Short Stories of Former Neighbors in Washington Heights - New York City
I hope you will read this account of my time in New York City, from the corner of a ghetto, to the affluent enclaves of the wealthy and privileged. It took me five long-years to finish this account of my time in New York. Somewhat exhausted, I commend to you, my dear reader, to ponder in your heart the things that I lived-through during the 1990s, and how I found my thought-material to composing and transcribing some of the organ musical pieces as found on YouTube. These writings, however toned with struggles, sufferings and inspiration, have found my best expression in my recent transcription for the organ: Dr. Faustus.
Such echoes may better convey the thoughts which I have cozily harbored in my heart and mind for years long. Moreover, though I am a tolerably happy person, I even dared ask the homeless man in the street to lend me his heart for a few days, so that I could write music as only possible with some propitious share of sufferings, compassion and love. Unlike Dr. Faust, I would seek inspiration in the Golgotha Path of Christ, whose sufferings and passions had furnished Johann Sebastian Bach with glorious music for a human being still in possession of his-her soul.
During the intervening years, 2014-2015, I lost my previous apartment to the Presbyterian Hospital and Cushman and Wakefield LLC, who have both become major real estates holders in New York City. By 2015, I ended up living in Pelham Parkway in the Bronx. During that time I transcribed Spanish Rhapsody (to be found on YouTube), and started writing the first lines for My Memoirs while living in Washington Heights.
For the last ten years, some landlords have been aggressively evicting tenants, constantly baiting potential affluent clients for more than double the current rent fees. Back in 2014, I left my previous apartment paying $669.55 cents a month. Now the rent-fee for a two-bedroom apartment is more than 2, 500.00 per month. For more than 20 years, I saw my rent-fees-increase some 5 %, which, may seem very little for the current market values, but my family had been paying rents at Apt. 21C since 1974.
Why I left the apartment could be compared to Father Jacob and his twelve recalcitrant children: after my mom passed-on to the Spirit Realm in 2011, feud and bickering became more frequent, and whatever was bequeathed to me would require the difficult task of constant pleas and asking (an older relative) for the renewal of the expired lease (2012-2014). What an excruciating experience it was, but there was some blessed assurance that God was in control.
Nevertheless, my patience and nerves were tested to their boiling limits, and we wound up in the Civil Court. Over the years, like a finicky, punctilious lawyer, I had amassed a veritable mountain of dossiers and carefully-dated papers attesting to my legal rights, but my good conscience led me to release the premises and be in peace with my Creator (Psalm 23).
As much as we all need to back any right with a competent lawyer, I actually dislike fighting in court, even the best of manners, ethical principles and probities are often compromised by our stubborn attachment to material things, but the heavy load of ill feelings and resentments rarely compensate for the wounds of fractured relationships, broken homes and a sense of betrayal to one's sense of dignity and precious memories.
The Civil Court: I was shocked by the hypocrisy and spruced-up comportment of intelligent people in court, but even more surprised and disappointed by the occasional, silent interjection of a cursed word (...) in their foul mouth to rectifying their cases.
The lawyer against me, as I observed the proceeding protocol as befitting his discipline, was a polite, Italian-looking middle-aged man with a rather Brooklynite English. Mr. Marino, his last name, reminded me of the renown Cuomo family, but his lighter complexion was that of Northern European ancestry. His face already showed the grueling toils of his profession, which to me reminded me of those two-faced statues from the early Roman period. I am not a psychologist, but duplicity was already creasing his forehead with rugged furrows, and two conspicuous lines of aging and sullenness were likewise leaving their indelible marks around his nose and mouth.
His English lilt at first amused me as rather hilarious for an Attorney at Law in New York City, but I knew he was just acting his cool side to kick me out of my previous apartment with little vexation or confrontation. True! The lawyer, a natural psychologist by the rigor of constant close scrutinies on his opponents' character and integrity, had perhaps perceived in me some ambivalence, some qualms and scruples torn-apart by the moral duty of an upright Christian fighting his way out of this rabbit hole. --Was I silly?
"So, when would you like to vacate the apartment Mr. Beato?"
True, at times I felt like a dog licking his paws, and a piercing feeling of psychological displacement pressed on me with unexplainable bouts of uncertainties, forebodings and silent rage. It was not so much about losing a Sweet Old Home any more than my sense of loss and honor for an umbilical connectivity with my past. Losing my past would be tantamount to losing the meaning of life.
Though I had the chances of winning a legal fight against an implacable relative, a good Christian friend told me to leave the apartment, that is to say, to avoiding any remaining lingering grudge from such ugly family feuds —so common in modern society. Thus I learned the meaning of the song What a Friend We Have in Jesus, and how a good friend is like a brother during times of needs.
By February of 2015, I had to vacate the apartment at 625 West and 164th Street, my old hood. Imagine the pain of having to store my paintings, my baby grand piano, my beloved foxed books, and other cherished appurtenances in a storage. I had lived there, in that little cozy nest for more than 20 years, and I felt an incomprehensible attachment to my previous neighborhood, but it was time for me to move on and seek a New Seashore.
During Covid-19 - Where Do I Live Now?
Just for a few years, I lived in an enclaved residential area on the upper west side of Washington Heights, a few blocks away from the famous Fort Tryon Park, whereat I had, on certain unforgettable Springs (1999-2002), heart-rending conversations with Holocaust Survivors still bearing the infamous marks of the genocide in the bleeding trenches of their souls and bodies.
Such Jewish survivors are probably dead by this time.
Their stories still throw my mind in state of fear and apprehension. In the year 2000, an olden Jewish man (probably in his late 70s) showed me his arm still prodded with the mark of a slave in a concentration camp. His wife reprimanded him for confessing such inhumanities and cruelties, but he went on telling me that Russian Jews were routinely hung by the Nazis. At this point, his wife, a Polish-looking woman with a rather stern voice, asked him to stop. At her behest, I simply departed with a heavy heart, and on my pensive ways, alongside lovely beds of jazmines and hyacinths exuding their luscious fragrance, I noticed another old couple in yonder spot, probably Jews from Poland, quietly brooding under the shades of a gnarled tree. I realized that these old people were perhaps Eastern Europeans, or Holocaust Survivors. Their flaccid faces gave me chills.
Such echoes may better convey the thoughts which I have cozily harbored in my heart and mind for years long. Moreover, though I am a tolerably happy person, I even dared ask the homeless man in the street to lend me his heart for a few days, so that I could write music as only possible with some propitious share of sufferings, compassion and love. Unlike Dr. Faust, I would seek inspiration in the Golgotha Path of Christ, whose sufferings and passions had furnished Johann Sebastian Bach with glorious music for a human being still in possession of his-her soul.
During the intervening years, 2014-2015, I lost my previous apartment to the Presbyterian Hospital and Cushman and Wakefield LLC, who have both become major real estates holders in New York City. By 2015, I ended up living in Pelham Parkway in the Bronx. During that time I transcribed Spanish Rhapsody (to be found on YouTube), and started writing the first lines for My Memoirs while living in Washington Heights.
For the last ten years, some landlords have been aggressively evicting tenants, constantly baiting potential affluent clients for more than double the current rent fees. Back in 2014, I left my previous apartment paying $669.55 cents a month. Now the rent-fee for a two-bedroom apartment is more than 2, 500.00 per month. For more than 20 years, I saw my rent-fees-increase some 5 %, which, may seem very little for the current market values, but my family had been paying rents at Apt. 21C since 1974.
Why I left the apartment could be compared to Father Jacob and his twelve recalcitrant children: after my mom passed-on to the Spirit Realm in 2011, feud and bickering became more frequent, and whatever was bequeathed to me would require the difficult task of constant pleas and asking (an older relative) for the renewal of the expired lease (2012-2014). What an excruciating experience it was, but there was some blessed assurance that God was in control.
Nevertheless, my patience and nerves were tested to their boiling limits, and we wound up in the Civil Court. Over the years, like a finicky, punctilious lawyer, I had amassed a veritable mountain of dossiers and carefully-dated papers attesting to my legal rights, but my good conscience led me to release the premises and be in peace with my Creator (Psalm 23).
As much as we all need to back any right with a competent lawyer, I actually dislike fighting in court, even the best of manners, ethical principles and probities are often compromised by our stubborn attachment to material things, but the heavy load of ill feelings and resentments rarely compensate for the wounds of fractured relationships, broken homes and a sense of betrayal to one's sense of dignity and precious memories.
The Civil Court: I was shocked by the hypocrisy and spruced-up comportment of intelligent people in court, but even more surprised and disappointed by the occasional, silent interjection of a cursed word (...) in their foul mouth to rectifying their cases.
The lawyer against me, as I observed the proceeding protocol as befitting his discipline, was a polite, Italian-looking middle-aged man with a rather Brooklynite English. Mr. Marino, his last name, reminded me of the renown Cuomo family, but his lighter complexion was that of Northern European ancestry. His face already showed the grueling toils of his profession, which to me reminded me of those two-faced statues from the early Roman period. I am not a psychologist, but duplicity was already creasing his forehead with rugged furrows, and two conspicuous lines of aging and sullenness were likewise leaving their indelible marks around his nose and mouth.
His English lilt at first amused me as rather hilarious for an Attorney at Law in New York City, but I knew he was just acting his cool side to kick me out of my previous apartment with little vexation or confrontation. True! The lawyer, a natural psychologist by the rigor of constant close scrutinies on his opponents' character and integrity, had perhaps perceived in me some ambivalence, some qualms and scruples torn-apart by the moral duty of an upright Christian fighting his way out of this rabbit hole. --Was I silly?
"So, when would you like to vacate the apartment Mr. Beato?"
True, at times I felt like a dog licking his paws, and a piercing feeling of psychological displacement pressed on me with unexplainable bouts of uncertainties, forebodings and silent rage. It was not so much about losing a Sweet Old Home any more than my sense of loss and honor for an umbilical connectivity with my past. Losing my past would be tantamount to losing the meaning of life.
Though I had the chances of winning a legal fight against an implacable relative, a good Christian friend told me to leave the apartment, that is to say, to avoiding any remaining lingering grudge from such ugly family feuds —so common in modern society. Thus I learned the meaning of the song What a Friend We Have in Jesus, and how a good friend is like a brother during times of needs.
By February of 2015, I had to vacate the apartment at 625 West and 164th Street, my old hood. Imagine the pain of having to store my paintings, my baby grand piano, my beloved foxed books, and other cherished appurtenances in a storage. I had lived there, in that little cozy nest for more than 20 years, and I felt an incomprehensible attachment to my previous neighborhood, but it was time for me to move on and seek a New Seashore.
During Covid-19 - Where Do I Live Now?
Just for a few years, I lived in an enclaved residential area on the upper west side of Washington Heights, a few blocks away from the famous Fort Tryon Park, whereat I had, on certain unforgettable Springs (1999-2002), heart-rending conversations with Holocaust Survivors still bearing the infamous marks of the genocide in the bleeding trenches of their souls and bodies.
Such Jewish survivors are probably dead by this time.
Their stories still throw my mind in state of fear and apprehension. In the year 2000, an olden Jewish man (probably in his late 70s) showed me his arm still prodded with the mark of a slave in a concentration camp. His wife reprimanded him for confessing such inhumanities and cruelties, but he went on telling me that Russian Jews were routinely hung by the Nazis. At this point, his wife, a Polish-looking woman with a rather stern voice, asked him to stop. At her behest, I simply departed with a heavy heart, and on my pensive ways, alongside lovely beds of jazmines and hyacinths exuding their luscious fragrance, I noticed another old couple in yonder spot, probably Jews from Poland, quietly brooding under the shades of a gnarled tree. I realized that these old people were perhaps Eastern Europeans, or Holocaust Survivors. Their flaccid faces gave me chills.
The said Jewish man (Year 2000) expressed his heartfelt gratitude to this great nation (USA), and his moving words would become so incredibly significant in my ensuing years, for I would eventually partake of some his existential sufferings.
The irony is that Jewish landlords are now evicting Dominican tenants, their former rescuers during the Second World War, whose ancestry and travails are believed to be related to the Jews themselves, shunted away by the unutterable atrocities during the heydays of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo. The Jewish people paid their gratitude to the Dominicans, but it seems that time has weakened the once strong bonds of solidarity between these kin and kith.
Mercedez Espinal:
The Dominican Republic, or, I should say La Hispaniola Island, ever since it was discovered, 1492, has been the backyard for political refugees, pirates, even criminals, and hapless people looking for asylum and safety in Latin America.
Of course, back in 1970s, I met some Jews and Germans in the Highlands of the Northern Coast, Puerto Plata, some believed to be 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 these blond Dominicans 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.
The irony is that Jewish landlords are now evicting Dominican tenants, their former rescuers during the Second World War, whose ancestry and travails are believed to be related to the Jews themselves, shunted away by the unutterable atrocities during the heydays of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo. The Jewish people paid their gratitude to the Dominicans, but it seems that time has weakened the once strong bonds of solidarity between these kin and kith.
Mercedez Espinal:
The Dominican Republic, or, I should say La Hispaniola Island, ever since it was discovered, 1492, has been the backyard for political refugees, pirates, even criminals, and hapless people looking for asylum and safety in Latin America.
Of course, back in 1970s, I met some Jews and Germans in the Highlands of the Northern Coast, Puerto Plata, some believed to be 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 these blond Dominicans 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 Mr. Barta 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 music 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.
During the Eastern Season the Catholic peasants would sing the sweet vespers of holy existence in the gloaming hours of prayers, faith and inspiration: from Germany to Spain, from the Middle East to the Dominican Republic and even beyond the Atlantis Enigmas, we would hold loving-hands together.
The Atlantis Question
The Island of La Hispaniola is still tinged with the Blue Mysteries of the lost continent of Atlantis. For those who have been in the Dominican Republic, especially in La Cumbre —breath-taking Olympian Heights— rising amidst the wafting clouds of magic and the luscious fragrance of pure nature, could attest to this inexplicable Atlantis-Question hovering all along the ever-stretching Valley of El Cibao.
As a wild child, and perched like a free bird on the top of "La Cumbre, the Highlands," I would placidly scan the deep purple valleys, pastel-shaded dales, lovely green meadows and slanting lands —however uplifting— ever slopping downhill to El Cibao plateau.
********************************
At 185th Street and Fort Washington Avenue, there is to be found a Synagogue. I have never visited it, but I am familiar with their Jewish-looking faces through Interfaith Services held at a local church: Holyrood Church. We all share the common plight against the injustices of a world still fraught with inequalities, racism, deportation and other shocking realities.
Where Do I Live Today?
Today I share a three-bedroom apartment with a friend, but I am, for the most part, in possession of some spacious sense of peace, grace and gratitude. For the most part, the apartment, located in Inwood, is left to my sole responsibility, and I take good care of everything as a prodigal son. But, frankly speaking, I have never felt like a prodigal son. I always dress well like a prince, and as you may know, my joy is to rise early in the morning.
The Fort Tryon Park, under the good care of the Jewish people, is like a paradise, and during some memorable Springtimes, I have fancied to be so wealthy a man among these budding flowers of spirituality and precious memories, their fragrance filled me with some incomprehensible sense of gratitude for the gifts of life. But I have to confess some returning lingering sadness when recalling that lonely old Jewish couple giving free outlet to their nightmarish times in Poland.
*********************************
No one could explain why Mr. Barta 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 music 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.
During the Eastern Season the Catholic peasants would sing the sweet vespers of holy existence in the gloaming hours of prayers, faith and inspiration: from Germany to Spain, from the Middle East to the Dominican Republic and even beyond the Atlantis Enigmas, we would hold loving-hands together.
The Atlantis Question
The Island of La Hispaniola is still tinged with the Blue Mysteries of the lost continent of Atlantis. For those who have been in the Dominican Republic, especially in La Cumbre —breath-taking Olympian Heights— rising amidst the wafting clouds of magic and the luscious fragrance of pure nature, could attest to this inexplicable Atlantis-Question hovering all along the ever-stretching Valley of El Cibao.
As a wild child, and perched like a free bird on the top of "La Cumbre, the Highlands," I would placidly scan the deep purple valleys, pastel-shaded dales, lovely green meadows and slanting lands —however uplifting— ever slopping downhill to El Cibao plateau.
********************************
At 185th Street and Fort Washington Avenue, there is to be found a Synagogue. I have never visited it, but I am familiar with their Jewish-looking faces through Interfaith Services held at a local church: Holyrood Church. We all share the common plight against the injustices of a world still fraught with inequalities, racism, deportation and other shocking realities.
Where Do I Live Today?
Today I share a three-bedroom apartment with a friend, but I am, for the most part, in possession of some spacious sense of peace, grace and gratitude. For the most part, the apartment, located in Inwood, is left to my sole responsibility, and I take good care of everything as a prodigal son. But, frankly speaking, I have never felt like a prodigal son. I always dress well like a prince, and as you may know, my joy is to rise early in the morning.
The Fort Tryon Park, under the good care of the Jewish people, is like a paradise, and during some memorable Springtimes, I have fancied to be so wealthy a man among these budding flowers of spirituality and precious memories, their fragrance filled me with some incomprehensible sense of gratitude for the gifts of life. But I have to confess some returning lingering sadness when recalling that lonely old Jewish couple giving free outlet to their nightmarish times in Poland.
*********************************
Ana S. Manson: “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 to writing of the 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 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 writing about them, and If I did say something about these folks, the convict or the hooligan, 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 reader, I was able to gather enough thought-material to writing about my spiritually-charged experiences while living in Washington Heights.
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, Italians and some Greeks whose ancestors had moved in before Second World War, and I was diligent to inquire 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 90s, 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 Dominican 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, 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. Today, alas, I see some dear old timers of fortitude, true soldiers of life, carrying their bodies, dragging their feet round the same square of yesteryears, hopeful of some happy ending to their lives. From time to time, this former generation would lose a courageous soldier in the struggle of existence. “
*********************************
Ana Asulsona: New York City (1940s-2012)
The Big City has few places as eerily haunting as Washington Heights' old buildings, especially the Trinity Cemetery and Morris-Jumel Mansion, which is believed to be haunted by the ghost of Madam Jumel, is the oldest house in New York.
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.
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.
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.
But who would separate the weed from the chaff in the social weltering of humanity?
Nevertheless, my hood 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, but 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.
Back in the year 2000, as I was browsing through the shelves of Barnes & Noble Bookstore, 66th Street and Broadway, a Jewish woman asked me whether I had read People of the Abyss by Jack London?
"...Read this book like a Bible."
With my humble smattering of sociology and psychology, I studied the little book of Jack London like a sleuth, ever marveling at the underlying forces in the abysmal trenches of the human soul: the good and the bad. I wanted to know why some people are so incredibly different in New York City.
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, or imposing machineries of modern society. By the way, 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?
1990s: 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.
Back in Latin America, I found out that some remarkable people, Guatemalans, Peruvians, Salvadorians, Hondurans, Colombians, Dominicans among other Latinos, could survive under the most inhabitable circumstances, amidst muddy lands, by the river-shore, or even at the foot of some volcano, but rarely would these hapless stranded peasants —from the Caribbean Islands— build their shanties, huts or shacks amidst the slimes and asbestos of those slum-landlords' murky quarters, or, at least subsist inside those caving-holes of civilization to inhale and exhale the pernicious soot amidst the abject conditions of those peripheral areas in the State of New York.
Don't these pensants hanker back to their former pristine bucolic existence?
And, perhaps the lovely woods are still redolent of unspoiled human innocence and internal beauty.
But Washington Heights, at least in the 90s, 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.
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. It was indeed heart-breaking to see some peasants, smashing beautiful Dominican women, of the finest moral caliber, Catholic, cohabiting with those hellish rabbles produced in the worst neighborhoods of the Dominican Republic.
In the slums of New York, nevertheless, hither and thither, one may find the old abandoned buildings, forlorn churches, time-stricken hovels 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.
An Old Lady, Una Santera:
An old lady, whose sunken-cheeks, flaccid facial features, deep-set hollow eyes reminded of Madam Fate in her other mysterious guises, and who had perceived in me some remaining relics of a fine gentleman from the time of Don Quixote, opened her pursed lips to warm me this wise saying:
"...You must come to terms with these amigos if you wish to reach your goals!"
Ana Sulsona: “In 1995, not that far from where I lived, a Cuban woman, una Santera, a hight-hag, was reported to have dangerously tampered with the other spirits of our dread.
For many days and nights, a rancid, putrid odor coming from her apartment, led the perplexed tenants to call the authorities.
The hapless woman was found dead amidst her infamous practices and hideous objects, among which, there were chicken's carcasses and entrails, dry bones, blood-splotches and other organic substances besmirching the floor and walls.
The stench of her apartment was so repugnant and indescribably hellish, that for a long time, some of her neighboring tenants reported to have suffered from nightmare and dizziness...
In the 90s, Latinos churches were overwhelmingly packed with people looking for help. Our neighborhoods and endless squalid slums were stricken with drugs, dysfunctional homes, unwanted pregnancy, witchcraft, obesity, superstition, segregation. The government did very little to improve the condition of the minority community, and so, scores of hapless people gave themselves either to the mysterious forces of Satan or to the caring hands of Jesus Christ.
