knew death would come to claim me as her own.

The cut was so deep that it had lacerated an artery. The aorta, as it appeared partially damaged, was gushing forth with a rather mild flow of blood. Its continuous meandering spills, nevertheless, would reach down my shanks and down below the car.

If I didn’t bring myself out of this serious life-threatening situation, I knew I would bleed myself to death, but perhaps the car could still start-off.

So, in the last throes, forthwith I ripped off part of the sleeve (as a poultice of band aid) and put it under my leg to (caulk the flow of blood.). Then I fastened it up tight around the wound, and much to my relief, the flood of blood would slowly subside.

I could not tighten it any further, because, to do so, I would need a stick at hand save this quill, which, would not even hold two rounds.

—‘Tú querías conocer mi historia— me dijo una voz de mujer a mi lado, una mujer que no estaba ahí y que parecía disfrutar con mi miedo.’

—Do you want to know my story— so I heard the bodiless voice of a woman by my left flank, and yet, a woman not to be seen, and one who seemed to be enjoying beside herself with my fright.

Fears-struck, I wanted to take leave out of this ordeal, and by moving myself, I had only further exacerbated the bleeding wound, and now running blood was oozing forth unremittingly from my leg.

Dread took hold of me, and I knew death would claim me as her own: a lost child to the haunting spirit of this dreadful woman.

Then, Sarah Evangelina Sanchez, once again, appeared by my side. So beautiful and resplendent, like that bright-day I first gave her a lift.

Her ghost then appeared in front of me, sad, lovelorn, came forward to cherish my forehead this wise saying:

—Víctor, siempre te querré. Lamento tanto que tuvieras que estar solo antes de morir... te amo, siempre estaré contigo en adelante. Viviremos juntos para siempre en un lugar sin lágrimas. Ya no tienes que correr más, nuestra boda se realizará en el cielo con coros de ángeles, con rosas azules y querubines cantando de alegría.

—Víctor, I would always love you. I do feel sorry for your loneliness before departing to the Spirit Realm…I love you, I will always be with you hence.

We will live together in a place without tears.
It is time to stop running back and forth, our wedding will be celebrated in heaven with the choirs of angels, with blue roses, cherubs and the jubilant singing of happiness.

Her voice was so adorable, and her hands so smooth and gentle that I had to let a few tears.

I thought her boyfriend Victor had died because of me, for this my lingering guilt of not being able to provide him the help timely, propitious. But at the same time, I felt myself to be Victor.

Then, I went on to dip my forefinger with my own blood, on the crystal I jotted down this good bye words: ‘Dear Sarah, I am sorry, I love you too.’

‘Entonces ella desapareció y me quedé solo. Completamente solo, con el tiempo justo para ver venir la muerte y dejar por escrito las pruebas de que lo que me ha pasado no ha sido fantasía sino tan real como esta sangre que poco a poco va escapándose de mí, dejándome sin vida.’

At this point, the ghost disappeared, and I was left alone, totally alone with the course of time, to see the hands of death coming to me, and henceforth, be able to leave this my account, as irrefutable proofs, that what happened to me was not a fantasy, but as real as this my blood, which, little by little is now oozing forth from my soul’s profoundest hankerings…thus leaving me dead.’

Footnotes:

Los Conquistadores and their Offspring Today

I herein would like to touch upon the fragile sinews of solidarity among Latino people, how sectarianism, religious denominations, more than ethnicity or race, has become the single most divisive force to stunting the offspring of los Conquistadores in the latter ripples of history.

For many Latino people, the Catholic Church is no longer the Mother Madonna embosoming her children in the glorious past of Ancient Greece and Rome.

These new children have been conquered by the spirit of the North in the Protestant religion. (Please, peruse George Santayana's insights into these and other religious differences for such people).

Latino people in USA, as today, are divided into many religious denominations, and the Spanish culture has lost proselytes in the cultivation of character and aesthetic sensibilities.

Though the Spanish culture is much admired by those who love history, many Latino immigrants seem to be ignorant, nay, oblivious to their glorious past, and often the finest gems from Spain are relegated to oblivion. Those who have visited the Hispanic American Society in Manhattan, the finest building ever constructed in Washington Heights, could vouch my views in this total neglect of our once glorious past.