Under such dire circumstances, certainly, there was not a better place to be than in a nearby church; therein, in the snug sanctuary, tenderly illumined by a few rays of hope, we would cry out to God for help:
Shanti Chapter V (In the Purgatory)
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.
The Morris-Jumel Mansion:
For many years (1988-2014) I lived a few blocks off the famous Morris-Jumel Mansion. The said mansion, the first ever built in New York City, has been reported to be haunted by the ghost of Madam Jumel. Some famous landmarks are quite often said to be haunted, and these haunting stories, without a doubt, would bring the curious visitors in search for some spine-tingling, thrilling experiences with the paranormal.
However a diehard enthusiast of the old New York, I did not visit the Morris-Jumel Mansion, but back in the 90s, around evening, sometimes I would stroll, back and forth, through alleys and squares once filled with the roisterous voices of Armenians, Greeks, Irish, Italians, but now the atmosphere has an uncanny eeriness of people lost in the continued flow of human society. (Las calles 157 hasta la 166th calle en la avenida de Audubon, me parecían grises aún en el verano.)
Esta gente se veían un poco triste y cabizbaja. Where once was the healthy stir and bustle of life in industrious activities, one now finds a downcast people —the drafty winds of the long-winters (1996-2010)—gave me chilly delights for the other side of my neighborhood.
Not far from where I lived, there is to be found the Trinity Cemetery, the oldest graveyard in New York City. Sometimes, in the dusky hours, as I walked along the Riverside Drive, from 153rd Street up to 165th Street, I felt a strange curiosity to inquiring on former neighbors.
The Trinity Cemetery is a veritable quiet place of solitude, peace and meditations.
The spacious habitation of the dead is replete with tombs (epitaphs dating back to the eighteenth century) some unvisited by any Kith or Kin in the long intervals of time.
Hither and thither, there were to be found the crisscrossed solitary pathways, and lo! In yonder spot, the deceptive impression of a human being, a specter, un fantasma, hovering near her resting place.
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Conversations With La Señora Ana Sulsona (2015-2017) A Loyal Chaperone to Her Dying Friends:
Year 2015, speaking of former neighbors in Washington Heights, one early morning, as I gather the autumnal leaves of that unforgettable Fall Season, I saw a Latin old woman, Ana Sulsona, whose nursing heart had been entrusted to the care of two of her best friends, Carmen Sanchez and Mercedes Espinal. Their last days were to be spent in the deathbed. Two weeks later, their souls would pass on to the Spirit Realm.
I am sure that back in the 60s, these old ladies were much into dancing and partying. Puerto Rican Ana Sulsona Martin is descendant of a Spaniard Catalan (father), Russian (grandfather), English (mother's background). Just I remember my beloved 1980s as fresh as yesterday, likewise Ana Sulsona, recalled her past (1950s) with remarkable vivid details and the most moving stories of travails and challenges for former immigrants.
La Señora Ana came to New York when she was a seventeen-year old immigrant, and was able to keep her ship afloat through the most difficult windstorms and challenges. Puerto Rican immigrants went through a lot of daunting challenges, constantly clashing with the Italians (West-Side Stories), and along with the Jews, Blacks and other socially discriminated people, they would pave the way for greater social justice for all. Dominican people, whom complain about racism, did not live through these tough years of segregation, discrimination and hardships. As an old lady now, La Señora Ana drags herself around like a haunting ghost, her personal experiences buried in the living social cemetery for countless people relegated to oblivion.
Who will recall her early years in New York City?
In these last years, as a great human being --who always wanted the best for other people-- she had been taking care of two other hapless old ladies living their last chapters in the bed of affliction, but little was she aware of a lethal bacteria sucking the last strength of her nicotine-stricken lungs. While Ana related to me her heartbreaking stories in the cold winters of the 1960s, the stench of her Marlboro cigarettes almost choked me. But I endured much with her precious memories, because the beautiful soul was perfumed with the virtues of fortitude, endurance and dogged-tenacity.
While keeping an eye on my short 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 Ana Sulsona— would leave me but much disappointed on the meaning of life for the greater lot of the human race.
Fate, the "Sullen Matron of Our Dread," whose hollow-cheeked, haggard face may appear like a night-hag from Medieval Times, sometimes would carry a beautiful innocent dove roosting atop a slightly lifted right hand: trust, solidarity and loyalty.
--Can we trust this right hand?
True! 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 any more lasting than the other left unstable hand, and hence, she is thus condemned to go around with uneasy steps along the perilous zigzagging paths of existence.
On the other hand, enclasped into each other's tight embraces, "distrust and betrayal," there was a multi-colored snake of most frightening aspect. Her multiple folds and tangles, cocky head rising menacing towards me, would set my limbs loose, trembling under my jerking knees.
From the lower base of the scrawny wrist, up to a shaggy thatch of disheveled hairs growing prodigiously (like blades of grass) 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, she was alike civil and a savage woman with the least regards for a large part of the human race. Nonetheless, day and night, she would not allow the snake to eat the turtle dove perched atop the right hand, which, once conquered, could ultimately threaten to swallow whole any remaining of goodness on the surface of the earth.
Nevertheless, I am bound to admit that, in spite of every effort to keeping the good, meek dove safe from the mortal grasp of the ancient serpent, Satan, evil has the greater sway in this world: this is a fact of life:
Tentatively, I could not tell whether a venomous, dangerous hand or a poisonous snake were welded together in unison or perhaps separated as two distinct phenomena (two hideous sisters yet born from the same awful womb), so that any differentiation between the two sisters, "discrepancy and inequality," could prove to be a most difficult incomprehensible undertaking or conundrum.
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 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.
With tickets in hand, I would dare enter into a terrible scuffle with that Cruel Gangster, the master of modern society, today in partnership with this prodigious machine,
Technocracy, whose all-reaching wires and tentacled fetters are said to be stronger than the will of the masses.
But as observed by Jose Ortega y Gasset in his Revolt the Masses, we are but a bunch of barbarians strutting amidst the prison-cells of "civilization."
The difference between a modern man and the savage in the jungle, "anarchy," is rather one of organization, orderliness or domestication, because the natural feral instincts of some humans, like a wild cat (a lynx), at the first opportunity —such beasts of civilization— could strike back into the woods, to live blissfully in the jungle.
And some folks would find it a blessing to retreat back into the wilderness. Of course, I would neither embrace nor praise such barbaric resolutions, because, how much I could sympathize with Henry David Thoreau‘s disobedience, or with Jack London on the shackles of modern civilization, the cold woods or the waste lands of yore are still replete with the woes of humanity.
Accordingly, if an Ancient Egyptian or Sumerian were to have a tour at the most important landmarks and sites of New York City, the sojourner from antiquity, in all likelihood, would be impressed by the staggering scale of our highly-polished materials, mind-blogging glittering technology, building techniques as superior to any imperial powers in history.
Nevertheless, I am not sure whether we could teach these ancient people any philosophy on the art of taming the human cattle. In all likelihood, their assessment of our civilization would be one of wonder and horror.
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Year 2016, Saying Good Bye to My Neighbor Ana S. Manson - Interpretation of Dreams:
With the caring hands of a faithful scribe, I have, herein, attempted to fill-in some missing lacunae in the last days of my dear former neighbor, Anna Sulsona, whose death (Autumn Season 2016), was to be revealed to me in a dream (Valley of Shadow) thus corroborating my insightful observations: that our lives' sequels and circundantes are to be construed but in this transcendent contiguity between dreams and reality, but also in the early intuitive perceptions of our infancy.
How you react to this dream would determine your spiritual strength to coping with the undeniable reality of death for all of us.
This dream, could be the peculiar fancies of my mind afraid of one thousand real facts for all of us: perhaps this dream is the influence and confluence of one thousand impressions coinciding in the unconscious reaches of our mind's deepest forebodings: the reality of death for all of us.
In this dream, I saw what appeared to be a mother's tomb, a gravestone, the capstone was as real as I write these notes. I can recall the epitaph, the smooth surface of the marble stone, and other details appeared to me as real as my heart pounding and beating with strangest feelings of sadness and loss.
Phoenix Bird Impression of Hell:
The scenic aspect of this crowding of ghosts suddenly changed into a bleak world filled with dread, foreboding and horror.
Some horrific spirits, ever rambling and gyrating this gloomy circle of cursed ghosts in the Purgatory, caught sight of me, but I was able to fly away to a safer place.
Meanwhile, the shadows of our dread fixed their cold stares on me.
—Look at those spirits!
They seemed to be at pains to catch me by some other stratagems. As I glanced around me, a steel-cold fear pierced my heart like a sheet of ice slowly melting in my bosom. I tried to escape this futuristic world as one who had sensed something demonic, fatale and gruesome.
All of a sudden, as I stood in mid air, floating, suspended, and rising above the spirits of my dread, further in view, lo! I saw what appeared to be a Deep Valley of Shadows (Psalm 23).
It was a dreadful valley, somber and engulfed with grey filaments of formless haze resembling hovering specters or ghosts.
Enveloped in thick fogs, scarcely mollifying the disheartening, raging, wailing of cold winds ravaging and buffeting the sore gullets of those throaty crags, I was overwhelmed by this "sense of in-falling-depth" into the unfathomable reaches of my poor soul's labyrinths.
The Valley of Shadow was not the Pit of Hell, but its yawning maw, its spacious, throaty, spiraling descent, was indeed filled with inexplicable sadness, dejection, cacophonous voices, disheartening whimpering and shrieks amidst the starless night of one thousand frightening figments. This has to be Hell!
Listening to the Secret Scribe's Sotto Voce - Visiting my Previous Neighborhood Again (Year 2017)
A few days later, and still grappling with the disturbing figments of my dream on the Valley of Shadow, the Spirit urged me to go back to my previous neighborhood: Washington Heights. I had not visited the dearly loved neighborhood for a few months now (end of the year 2016 to the beginning of the year 2017), but a chain of circumstances would place us in direct connection with the most personal chapters of our lives' sequels: our intimate episodes, our dear neighbors, our very life and surroundings are all intertwined in the flickering waning candle's flames of our destiny. Such sweet candle’s flame waved and wavered unto me with strangest forebodings, but I have this gut-feeling that God is in control of my unfolding days.
Mind you, the Secret Scribe of our personal life is always at our rear, and sometimes, we just simply feel this incomprehensible urge to obeying this most mysterious of intuitions, forebodings, pre-sentiments. On my way back home, lo and behold! My beloved neighbor, La Señora Ana Sulsona, was quietly brooding at Carrot Top, a trendy bakery located between 164th and 165th and Broadway avenue. She was alone, and seating on most pensively by the glassy windowed walls. As I passed by, all of a sudden, we both caught sight of each other.
"My dear!" So greeted me the old lady, with downcast, heavy-lidded eyes, expressed her difficult days, conveyed to me her soul-wracking angst with what appeared to be a malign bacteria gnawing at her gut. My goodness! My suggestion was to seek a doctor as soon as possible, and to take antibiotics, or intake some cloves of pungent garlic --and chew them raw for going to sleep— for the aging body is the more prompt to sickness at the octogenarian age.
Interpretation of My Dream and Sensing the Voices of the Spirit Realm: the Death of Ana Sulsona
Beyond my mind, beyond my all too-human strength and efforts, I have had some spiritual experiences with the Spirit Realm: these are my best gleanings to the meaning of life! I have to say that I have found Grace in the revelation and interpretation of Dreams. Such dreamy experiences would become meaningful but in the episodic sequels of our lives. In it, I saw a tombstone bearing an epitaph, a headstone made of sleek marble, whereupon, all of a sudden, I found myself aloft, as though flying above this horrific scene of so much dread. Down there, I saw what appeared to be the presence of wandering, hellbent vindictive spirits roaming back and forth. The bleak scene reminded of the Valley of Shadows mentioned in Psalm 23.
I had mistakenly related this dream to be that of my mother's soul, that perhaps she was in the Purgatory, and that she was probably asking me for prayers. But now, it is clear to me that the tomb of my dream belongs to my neighbor La Senora Ana Sulsona, whose soul, while still with us in this world, was perhaps reaching out to me, urging me to write the last final notes of her farewell adieu into the Spirit Realm.
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German-Dominican Woman, Ms. Ingrid (1988-2014)
From 1988 to 2014, I befriended a wonderful religious neighbor, an American-German woman, Ms. Ingrid, who moved in the hood just after the Second World War. Before moving to Washington Heights, she had lived in the Dominican Republic with her husband. A devout Catholic mother and teacher, Ingrid will survive in the memories of her beloved children.
Last year, 2014, Ms. Ingrid was diagnosed with brain cancer, but she still stepped outside to greet the sunrise of hope and faith. Religious people, whether they are self-deluded or not, may possess some remarkable fearlessness to facing death with hope in the hereafter. Last time I saw Ms. Ingrid, she was coming from a Mass Service held every morning at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church.
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A Homeless Woman, Mary Barnes and the Music of Chopin (2017...)
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 to writing of the 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 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 writing about them, and If I did say something about these folks, the convict or the hooligan, 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 reader, I was able to gather enough thought-material to writing about my spiritually-charged experiences while living in Washington Heights.
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, Italians and some Greeks whose ancestors had moved in before Second World War, and I was diligent to inquire 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 90s, 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 Dominican 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, 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. Today, alas, I see some dear old timers of fortitude, true soldiers of life, carrying their bodies, dragging their feet round the same square of yesteryears, hopeful of some happy ending to their lives. From time to time, this former generation would lose a courageous soldier in the struggle of existence. “
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Ana Asulsona: New York City (1940s-2012)
The Big City has few places as eerily haunting as Washington Heights' old buildings, especially the Trinity Cemetery and Morris-Jumel Mansion, which is believed to be haunted by the ghost of Madam Jumel, is the oldest house in New York.
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.
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.
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.
But who would separate the weed from the chaff in the social weltering of humanity?
Nevertheless, my hood 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, but 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.
Back in the year 2000, as I was browsing through the shelves of Barnes & Noble Bookstore, 66th Street and Broadway, a Jewish woman asked me whether I had read People of the Abyss by Jack London?
"...Read this book like a Bible."
With my humble smattering of sociology and psychology, I studied the little book of Jack London like a sleuth, ever marveling at the underlying forces in the abysmal trenches of the human soul: the good and the bad. I wanted to know why some people are so incredibly different in New York City.
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, or imposing machineries of modern society. By the way, 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?
1990s: 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.
Back in Latin America, I found out that some remarkable people, Guatemalans, Peruvians, Salvadorians, Hondurans, Colombians, Dominicans among other Latinos, could survive under the most inhabitable circumstances, amidst muddy lands, by the river-shore, or even at the foot of some volcano, but rarely would these hapless stranded peasants —from the Caribbean Islands— build their shanties, huts or shacks amidst the slimes and asbestos of those slum-landlords' murky quarters, or, at least subsist inside those caving-holes of civilization to inhale and exhale the pernicious soot amidst the abject conditions of those peripheral areas in the State of New York.
Don't these pensants hanker back to their former pristine bucolic existence?
And, perhaps the lovely woods are still redolent of unspoiled human innocence and internal beauty.
But Washington Heights, at least in the 90s, 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.
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. It was indeed heart-breaking to see some peasants, smashing beautiful Dominican women, of the finest moral caliber, Catholic, cohabiting with those hellish rabbles produced in the worst neighborhoods of the Dominican Republic.
In the slums of New York, nevertheless, hither and thither, one may find the old abandoned buildings, forlorn churches, time-stricken hovels 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.
An Old Lady, Una Santera:
An old lady, whose sunken-cheeks, flaccid facial features, deep-set hollow eyes reminded of Madam Fate in her other mysterious guises, and who had perceived in me some remaining relics of a fine gentleman from the time of Don Quixote, opened her pursed lips to warm me this wise saying:
"...You must come to terms with these amigos if you wish to reach your goals!"
Ana Sulsona: “In 1995, not that far from where I lived, a Cuban woman, una Santera, a hight-hag, was reported to have dangerously tampered with the other spirits of our dread.
For many days and nights, a rancid, putrid odor coming from her apartment, led the perplexed tenants to call the authorities.
The hapless woman was found dead amidst her infamous practices and hideous objects, among which, there were chicken's carcasses and entrails, dry bones, blood-splotches and other organic substances besmirching the floor and walls.
The stench of her apartment was so repugnant and indescribably hellish, that for a long time, some of her neighboring tenants reported to have suffered from nightmare and dizziness...
In the 90s, Latinos churches were overwhelmingly packed with people looking for help. Our neighborhoods and endless squalid slums were stricken with drugs, dysfunctional homes, unwanted pregnancy, witchcraft, obesity, superstition, segregation. The government did very little to improve the condition of the minority community, and so, scores of hapless people gave themselves either to the mysterious forces of Satan or to the caring hands of Jesus Christ.
Under such dire circumstances, certainly, there was not a better place to be than in a nearby church; therein, in the snug sanctuary, tenderly illumined by a few rays of hope, we would cry out to God for help:
Shanti Chapter V (In the Purgatory)
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.
The Morris-Jumel Mansion:
For many years (1988-2014) I lived a few blocks off the famous Morris-Jumel Mansion. The said mansion, the first ever built in New York City, has been reported to be haunted by the ghost of Madam Jumel. Some famous landmarks are quite often said to be haunted, and these haunting stories, without a doubt, would bring the curious visitors in search for some spine-tingling, thrilling experiences with the paranormal.
However a diehard enthusiast of the old New York, I did not visit the Morris-Jumel Mansion, but back in the 90s, around evening, sometimes I would stroll, back and forth, through alleys and squares once filled with the roisterous voices of Armenians, Greeks, Irish, Italians, but now the atmosphere has an uncanny eeriness of people lost in the continued flow of human society. (Las calles 157 hasta la 166th calle en la avenida de Audubon, me parecían grises aún en el verano.)
Esta gente se veían un poco triste y cabizbaja. Where once was the healthy stir and bustle of life in industrious activities, one now finds a downcast people —the drafty winds of the long-winters (1996-2010)—gave me chilly delights for the other side of my neighborhood.
Not far from where I lived, there is to be found the Trinity Cemetery, the oldest graveyard in New York City. Sometimes, in the dusky hours, as I walked along the Riverside Drive, from 153rd Street up to 165th Street, I felt a strange curiosity to inquiring on former neighbors.
The Trinity Cemetery is a veritable quiet place of solitude, peace and meditations.
The spacious habitation of the dead is replete with tombs (epitaphs dating back to the eighteenth century) some unvisited by any Kith or Kin in the long intervals of time.
Hither and thither, there were to be found the crisscrossed solitary pathways, and lo! In yonder spot, the deceptive impression of a human being, a specter, un fantasma, hovering near her resting place.
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Conversations With La Señora Ana Sulsona (2015-2017) A Loyal Chaperone to Her Dying Friends:
Year 2015, speaking of former neighbors in Washington Heights, one early morning, as I gather the autumnal leaves of that unforgettable Fall Season, I saw a Latin old woman, Ana Sulsona, whose nursing heart had been entrusted to the care of two of her best friends, Carmen Sanchez and Mercedes Espinal. Their last days were to be spent in the deathbed. Two weeks later, their souls would pass on to the Spirit Realm.
I am sure that back in the 60s, these old ladies were much into dancing and partying. Puerto Rican Ana Sulsona Martin is descendant of a Spaniard Catalan (father), Russian (grandfather), English (mother's background). Just I remember my beloved 1980s as fresh as yesterday, likewise Ana Sulsona, recalled her past (1950s) with remarkable vivid details and the most moving stories of travails and challenges for former immigrants.
La Señora Ana came to New York when she was a seventeen-year old immigrant, and was able to keep her ship afloat through the most difficult windstorms and challenges. Puerto Rican immigrants went through a lot of daunting challenges, constantly clashing with the Italians (West-Side Stories), and along with the Jews, Blacks and other socially discriminated people, they would pave the way for greater social justice for all. Dominican people, whom complain about racism, did not live through these tough years of segregation, discrimination and hardships. As an old lady now, La Señora Ana drags herself around like a haunting ghost, her personal experiences buried in the living social cemetery for countless people relegated to oblivion.
Who will recall her early years in New York City?
In these last years, as a great human being --who always wanted the best for other people-- she had been taking care of two other hapless old ladies living their last chapters in the bed of affliction, but little was she aware of a lethal bacteria sucking the last strength of her nicotine-stricken lungs. While Ana related to me her heartbreaking stories in the cold winters of the 1960s, the stench of her Marlboro cigarettes almost choked me. But I endured much with her precious memories, because the beautiful soul was perfumed with the virtues of fortitude, endurance and dogged-tenacity.
While keeping an eye on my short 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 Ana Sulsona— would leave me but much disappointed on the meaning of life for the greater lot of the human race.
Fate, the "Sullen Matron of Our Dread," whose hollow-cheeked, haggard face may appear like a night-hag from Medieval Times, sometimes would carry a beautiful innocent dove roosting atop a slightly lifted right hand: trust, solidarity and loyalty.
--Can we trust this right hand?
True! 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 any more lasting than the other left unstable hand, and hence, she is thus condemned to go around with uneasy steps along the perilous zigzagging paths of existence.
On the other hand, enclasped into each other's tight embraces, "distrust and betrayal," there was a multi-colored snake of most frightening aspect. Her multiple folds and tangles, cocky head rising menacing towards me, would set my limbs loose, trembling under my jerking knees.
From the lower base of the scrawny wrist, up to a shaggy thatch of disheveled hairs growing prodigiously (like blades of grass) 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, she was alike civil and a savage woman with the least regards for a large part of the human race. Nonetheless, day and night, she would not allow the snake to eat the turtle dove perched atop the right hand, which, once conquered, could ultimately threaten to swallow whole any remaining of goodness on the surface of the earth.
Nevertheless, I am bound to admit that, in spite of every effort to keeping the good, meek dove safe from the mortal grasp of the ancient serpent, Satan, evil has the greater sway in this world: this is a fact of life:
Tentatively, I could not tell whether a venomous, dangerous hand or a poisonous snake were welded together in unison or perhaps separated as two distinct phenomena (two hideous sisters yet born from the same awful womb), so that any differentiation between the two sisters, "discrepancy and inequality," could prove to be a most difficult incomprehensible undertaking or conundrum.
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 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.
With tickets in hand, I would dare enter into a terrible scuffle with that Cruel Gangster, the master of modern society, today in partnership with this prodigious machine,
Technocracy, whose all-reaching wires and tentacled fetters are said to be stronger than the will of the masses.
But as observed by Jose Ortega y Gasset in his Revolt the Masses, we are but a bunch of barbarians strutting amidst the prison-cells of "civilization."
The difference between a modern man and the savage in the jungle, "anarchy," is rather one of organization, orderliness or domestication, because the natural feral instincts of some humans, like a wild cat (a lynx), at the first opportunity —such beasts of civilization— could strike back into the woods, to live blissfully in the jungle.
And some folks would find it a blessing to retreat back into the wilderness. Of course, I would neither embrace nor praise such barbaric resolutions, because, how much I could sympathize with Henry David Thoreau‘s disobedience, or with Jack London on the shackles of modern civilization, the cold woods or the waste lands of yore are still replete with the woes of humanity.
Accordingly, if an Ancient Egyptian or Sumerian were to have a tour at the most important landmarks and sites of New York City, the sojourner from antiquity, in all likelihood, would be impressed by the staggering scale of our highly-polished materials, mind-blogging glittering technology, building techniques as superior to any imperial powers in history.
Nevertheless, I am not sure whether we could teach these ancient people any philosophy on the art of taming the human cattle. In all likelihood, their assessment of our civilization would be one of wonder and horror.
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Year 2016, Saying Good Bye to My Neighbor Ana S. Manson - Interpretation of Dreams:
With the caring hands of a faithful scribe, I have, herein, attempted to fill-in some missing lacunae in the last days of my dear former neighbor, Anna Sulsona, whose death (Autumn Season 2016), was to be revealed to me in a dream (Valley of Shadow) thus corroborating my insightful observations: that our lives' sequels and circundantes are to be construed but in this transcendent contiguity between dreams and reality, but also in the early intuitive perceptions of our infancy.
How you react to this dream would determine your spiritual strength to coping with the undeniable reality of death for all of us.
This dream, could be the peculiar fancies of my mind afraid of one thousand real facts for all of us: perhaps this dream is the influence and confluence of one thousand impressions coinciding in the unconscious reaches of our mind's deepest forebodings: the reality of death for all of us.
In this dream, I saw what appeared to be a mother's tomb, a gravestone, the capstone was as real as I write these notes. I can recall the epitaph, the smooth surface of the marble stone, and other details appeared to me as real as my heart pounding and beating with strangest feelings of sadness and loss.
Phoenix Bird Impression of Hell:
The scenic aspect of this crowding of ghosts suddenly changed into a bleak world filled with dread, foreboding and horror.
Some horrific spirits, ever rambling and gyrating this gloomy circle of cursed ghosts in the Purgatory, caught sight of me, but I was able to fly away to a safer place.
Meanwhile, the shadows of our dread fixed their cold stares on me.
—Look at those spirits!
They seemed to be at pains to catch me by some other stratagems. As I glanced around me, a steel-cold fear pierced my heart like a sheet of ice slowly melting in my bosom. I tried to escape this futuristic world as one who had sensed something demonic, fatale and gruesome.
All of a sudden, as I stood in mid air, floating, suspended, and rising above the spirits of my dread, further in view, lo! I saw what appeared to be a Deep Valley of Shadows (Psalm 23).
It was a dreadful valley, somber and engulfed with grey filaments of formless haze resembling hovering specters or ghosts.
Enveloped in thick fogs, scarcely mollifying the disheartening, raging, wailing of cold winds ravaging and buffeting the sore gullets of those throaty crags, I was overwhelmed by this "sense of in-falling-depth" into the unfathomable reaches of my poor soul's labyrinths.
The Valley of Shadow was not the Pit of Hell, but its yawning maw, its spacious, throaty, spiraling descent, was indeed filled with inexplicable sadness, dejection, cacophonous voices, disheartening whimpering and shrieks amidst the starless night of one thousand frightening figments. This has to be Hell!
Listening to the Secret Scribe's Sotto Voce - Visiting my Previous Neighborhood Again (Year 2017)
A few days later, and still grappling with the disturbing figments of my dream on the Valley of Shadow, the Spirit urged me to go back to my previous neighborhood: Washington Heights. I had not visited the dearly loved neighborhood for a few months now (end of the year 2016 to the beginning of the year 2017), but a chain of circumstances would place us in direct connection with the most personal chapters of our lives' sequels: our intimate episodes, our dear neighbors, our very life and surroundings are all intertwined in the flickering waning candle's flames of our destiny. Such sweet candle’s flame waved and wavered unto me with strangest forebodings, but I have this gut-feeling that God is in control of my unfolding days.
Mind you, the Secret Scribe of our personal life is always at our rear, and sometimes, we just simply feel this incomprehensible urge to obeying this most mysterious of intuitions, forebodings, pre-sentiments. On my way back home, lo and behold! My beloved neighbor, La Señora Ana Sulsona, was quietly brooding at Carrot Top, a trendy bakery located between 164th and 165th and Broadway avenue. She was alone, and seating on most pensively by the glassy windowed walls. As I passed by, all of a sudden, we both caught sight of each other.
"My dear!" So greeted me the old lady, with downcast, heavy-lidded eyes, expressed her difficult days, conveyed to me her soul-wracking angst with what appeared to be a malign bacteria gnawing at her gut. My goodness! My suggestion was to seek a doctor as soon as possible, and to take antibiotics, or intake some cloves of pungent garlic --and chew them raw for going to sleep— for the aging body is the more prompt to sickness at the octogenarian age.
Interpretation of My Dream and Sensing the Voices of the Spirit Realm: the Death of Ana Sulsona
Beyond my mind, beyond my all too-human strength and efforts, I have had some spiritual experiences with the Spirit Realm: these are my best gleanings to the meaning of life! I have to say that I have found Grace in the revelation and interpretation of Dreams. Such dreamy experiences would become meaningful but in the episodic sequels of our lives. In it, I saw a tombstone bearing an epitaph, a headstone made of sleek marble, whereupon, all of a sudden, I found myself aloft, as though flying above this horrific scene of so much dread. Down there, I saw what appeared to be the presence of wandering, hellbent vindictive spirits roaming back and forth. The bleak scene reminded of the Valley of Shadows mentioned in Psalm 23.
I had mistakenly related this dream to be that of my mother's soul, that perhaps she was in the Purgatory, and that she was probably asking me for prayers. But now, it is clear to me that the tomb of my dream belongs to my neighbor La Senora Ana Sulsona, whose soul, while still with us in this world, was perhaps reaching out to me, urging me to write the last final notes of her farewell adieu into the Spirit Realm.
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German-Dominican Woman, Ms. Ingrid (1988-2014)
From 1988 to 2014, I befriended a wonderful religious neighbor, an American-German woman, Ms. Ingrid, who moved in the hood just after the Second World War. Before moving to Washington Heights, she had lived in the Dominican Republic with her husband. A devout Catholic mother and teacher, Ingrid will survive in the memories of her beloved children.
Last year, 2014, Ms. Ingrid was diagnosed with brain cancer, but she still stepped outside to greet the sunrise of hope and faith. Religious people, whether they are self-deluded or not, may possess some remarkable fearlessness to facing death with hope in the hereafter. Last time I saw Ms. Ingrid, she was coming from a Mass Service held every morning at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church.
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A Homeless Woman, Mary Barnes and the Music of Chopin (2017...)
Year 2017, Holyrood Episcopal Church, corner of 179th Street and Fort Washington Avenue, right at the entrance door, I came across an unfortunate homeless woman sprawling on the floor.
Shipwrecked, she could scarcely carry on the load of her hard existence: rains, storms, disappointment she has escaped a lot --but, for how long?
This is the same poor woman whose sad poetry, "Where-I-Come-From," had moved me to think about the meaning of life. From time to time, I would come across the ubiquitous homeless people, and some, to my surprise, are in possession of noblest feelings: Philippians 04:08.
Last Saturday, as I was practicing Chopin Waltzes, Brillante, Ms. Mary Barnes, came forward to speak her heart with the sad music of Chopin: the melancholy side of life. While playing a sad melody, between the Sad Waltzes of joy and losses, pretty Mary felt moved to recite to me a disheartening poetry, Where-I-Come-From (poetry by a homeless woman). Her poetry was alike patriotic and elegiac, beautiful and sad.
Sunny Days and Rainy Days:
She was born to Irish Immigrants, and like a great American family, seeking new seashores —the flashy horizon of opportunities— they had pursued their dreams with all the inspiration, enterprise and enthusiasm of heaven on earth: life, liberty, happiness. The Irish family bought a house, a splendid bungalow as befitting a middle-class family of the noblest rustic type, in the sequestered rural areas of New Jersey, and thus was born a beautiful little girl named Mary. Her poetry sounded like a "panegyric" or an elegy to a great human being. My goodness! The homeless woman is not bereft of noblest feelings! She has a heart for Chopin's Waltzes! Nay, she is admirably imbued with loftiest thoughts for the melancholy side of existence. While she recited her "where-I-come-from," all of a sudden, the homeless woman broke into tears and, in a fit of rage, left the disheartening scene as though overcome with mixed feelings of pity, shame, embarrassment and indignation. Mary's unfortunate train of circumstances could break the heart of any good mother.
—But who would care for her life?
What a strange breed of beautiful human beings, so spoiled and ruinous in the quarters of New York City, whose personal book of life would ultimately be buried in the graveyard of oblivion. Blue-eyed Mary, as today, is probably reaching the dusky years of her late 40s. 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. She still smiles at the blue skies for the gift of life. When I finally played the last rolling notes in Valse Brillante by Chopin, Mary's little face sparked with Faith and Hope. Indeed, she is still in possession of a sensible mind: rich in precious memories, and most importantly, a sensitive soul for the beautiful music of Frederick Chopin.
Dear good soul, do you still believe in God?
So I asked Mary while fixing my eyes upon some gorgeous strands of ash-blond hair falling luxuriously on her agreeably arching forehead and temples. Alternatively, she would contort and tilt her pretty face into a charming grimace, a passing childish, adorable wince slowly yielding to an expressive, although a somewhat sad cast frame of mind, perhaps a deeply-felt hankering, gently limning her countenance with some remaining traces of innocence and regret.
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 woman, nevertheless, would finally nod an affirmative yes: "I believe in God."
Phoenix Bird: “Mary Barnes wept her sorrows apace with this river, and we could find words to conveying our deepest empathy for the lost of her childhood.
So fair a daughter of a pedigree sylvan past, would wither away a deeply-felt sigh in those far-gazing eyes, so moist with the tears of precious memories left behind in the paradisiac wonderlands of Texas.”
Squirrel Parsifal: “Don't let people humiliate you. Your natural gifts are still a living investment. Stay strong, my dear, and claim your true place with those who value you!”
So we encouraged Mary to live on for her Creator, while still pondering on her heart-rending poetry: Where I Come From...
A Homeless Man, Josh Manson (2017)
Swaddled in sheets, like a mummy, I had often seen a young white man laying his tired head on the hard ground by the corner of 181st Street and Fort Washington Avenue. I wonder how would a good sensitive mother react to beholding her beautiful son, the prodigal son, abandoned in such disheartening circumstances?
Winter of 2017, as I was exiting the A train station, I caught sight of Mr. Josh Manson. The handsome man was couched on the ground like a jackal licking his forepaws.
On many a cold day, like a stray quadruped overcome by the toiling drudgeries and chores of a monotonous existence, I often saw the young man idly sprawling on the hard ground of necessities and negligence.
Covered in sheets and comforters due to a bone-chilling winter, Josh's life is durable thanks to his unquenchable passions for science-fiction literature, but also of much motivation was his hope to finally settle with a beautiful woman, a wife, and thus realize the dream of his life.
Despite his humble educational background, the American dude could hold intellectual conversations to great effects, charisma and an easy token of amicability with passers-by.
In a city where physical beauty could rank no less than a college degree, wealth or success, Josh's smashing physique could still attract the single ladies in queue by the subways of New York City, and occasionally he would enjoy a first-class treat to a fine bistro restaurant. And so he fell in love with a beautiful woman. Now that his heart was throbbing and swelling with the butterflies of love, he made greater efforts to rise up to a more respectable existence, to find himself a job, even as a courier or as a porter in downtown Manhattan, because the pinions of love, especially in the prime of youth, could raise us all above our circumstances.
Propelled by the twinkles of a beautiful woman, Mr. Josh Manson, despite his present circumstances could fly aloft into rapt moments of limerence, reveries and happiness. And so Josh's physical appearance would soon look dapper, smarter, neat, trim and clean for days on. The young man had finally found an amazing reason to live for: a strikingly beautiful white woman, whose bewitching charms he could not resist!
Caught up with recurrent inexplicable paroxysms of self-propelling thoughts of the most fantastical otherworldliness and unearthliness, Josh Manson would rise up early in the morning. Around 6am, he would have a most meaningful walk by the Fort Tryon Park. Lost in paradisiac instances of strangest longings and love, Josh Manson would fix his dreamy eyes on the leeway trails of those languishing autumnal leaves in yonder path.
The lonely path was lined with some leafless trees already yielding to the chilly breezes of November, but the promenade was soon warming up with loveliest shafts of glorious sunlight casting their beams upon the partially shaded veils of Mother Nature's nuptial gowns.
Shipwrecked, she could scarcely carry on the load of her hard existence: rains, storms, disappointment she has escaped a lot --but, for how long?
This is the same poor woman whose sad poetry, "Where-I-Come-From," had moved me to think about the meaning of life. From time to time, I would come across the ubiquitous homeless people, and some, to my surprise, are in possession of noblest feelings: Philippians 04:08.
Last Saturday, as I was practicing Chopin Waltzes, Brillante, Ms. Mary Barnes, came forward to speak her heart with the sad music of Chopin: the melancholy side of life. While playing a sad melody, between the Sad Waltzes of joy and losses, pretty Mary felt moved to recite to me a disheartening poetry, Where-I-Come-From (poetry by a homeless woman). Her poetry was alike patriotic and elegiac, beautiful and sad.
Sunny Days and Rainy Days:
She was born to Irish Immigrants, and like a great American family, seeking new seashores —the flashy horizon of opportunities— they had pursued their dreams with all the inspiration, enterprise and enthusiasm of heaven on earth: life, liberty, happiness. The Irish family bought a house, a splendid bungalow as befitting a middle-class family of the noblest rustic type, in the sequestered rural areas of New Jersey, and thus was born a beautiful little girl named Mary. Her poetry sounded like a "panegyric" or an elegy to a great human being. My goodness! The homeless woman is not bereft of noblest feelings! She has a heart for Chopin's Waltzes! Nay, she is admirably imbued with loftiest thoughts for the melancholy side of existence. While she recited her "where-I-come-from," all of a sudden, the homeless woman broke into tears and, in a fit of rage, left the disheartening scene as though overcome with mixed feelings of pity, shame, embarrassment and indignation. Mary's unfortunate train of circumstances could break the heart of any good mother.
—But who would care for her life?
What a strange breed of beautiful human beings, so spoiled and ruinous in the quarters of New York City, whose personal book of life would ultimately be buried in the graveyard of oblivion. Blue-eyed Mary, as today, is probably reaching the dusky years of her late 40s. 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. She still smiles at the blue skies for the gift of life. When I finally played the last rolling notes in Valse Brillante by Chopin, Mary's little face sparked with Faith and Hope. Indeed, she is still in possession of a sensible mind: rich in precious memories, and most importantly, a sensitive soul for the beautiful music of Frederick Chopin.
Dear good soul, do you still believe in God?
So I asked Mary while fixing my eyes upon some gorgeous strands of ash-blond hair falling luxuriously on her agreeably arching forehead and temples. Alternatively, she would contort and tilt her pretty face into a charming grimace, a passing childish, adorable wince slowly yielding to an expressive, although a somewhat sad cast frame of mind, perhaps a deeply-felt hankering, gently limning her countenance with some remaining traces of innocence and regret.
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 woman, nevertheless, would finally nod an affirmative yes: "I believe in God."
Phoenix Bird: “Mary Barnes wept her sorrows apace with this river, and we could find words to conveying our deepest empathy for the lost of her childhood.
So fair a daughter of a pedigree sylvan past, would wither away a deeply-felt sigh in those far-gazing eyes, so moist with the tears of precious memories left behind in the paradisiac wonderlands of Texas.”
Squirrel Parsifal: “Don't let people humiliate you. Your natural gifts are still a living investment. Stay strong, my dear, and claim your true place with those who value you!”
So we encouraged Mary to live on for her Creator, while still pondering on her heart-rending poetry: Where I Come From...
A Homeless Man, Josh Manson (2017)
Swaddled in sheets, like a mummy, I had often seen a young white man laying his tired head on the hard ground by the corner of 181st Street and Fort Washington Avenue. I wonder how would a good sensitive mother react to beholding her beautiful son, the prodigal son, abandoned in such disheartening circumstances?
Winter of 2017, as I was exiting the A train station, I caught sight of Mr. Josh Manson. The handsome man was couched on the ground like a jackal licking his forepaws.
On many a cold day, like a stray quadruped overcome by the toiling drudgeries and chores of a monotonous existence, I often saw the young man idly sprawling on the hard ground of necessities and negligence.
Covered in sheets and comforters due to a bone-chilling winter, Josh's life is durable thanks to his unquenchable passions for science-fiction literature, but also of much motivation was his hope to finally settle with a beautiful woman, a wife, and thus realize the dream of his life.
Despite his humble educational background, the American dude could hold intellectual conversations to great effects, charisma and an easy token of amicability with passers-by.
In a city where physical beauty could rank no less than a college degree, wealth or success, Josh's smashing physique could still attract the single ladies in queue by the subways of New York City, and occasionally he would enjoy a first-class treat to a fine bistro restaurant. And so he fell in love with a beautiful woman. Now that his heart was throbbing and swelling with the butterflies of love, he made greater efforts to rise up to a more respectable existence, to find himself a job, even as a courier or as a porter in downtown Manhattan, because the pinions of love, especially in the prime of youth, could raise us all above our circumstances.
Propelled by the twinkles of a beautiful woman, Mr. Josh Manson, despite his present circumstances could fly aloft into rapt moments of limerence, reveries and happiness. And so Josh's physical appearance would soon look dapper, smarter, neat, trim and clean for days on. The young man had finally found an amazing reason to live for: a strikingly beautiful white woman, whose bewitching charms he could not resist!
Caught up with recurrent inexplicable paroxysms of self-propelling thoughts of the most fantastical otherworldliness and unearthliness, Josh Manson would rise up early in the morning. Around 6am, he would have a most meaningful walk by the Fort Tryon Park. Lost in paradisiac instances of strangest longings and love, Josh Manson would fix his dreamy eyes on the leeway trails of those languishing autumnal leaves in yonder path.
The lonely path was lined with some leafless trees already yielding to the chilly breezes of November, but the promenade was soon warming up with loveliest shafts of glorious sunlight casting their beams upon the partially shaded veils of Mother Nature's nuptial gowns.
In the midst of this garden, Josh Manson, so entranced by this Garden of Eden, el loco chico fancied to see his will-be-wife Eve, a woman of palest skin, a nymph of mesmerizing beauty hiding her pretty face behind those enchanting bushes and purple shrubs. The bride-to-be, wearing a crown of twisted twigs, roses and drooping leaves smooching her countenance, was standing in an open-gated arbor. The olden gothic structure was covered with loviest greeneries interspersed with gently-toned browns, half-lit penumbras of emerald greens and foliage of daintiest hues, thus creating an ideal background for a nuptial ceremony.
Meanwhile, Josh Manson would fancy to see his angel slowly coming into his wide-open arms. The bride was so embellished with her wedding trousseau of immaculate roses and tulips, such red flowers, dolphins and goldfish, so smug for recognition, were placidly couched in sybaritic beds and pillows of purest greens! Such flowers, still unscathed by the falling autumnal leaves, would soon flaunt their delicate, petalled pretty faces to greet the groom along his path. The scenic landscape could grant the lover an incredible mystical nexus, a Jacob's Ladder, a dreamscape between the expanses of heaven and the uncharted unfettered woods of this absolutely ravishing wilderness.
Thus, every morning, like a hermit, like a mystic, like a recluse, he would visit the same terraced cliff overlooking the Hudson River, but his high-flown dreams could not become a reality any more than those bright castles built in mid air; or, those gold-gilt, fabulous temples cushioned in the scudding clouds' pillows for an obtuse lover.