True, the Spanish language continues to be spoken as the main language of Latin America, but in USA, a nation traditionally known to be hostile towards any Latinization, at least in the unkempt frowsy aspect of this new immigrant by the seashore, may further split into new demographics along the marginal lines of language, culture and ethnicity.

I express my views tactfully, always keeping an eye on the ever brewing soup of immigration, but also carefully skimming above the simmering bubbles of discrimination and racism: the oldest cousins in the history of humanity.

When approaching the social cultural make-up of the Hispanic people, one could only wish that such differences could be abridged by the power of solidarity, fraternity, religion, humanity and the power of politics. Alas, this is a thankless task.

As I said in a previous e-mail, the weakness of any group of people, as observed by Miguel Cervantes in his masterpiece, El Poder de la Sangre, is their visceral divisions and sectarianism.

Speaking of the binding power of our kin in the spirit of our ancestry, I would like to quote this passage on Santayana's unswerving allegiance to his Spanish Heritage:

"...Remarkably, George Santayana achieved this stature in American thought without being an American citizen. He proudly retained his Spanish citizenship throughout his life.

Yet, as he readily admitted, it is as an American that his philosophical and literary corpuses are to be judged. Using contemporary classifications, Santayana is the first and foremost Hispanic-American philosopher."

The Dominican people, the oldest stock of mixed people from colonial times, are fragmented into countless capsules of religious sects --could split the spleens of any people-- thus thwarting the most common bound that binds a people together: El Poder de la Sangre.

Here and there, we may meet the offspring of Los Conquistadores, los Fundadores de Patrias.

500 years of history has not yet obliterated the keen insights of Miguel Cervantes, El Poder De La Sangre: the Skein of Destiny is often untangled through the mysterious unfolding chapters of our blood: kin and kith.

Overtime, one may meet this fishy scaly creature, un primo, a sea-otter from colonial times, sticking its head out of the oceanic surprises of yesteryears: the offspring of Los Conquistadores.

It is to be observed that Jewish people, during the Spanish inquisition, may have become part of the gene-pool of the Dominicans and Puerto Rican people, hence this contiguous amicability in the neighborhood of Inwood, Washington Heights, Manhattan, and in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Cubans, like Argentines, are said to be a proud Latino people, and at times, some may judge them as the puffed-up "caballeros" of Latin America, but it is not an easy task to tiptoe the lands of Los Gringos without losing the glossy varnish of our Spanish ancestry in the writings of Baltasar Gracián --especially if you live in El Barrio, Manhattan.

Back in the 90s, Argentinian tourists bearing Spanish last names Rodriguez, Jimenez, Beato, et. al, would soon become aware of their distant cousins living as stranded immigrants in New York.

This tree-lined genealogy, branching off into every direction, could make them nervous, but Tito Puente has placed some Puerto Ricans in the high venues of culture and prestige.

Therefore, mi amigo del alma, don't fret, don't panic if your last name happens to be Lopez, Diaz, Polanco, Fuente, Rodriguez, Ramirez, Gomez, and so on and so forth.

Speaking of Cuban immigrants, some brave cousins may share much in common with our Dominican heritage, and so we are in the most amicable terms with Haitians, Jamaicans, Cubans, because it is a genealogical truth when we call a Mexican immigrant, or a Haitian relative, "un primo." In the last analysis, we are part of the family of humanity.

What is striking about our Dominican people's heritage is the ironic twists of History in the unpredictable Skein of Destiny: today some progeny, direct offspring of the proud founders of the Dominican Republic could be found in Venezuela, Cuba, Espana, and perhaps even in Washington Heights, Inwoods, Corona Queens.

Today, some cousins, hijos de gente noble del siglo dieciocho, are toiling hard through the drudgery of immigration and all kinds of clashes with Los Gringos.

By the way, the Corona Family, and los Diaz de Sabana Iglesia, were the first Dominican immigrants to settle permanently in Queens, hence Corona Queens.

Of course, some offsprings have kept their noble lineage in the proud spirit of their ancestry: modest pride, dignity and respect in the struggle of existence.