Nevertheless, Josh Manson, a legendary unicorn ever-trotting into the unfettered paths of limerence, was a diehard romantic man. He would not let go the idea. While fixed in deepest thoughts for a concealed truth behind those blue eyes, he would stretch out his widespread hands unto that looming-promising-rainbow in the imagination of a fool.
--"Perhaps she loves me."
What an idiotic infatuation, and yet he loved the idea! The possibility of love proved to be tempting and irresistible!
"Am I out of my wit?" Thus he would say every morning. Indeed! Mr. Josh Manson loved that Ineffable woman!
Spellbound by her pretty face, day and night, with the tips of his fingers, ever assuming the shape of mythical steeds galloping up into the vault of heaven, Mr. Manson would reach out to that beautiful rainbow of flying colors.
Such charming smiles, such flirtatious twinkles, such tacit suggestions, amorously receding, ever-soaring into the haze of distance...were so promising to his heart.
Indeed, the pretty woman was driving him nuts. "O God! I love that woman, she is my inspiration. If you answer my prayers, I shall go to church every Sunday."
Unfortunately the flight of days passed on quickly, inexorably, and his efforts, his self-will and determination, were not advancing him to any foreseeable prospect of reciprocal love in the flashy horizon of tomorrow.
His high-flown dreams, for so they seemed to be so unbelievably chimerical, were ever-wafting, ever-receding, ever-disappearing far into the immeasurableness of the boundless sky, and his touch with concrete reality, little by little, became an embarrassing self-delusional enterprise, una divina locura, the epiphany for a madman, a hard-to embrace self-realization that perhaps, in spite of his self-denial, such divine a fabulous creature was meant for another man.
By heaven's sake, he really longed to reach that twinkling daystar of his heart, but the angel was inaccessible. The bombshell blond was meant to be destined for another man's hugs and kisses.
Thus, as much as he tried to raise himself up to a more serviceable, worthy, honorable existence, the tight bound of Fate had been fastened around his neck. Madam Fate has decreed his destiny: an incorrigible romantic fool, and the joy of his sweetheart deserted him as a pitiable man.
December of 2017
A cloudy day had cast a drab pall upon the once beautiful sky of Josh Manson's prospective days. Squatted in a corner, like a dog, the good-hearted soul appeared so frowsy, bedraggled, unkempt, neglected and forlorn. It seemed, as I later found out, that a passer-by woman, a striking beautiful blond ballerina from Texas, had not reciprocated his love, and the jilt, as sour as gall, hurt his feelings to the core.
The hard ground could make our body ache with nightlong pains, but these thorns would be but minor afflictions when compared to the sharp twinges of unrequited love.
Rejection is one of the hardest blow to our precious self-esteem. Poor man Josh Manson! Who would caulk his aching heart from the constant bleeding of love?
The cold winter, which, by the way, could reach temperatures below zero, could take a toll on some people's lives, and Josh's youthful attractive appearance: fine-chiseled facial symmetries, brown eyes, impressive aquiline nose and enameled-white teeth were little by little wearing off.
The elements were taking a toll in the heart and physical appearance of this romantic fool, and the fragile shards of greatness were falling, piece by piece, on the floor.
Almost on the fray, his once beautiful countenance, thick eyebrows, calm and yet vivid visage full of effulgence, candor and passions, were already showing unequivocal signs of internal uneasiness, dejection, unsteadiness, defeat and despair.
Eventually the young man would lose the mincing gait, el divino tesoro of the happy youth, and with unstable steps, he trudged on, like a lamb into the hands of uncertainties, perhaps hellbent into the slaughterhouse of modern society.
True, I never suspected Josh of any grudge or seed of resentment for an unfair life, but the rutted path of forgiveness may test his goodness, his character and integrity, always edging on the fringe of necessity and needs.
By any assessment of natural beauty, a human being's vulnerable possession, Josh Manson was a very handsome man, intelligent and, perhaps, a person of high probity, but it seemed that he had no close friends or family in New York.
For years, Josh had been seen sleeping, lying and squatting in that corner of modern society...like a missing sheep.
A few months ago, he complained of awful conditions in the basement of a local Church, and it seemed he had few choices but to lay down his head on that hard ground for losers.
True. Josh Manson's limerence became his own undoing and nightmare, but even through the Pit of Hell in Washington Heights, he would not desist from living under the spells of love, whose quasi-numinous effects could grant his soul pinions for things mythical, fantastic and otherworldly.
Nevertheless, I still shudder when musing on the heart's unfathomable reaches, its resilience, its endurance, its amazing obstinacy, for I cannot believe that after all these years, it is the same silly thing, foolish, immature. The heart is always the same silly thing --a romantic fool. Just look at that old man, Don Sebastian Cornelio, the plaything of that saucy chick.
Josh Manson was perhaps born in the wrong time, in the wrong society, and his constant retreat to the Fort Tryon Park was perhaps a psychological reaction to a modern world ever-going callous, cold, unnatural, a valley of dry bones.
And how much we blame poor Josh Manson for lagging behind modern society, a failure, I am inclined to sympathize wth his revolt against the machines of our time. I doubt whether any human being could speak of life and love in earnest, "I have lived," without those inevitable thorns and thistles. Love, therefore, should be the gist of our lives, even when loving may entail some share of sufferings.
A Knight, Señor Sebastián Cornelio (Winter of 1996-1997)
Back in 1997, I met a great artist, a great mystic and composer, Señor Sebastian Cornelio, when immersed in his artworks, was able to dodge the arrows of Cupid, but as a composer, he confessed his absolute dependence and devotion to that divine goddess, Muse, whose blessed lips could grant him the loveliest melodious moments and inspiration.
Like Josh Manson, Don Sebastian Cornelio had imbued his mind with the mystification and elevation of Helena, a divine Minerva, a charming "Rosalinda Conception," whose "yo no se que" (uncanny veils) could throw his faculties into the open arms of passions and creativity.
Without such exalted ideas, his art, his life, would be but a dead horse, lackadaisical and vapid. A beautiful, inspiring woman was therefore the secret of his formidable artistic output, but at times, he had to endure some heart-wrenching experiences with a saucy creature.
La Señorita Selena, a Spanish woman, a beautiful brunette, whose whims, prettiness and caprices would drive him nut, had also been the true author of such dramatic output of musical inventiveness, artworks verging on the macabre, the chaotic, "the demonic, " the brilliance of a genius, a monster of creativeness, a divine composer when possessed by such tremulous tensions in the throes of love.
La Señorita Selena, however an inspiring Venus, was not a good girl, and with her bewitching charms she had placed herself a Mighty Ruling Queen over this man's heart and mind. Sebastian was losing wits to the bounds of love, but out of these tremendous conflicts a greater composer would eventually emerge.
As I later found out, an audacious man, a dandy of society, Juan D' Los Palos, with tempting scheme and treachery, was able to gain a "secreted retreat" with Selena into the wild woods of the Fort Tryon Park.
For day and night, o dear reader, Don Sebastian had to come to grips with the bats of jealousy and suspicion gnawing at his guts and carcasses into the dark quarters of hell.
In-rushing thoughts of infidelity were not to be discarded, but it was during that time (Winter of 1996-1997) Señor Sebastian Cornelio felt impelled to cry out to God for help. Were not for the Divine Assistance of God, Sebastian's once brilliant mind would have become a madhouse of unclean spirits.
True, Sebastian would rather prefer a "blade of grass" than a "thorn of love" ever piercing his heart with the bleeding tears of that frightful woman, Selena, ever-bathing her naked body in the fetid waters of the River Purgatory.
Thus his days and nights would unfold with a sad song, Melina, which even today, as I recall that name, may rub my heart anew with pity for the great artist: Sebastian Cornelio, like Josh Manson, had perhaps fallen victim to the fancy of his own mind.
When I heard the sad song, Melina, my dear reader, I had to let out a few tears, and even when I think me silly, ridiculously sentimental, something within me refuses any hardiness, any self-denial, any self-pity, as inappropriate for a man still in possession of some relics of compassion and humanity.
The sad song, nevertheless, may pierce my heart with the tears of Selena, a lovelorn mermaid existing today as a ghost, "una historia y un pueblo en el olvido."
But let me give you an idea, however tentatively, how much times and things have changed for those who once lived under the power of love and petrichor. Don Sebastian Cornelio, is the story of a Latin Soul whose heart still dreamed in the former glory of Ancient Greece, the Hellenic Culture, ancient Rome. Such song is said to exude the "intoxicating petrichor" of our lands, reminiscent of the uncanny feelings of our distant past with Spain and the Mediterranean people.
Imagine the effects of petrichor upon the minds of two lovers caught-up in the paradisiac landscapes of Mexico, Spain, Ecuador or the Dominican Republic in the Seventeenth Century. Of course, I am speaking of two kindred souls with the sensitive fabric of the pilgrims, or the Amish, or "the naturalist," because few things could vie with Mother Nature when compensating the happy couple with a propitious "dope of petricor.”
The blessed couple were perhaps campesinos (peasants), but one would not deny a heaven to these Lucky Souls embraced in the ever stretching plots of virgin lands. A daily dose of petrichor would propel these legendary butterflies into the higher realms of heaven. Adding to the inexplicable effects of petrichor in our soul, imagine the soothing effects of a gentle rain pelting and simmering upon the zinc-roofed shack or shanties of yesteryears (bohío as called by the Aborígenes). Even today the gentle rain may send shivers down my spine! Nada como dormir bajo el aliciente de una lluvia!
Añoranzas (Idyllic Songs) - Courtly Love and Yearnings.
The sad songs, añoranzas (feverish yearnings) as only known to the heart in-love, aquiver with romantic thrills of amorous raptures, may touch on the mournful side of platonic love: courtly love and chivalry are often the preferred genre for the Spanish singer.
Like the melancholy music of F. Chopin or Franz Schubert, the ballad, "bolero," must invoke heart-rending feelings of inexplicable love in the mystification of our dearly loved. Hence, the elevated idea of womanhood, Perfidia, is quite often wooed as the sacred source of strangest delights and sighs:
Of course, in the bitter-sweet writings of Colombian author José María Vargas Vila, ("Ibis, Laura y Las Gaviotas,") the Angel of Love is depicted as the source of our joys and woes!
Back in the 80s, it was not uncommon to see a fiancé-fiancée caught-up in rapt frenzies of love and madness: eres un "romántico empedernido," (an incurable romantic.)
Latino people of yesteryears, more than other cultures and peoples, are known to conflate ideas of purity and beauty in the mystification of "belleza femenina:" the cult of womanhood, Galatea, Venus, Mary, Beatrice, Minerva, Naussica, Andromeda, Selena, Athena. the beautiful song, rarely, if ever, touch upon things lustful, sleazy, salacious or lascivious.
However an amorous minstrel, but injured by something tragic in the fickle reciprocities of Fate & Amargura, (unrequited love), the Latin Balad, more than any other genre, is still regarded as the most exalted form of poesy, afflatus and loftiest human sentiments as conceived in the heart of former composers in Latin America.
In the ethos of yore, there was a time when a lover would be happy just receiving the long-journeyed letter of the distant beloved! The hand-written letter, ether-tinted and redolent of heartiest feelings, was indeed a source of strangest emotions and butterflies.
Quite often, and as some of you may still remember, the amorous couple would perfume the long-journeyed letter with the scents of "Powdered Love," which is the candor-gist for the most intoxicating songs ever composed during the golden era of music-love-making in Latin America. Songs the likes of Bésame Mucho, Perfidia, Melina by the divine minstrel Camilo Sesto (Melina), or that unforgettable prince of the heart, Jose Jose, Ya Lo Pasado Pasado (Past is Already Past) among other unforgettable tunes, have gathered proselytes all over the world.
Lost Pearls and Gems in the Cerulean Ocean of Yesteryears with Latin America - Island of Puerto Rico:
Y Yo Sin Poderte Hablar (Unable to Speak to You)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ofdM4omDExY
Divine music, sensible mind of that great composer who thus could dictate his emotions! A Latin rhythm, exotic, saucy, intimate and truly Caribbean like the ardent Island of Puerto Rico, is the next nexus-scene with lost pearls in the cerulean ocean of our yesteryears: the other winged stories of those Latin souls still bathed in dews, thrills, shivers and sighs unsayable by any dint of word-expression:
It was a virgin world still dreaming of innocent love, promises and passions that seem to pierce the heart ever anew with more tears, hand-written letters and other yearnings...Puerto Rico.
Hometown Moca, Dominican Republic, year 1979, I was still a shy lad when I first heard this beautifully sad tune, which, like a Czardas-arrow, forthwith, it lodged itself in my heart.
Overwhelmed by the ineffable voices of this song, I stayed my tired feet briefly nearby, to seek myself under a tree or a cloud, like a wayfarer, like a Gypsy, still a stranger in this most incomprehensible of world of beauty and nostalgia.
Y Yo Sin Poderet Hablar! (And I Unable To Speak To Thee:)
As I fix my attention to consecrate the Latin hour accordingly, a pellucid flute seems to warble, here and there, a more optimistic approach and consolation to those unfortunate companions of sorrows and love; but in vain, because the ever-encamping cellos, true possessors of the human heart, cannot rest, but to eke out their smooth path-way with the other G-strings, their heartbreaking strain; step by step, moving on and on, in underlying caring with the leading tenor and the other supernal feminine sotto voces.
At intervals, ceasing their subdued lullabies Uuuuu and la-la-la-la-la embellishments, the ravishing soprano and alto voices would finally join in to outcry the long yearning of a missing beloved (Anoranzas).
Y Yo Sin Poderte Hablar, could be rendered in English: And I Unable to Speak To You. Back in those days we have neither e-mails, nor easy access to a quick phone call, but we relied solely on hand- written letters...perfumed with powder redolent of jasmine!
Existence could not be more promising and beautiful than in this sweet rosy introspection, my memories inly found in tad glimpses of yesteryears, our pristine days spent in a cease-less quest to the interpretation of that music: the timelessness of our mind awareness!
Yes! Life was very beautiful, romantic, and the sweet music of the French arrangers the likes of Frank Pourcel, Paul Mauriat, James Last, among others, would elevate the ardent music of Latin America to a tremendous pitch of poetic self-intoxication --comparable to that of the Slavic people in beauty (Dark Eyes), nostalgia and the strong temperament of the Northerners.
*********************************
On the Virtues of Strength and Mental Fortitude - Ballerina Natasha Blavatsky (2011)
...There are those days when the nipping whether could make numb the human heart. And yet a good woman, a devout Christian soldier, endured the hour to find her day delightful. Today she is enjoying a blissful sunset of peace and glorious music in the recollection of her early memories ((1960s) as a child in New York.
A Russian woman at heart, Natasha Blavatsky has a heart for music and is quite artistically sensible for the boon of Mother Nature, art and classical music. On many a cloudy day, the aging creature, nevertheless, has been seen walking with two menacing hounds by the Hudson River.
No doubt, she was a smashing beautiful blond, a bombshell in her youth, well designed for sensual pleasures. A strawberry ballerina, she had a voluptuous body with well-proportioned limbs, like a Spaniard guitar, ending in a buxom buttock of most remarkable firmness.
Above these curves of indulgent shapeliness, there lay unbending, unyielding the ideal forms as held together by a stately neck, going up, to the crowning princely stature of a saintly countenance of the noblest type. Natasha Blavatsky was-is a strikingly beautiful Celtic woman.
Meanwhile, Josh Manson would fancy to see his angel slowly coming into his wide-open arms. The bride was so embellished with her wedding trousseau of immaculate roses and tulips, such red flowers, dolphins and goldfish, so smug for recognition, were placidly couched in sybaritic beds and pillows of purest greens! Such flowers, still unscathed by the falling autumnal leaves, would soon flaunt their delicate, petalled pretty faces to greet the groom along his path. The scenic landscape could grant the lover an incredible mystical nexus, a Jacob's Ladder, a dreamscape between the expanses of heaven and the uncharted unfettered woods of this absolutely ravishing wilderness.
Thus, every morning, like a hermit, like a mystic, like a recluse, he would visit the same terraced cliff overlooking the Hudson River, but his high-flown dreams could not become a reality any more than those bright castles built in mid air; or, those gold-gilt, fabulous temples cushioned in the scudding clouds' pillows for an obtuse lover.
Nevertheless, Josh Manson, a legendary unicorn ever-trotting into the unfettered paths of limerence, was a diehard romantic man. He would not let go the idea. While fixed in deepest thoughts for a concealed truth behind those blue eyes, he would stretch out his widespread hands unto that looming-promising-rainbow in the imagination of a fool.
--"Perhaps she loves me."
What an idiotic infatuation, and yet he loved the idea! The possibility of love proved to be tempting and irresistible!
"Am I out of my wit?" Thus he would say every morning. Indeed! Mr. Josh Manson loved that Ineffable woman!
Spellbound by her pretty face, day and night, with the tips of his fingers, ever assuming the shape of mythical steeds galloping up into the vault of heaven, Mr. Manson would reach out to that beautiful rainbow of flying colors.
Such charming smiles, such flirtatious twinkles, such tacit suggestions, amorously receding, ever-soaring into the haze of distance...were so promising to his heart.
Indeed, the pretty woman was driving him nuts. "O God! I love that woman, she is my inspiration. If you answer my prayers, I shall go to church every Sunday."
Unfortunately the flight of days passed on quickly, inexorably, and his efforts, his self-will and determination, were not advancing him to any foreseeable prospect of reciprocal love in the flashy horizon of tomorrow.
His high-flown dreams, for so they seemed to be so unbelievably chimerical, were ever-wafting, ever-receding, ever-disappearing far into the immeasurableness of the boundless sky, and his touch with concrete reality, little by little, became an embarrassing self-delusional enterprise, una divina locura, the epiphany for a madman, a hard-to embrace self-realization that perhaps, in spite of his self-denial, such divine a fabulous creature was meant for another man.
By heaven's sake, he really longed to reach that twinkling daystar of his heart, but the angel was inaccessible. The bombshell blond was meant to be destined for another man's hugs and kisses.
Thus, as much as he tried to raise himself up to a more serviceable, worthy, honorable existence, the tight bound of Fate had been fastened around his neck. Madam Fate has decreed his destiny: an incorrigible romantic fool, and the joy of his sweetheart deserted him as a pitiable man.
December of 2017
A cloudy day had cast a drab pall upon the once beautiful sky of Josh Manson's prospective days. Squatted in a corner, like a dog, the good-hearted soul appeared so frowsy, bedraggled, unkempt, neglected and forlorn. It seemed, as I later found out, that a passer-by woman, a striking beautiful blond ballerina from Texas, had not reciprocated his love, and the jilt, as sour as gall, hurt his feelings to the core.
The hard ground could make our body ache with nightlong pains, but these thorns would be but minor afflictions when compared to the sharp twinges of unrequited love.
Rejection is one of the hardest blow to our precious self-esteem. Poor man Josh Manson! Who would caulk his aching heart from the constant bleeding of love?
The cold winter, which, by the way, could reach temperatures below zero, could take a toll on some people's lives, and Josh's youthful attractive appearance: fine-chiseled facial symmetries, brown eyes, impressive aquiline nose and enameled-white teeth were little by little wearing off.
The elements were taking a toll in the heart and physical appearance of this romantic fool, and the fragile shards of greatness were falling, piece by piece, on the floor.
Almost on the fray, his once beautiful countenance, thick eyebrows, calm and yet vivid visage full of effulgence, candor and passions, were already showing unequivocal signs of internal uneasiness, dejection, unsteadiness, defeat and despair.
Eventually the young man would lose the mincing gait, el divino tesoro of the happy youth, and with unstable steps, he trudged on, like a lamb into the hands of uncertainties, perhaps hellbent into the slaughterhouse of modern society.
True, I never suspected Josh of any grudge or seed of resentment for an unfair life, but the rutted path of forgiveness may test his goodness, his character and integrity, always edging on the fringe of necessity and needs.
By any assessment of natural beauty, a human being's vulnerable possession, Josh Manson was a very handsome man, intelligent and, perhaps, a person of high probity, but it seemed that he had no close friends or family in New York.
For years, Josh had been seen sleeping, lying and squatting in that corner of modern society...like a missing sheep.
A few months ago, he complained of awful conditions in the basement of a local Church, and it seemed he had few choices but to lay down his head on that hard ground for losers.
True. Josh Manson's limerence became his own undoing and nightmare, but even through the Pit of Hell in Washington Heights, he would not desist from living under the spells of love, whose quasi-numinous effects could grant his soul pinions for things mythical, fantastic and otherworldly.
Nevertheless, I still shudder when musing on the heart's unfathomable reaches, its resilience, its endurance, its amazing obstinacy, for I cannot believe that after all these years, it is the same silly thing, foolish, immature. The heart is always the same silly thing --a romantic fool. Just look at that old man, Don Sebastian Cornelio, the plaything of that saucy chick.
Josh Manson was perhaps born in the wrong time, in the wrong society, and his constant retreat to the Fort Tryon Park was perhaps a psychological reaction to a modern world ever-going callous, cold, unnatural, a valley of dry bones.
And how much we blame poor Josh Manson for lagging behind modern society, a failure, I am inclined to sympathize wth his revolt against the machines of our time. I doubt whether any human being could speak of life and love in earnest, "I have lived," without those inevitable thorns and thistles. Love, therefore, should be the gist of our lives, even when loving may entail some share of sufferings.
A Knight, Señor Sebastián Cornelio (Winter of 1996-1997)
Back in 1997, I met a great artist, a great mystic and composer, Señor Sebastian Cornelio, when immersed in his artworks, was able to dodge the arrows of Cupid, but as a composer, he confessed his absolute dependence and devotion to that divine goddess, Muse, whose blessed lips could grant him the loveliest melodious moments and inspiration.
Like Josh Manson, Don Sebastian Cornelio had imbued his mind with the mystification and elevation of Helena, a divine Minerva, a charming "Rosalinda Conception," whose "yo no se que" (uncanny veils) could throw his faculties into the open arms of passions and creativity.
Without such exalted ideas, his art, his life, would be but a dead horse, lackadaisical and vapid. A beautiful, inspiring woman was therefore the secret of his formidable artistic output, but at times, he had to endure some heart-wrenching experiences with a saucy creature.
La Señorita Selena, a Spanish woman, a beautiful brunette, whose whims, prettiness and caprices would drive him nut, had also been the true author of such dramatic output of musical inventiveness, artworks verging on the macabre, the chaotic, "the demonic, " the brilliance of a genius, a monster of creativeness, a divine composer when possessed by such tremulous tensions in the throes of love.
La Señorita Selena, however an inspiring Venus, was not a good girl, and with her bewitching charms she had placed herself a Mighty Ruling Queen over this man's heart and mind. Sebastian was losing wits to the bounds of love, but out of these tremendous conflicts a greater composer would eventually emerge.
As I later found out, an audacious man, a dandy of society, Juan D' Los Palos, with tempting scheme and treachery, was able to gain a "secreted retreat" with Selena into the wild woods of the Fort Tryon Park.
For day and night, o dear reader, Don Sebastian had to come to grips with the bats of jealousy and suspicion gnawing at his guts and carcasses into the dark quarters of hell.
In-rushing thoughts of infidelity were not to be discarded, but it was during that time (Winter of 1996-1997) Señor Sebastian Cornelio felt impelled to cry out to God for help. Were not for the Divine Assistance of God, Sebastian's once brilliant mind would have become a madhouse of unclean spirits.
True, Sebastian would rather prefer a "blade of grass" than a "thorn of love" ever piercing his heart with the bleeding tears of that frightful woman, Selena, ever-bathing her naked body in the fetid waters of the River Purgatory.
Thus his days and nights would unfold with a sad song, Melina, which even today, as I recall that name, may rub my heart anew with pity for the great artist: Sebastian Cornelio, like Josh Manson, had perhaps fallen victim to the fancy of his own mind.
When I heard the sad song, Melina, my dear reader, I had to let out a few tears, and even when I think me silly, ridiculously sentimental, something within me refuses any hardiness, any self-denial, any self-pity, as inappropriate for a man still in possession of some relics of compassion and humanity.
The sad song, nevertheless, may pierce my heart with the tears of Selena, a lovelorn mermaid existing today as a ghost, "una historia y un pueblo en el olvido."
But let me give you an idea, however tentatively, how much times and things have changed for those who once lived under the power of love and petrichor. Don Sebastian Cornelio, is the story of a Latin Soul whose heart still dreamed in the former glory of Ancient Greece, the Hellenic Culture, ancient Rome. Such song is said to exude the "intoxicating petrichor" of our lands, reminiscent of the uncanny feelings of our distant past with Spain and the Mediterranean people.
Imagine the effects of petrichor upon the minds of two lovers caught-up in the paradisiac landscapes of Mexico, Spain, Ecuador or the Dominican Republic in the Seventeenth Century. Of course, I am speaking of two kindred souls with the sensitive fabric of the pilgrims, or the Amish, or "the naturalist," because few things could vie with Mother Nature when compensating the happy couple with a propitious "dope of petricor.”
The blessed couple were perhaps campesinos (peasants), but one would not deny a heaven to these Lucky Souls embraced in the ever stretching plots of virgin lands. A daily dose of petrichor would propel these legendary butterflies into the higher realms of heaven. Adding to the inexplicable effects of petrichor in our soul, imagine the soothing effects of a gentle rain pelting and simmering upon the zinc-roofed shack or shanties of yesteryears (bohío as called by the Aborígenes). Even today the gentle rain may send shivers down my spine! Nada como dormir bajo el aliciente de una lluvia!
Añoranzas (Idyllic Songs) - Courtly Love and Yearnings.
The sad songs, añoranzas (feverish yearnings) as only known to the heart in-love, aquiver with romantic thrills of amorous raptures, may touch on the mournful side of platonic love: courtly love and chivalry are often the preferred genre for the Spanish singer.
Like the melancholy music of F. Chopin or Franz Schubert, the ballad, "bolero," must invoke heart-rending feelings of inexplicable love in the mystification of our dearly loved. Hence, the elevated idea of womanhood, Perfidia, is quite often wooed as the sacred source of strangest delights and sighs:
Of course, in the bitter-sweet writings of Colombian author José María Vargas Vila, ("Ibis, Laura y Las Gaviotas,") the Angel of Love is depicted as the source of our joys and woes!
Back in the 80s, it was not uncommon to see a fiancé-fiancée caught-up in rapt frenzies of love and madness: eres un "romántico empedernido," (an incurable romantic.)
Latino people of yesteryears, more than other cultures and peoples, are known to conflate ideas of purity and beauty in the mystification of "belleza femenina:" the cult of womanhood, Galatea, Venus, Mary, Beatrice, Minerva, Naussica, Andromeda, Selena, Athena. the beautiful song, rarely, if ever, touch upon things lustful, sleazy, salacious or lascivious.
However an amorous minstrel, but injured by something tragic in the fickle reciprocities of Fate & Amargura, (unrequited love), the Latin Balad, more than any other genre, is still regarded as the most exalted form of poesy, afflatus and loftiest human sentiments as conceived in the heart of former composers in Latin America.
In the ethos of yore, there was a time when a lover would be happy just receiving the long-journeyed letter of the distant beloved! The hand-written letter, ether-tinted and redolent of heartiest feelings, was indeed a source of strangest emotions and butterflies.
Quite often, and as some of you may still remember, the amorous couple would perfume the long-journeyed letter with the scents of "Powdered Love," which is the candor-gist for the most intoxicating songs ever composed during the golden era of music-love-making in Latin America. Songs the likes of Bésame Mucho, Perfidia, Melina by the divine minstrel Camilo Sesto (Melina), or that unforgettable prince of the heart, Jose Jose, Ya Lo Pasado Pasado (Past is Already Past) among other unforgettable tunes, have gathered proselytes all over the world.
Lost Pearls and Gems in the Cerulean Ocean of Yesteryears with Latin America - Island of Puerto Rico:
Y Yo Sin Poderte Hablar (Unable to Speak to You)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ofdM4omDExY
Divine music, sensible mind of that great composer who thus could dictate his emotions! A Latin rhythm, exotic, saucy, intimate and truly Caribbean like the ardent Island of Puerto Rico, is the next nexus-scene with lost pearls in the cerulean ocean of our yesteryears: the other winged stories of those Latin souls still bathed in dews, thrills, shivers and sighs unsayable by any dint of word-expression:
It was a virgin world still dreaming of innocent love, promises and passions that seem to pierce the heart ever anew with more tears, hand-written letters and other yearnings...Puerto Rico.
Hometown Moca, Dominican Republic, year 1979, I was still a shy lad when I first heard this beautifully sad tune, which, like a Czardas-arrow, forthwith, it lodged itself in my heart.
Overwhelmed by the ineffable voices of this song, I stayed my tired feet briefly nearby, to seek myself under a tree or a cloud, like a wayfarer, like a Gypsy, still a stranger in this most incomprehensible of world of beauty and nostalgia.
Y Yo Sin Poderet Hablar! (And I Unable To Speak To Thee:)
As I fix my attention to consecrate the Latin hour accordingly, a pellucid flute seems to warble, here and there, a more optimistic approach and consolation to those unfortunate companions of sorrows and love; but in vain, because the ever-encamping cellos, true possessors of the human heart, cannot rest, but to eke out their smooth path-way with the other G-strings, their heartbreaking strain; step by step, moving on and on, in underlying caring with the leading tenor and the other supernal feminine sotto voces.
At intervals, ceasing their subdued lullabies Uuuuu and la-la-la-la-la embellishments, the ravishing soprano and alto voices would finally join in to outcry the long yearning of a missing beloved (Anoranzas).
Y Yo Sin Poderte Hablar, could be rendered in English: And I Unable to Speak To You. Back in those days we have neither e-mails, nor easy access to a quick phone call, but we relied solely on hand- written letters...perfumed with powder redolent of jasmine!
Existence could not be more promising and beautiful than in this sweet rosy introspection, my memories inly found in tad glimpses of yesteryears, our pristine days spent in a cease-less quest to the interpretation of that music: the timelessness of our mind awareness!
Yes! Life was very beautiful, romantic, and the sweet music of the French arrangers the likes of Frank Pourcel, Paul Mauriat, James Last, among others, would elevate the ardent music of Latin America to a tremendous pitch of poetic self-intoxication --comparable to that of the Slavic people in beauty (Dark Eyes), nostalgia and the strong temperament of the Northerners.
*********************************
On the Virtues of Strength and Mental Fortitude - Ballerina Natasha Blavatsky (2011)
...There are those days when the nipping whether could make numb the human heart. And yet a good woman, a devout Christian soldier, endured the hour to find her day delightful. Today she is enjoying a blissful sunset of peace and glorious music in the recollection of her early memories ((1960s) as a child in New York.
A Russian woman at heart, Natasha Blavatsky has a heart for music and is quite artistically sensible for the boon of Mother Nature, art and classical music. On many a cloudy day, the aging creature, nevertheless, has been seen walking with two menacing hounds by the Hudson River.
No doubt, she was a smashing beautiful blond, a bombshell in her youth, well designed for sensual pleasures. A strawberry ballerina, she had a voluptuous body with well-proportioned limbs, like a Spaniard guitar, ending in a buxom buttock of most remarkable firmness.
Above these curves of indulgent shapeliness, there lay unbending, unyielding the ideal forms as held together by a stately neck, going up, to the crowning princely stature of a saintly countenance of the noblest type. Natasha Blavatsky was-is a strikingly beautiful Celtic woman.
Natasha had very sharp, chiseled facial features decked out with a protuberant upright nose of modest pride, flanked by delicately trim eyelashes, moderately fleshy lips with an ironic, edgy smirk to the point of a saucy laughter, or, perhaps concealing an incomprensible self-unconscious flirtation of knowing that she was (and perhaps still is) extremely pretty.
But here lies her natural beauty: she rarely made use of any such unnecessary flaunting of pretenses, which she felt to be beneath her dignity, though, I must admit her long neck, poised head, lithe wrists, and even her well-rounded pretty feet, were often decorated with curious necklaces of beads, pendants of pretty virgins, crucifixes, pearls and other gaudy gewgaws.
She assured me that these decorative things were mere amulets, aimed at warding off evil or bad luck. Indeed, though she was raised an Orthodox Christian, I perceived strong leanings towards the naturalism of her former ancestry.
Her complexion was a flawless rosy skin, whose charmingly, overall exquisite effects, from head to toe, were enhanced by the uncanny deep azure of strikingly pellucid Nordic eyes --thus capping this woman's phenotype as a goddess, or fairy tale woman in the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites Brotherhood.
Indeed, such woman's physical appearance could bear witness to a noble ancestry. Her statuette body though of a rather slim frame by now, was still in excellent health and shapeliness!
With the passage of time, nevertheless, the hardy soul, notwithstanding her once lavished physical gifts, much disappointed with the lecherous nature of her wooers and exploiters, would eventually prefer dogs for friends than the conviviality of human beings in general.
After all these years, Natasha Blavatsky has learned to be self-reliant, self-aware, self-determined, resolute, clever and strong in the battlefield of life.
Over the years, Natasha has built her inner strong-fortress -- a mighty citadel against the cold winds of disappointment in the high expectations of life.
Today, she is a quiet soul, I would say a great human being who never achieved success, or anything worldly in the most mundane sense of the word, but who is, thanks to her mental fortitude and aesthetic sensibilities, a blessed soul! She is fond of Robert Schumann, Franz Schubert, Sergei Rachmaninov and F. Chopin!
Like the quieting waters of the Hudson River, ever eddying with soothing streams, her temperament is rather placid but also aloof and cautious to losing a precious swath of her inner private territory.
She told me that her victories ought to be found inside, for here lies the secrets to a "vita beata." I smiled at this rather ascetic sturdy beautiful woman so endured in loneliness, and yet so happy when conveying the sweet golden beams of a sunlight cast in the deep embosomed-depths of the glaucous waters of the Hudson River, whose shimmering sparks and splashing ripples she felt to be so soothing and up-lifting.
The Hudson River she felt to be part of her priceless heritage and spirituality, and had not its splendid waters become sullied and musty due to the toxic chemicals thrown-in by the swills of modern civilization, she would have bathed in it every morning, every evening to celebrating her Celtic mysteries and rituals
"I cannot thank enough this lovely river, this piece of my heart, for cleaning my mind and soul of the pervasive pollution of modern society. Were not for those scattered, callous stones of modern civilization, in yonder spot, by the river-shore, I would have built me a cabin to celebrate the gifts of life with the blissful elements of air, water, ether, earth and light."
On one occasion, nevertheless, as I remember now, Natasha Blavatsky told me of a serious confrontation with a Jewish landlord who, for years, had being trying to evict her, that is to say, to rob her of the sweet-home of her primordial memories alongside her now deceased mother (an immigrant from Russia).
Upon mentioning the word eviction to my good caring listening, her outrage could have sent tidal waves through the bowels of hell, but she had developed a remarkable capacity to coping with life's trying challenges without losing her sound judgment, equanimity and forbearance.
When she found out that I was a pianist and organist at a local church, her beautiful face, today creased with the hieroglyphics of chicken's feet, soon assumed the gentle, smooth affection of an adorable soul, amiable and refined as befitting her noble ancestry. When I succinctly made references to the remarkable, fired writings of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, forthwith, her facial expression resumed the virtues of a strong woman, and ever since (year 2006) we are friends forever in the journey of life.
From time to time, I would come across the Russian woman of yesteryears. Today, albeit much advanced in age, she has learned to live peacefully under the sunset of forgiveness, faith and hope, but above all, love and charity. She is one of my favorite neighbors!!!
In this cruel world, virtue and strength may surprise us in the wood of oblivion, the irony of success and victory. Like Natasha, I have met some victorious neighbors in the hood of Washington Heights, true soldiers in the battlefield of life, sustaining themselves by the staff of faith and hope in the hereafter.
The world is for courageous, strong souls...
We may wake up in the morning to be confronted with the question of existence...For those who have a snug shelter and food, their lives may be less vexed and prodded to action, survival may take into other psychological challenges.
Nevertheless, the question of suffering and meaning may have profound metaphysical implications and predicaments --no matter your station in society, life could be tough.
Those well-off and healthy may seem less tormented with material needs. Nonetheless, power of foresight, judgment and a careful, in-depth approach into the riddles of life may reveal another awful face: the unquestionable reality of suffering, a wide world filled with the woes, sighs and tears of Mother Eve.
The good lady, Mother Eve, Genesis (Chapter 3), found her suffering in the form of a beautiful snake! Now we think of a snake as something scary to behold, a living entity with numb expression, and yet a quiet being capable of inspiring fear for an evil that lies concealed in potential predictability, in potential futurity; whereas with other brutes, malice is detectable and it may burst into unbridled noisy fury, the snake, nevertheless, is always quiet, crafty, subtle.
Therefore, with many a creature we are not caught off guard. But there is also this intelligence that is both observant and vigilant, with laser-like accuracy pursuing its target to a final doom. Fortunately, the beautiful, silent reptile is damned to crawl on her belly and feed on dust...Thanks be to God.
I am frightened by snakes as much by growling dogs, roaring lions or any other prowling beasts roaming this earth. Very rarely I have met a woman with a snake entangled around her neck: Madam Fate!
But much to my surprise, Madam Fate, an old sullen lady of most serious aspect, appeared to me in yonder spot, motionless, eyes dark and lusterless fixed upon me, and with her right hand ever-pointing to the Upper West Side of Manhattan, she beckoned me to quiet places, sequestered residential areas of Washington Heights, still smacking of the unpalatable pages of history: the sins of my Spanish ancestors during colonial times.
****************************************
Confronting the Dogs of Distrust of Two Neighbors: American Charlie Jone-Stones and Russian Immigrant Yelena Rachmaninov (Year 2012)
While strolling by the Hudson River's banks, a defiant hound had been watching me with suspicion, and following my footprints, the distrustful creature pursued me as though sensing a convict, a hooligan, an outcast.
I retreated back to a propitious stripe of narrow woody lands unfolding into a maze of downhills and hillocks, which, as I continued treading and skittering along the edgy curves of jagged stones, quaysides, dangerous slabs, all these mad pathways sometimes would steep into precipitous, perilous ravines of distrust, suspiciousness, unfriendliness.
A German dog, a beast of most frightening aspect, property of an American fellow, Charlie Jone-Stones, was not pleased at the irregular pace of my clumsy gait, which he felt was absolutely alien to his culture, and deemed me an unwanted fellow in his own territory: a natural distrust, which frankly speaking, could be very embarrassing for any humanist who believes in the intrinsic goodness of mankind.
Sniffing me, and leering at my face with a disconcerting curiosity, the outlandish dog growled, grumbled and encircled around my feet, and then hunkered down quietly on his angular rump to muse about my unstable gait. With lurid eyes ever fixed on me, he suddenly addressed me thus:
"Tell me the truth. By God's sake, are you Dominican? And what the heck are you doing here in this neighborhood?"
Yes Sir! So I answered in a positive polite manner. I am Dominican, Catholic background.
I was born in a small Island, Hispaniola, La Española, named after the adventurous Spaniard conquistadores. In 1492, Christopher Columbus beached his ships, La Pinta, La Niña, y La Santa María, along the splendid seashores of this lovely Island, Quisquella.
The Spaniards were completely captivated by this virgin world of innocence, beauty, pasture, naturalism. By contrast, the Spanish crew consisted of an entourage of unkempt criminals, convicts, lowlifes, that have entrusted their fate to an adventurous mariner. Christopher Columbus, was a clever jew, and he was known for being a fearless navigator, would eventuallly win the friendship of an antisemite Spanish Queen: Reina Isabela.
The inhabitants of this Island, Taínos, though small, were a very beautiful people. Fond of nudity and simplicity, they would daub their cinamon-colored skin with coco oil to ward off the stings of mosquitos. The beautiful Taina girls, innocent, natural, so we are told, would soon fall prey to the all-clutching fingers of these devils in human form.
El Diablo tiene su interés en la República Dominicana, for he knows that the History of America starts with the genocide of the Taínos, and from these atrocities, coupled with every conceivable crime against humanity, slavery, rapes, pillaging, dehumanization and piracy, galore, the biological frosty stuff of history would finally produce a remarkable species called Los Dominicanos.
Dominican people, therefore, are the sum total of every possible interbreeding among the different races during colonial times, hence, why it is so difficult to classify us within the bracketing of any conventional racial terminology or category.
Every Dominican person, more than other races, is lavishly bestowed with the generic traits of the whole of the human race. Some philosophers, if they are to seek interesting cases of human experiments in the ever spawning womb of history, would have a great supply of biological types among the gene-pool of the Dominican people.
On closer inspection, nevertheless, we are bound to admit, that contrary to the churchy views and baseless prejudice associated with race-mixing in some parts of the world, there are people, whose physical constitution and musical sensitiveness, would make them more suitable for the equation of existence in the dissonantly jarring chord of pain, boredom and struggle...
The History of Colonialism, its crimes, genocide of the Aborigines, cannot be expiated by simply relocating this hapless progeny to the lands of North America, and thus would Fate write her unutterable pages in the ever-rolling bloody Sea of History.
The Devil has left his signature across the blood-tinged waters of el Canal de la Mona, a a few miles off the Capital of the Dominican Republic: Santo Domingo.
The crimes of our ancestors pursue us even unto this day. The disheartening screams and plaintive signs of those hapless Taina mothers, raped and then humiliated, could still still be heard in the heart of the Dominican Community in Washington Heights.
Of course, any intelligent person would admit good and bad people among any group of people; that some have exceeded more than others in the bad reputation that goes along with the hard reality of hardships, eviction, drug-traffcking, adaptation, assimilation, et al., I cannot think of any immigrants, or migrants, that did not have to fight their way up to a more civil society.
When I finished this succinct account on the Dominican Republic's infamous past and the extermination of the aborigines, Charlie Jone-Stones, while curbing his dog, held silence for a moment, but was soon most willing to dispel his doubts by drilling me with other queries.
He smelled something fishy about my stories about the people of Santo Domingo (Holy Sunday) and was not yet persuaded about the origin of the prefixed adjective "Dominican" to my origination and provenance:
"--Are Dominican people really Christian?"