It is just incredible how correct was Spaniard author Cervantes in his Magnus Opus: El Poder de La Sangre.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Por las últimas tres semanas hemos hablado sobre el Latinismo y sus infortunios, expresado proféticamente en los versos de Carmina Burana, del compositor Alemán, Carl Orff: las páginas grises en las fuerzas de las circunstancias y la historia.

Lo irónico de todo esto es que los hombres más brillantes Estadounidenses, Thomas Jefferson, Henry D. Thoreau, Jorge Santayana, entre otros pensadores, tuvieron su fuente de inspiración en los escritos de autores Romanos.

A penas hace ya un siglo, el Latin era el idioma de la gente culta. Yo, por desgracia, no hablo el idioma Latin, pero si fuese a buscar lo mejor de mis antepasados, tendría que considerar estos autores y genios cuyas obras y pensamientos son considerados la misma cúspide de nuestra cultural occidental.

Un persona Latina que no estudie estas páginas, ya grises por las cenizas del tiempo, "es una sombra tenebrosa," un fantasma desgraciado; un Don Nadie ya hecho tiras y remiendos por las orillas Del Río Hudson; un pobre emigrante azotado por los vientos fríos de despersonalización, sin entidad, deambulando por esos mundos... sin historia ni pasado.

Lo triste del Hispano, como es el
caso de aquel viajero, "aquel forastero," que se pierde en un festín de perros pero sin rabos, es que los Gringos son más Latinos que esta grey que no valora la grandeza del Imperio Romano.

Cuanto leemos a Henry D. Thoreau, cuyos antecedentes eran Franceses, pues como no querer imitar los buenos modales de los Latinos del siglo XVIII?

El consejo que se le daría a nuestros amigos Latinos, es de buscar su dignidad y respeto en la Francia de Napoleón Bonaparte, porque como me decía un cubano erudito, Edmundo Lopez, la Raza Latina en Los Estados Unidos es huérfana de historia.

Más tarde, pensé en lo duro de estas palabras, pero después de tantos inviernos, que tan ciertos son estas palabras?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

José María Vargas Vila, el Controvertido Escritor de Colombia, Ante Los Bárbaros del Norte:

Sus ideas hostiles hacia los Estados Unidos, cuando las leemos desde los prismas de nuestros tiempos, podría decir que Latino América, hoy gimiendo en los llantos de Selena, deben culpar a sus hijos por traicionar su historia en las páginas grises de gobiernos corruptos, hombres insensatos y avaros, que simplemente no aman sus raíces ni sus antepasados.

The United States of America has rather suffered the influx of hordes of Latin people straddling two lands, two worlds, viviendo en dos mundos, whose countries are often rife with corrupted politicians.

Blaming USA —as did Vargas Vila in his turgid writings-- for the deplorable economic conditions of Latin America, such as the current situation in Venezuela, could even argue his lack of honesty and objectivity when assessing the solemn verdicts of history.

Latin America's stagnant policies and botched economic systems, may be part of a larger global crisis affecting the new world order, including USA, but few would deny the fact that corruption, mendacity and money have the greater sway over the will of our people.

Note: Rarely, if ever, did Latin America enjoy such admirable well-balanced a government (a Capitolio) as that of Washington DC, whose unification and rulerships over its lands and people, for the most part solely through the rule of law, could override the disjointed policies and schism so imbedded in the rebellious children of colonialismo.

Los Latinos le dicen no a la madre España en su imperialismo, pero que se puede decir de estas naciones hoy día?

Debemos culpar a España?

When viewed from the stately pavilions of Ancient Rome, Latin America, may share much in common with USA, but the former, with their flawed economic systems and corrupted politicians, could scarcely deserve the designation of "free republics" as conceived by their founding fathers.

The condescending tone, cultural superiority once glossing the minds of our ancestry, and so characteristic of Spanish authors in the nineteenth century, was not just exclusive to Vargas Vila's acrimonious political ravings, for throughout history, the West could never be too civilized without the auspice of ancient Roman authors: from the Capitolio of USA, to Buenos Aires, Argentina, the bedrock of our Western society has always been laid down upon the cornerstones of Ancient Rome.

Though the United States is mainly composed of Northern European people, the building blocks of this society are the quintessence of the ancient Roman Empire, and even the capital is designed after the Ancient Roman Capitolio.