I tríed to explain myself in religious terms, but the dog, my goodness! was soon bent on smelling my limbs, my torso, my buttock, ever-grumbling the Dominican word, he then muttered to his boss:
"Hmmm, is this true?
I felt somehow decomposed at such close scrutiny and inspection; perhaps the animal was suspecting me of some mischief, duplicity, cowardice, treachery, embezzlement, fraud, hypocrisy, rascality, deception, impertinence, uncleanliness, corruption, humbug, foolishness.
After closer examination and inspection, the dog seemed to have been pleased at my moral constitution.
Gawking at me in disbelief, the dog was somewhat surprised at my stories of Santo Domingo (Holy Sunday), capital of the Dominican Republic, for I had displayed a level of rationality that would challenge previously-held theories on the detrimental effects of a simple menu mainly consisting of Caribbean crops: plantain, rice and yuca (the so-called PRC effects) which are believed to dull our higher intellectual faculties.
Charlie Jone-Stones, an American man of a rather stocky frame, originally from Chicago, as I stared at his finely dapper presence, was not a night-roaming cur, but rather a pedigree of noble European Stock.
He wore a shaggy, fur coat of an upper-crusty intellectual living in a residential area, and it seemed that my detailed accounts on the devils of colonialism in the Dominican Republic, their crimes, their fiendish atrocities against the Aborigines, had only confirmed his views: that most nations are founded upon the ruins of wars, rapes, genocides, bloodshed and destruction.
I was about to say another word on colonialism, but the dog, all of a sudden, fell in a fit of frantic behavior and distrust, and soon started barking at me with such hideously ugly grimaces that I was forced to run out of these horrendous scenes of so much bloodshed, crimes, genocides, cruelties, inhumanities and horrors. Dammed the human race without God.
On another occasion, I encountered an adorable Russian woman,Yelena Rachmaninov, escorted with three menacing hounds ready to devour me whole. At that moment, I cried out for mercy: ‘Woman have mercy on me, Kyrie, Kyrie Eleison.’ By so doing, I thought my pious demeanor would impress her as being that of a devout Catholic saint from Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic.
Fortunately, the fierce animals, a three-headed horrendous Cerberus of Hatred, were curbed at the hypnotic sounds of some jingling bells: a necklace of gems the woman was wearing made of golden beads —perhaps an amulet— and with wagging tail the three monsters of my fright forthwith obeyed the sullen lady: Madam Fate.
The old soul then sternly shouted: "Leave him alone, the man dressed in blue is trustworthy."
Oh reader, my heart almost melted and I could not comprehend why most creeping and crawling animals are wholeheartedly misanthropes?
*****************************************
On Angels and Devils - Plunging the Unconscious Swamps of People after Carl Jung:
But here lies her natural beauty: she rarely made use of any such unnecessary flaunting of pretenses, which she felt to be beneath her dignity, though, I must admit her long neck, poised head, lithe wrists, and even her well-rounded pretty feet, were often decorated with curious necklaces of beads, pendants of pretty virgins, crucifixes, pearls and other gaudy gewgaws.
She assured me that these decorative things were mere amulets, aimed at warding off evil or bad luck. Indeed, though she was raised an Orthodox Christian, I perceived strong leanings towards the naturalism of her former ancestry.
Her complexion was a flawless rosy skin, whose charmingly, overall exquisite effects, from head to toe, were enhanced by the uncanny deep azure of strikingly pellucid Nordic eyes --thus capping this woman's phenotype as a goddess, or fairy tale woman in the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites Brotherhood.
Indeed, such woman's physical appearance could bear witness to a noble ancestry. Her statuette body though of a rather slim frame by now, was still in excellent health and shapeliness!
With the passage of time, nevertheless, the hardy soul, notwithstanding her once lavished physical gifts, much disappointed with the lecherous nature of her wooers and exploiters, would eventually prefer dogs for friends than the conviviality of human beings in general.
After all these years, Natasha Blavatsky has learned to be self-reliant, self-aware, self-determined, resolute, clever and strong in the battlefield of life.
Over the years, Natasha has built her inner strong-fortress -- a mighty citadel against the cold winds of disappointment in the high expectations of life.
Today, she is a quiet soul, I would say a great human being who never achieved success, or anything worldly in the most mundane sense of the word, but who is, thanks to her mental fortitude and aesthetic sensibilities, a blessed soul! She is fond of Robert Schumann, Franz Schubert, Sergei Rachmaninov and F. Chopin!
Like the quieting waters of the Hudson River, ever eddying with soothing streams, her temperament is rather placid but also aloof and cautious to losing a precious swath of her inner private territory.
She told me that her victories ought to be found inside, for here lies the secrets to a "vita beata." I smiled at this rather ascetic sturdy beautiful woman so endured in loneliness, and yet so happy when conveying the sweet golden beams of a sunlight cast in the deep embosomed-depths of the glaucous waters of the Hudson River, whose shimmering sparks and splashing ripples she felt to be so soothing and up-lifting.
The Hudson River she felt to be part of her priceless heritage and spirituality, and had not its splendid waters become sullied and musty due to the toxic chemicals thrown-in by the swills of modern civilization, she would have bathed in it every morning, every evening to celebrating her Celtic mysteries and rituals
"I cannot thank enough this lovely river, this piece of my heart, for cleaning my mind and soul of the pervasive pollution of modern society. Were not for those scattered, callous stones of modern civilization, in yonder spot, by the river-shore, I would have built me a cabin to celebrate the gifts of life with the blissful elements of air, water, ether, earth and light."
On one occasion, nevertheless, as I remember now, Natasha Blavatsky told me of a serious confrontation with a Jewish landlord who, for years, had being trying to evict her, that is to say, to rob her of the sweet-home of her primordial memories alongside her now deceased mother (an immigrant from Russia).
Upon mentioning the word eviction to my good caring listening, her outrage could have sent tidal waves through the bowels of hell, but she had developed a remarkable capacity to coping with life's trying challenges without losing her sound judgment, equanimity and forbearance.
When she found out that I was a pianist and organist at a local church, her beautiful face, today creased with the hieroglyphics of chicken's feet, soon assumed the gentle, smooth affection of an adorable soul, amiable and refined as befitting her noble ancestry. When I succinctly made references to the remarkable, fired writings of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, forthwith, her facial expression resumed the virtues of a strong woman, and ever since (year 2006) we are friends forever in the journey of life.
From time to time, I would come across the Russian woman of yesteryears. Today, albeit much advanced in age, she has learned to live peacefully under the sunset of forgiveness, faith and hope, but above all, love and charity. She is one of my favorite neighbors!!!
In this cruel world, virtue and strength may surprise us in the wood of oblivion, the irony of success and victory. Like Natasha, I have met some victorious neighbors in the hood of Washington Heights, true soldiers in the battlefield of life, sustaining themselves by the staff of faith and hope in the hereafter.
The world is for courageous, strong souls...
We may wake up in the morning to be confronted with the question of existence...For those who have a snug shelter and food, their lives may be less vexed and prodded to action, survival may take into other psychological challenges.
Nevertheless, the question of suffering and meaning may have profound metaphysical implications and predicaments --no matter your station in society, life could be tough.
Those well-off and healthy may seem less tormented with material needs. Nonetheless, power of foresight, judgment and a careful, in-depth approach into the riddles of life may reveal another awful face: the unquestionable reality of suffering, a wide world filled with the woes, sighs and tears of Mother Eve.
The good lady, Mother Eve, Genesis (Chapter 3), found her suffering in the form of a beautiful snake! Now we think of a snake as something scary to behold, a living entity with numb expression, and yet a quiet being capable of inspiring fear for an evil that lies concealed in potential predictability, in potential futurity; whereas with other brutes, malice is detectable and it may burst into unbridled noisy fury, the snake, nevertheless, is always quiet, crafty, subtle.
Therefore, with many a creature we are not caught off guard. But there is also this intelligence that is both observant and vigilant, with laser-like accuracy pursuing its target to a final doom. Fortunately, the beautiful, silent reptile is damned to crawl on her belly and feed on dust...Thanks be to God.
I am frightened by snakes as much by growling dogs, roaring lions or any other prowling beasts roaming this earth. Very rarely I have met a woman with a snake entangled around her neck: Madam Fate!
But much to my surprise, Madam Fate, an old sullen lady of most serious aspect, appeared to me in yonder spot, motionless, eyes dark and lusterless fixed upon me, and with her right hand ever-pointing to the Upper West Side of Manhattan, she beckoned me to quiet places, sequestered residential areas of Washington Heights, still smacking of the unpalatable pages of history: the sins of my Spanish ancestors during colonial times.
****************************************
Confronting the Dogs of Distrust of Two Neighbors: American Charlie Jone-Stones and Russian Immigrant Yelena Rachmaninov (Year 2012)
While strolling by the Hudson River's banks, a defiant hound had been watching me with suspicion, and following my footprints, the distrustful creature pursued me as though sensing a convict, a hooligan, an outcast.
I retreated back to a propitious stripe of narrow woody lands unfolding into a maze of downhills and hillocks, which, as I continued treading and skittering along the edgy curves of jagged stones, quaysides, dangerous slabs, all these mad pathways sometimes would steep into precipitous, perilous ravines of distrust, suspiciousness, unfriendliness.
A German dog, a beast of most frightening aspect, property of an American fellow, Charlie Jone-Stones, was not pleased at the irregular pace of my clumsy gait, which he felt was absolutely alien to his culture, and deemed me an unwanted fellow in his own territory: a natural distrust, which frankly speaking, could be very embarrassing for any humanist who believes in the intrinsic goodness of mankind.
Sniffing me, and leering at my face with a disconcerting curiosity, the outlandish dog growled, grumbled and encircled around my feet, and then hunkered down quietly on his angular rump to muse about my unstable gait. With lurid eyes ever fixed on me, he suddenly addressed me thus:
"Tell me the truth. By God's sake, are you Dominican? And what the heck are you doing here in this neighborhood?"
Yes Sir! So I answered in a positive polite manner. I am Dominican, Catholic background.
I was born in a small Island, Hispaniola, La Española, named after the adventurous Spaniard conquistadores. In 1492, Christopher Columbus beached his ships, La Pinta, La Niña, y La Santa María, along the splendid seashores of this lovely Island, Quisquella.
The Spaniards were completely captivated by this virgin world of innocence, beauty, pasture, naturalism. By contrast, the Spanish crew consisted of an entourage of unkempt criminals, convicts, lowlifes, that have entrusted their fate to an adventurous mariner. Christopher Columbus, was a clever jew, and he was known for being a fearless navigator, would eventuallly win the friendship of an antisemite Spanish Queen: Reina Isabela.
The inhabitants of this Island, Taínos, though small, were a very beautiful people. Fond of nudity and simplicity, they would daub their cinamon-colored skin with coco oil to ward off the stings of mosquitos. The beautiful Taina girls, innocent, natural, so we are told, would soon fall prey to the all-clutching fingers of these devils in human form.
El Diablo tiene su interés en la República Dominicana, for he knows that the History of America starts with the genocide of the Taínos, and from these atrocities, coupled with every conceivable crime against humanity, slavery, rapes, pillaging, dehumanization and piracy, galore, the biological frosty stuff of history would finally produce a remarkable species called Los Dominicanos.
Dominican people, therefore, are the sum total of every possible interbreeding among the different races during colonial times, hence, why it is so difficult to classify us within the bracketing of any conventional racial terminology or category.
Every Dominican person, more than other races, is lavishly bestowed with the generic traits of the whole of the human race. Some philosophers, if they are to seek interesting cases of human experiments in the ever spawning womb of history, would have a great supply of biological types among the gene-pool of the Dominican people.
On closer inspection, nevertheless, we are bound to admit, that contrary to the churchy views and baseless prejudice associated with race-mixing in some parts of the world, there are people, whose physical constitution and musical sensitiveness, would make them more suitable for the equation of existence in the dissonantly jarring chord of pain, boredom and struggle...
The History of Colonialism, its crimes, genocide of the Aborigines, cannot be expiated by simply relocating this hapless progeny to the lands of North America, and thus would Fate write her unutterable pages in the ever-rolling bloody Sea of History.
The Devil has left his signature across the blood-tinged waters of el Canal de la Mona, a a few miles off the Capital of the Dominican Republic: Santo Domingo.
The crimes of our ancestors pursue us even unto this day. The disheartening screams and plaintive signs of those hapless Taina mothers, raped and then humiliated, could still still be heard in the heart of the Dominican Community in Washington Heights.
Of course, any intelligent person would admit good and bad people among any group of people; that some have exceeded more than others in the bad reputation that goes along with the hard reality of hardships, eviction, drug-traffcking, adaptation, assimilation, et al., I cannot think of any immigrants, or migrants, that did not have to fight their way up to a more civil society.
When I finished this succinct account on the Dominican Republic's infamous past and the extermination of the aborigines, Charlie Jone-Stones, while curbing his dog, held silence for a moment, but was soon most willing to dispel his doubts by drilling me with other queries.
He smelled something fishy about my stories about the people of Santo Domingo (Holy Sunday) and was not yet persuaded about the origin of the prefixed adjective "Dominican" to my origination and provenance:
"--Are Dominican people really Christian?"
I tríed to explain myself in religious terms, but the dog, my goodness! was soon bent on smelling my limbs, my torso, my buttock, ever-grumbling the Dominican word, he then muttered to his boss:
"Hmmm, is this true?
I felt somehow decomposed at such close scrutiny and inspection; perhaps the animal was suspecting me of some mischief, duplicity, cowardice, treachery, embezzlement, fraud, hypocrisy, rascality, deception, impertinence, uncleanliness, corruption, humbug, foolishness.
After closer examination and inspection, the dog seemed to have been pleased at my moral constitution.
Gawking at me in disbelief, the dog was somewhat surprised at my stories of Santo Domingo (Holy Sunday), capital of the Dominican Republic, for I had displayed a level of rationality that would challenge previously-held theories on the detrimental effects of a simple menu mainly consisting of Caribbean crops: plantain, rice and yuca (the so-called PRC effects) which are believed to dull our higher intellectual faculties.
Charlie Jone-Stones, an American man of a rather stocky frame, originally from Chicago, as I stared at his finely dapper presence, was not a night-roaming cur, but rather a pedigree of noble European Stock.
He wore a shaggy, fur coat of an upper-crusty intellectual living in a residential area, and it seemed that my detailed accounts on the devils of colonialism in the Dominican Republic, their crimes, their fiendish atrocities against the Aborigines, had only confirmed his views: that most nations are founded upon the ruins of wars, rapes, genocides, bloodshed and destruction.
I was about to say another word on colonialism, but the dog, all of a sudden, fell in a fit of frantic behavior and distrust, and soon started barking at me with such hideously ugly grimaces that I was forced to run out of these horrendous scenes of so much bloodshed, crimes, genocides, cruelties, inhumanities and horrors. Dammed the human race without God.
On another occasion, I encountered an adorable Russian woman,Yelena Rachmaninov, escorted with three menacing hounds ready to devour me whole. At that moment, I cried out for mercy: ‘Woman have mercy on me, Kyrie, Kyrie Eleison.’ By so doing, I thought my pious demeanor would impress her as being that of a devout Catholic saint from Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic.
Fortunately, the fierce animals, a three-headed horrendous Cerberus of Hatred, were curbed at the hypnotic sounds of some jingling bells: a necklace of gems the woman was wearing made of golden beads —perhaps an amulet— and with wagging tail the three monsters of my fright forthwith obeyed the sullen lady: Madam Fate.
The old soul then sternly shouted: "Leave him alone, the man dressed in blue is trustworthy."
Oh reader, my heart almost melted and I could not comprehend why most creeping and crawling animals are wholeheartedly misanthropes?
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On Angels and Devils - Plunging the Unconscious Swamps of People after Carl Jung:
When speaking of good and bad crowds peopled in the moral fabrics of every society, I shall now touch upon the gist of my writings on whether some human beings could be as good as angels.
My goodness! I could not write about Angels without their counterparts, the Devils, Goblins and Phantoms, and for such creepy stuff, my dear reader, you may forgive me a few lines on the fringe of the paranormal or supernatural: the unconscious swamp of people's collective psyche.
When thinking about such gruesome bevy of dreadful spirits, my mind brought me the disheartening lands of the United States of America, especially those ghost-towns, Michigan, Gary Indiana, California, and certain creepy spots in New York, whose eeriness and time-ravaged quarters (Upper West Side, Edgecome Avenue in Washington Heights) could freeze my blood cold even during a summer walk.
Don't walk down that road during the Autumn season, the autumnal leaves may fall like lost souls in a city of the living dead.
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. Once these kids are inside of your house, oh my dear, 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 Dominican 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. We may assume such elusive figments, i. e., ghosts and goblins, 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.
For those interested in some bizarre stories verging on the paranormal, I would like to recommend the soul-wracking writings of Brent Swancer, who, to me has the "thrill of dread" lodged in the stream-blood of his remarkable creative ingenuity.
Remind 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 Colletive Consciousness in the interpretation of transient phenomena.
Why would evil spirits assume the innocent face of an innocent child to win our trust and benevolence?
Just be careful, the 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, your belongings could be stolen, in-rushing problems could just break-in through the main-entrance door.
I assure you, once these kids are inside of your house, you would let out a scream. Some trouble could take away your peace, your 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.
Malefic Powers: Reality or Myth?
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 person who is too trusting and sheepish. I know some of you to be cautious when coming to grips with one of these frightening entities: strangers of the night. I beseech you, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, please, pray, and pray, and pray, because like black-eyed kids, so there are mysterious phenomena defying any explanation.
Angels do exist anymore than the reality of devils or bad people out there. If you are an intelligent person, then don't run into any "strangers' wide-spreading arms" like a silly sheep freeway into the butcher's trap or the infamous slaughterhouse for fools (Proverbs Chapter 1). If you know someone to lack wisdom, tell him or her to apply herself to (Proverbs Chapter 12).
It is a fact of life: five out of six people could turn out to be a veritable jerking experience.
Just check your intimate personal annals of traumatic experiences with people out there. The more gifted and intelligent you are, the more selective and small would be the inner circle of your angels: Friends of Integrity, Loyalty, Probity and High-mindedness, what strange breed of human beings, these angels are your blessings!!!
Bad people do exist, as real as serial killers, or subtle tormentors of one's soul, could inflict pain, in "attrition-like manner," could be as effective as those Devils who may maim and mangle your body's limbs into the dark quarters of hell.
The latter, "subtle tormentor of one's soul," (Chupacabra as known in Latin America) is the most common arch-enemy and mortal foe, and for the most part, he or she may escape the weight and vigor of the law (beyond impunity).
Their wiles and arrows are charged at one's self-esteem with laser-like precision, and little by little one would lose self-confidence, self-reliance, self-determination, self-empowered conviction in the serious battlefield of life. Fight the Good Fight!!!
Watch out, because such friend is actually your enemy.
With such counterfeit-friends, you don't need enemies as the saying goes, but even Jesus had a bad friend in Judas Iscariot, and sometimes our character is perfected through such trials and tribulations.
Your sharp words hurt like the point of a spear in my soul.
These latter friends are said to be intellectually superior, but be careful, intelligence not always tallies to goodness. As a matter of factly personal experiences with intellectually superior people, some could be as caustic and corrosive (sardonic) as lethal acids to our self-esteem, and they could charge their poisonous lampoon at our humble educational levels to make us feel inferior, crappy and a total failure in their eyes. Be careful, run away from that friend. He or she is at war with you.
The Good Angel: A Beautiful Human Being of Trust and Integrity: His Rebuke is Good To Me!!!
At times, believe it or not, just when you came out of a heartbreaking experience, Providence (Dios) have probably sent you an amazing human being, so increíble perfect, you have probably thought her or him to be but an angel in the Order of Melchizedek, the High Priest! My goodness! She or he is an angel!!!
But still, be careful, to jump into foolishness and so quickly hold that human as an angel. Some creepy entities could assume the expressive lovely eyes of Gabriel or Michael the good angels: serial killer Ted Bundy, for instance, had the face of an angel. But I personally believe that the countenance (face) could eventually reveal whether your angel is in fact a godly human being.
Angels are a fact of life, and they are sent to you to keep you on the right path of self-improvement, saintliness , purity and perfection. At some point, you may not only meet an angel, could probably have access to mystical temples reserved for the finest souls: this is a fact of life. If your heart is pure, then you shall be blessed, the lovely woods would be a heaven to your heart's content!
Feeling the gut-feeling of danger (foreboding and premonition)
I tell you to follow your gut-feelings when meeting strangers, and follow your inner voice when circumstances are turning against your wishes: a repetition of the same odds could warn you of unfolding troubles:
Some of my greatest challenges:
At times, I have to let a friend know, albeit indirectly, that within him or her there are scary entities at war with me. Likewise, you can intuit when a person has ill feelings for you.
A dearly loved human being may be a wonderful friend, but sometimes one can feel a "subtle discord" lurking behind the face of trust. Quickly, alert your friend to start praying because something is wrong: could be a subtle injury "rift of trust" in the past, a word that hurt the feelings to the core, or some unresolved issue along the path of forgiveness and mutual love.
You may extend a simple gift to your dearly loved friend as an expression of filial love and respect. This gift of love could act like an antidote against the psychic transmission of hatred, jealousy, vengeance, pride, and the well-known ugly energies emerging from the heartbeats' deepest palpitations.
As ugly as the reality of serious offenses and betrayal, one would need to "guard our heart" from further damages, and tactfully, let that person know that from the dark unfathomable reaches of the heart, our human nature without a "good checker," therein could emerge monstrous things that would shock you and me.
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The Plight of the Poor and Homeless in New York City:
While considered to be one of the wealthiest cities in the world, Manhattan is also notorious for economic discrepancies, biases, prejudice and discrimination against homeless people, an alarming situation, which, as an issue of the utmost importance —should concern us all— would require greater efforts to creating public awareness, safety and the right approach to tackling the serious problem of homelessness objectively, but also sensitively mindful of the other social ills deeply imbedded in the fabric of our society.
Daily, I come across homeless people, and much to my surprise, some are endowed with noblest feelings. The true reality is that New York City is an awful world for those who don’t have a place to sleep, and I wish to ask the Government of New York, Andrew Cuomo, to expedite any Initiatives or resources to creating new shelters or affordable mental clinics for those diagnosed with psychological illnesses traceable to the social ills of joblessness among the working class. A well-educated homeless person, an outcast, thrown out to the streets by an unfair society offering little, if any, alternatives, has, of late, raised the fear that some folks are simply trapped in the lower rung of our society's economic ladder.
Indeed. Social mobility has become more difficult for people without education, but for those with basic manual skills, i.e., the carpenter, the plumber, the painter, the construction worker, the situation is not as promising when an excess of demands and supplies (competitiveness may increase the wealth for some, but a surplus of employees may cheapen the labor's fair wages) may fall short of expectations.
For the most part, such jobs are given to very low-waged employees (...), whose ilegal status, is on the other side of the peripheral fringe of New York's ghettoes and slums: immigrants living anymore than shadows with little legal rights to fighting for justice.
Scanty Job-Opportunities For Those Trapped in the Lowest Rung of Our Economic Latter:
Menial jobs are often reserved for those willing to be paid the lowest minimum wages, which, contrary to the moral-base and pride of any society, should be accorded certain dignity and respectability worthy of the proletariat still fighting his or her way out of poverty.
The results have been outright pathetic: an increase in poverty among the law-abiding citizens, and in the worst of case-scenario, a staggering increase in homelessness even for the American citizens lagging behind the machine of modern society.
Meanwhile, some ilegal immigrants are willing to take the pettiest menial jobs, because, as previously stated, they have no other choice.
The poor citizen's pride, on the other side of the aisle, has led him to believe that he or she is entitled for a bigger piece of the apple-pie cake (the Big Apple) of opportunities in New York. But munch to our dismay, this latter crowd are now roaming the streets of New York City.
Homeless, they go around asking for a few dollars, a few dimes, or even a nickel to buy a loaf of bread, a meal, coffee, tea, cigars, drugs, candies, groceries, perhaps some fish of faith in a local church, or some clean embottled water to slake their thirst for justice.
These hapless folks are often faced with reduced access to private and public services and vital necessities:
Everything the outcast owns (some rags and tatters) is perhaps to be found in a shopping cart, a cupboard somewhere, or perhaps left in a wardrobe to be retrieved at a latter point, or simply dumped at a local sanctuary-church, whose wooded pews are definitely cozier and cushier than the hard slabs at the entrance- door of the Church-Sanctuary.
There, by the entrance-door, even amidst the nipping winds of winter, these homeless people could even build their nesting enfolding beds on the hard floor.
The scene is rather a confusing welter of misery, defeat and filths soaked-in by the dirty materials of their comforters.
And so they wrap themselves with thick blankets and sheets enrolled in multiple folds, worn-out rags, which, the next day, as goaded by the three-forked trident of any decent society, duty, civility and cleanliness, they are then forced to discard as superfluous belongings or junks in the equation of existence.
Nevertheless, it is incumbent upon the homeless, however crushed by the cumbersome load of a wretched life, to put on a decent face of civility. Such druggy-grubby zombies are often avoided like lepers, and if they stink, it is even more difficult to find a Good Samaritan,
Nevertheless, the cold of the night could make us shudder with dread and horror for the mental fortitude of some homeless people.
In the drooping hours of the evening (around 8:30 pm), these homeless people, tormented by the fiercest winds of winter, which, by the way, could make them wriggle like wretched worms under the soil or clod thrown into a yawning grave for the dead. The hard pavement or slab of civilized society has become their capstone and grave.
By any stretch of the imagination, these homeless people are living a veritable hell of an existence.
Soon, around bedtime, these poor souls, however hard on themselves to avoiding the stigma of riff-rafts or vagrants, midway to becoming outcasts, would fetch out their comforters and rags anymore than a savage in a jungle, would fetch out some logs of woods which he would gladly set afire against the in-coming bone-chilling winds.
Do They Have Any Place?
Rarely. This unfortunate army cannot go anywhere because, often times, they are either too physically emaciated by the burdens of a hard existence, or too busy protecting their "few things," which, as I said, may amount to a cumbersome load of heartbreaking personal issues: psychological illness, drugs, light-carrying dirty appurtenances, a drawing board, a journal, a diary, wherein some homeless would even jot down the dire train of circumstances which led him-her to end up living a dysfunctional, lethargic, if perhaps tragic existence.
That some are in possession of some relics of their former selves could win my wonder and admiration.
Poetry is often the preferred genre of some homeless with a bent for the art, which, requiring little luxury anymore than a piece of paper, a drawing board, or a notebook, some are diligent to writing down some self-pregnant thoughts with remarkable beauty, humanity and even genius!
Some could even sketch like a fine draftsman of the first order. But the little talent or skill they may possess, due to poor health conditions, overtime, may become a mediocre and careless pursuit, and very rarely could these dear folks provide for themselves a decent livelihood with such natural talents.
Thus I see some homeless folks wandering back and forth, with slouching gait, hunchback, haggard, gaunt-cheeked faces whose sinking stares may remind me of sub-human beings on the brink of despair and suicide.
Day and night they toil hard for a longer wretched existence.
Like a thronging horde of lost souls cast out from the Pit of Hell, they trudge forward along the ever-stretching Avenues of Broadway, Amsterdam, St. Nicholas, Audubon, and by the sidewalks, lo! there comes a poor woman, Señora Miseria, in pious pose, asking for help: "amigo, por favor, ayúdeme."
The old woman pleads for a few dollars, would even weep and beg for a few coins to buying herself a simple meal at a local Macdonald.
I even met a decent lady unable to pay the fees of her room, and her personal story could rend the stoutest heart. Her youth is gone, her teeth are falling off, and all her strength and prayers are aimed at avoiding the cold streets of NYC during the winter —it is like the Sahara desert.
But worse things could be reported: the homeless must dislodge the other loads of necessity.
Perhaps a propitious shower is possible, perhaps there is to be found handy a toilet in the restroom of the local restaurant, which, as you may know, could be one of the most pressing needs for a homeless person: hygiene, mental sobriety and health.
Above all, the homeless, if he (she) is street-wise, clever and strong, must play the decent face of a human being in possession of some civility, that is to say, if he-she is to be admitted in the bathrooms of the public squares. My dear, keep a minimum of hygiene, otherwise the man in rags and tatters may run the risk of being chased away like a leper, a bum or a thief.
Unfortunately, the stench of the body may bring an injunction against the outcasts of New York City, but in my humble view, it is the opposite: homelessness may bring an indictment against New York.
A cursed existence may argue against the principles of our constitution. Overtime, sadly, the poor soul must accept a pathetic reality, a social discrepancy and inequality welded together like two twin-sisters born from the same womb on the throes of pains, whose heartbreaking aspect is alike revolting and shameful for any civilized society.
Our Civilized Society and Homelessness:
Our civilized society, which is worse than the wood for the peasant of yore, or, as observed by Jack London (People of the Abyss), may fall below the primitiveness of the aborigines whom could still till the land for crops, sustenance and a tolerable existence.
Our modern society, in the last analysis, is today but a slaughterhouse for the unskilled, the computer illiterate, the mentally-ill for lack of adaptability in the Age of Thinking Machines.
The homeless, the drug addict, the lazy, the destitute, and sadly, the innocent victims living in a unfair world, are said to be the passive victims of discrimination and social injustice.
A new species of human beings are emerging from the tall walls of civilization. A homeless person is but an animal of survival, but tempered by needs and despair, it is generally believed that even the virtuous could become a criminal.
True! Necessity has no law, and crime and punishment are now to be reckoned and executed in the streets of big cities like New York.
Natasha Blavatsky:
“…A homeless Christian may not have the criminal instincts so ruffled in the rough ghettos, nor the gut to outsmarting the system, but some could succumb to the rapacious hyenas of despair, lawlessness, prostitution and theft.
Among these homeless Christians, with no other choice but to walk lonely the solitary path of life or death, a church-sanctuary could be like a citadel.
For those with no other choice but to suffer such daily calamities of rejection, hunger and discrimination, a peaceful death could be a blessing.
Well, in the last breath of faith, some would stay homeless with a deep-seated conviction that there is justice at the end of this long-journeyed experience.
Like an unfortunate man lost in the Gobhi desert, but hopeful for a fresh oasis in the high promise of those ever-stretching dunes of desperation and depredation, a Christian may be lucky if his-her existence is finally culminated by a whirlwind of sands, or, devoured by rapacious hyenas than to finally suffer the Scorching Heat of Hades without Hope, Faith and Love.
How About the Criminal Homeless?
Meanwhile, I would spare the other ubiquitous criminal folks of their guilt, unscrupulousness and what Madam Fate has made of their lives in the shambles of civilization: the burglar, the prostitute, the hooligan and the pickpocket, whom, at least, in the 1990s, could survive in the battlefield of the stronger, but the ever-present surveillance cameras of New York has changed the game of civilization.
In fact, such machines have created a new type of homeless fugitives, whose surviving mechanism may not be match for a technocracy ruled with the Might of the State Machine.
Nevertheless, criminals are still proliferating at a staggering pace, and the white-collar criminal could prove to be more dangerous than the poor homeless crouching in the street for a minor offense against the law.
The homeless of today, like a madman frantically crying in a sanatorium, is now trapped in the streets of New York City, and, he is imprisoned not in a jail designed for criminals, but therein, within the high-walls of civilization, find the chains and shackles of slavery, whose tight fetters, grips and fences few may dare break loose without provoking the cruel master's punishment.
Sure! The Master of Technocracy would flog the slave a thousandfold increase for every daring of liberty and emancipation, and so slavery has become the status quo for the homeless.
Fortunately, there is a backdoor in the backyard of civilization, and perhaps we may be able to escape far into to the unfettered woods in the unpalatable pages of history?
The pitiable drudgeries of the homeless automaton of civilization could fill me with dread, fear, apprehension and indignation for this patent social inequality wedging an awful gash in the heart of the human species.
Bone-chilling winds in the cold winters of New York, I hear them wailing and whimpering like a poor mother begging her grim master to spare her child the sharp dagger of death.
Does this gangster of civilization have a heart?
Then I set my eyes on the other side of Manhattan, Times Square, and Downtown Manhattan. Lo and behold! There was a big crowd of hawking spectators in the Central Park. Like a flock of high-ranking turkeys flaunting their plumages for all to see, they were celebrating Thanksgiving Day with boisterous hurrahs, cheers, bouquets, pomp and circumstances.
Their callousness sent shivers down my spine. These upper-crusty folks were well-dressed in splendid clothes —the privileges for the wealthy classes.
Indeed, they all appeared to be congratulatory of their material successes and accomplishments, but outside, by the sidewalks (34th Street and 8th Avenue), I saw these beggars squatting on the floor like a bevy of wretched dogs, licking their paws, whining and yelping for some leftovers and crumbs strewn here and there by the benches.
Their vacant faces gave me chills.
It is not just the burden of homelessness, poor hygiene and sanitation that are all at high stake for the bleak future of New York City, but, frankly speaking, we are also at higher risks of contagious diseases hard to contain (Coronavirus, CoVid-19), or to ward-off, in the squalid conditions of the subway system on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
And therein, by the subways, in the public squares, by the sidewalks, in the parks, I daily come across this lost army of humans packing and unpacking their few belongings.
I was told that a great number of homeless people are afflicted with mental illnesses (nay, defective immune system and poor hygiene), which could make them the more vulnerable for strangest mental and physical ailments, ranging from a mild flu to serious internal damages of their organs.
Understandably, by consuming drugs and hallucinogens, they would expect such ill-concocted substances to alleviate their precarious conditions and wretchedness.
Day and night, some would dope themselves with cocaine, marijuana, even morphine, which, as we all know, in some cases could only aggravate their frail health to a final tragic death.
Contrary to the general opinion of the drug-addict's inner craving desires for such pain-killers or "highs", while it is true that some drugs (e.g. heroine, morpheme) may dumb the body from feeling the bone-chilling cold, "an overdose," is often the main culprit of mortality among the homeless.
The truth is that homeless people face many problems beyond the lack of a safe and suitable home. Generally, homeless people must grapple with rejection and discrimination, and they are, undoubtedly, at higher risk of suffering violence, abuse and death.
On Trust, Prosperity vs Wealth and Avarice:
The course of time could be one of Wealth or Poverty, but I have cast the arbitrariness of Fortuna anymore dangerous than the treacherous serpentine coils of Medusa, whose hideous visage could turn us into stones: callouss and cold-hearted for the misfortunes of others. And while gleaning the best of my gains and losses, I would like to come to terms with the two-faced coin of Janus, "success or failure," whose moral lessons are said to be a matter of opinion, of judgement, of historic latitude.
To some, poverty, in the fertile soil of needs, hardships, trials, tribulations, persecution and the challenges of a precarious existence, has always produced a greater harvest of interesting human types, whose iron-will, formidable mental fortitude, vigilance, dogged tenacity, presence of mind and discipline, could, in just a few years, claim a larger share of goods, friendships, territories, alliance, victories and the highest trophies of success for those already acquainted and trained with the fickle face of Fortuna or Janus.
Praise or reproach should not bend a man's will to seeking approval or disapproval in what he earnestly believes to be solely his rewards, his merits, whether in meditation or silence, the good fruits of an oak-tree well-planted along the salubrious river of integrity, peace, purity. And in line with the higher laws and strivings, the emulation of what is believed to be lofty in character, firmest in action, sincerest in motive and intentions, are the sure foundation for the happiest possible existence on the surface of the Earth. The true merits and rewards of our inner victories are seldom shared beyond the sacred sanctuary of our heart. Take for instance the sublime music of Johann Sebastian Bach, though ignored by his envious contemporaries, would eventually win a wider audience beyond the Rhine and the Danube Rivers!
At any rate, let us consider the humble beginning of nations and peoples, and how the most admirable work of genius, whether in times of war or armistice, or in the peaceful leisure of creativeness, produced formidable men and women whose fabric and spirituality may seem to have been forged from a totally different breed of human beings; or, as we compare the heights of their aspirations, we are bound to admit, regardless of any biases or any accusation of idolatry or racism, that the Ancient Romans, the Ancient Hebrews, the Ancient Germans, and the Ancient Egyptians may stand as obelisks towering above the ever-stretching plateau of modern civilization.
Enough has been said of the Ancient Greeks, and it is time to inquire on the former greatness of the Teutonic people. Their fate is no less lamentable than the Fall and Decline of the Roman Empire. These people of yore, the Germans, as observed by Thomas Mann, while believed to be in possession of the finest products of civilization, had in their instincts something tragic in the unpalatable pages of history. Almost a century later, these people are still recovering, like the Phoenix Bird, from the ashes of the Second World War. The Destruction of Germany, as the purveyor of culture and great philosophers, is already a centennial chapter deeply buried in the sepulchral backyards of history. Peruse George Santayana on German Philosophy and Barbarism. Their writings are so far-fetched that some German authors, according to Santayana, should be avoided, lest their wild literature cripple our mental faculties. But few would deny them of some greatness, and so let us re-embrace the best of the Germans of J.S. Bach.
Some Observations On the Internal Fabric of the Ancient People of Egypt, Germany and Rome:
What the Ancient Woods of Germanía accomplished in the bosom of the barbarian, is perhaps a more felicitous calibration of life's fundamentals, e.i., substance, blood, water, earth, fire and air, the vital elements in the biological dynamics of existence, believed to be highly more celebratory than the total mechanization of the modern automaton of our inquiry.
From this perspective, modern civilization is but a slaughterhouse for the soul, or perhaps it is a large sepulchral field of robotic mechanization, machines, computers, and high-walled cities of servitude in the grandest scale, here and there dotted with countless hutches for birds of very limited flight.
Though we are all creatures of the same God-Father, we must admit that just as dinosaurs perished to allowing a smaller kind though more numerous brood of little birds and reptiles resembling the former gigantic beasts, in like similitude, Mother Nature has perhaps contained her evolutionary prowess, which could produce the most monstrous of experiments, with these ever-stretching webs, fireworks and clearances of human civilization, but these latter, Homo sapiens, have turned out to be rather pernicious, and perhaps the most dangerous of predators in the larger scheme of global things.
Therefore, I am not sure whether this dispensation is the most interesting chapter as staged-out by this bipedal animal of conquest and destruction, master of empires and utopias, whose nostrils and vitals, are said to be happy but in a boundless, lush, splendid, floral, verdant horizon allowing ample space for the most ecstatic intoxication of life.
Unfortunately, the human species, is wreaking havoc on the surface of the Earth, and our flashy glittering technology, however impressive, is not enhancing the quality of life.
Air and space are akin to freedom and liberty, but a boundless horizon is always the measure of greatness and grandeur. The spectacles of life, if we fancy to believe in higher beings as eternal watchers and keepers of this ever-going celebration of life with all kinds of curious creatures, may proffer much entertainment and amusement in the grandest theaters of millennia.
On Modern Society and Wealths in Big Cities:
My goodness! I could not write about Angels without their counterparts, the Devils, Goblins and Phantoms, and for such creepy stuff, my dear reader, you may forgive me a few lines on the fringe of the paranormal or supernatural: the unconscious swamp of people's collective psyche.
When thinking about such gruesome bevy of dreadful spirits, my mind brought me the disheartening lands of the United States of America, especially those ghost-towns, Michigan, Gary Indiana, California, and certain creepy spots in New York, whose eeriness and time-ravaged quarters (Upper West Side, Edgecome Avenue in Washington Heights) could freeze my blood cold even during a summer walk.
Don't walk down that road during the Autumn season, the autumnal leaves may fall like lost souls in a city of the living dead.
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. Once these kids are inside of your house, oh my dear, 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 Dominican 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. We may assume such elusive figments, i. e., ghosts and goblins, 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.
For those interested in some bizarre stories verging on the paranormal, I would like to recommend the soul-wracking writings of Brent Swancer, who, to me has the "thrill of dread" lodged in the stream-blood of his remarkable creative ingenuity.
Remind 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 Colletive Consciousness in the interpretation of transient phenomena.
Why would evil spirits assume the innocent face of an innocent child to win our trust and benevolence?
Just be careful, the 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, your belongings could be stolen, in-rushing problems could just break-in through the main-entrance door.
I assure you, once these kids are inside of your house, you would let out a scream. Some trouble could take away your peace, your 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.
Malefic Powers: Reality or Myth?
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 person who is too trusting and sheepish. I know some of you to be cautious when coming to grips with one of these frightening entities: strangers of the night. I beseech you, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, please, pray, and pray, and pray, because like black-eyed kids, so there are mysterious phenomena defying any explanation.
Angels do exist anymore than the reality of devils or bad people out there. If you are an intelligent person, then don't run into any "strangers' wide-spreading arms" like a silly sheep freeway into the butcher's trap or the infamous slaughterhouse for fools (Proverbs Chapter 1). If you know someone to lack wisdom, tell him or her to apply herself to (Proverbs Chapter 12).
It is a fact of life: five out of six people could turn out to be a veritable jerking experience.
Just check your intimate personal annals of traumatic experiences with people out there. The more gifted and intelligent you are, the more selective and small would be the inner circle of your angels: Friends of Integrity, Loyalty, Probity and High-mindedness, what strange breed of human beings, these angels are your blessings!!!
Bad people do exist, as real as serial killers, or subtle tormentors of one's soul, could inflict pain, in "attrition-like manner," could be as effective as those Devils who may maim and mangle your body's limbs into the dark quarters of hell.
The latter, "subtle tormentor of one's soul," (Chupacabra as known in Latin America) is the most common arch-enemy and mortal foe, and for the most part, he or she may escape the weight and vigor of the law (beyond impunity).
Their wiles and arrows are charged at one's self-esteem with laser-like precision, and little by little one would lose self-confidence, self-reliance, self-determination, self-empowered conviction in the serious battlefield of life. Fight the Good Fight!!!
Watch out, because such friend is actually your enemy.
With such counterfeit-friends, you don't need enemies as the saying goes, but even Jesus had a bad friend in Judas Iscariot, and sometimes our character is perfected through such trials and tribulations.
Your sharp words hurt like the point of a spear in my soul.
These latter friends are said to be intellectually superior, but be careful, intelligence not always tallies to goodness. As a matter of factly personal experiences with intellectually superior people, some could be as caustic and corrosive (sardonic) as lethal acids to our self-esteem, and they could charge their poisonous lampoon at our humble educational levels to make us feel inferior, crappy and a total failure in their eyes. Be careful, run away from that friend. He or she is at war with you.