If you are an honest American person, but fail to recognize the ubiquitous influence of the ancient Roman Empire in your society, then you are simply ignoring the countless Latin Mottos and Phrases inscribed in the friezes of some of your most imposing buildings.

It is worth reminding the reader, that Vargas Vila, while sojourning through the lands of United States (at the end of the nineteenth century), spoke of New York, proletariat of America, as a decadent peroration of slaves.

Now, to call the Yankees barbarians would argue Vargas Vila's smattering knowledge of the American Society of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln.

The constitution of USA was drafted by a galaxy of statesmen, thoroughly schooled in the writings of French philosopher Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws. It is also worth noting that the Revolution of France in 1830, as forerunners to the civil war of the American people (1861-1865), and the writings of Thomas Paine, Common Sense, would lay down the framework for the constitution of USA: the inalienable rights of its free citizens and constituency.

True, and has been pointed out by some sociologists, the broad base and racial make-up of early American society, was largely composed of Northern European peasants of very humble background. But this is true for most early settlements in Las Americas of yore.

Nevertheless, we all know that back in the seventeenth century, some of the most gifted minds settled in USA. Countless affluent people, merchants and traders, came to USA seeking greater freedom, and with this latter, the possibility of greater expansion and production at a larger scale, would give this country the upper-hand and prominence in the wealth of the nations.

The tidal waves of the industrial revolution in England would soon eke out for new seashores, new seaports in the expansive uncharted lands of the United States of America.

It is worth saying that Jose Ortega y Gasset, another Spanish writer of high caliber, whose Magnus Opus, the Revolt of the Masses, is one of the finest political treatises ever written on the crisis of our times, may betray a sense of self-unconscious superiority when deigning to speak of our times as "inverted barbarism."

Nevertheless, the Spaniard author, time and time again, may draw the line between the Yankee Hilly Joes, "the savages," "the white-trash," and those well-mannered Protestant immigrants, the Quakers, the Amish, the Pilgrims, the Puritans, among other bucolic people whose moral fabric proved to be very industrious, diligent and the progeny of a Mighty Nation: America.

The latter, when compared with the former, stand out as another breed of human species, "nobles," even peasants of loftiest sentiments, stand out so different as it is the wheat from the chaff, or as it is the luster of copper so dull when compared with the shining glint of pure gold.

That such obnoxious people, "la chusma" as it is called in Latin America, the rabble, are more likely to spawn from the lower strata of any society, may remind us on the subversive power of poverty.

Poverty degrades human beings, regardless of race or nationality, it simply makes us fugitive to our loaners, and thus we end up bargaining the highly-priced virtues of probity and honesty for those of treachery and worldly shrewdness.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Vargas Vila, unlike Jose Ortega y Gasset, was rather a men of letters. He was not a genuine philosopher. I would say he had one of the greatest prose writings of the nineteenth century, but his political rantings may suffer from myopic chauvinism, which, for the most part, seemed to affect his blinkered political analysis of other societies.

Obviously, Vargas Vila was not acquainted with the pragmatism of William James, or with British philosopher, Adam Smith: Inquiry On the Wealth of the Nations.

"....En 1891 Vargas Vila viajó a Estados Unidos y se ubicó en Nueva York. El Apóstol, al recordar una reunión con obreros, escribió: “El vehemente entusiasmo con que, sacados de sus asientos por ímpetu de amor, saludaron aquellos esclavos de América la peroración cadenciosa, inspirada, valentísima del colombiano José María Vargas Vila, que cuenta sus días ya gloriosos por las batallas afamadas de su palabra y de su pluma en pro de la libertad”.

Ya hace dos semanas, me entenderé, por ciertos medios de prensa, que varios políticos Dominicanos, entre otros países de Latino América, enfrentan serios cargos de corrupción con una compañía de Brazil.

Should we blame the US government?

Now, these days, the economy has worsened for everybody, and the fetters of needs, servitude and serfdom with their feudal lords, landlords, IRS, etc., etc., once again, could plunge a goodly chunk of humanity into beasts of burden and necessities.

Best regards,
Ed. Beato

Continue:
Shanti Chapter VII:
www.eddiebeato.com/shanti-chapter-vii---jennifer-gemrsquos-impression-of-the-hudson-river.html