The Good Angel: A Beautiful Human Being of Trust and Integrity: His Rebuke is Good To Me!!!
At times, believe it or not, just when you came out of a heartbreaking experience, Providence (Dios) have probably sent you an amazing human being, so increíble perfect, you have probably thought her or him to be but an angel in the Order of Melchizedek, the High Priest! My goodness! She or he is an angel!!!
But still, be careful, to jump into foolishness and so quickly hold that human as an angel. Some creepy entities could assume the expressive lovely eyes of Gabriel or Michael the good angels: serial killer Ted Bundy, for instance, had the face of an angel. But I personally believe that the countenance (face) could eventually reveal whether your angel is in fact a godly human being.
Angels are a fact of life, and they are sent to you to keep you on the right path of self-improvement, saintliness , purity and perfection. At some point, you may not only meet an angel, could probably have access to mystical temples reserved for the finest souls: this is a fact of life. If your heart is pure, then you shall be blessed, the lovely woods would be a heaven to your heart's content!
Feeling the gut-feeling of danger (foreboding and premonition)
I tell you to follow your gut-feelings when meeting strangers, and follow your inner voice when circumstances are turning against your wishes: a repetition of the same odds could warn you of unfolding troubles:
Some of my greatest challenges:
At times, I have to let a friend know, albeit indirectly, that within him or her there are scary entities at war with me. Likewise, you can intuit when a person has ill feelings for you.
A dearly loved human being may be a wonderful friend, but sometimes one can feel a "subtle discord" lurking behind the face of trust. Quickly, alert your friend to start praying because something is wrong: could be a subtle injury "rift of trust" in the past, a word that hurt the feelings to the core, or some unresolved issue along the path of forgiveness and mutual love.
You may extend a simple gift to your dearly loved friend as an expression of filial love and respect. This gift of love could act like an antidote against the psychic transmission of hatred, jealousy, vengeance, pride, and the well-known ugly energies emerging from the heartbeats' deepest palpitations.
As ugly as the reality of serious offenses and betrayal, one would need to "guard our heart" from further damages, and tactfully, let that person know that from the dark unfathomable reaches of the heart, our human nature without a "good checker," therein could emerge monstrous things that would shock you and me.
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The Plight of the Poor and Homeless in New York City:
While considered to be one of the wealthiest cities in the world, Manhattan is also notorious for economic discrepancies, biases, prejudice and discrimination against homeless people, an alarming situation, which, as an issue of the utmost importance —should concern us all— would require greater efforts to creating public awareness, safety and the right approach to tackling the serious problem of homelessness objectively, but also sensitively mindful of the other social ills deeply imbedded in the fabric of our society.
Daily, I come across homeless people, and much to my surprise, some are endowed with noblest feelings. The true reality is that New York City is an awful world for those who don’t have a place to sleep, and I wish to ask the Government of New York, Andrew Cuomo, to expedite any Initiatives or resources to creating new shelters or affordable mental clinics for those diagnosed with psychological illnesses traceable to the social ills of joblessness among the working class. A well-educated homeless person, an outcast, thrown out to the streets by an unfair society offering little, if any, alternatives, has, of late, raised the fear that some folks are simply trapped in the lower rung of our society's economic ladder.
Indeed. Social mobility has become more difficult for people without education, but for those with basic manual skills, i.e., the carpenter, the plumber, the painter, the construction worker, the situation is not as promising when an excess of demands and supplies (competitiveness may increase the wealth for some, but a surplus of employees may cheapen the labor's fair wages) may fall short of expectations.
For the most part, such jobs are given to very low-waged employees (...), whose ilegal status, is on the other side of the peripheral fringe of New York's ghettoes and slums: immigrants living anymore than shadows with little legal rights to fighting for justice.
Scanty Job-Opportunities For Those Trapped in the Lowest Rung of Our Economic Latter:
Menial jobs are often reserved for those willing to be paid the lowest minimum wages, which, contrary to the moral-base and pride of any society, should be accorded certain dignity and respectability worthy of the proletariat still fighting his or her way out of poverty.
The results have been outright pathetic: an increase in poverty among the law-abiding citizens, and in the worst of case-scenario, a staggering increase in homelessness even for the American citizens lagging behind the machine of modern society.
Meanwhile, some ilegal immigrants are willing to take the pettiest menial jobs, because, as previously stated, they have no other choice.
The poor citizen's pride, on the other side of the aisle, has led him to believe that he or she is entitled for a bigger piece of the apple-pie cake (the Big Apple) of opportunities in New York. But munch to our dismay, this latter crowd are now roaming the streets of New York City.
Homeless, they go around asking for a few dollars, a few dimes, or even a nickel to buy a loaf of bread, a meal, coffee, tea, cigars, drugs, candies, groceries, perhaps some fish of faith in a local church, or some clean embottled water to slake their thirst for justice.
These hapless folks are often faced with reduced access to private and public services and vital necessities:
Everything the outcast owns (some rags and tatters) is perhaps to be found in a shopping cart, a cupboard somewhere, or perhaps left in a wardrobe to be retrieved at a latter point, or simply dumped at a local sanctuary-church, whose wooded pews are definitely cozier and cushier than the hard slabs at the entrance- door of the Church-Sanctuary.
There, by the entrance-door, even amidst the nipping winds of winter, these homeless people could even build their nesting enfolding beds on the hard floor.
The scene is rather a confusing welter of misery, defeat and filths soaked-in by the dirty materials of their comforters.
And so they wrap themselves with thick blankets and sheets enrolled in multiple folds, worn-out rags, which, the next day, as goaded by the three-forked trident of any decent society, duty, civility and cleanliness, they are then forced to discard as superfluous belongings or junks in the equation of existence.
Nevertheless, it is incumbent upon the homeless, however crushed by the cumbersome load of a wretched life, to put on a decent face of civility. Such druggy-grubby zombies are often avoided like lepers, and if they stink, it is even more difficult to find a Good Samaritan,
Nevertheless, the cold of the night could make us shudder with dread and horror for the mental fortitude of some homeless people.
In the drooping hours of the evening (around 8:30 pm), these homeless people, tormented by the fiercest winds of winter, which, by the way, could make them wriggle like wretched worms under the soil or clod thrown into a yawning grave for the dead. The hard pavement or slab of civilized society has become their capstone and grave.
By any stretch of the imagination, these homeless people are living a veritable hell of an existence.
Soon, around bedtime, these poor souls, however hard on themselves to avoiding the stigma of riff-rafts or vagrants, midway to becoming outcasts, would fetch out their comforters and rags anymore than a savage in a jungle, would fetch out some logs of woods which he would gladly set afire against the in-coming bone-chilling winds.
Do They Have Any Place?
Rarely. This unfortunate army cannot go anywhere because, often times, they are either too physically emaciated by the burdens of a hard existence, or too busy protecting their "few things," which, as I said, may amount to a cumbersome load of heartbreaking personal issues: psychological illness, drugs, light-carrying dirty appurtenances, a drawing board, a journal, a diary, wherein some homeless would even jot down the dire train of circumstances which led him-her to end up living a dysfunctional, lethargic, if perhaps tragic existence.
That some are in possession of some relics of their former selves could win my wonder and admiration.
Poetry is often the preferred genre of some homeless with a bent for the art, which, requiring little luxury anymore than a piece of paper, a drawing board, or a notebook, some are diligent to writing down some self-pregnant thoughts with remarkable beauty, humanity and even genius!
Some could even sketch like a fine draftsman of the first order. But the little talent or skill they may possess, due to poor health conditions, overtime, may become a mediocre and careless pursuit, and very rarely could these dear folks provide for themselves a decent livelihood with such natural talents.
Thus I see some homeless folks wandering back and forth, with slouching gait, hunchback, haggard, gaunt-cheeked faces whose sinking stares may remind me of sub-human beings on the brink of despair and suicide.
Day and night they toil hard for a longer wretched existence.
Like a thronging horde of lost souls cast out from the Pit of Hell, they trudge forward along the ever-stretching Avenues of Broadway, Amsterdam, St. Nicholas, Audubon, and by the sidewalks, lo! there comes a poor woman, Señora Miseria, in pious pose, asking for help: "amigo, por favor, ayúdeme."
The old woman pleads for a few dollars, would even weep and beg for a few coins to buying herself a simple meal at a local Macdonald.
I even met a decent lady unable to pay the fees of her room, and her personal story could rend the stoutest heart. Her youth is gone, her teeth are falling off, and all her strength and prayers are aimed at avoiding the cold streets of NYC during the winter —it is like the Sahara desert.
But worse things could be reported: the homeless must dislodge the other loads of necessity.
Perhaps a propitious shower is possible, perhaps there is to be found handy a toilet in the restroom of the local restaurant, which, as you may know, could be one of the most pressing needs for a homeless person: hygiene, mental sobriety and health.
Above all, the homeless, if he (she) is street-wise, clever and strong, must play the decent face of a human being in possession of some civility, that is to say, if he-she is to be admitted in the bathrooms of the public squares. My dear, keep a minimum of hygiene, otherwise the man in rags and tatters may run the risk of being chased away like a leper, a bum or a thief.
Unfortunately, the stench of the body may bring an injunction against the outcasts of New York City, but in my humble view, it is the opposite: homelessness may bring an indictment against New York.
A cursed existence may argue against the principles of our constitution. Overtime, sadly, the poor soul must accept a pathetic reality, a social discrepancy and inequality welded together like two twin-sisters born from the same womb on the throes of pains, whose heartbreaking aspect is alike revolting and shameful for any civilized society.
Our Civilized Society and Homelessness:
Our civilized society, which is worse than the wood for the peasant of yore, or, as observed by Jack London (People of the Abyss), may fall below the primitiveness of the aborigines whom could still till the land for crops, sustenance and a tolerable existence.
Our modern society, in the last analysis, is today but a slaughterhouse for the unskilled, the computer illiterate, the mentally-ill for lack of adaptability in the Age of Thinking Machines.
The homeless, the drug addict, the lazy, the destitute, and sadly, the innocent victims living in a unfair world, are said to be the passive victims of discrimination and social injustice.
A new species of human beings are emerging from the tall walls of civilization. A homeless person is but an animal of survival, but tempered by needs and despair, it is generally believed that even the virtuous could become a criminal.
True! Necessity has no law, and crime and punishment are now to be reckoned and executed in the streets of big cities like New York.
Natasha Blavatsky:
“…A homeless Christian may not have the criminal instincts so ruffled in the rough ghettos, nor the gut to outsmarting the system, but some could succumb to the rapacious hyenas of despair, lawlessness, prostitution and theft.
Among these homeless Christians, with no other choice but to walk lonely the solitary path of life or death, a church-sanctuary could be like a citadel.
For those with no other choice but to suffer such daily calamities of rejection, hunger and discrimination, a peaceful death could be a blessing.
Well, in the last breath of faith, some would stay homeless with a deep-seated conviction that there is justice at the end of this long-journeyed experience.
Like an unfortunate man lost in the Gobhi desert, but hopeful for a fresh oasis in the high promise of those ever-stretching dunes of desperation and depredation, a Christian may be lucky if his-her existence is finally culminated by a whirlwind of sands, or, devoured by rapacious hyenas than to finally suffer the Scorching Heat of Hades without Hope, Faith and Love.
How About the Criminal Homeless?
Meanwhile, I would spare the other ubiquitous criminal folks of their guilt, unscrupulousness and what Madam Fate has made of their lives in the shambles of civilization: the burglar, the prostitute, the hooligan and the pickpocket, whom, at least, in the 1990s, could survive in the battlefield of the stronger, but the ever-present surveillance cameras of New York has changed the game of civilization.
In fact, such machines have created a new type of homeless fugitives, whose surviving mechanism may not be match for a technocracy ruled with the Might of the State Machine.
Nevertheless, criminals are still proliferating at a staggering pace, and the white-collar criminal could prove to be more dangerous than the poor homeless crouching in the street for a minor offense against the law.
The homeless of today, like a madman frantically crying in a sanatorium, is now trapped in the streets of New York City, and, he is imprisoned not in a jail designed for criminals, but therein, within the high-walls of civilization, find the chains and shackles of slavery, whose tight fetters, grips and fences few may dare break loose without provoking the cruel master's punishment.
Sure! The Master of Technocracy would flog the slave a thousandfold increase for every daring of liberty and emancipation, and so slavery has become the status quo for the homeless.
Fortunately, there is a backdoor in the backyard of civilization, and perhaps we may be able to escape far into to the unfettered woods in the unpalatable pages of history?
The pitiable drudgeries of the homeless automaton of civilization could fill me with dread, fear, apprehension and indignation for this patent social inequality wedging an awful gash in the heart of the human species.
Bone-chilling winds in the cold winters of New York, I hear them wailing and whimpering like a poor mother begging her grim master to spare her child the sharp dagger of death.
Does this gangster of civilization have a heart?
Then I set my eyes on the other side of Manhattan, Times Square, and Downtown Manhattan. Lo and behold! There was a big crowd of hawking spectators in the Central Park. Like a flock of high-ranking turkeys flaunting their plumages for all to see, they were celebrating Thanksgiving Day with boisterous hurrahs, cheers, bouquets, pomp and circumstances.
Their callousness sent shivers down my spine. These upper-crusty folks were well-dressed in splendid clothes —the privileges for the wealthy classes.
Indeed, they all appeared to be congratulatory of their material successes and accomplishments, but outside, by the sidewalks (34th Street and 8th Avenue), I saw these beggars squatting on the floor like a bevy of wretched dogs, licking their paws, whining and yelping for some leftovers and crumbs strewn here and there by the benches.
Their vacant faces gave me chills.
It is not just the burden of homelessness, poor hygiene and sanitation that are all at high stake for the bleak future of New York City, but, frankly speaking, we are also at higher risks of contagious diseases hard to contain (Coronavirus, CoVid-19), or to ward-off, in the squalid conditions of the subway system on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
And therein, by the subways, in the public squares, by the sidewalks, in the parks, I daily come across this lost army of humans packing and unpacking their few belongings.
I was told that a great number of homeless people are afflicted with mental illnesses (nay, defective immune system and poor hygiene), which could make them the more vulnerable for strangest mental and physical ailments, ranging from a mild flu to serious internal damages of their organs.
Understandably, by consuming drugs and hallucinogens, they would expect such ill-concocted substances to alleviate their precarious conditions and wretchedness.
Day and night, some would dope themselves with cocaine, marijuana, even morphine, which, as we all know, in some cases could only aggravate their frail health to a final tragic death.
Contrary to the general opinion of the drug-addict's inner craving desires for such pain-killers or "highs", while it is true that some drugs (e.g. heroine, morpheme) may dumb the body from feeling the bone-chilling cold, "an overdose," is often the main culprit of mortality among the homeless.
The truth is that homeless people face many problems beyond the lack of a safe and suitable home. Generally, homeless people must grapple with rejection and discrimination, and they are, undoubtedly, at higher risk of suffering violence, abuse and death.
On Trust, Prosperity vs Wealth and Avarice:
The course of time could be one of Wealth or Poverty, but I have cast the arbitrariness of Fortuna anymore dangerous than the treacherous serpentine coils of Medusa, whose hideous visage could turn us into stones: callouss and cold-hearted for the misfortunes of others. And while gleaning the best of my gains and losses, I would like to come to terms with the two-faced coin of Janus, "success or failure," whose moral lessons are said to be a matter of opinion, of judgement, of historic latitude.
To some, poverty, in the fertile soil of needs, hardships, trials, tribulations, persecution and the challenges of a precarious existence, has always produced a greater harvest of interesting human types, whose iron-will, formidable mental fortitude, vigilance, dogged tenacity, presence of mind and discipline, could, in just a few years, claim a larger share of goods, friendships, territories, alliance, victories and the highest trophies of success for those already acquainted and trained with the fickle face of Fortuna or Janus.
Praise or reproach should not bend a man's will to seeking approval or disapproval in what he earnestly believes to be solely his rewards, his merits, whether in meditation or silence, the good fruits of an oak-tree well-planted along the salubrious river of integrity, peace, purity. And in line with the higher laws and strivings, the emulation of what is believed to be lofty in character, firmest in action, sincerest in motive and intentions, are the sure foundation for the happiest possible existence on the surface of the Earth. The true merits and rewards of our inner victories are seldom shared beyond the sacred sanctuary of our heart. Take for instance the sublime music of Johann Sebastian Bach, though ignored by his envious contemporaries, would eventually win a wider audience beyond the Rhine and the Danube Rivers!
At any rate, let us consider the humble beginning of nations and peoples, and how the most admirable work of genius, whether in times of war or armistice, or in the peaceful leisure of creativeness, produced formidable men and women whose fabric and spirituality may seem to have been forged from a totally different breed of human beings; or, as we compare the heights of their aspirations, we are bound to admit, regardless of any biases or any accusation of idolatry or racism, that the Ancient Romans, the Ancient Hebrews, the Ancient Germans, and the Ancient Egyptians may stand as obelisks towering above the ever-stretching plateau of modern civilization.
Enough has been said of the Ancient Greeks, and it is time to inquire on the former greatness of the Teutonic people. Their fate is no less lamentable than the Fall and Decline of the Roman Empire. These people of yore, the Germans, as observed by Thomas Mann, while believed to be in possession of the finest products of civilization, had in their instincts something tragic in the unpalatable pages of history. Almost a century later, these people are still recovering, like the Phoenix Bird, from the ashes of the Second World War. The Destruction of Germany, as the purveyor of culture and great philosophers, is already a centennial chapter deeply buried in the sepulchral backyards of history. Peruse George Santayana on German Philosophy and Barbarism. Their writings are so far-fetched that some German authors, according to Santayana, should be avoided, lest their wild literature cripple our mental faculties. But few would deny them of some greatness, and so let us re-embrace the best of the Germans of J.S. Bach.
Some Observations On the Internal Fabric of the Ancient People of Egypt, Germany and Rome:
What the Ancient Woods of Germanía accomplished in the bosom of the barbarian, is perhaps a more felicitous calibration of life's fundamentals, e.i., substance, blood, water, earth, fire and air, the vital elements in the biological dynamics of existence, believed to be highly more celebratory than the total mechanization of the modern automaton of our inquiry.
From this perspective, modern civilization is but a slaughterhouse for the soul, or perhaps it is a large sepulchral field of robotic mechanization, machines, computers, and high-walled cities of servitude in the grandest scale, here and there dotted with countless hutches for birds of very limited flight.
Though we are all creatures of the same God-Father, we must admit that just as dinosaurs perished to allowing a smaller kind though more numerous brood of little birds and reptiles resembling the former gigantic beasts, in like similitude, Mother Nature has perhaps contained her evolutionary prowess, which could produce the most monstrous of experiments, with these ever-stretching webs, fireworks and clearances of human civilization, but these latter, Homo sapiens, have turned out to be rather pernicious, and perhaps the most dangerous of predators in the larger scheme of global things.
Therefore, I am not sure whether this dispensation is the most interesting chapter as staged-out by this bipedal animal of conquest and destruction, master of empires and utopias, whose nostrils and vitals, are said to be happy but in a boundless, lush, splendid, floral, verdant horizon allowing ample space for the most ecstatic intoxication of life.
Unfortunately, the human species, is wreaking havoc on the surface of the Earth, and our flashy glittering technology, however impressive, is not enhancing the quality of life.
Air and space are akin to freedom and liberty, but a boundless horizon is always the measure of greatness and grandeur. The spectacles of life, if we fancy to believe in higher beings as eternal watchers and keepers of this ever-going celebration of life with all kinds of curious creatures, may proffer much entertainment and amusement in the grandest theaters of millennia.
On Modern Society and Wealths in Big Cities:
For the last three years, the inexorable course of time along the hurly burly of existence, once the merit of our dogged tenacity, will-power, determination to improving things, has, of late, accomplished much with little meddling of ourselves in the difficult enterprises of wealths, prosperity and success.
It seems as though the wealths of NYC has been lavishly bestowed upon its privileged citizens. Unfortunately, the gap between the wealthy and the poor, throughout history, continues to be the normal state of things for any society...
Socialism, and even communism, on closer inspection, has only enriched another class of oligarchs advocating the plight of the poor. Therefore, and in the last analysis, the Wheel of Fortuna, how capricious are her fleeting riches, as much as we dislike to speak of good or bad luck, may still determine a chunk of our precious wealth and peace of mind in the dusk of our existence. But I personally believe that diligence and productivity could secure a greater share of happiness than the idled life of the lazy and careless.
Some hardworking, decent folks of excellent work-ethics, are said to be reaping the blessings of a virtuous life. In very few exceptional cases of persecution or martyrdom, a virtuous life, so lived untarnished or irreproachable in the complex business and transactions of existence, could end up suffering the stings of guilt, remorse or anxiety --the main culprits of our wretchedness. Peace, health, safety and love, on the other hand, could be more preferable than all the golds and silvers of Constantinople.
For some, wealth is one of peace, intellectual progress, sanctity, well-being, healthy leisure and success in the higher temples of spirituality with the boons of Mother Nature. I may subscribe to this latter view, more so, because, after all these years of capitalistic indulgences, we have outgrown our childish silliness to believing material possessions, or the accumulation of money, as the only fountain of youth (well-being). The good news is that the blessings of well-being and peace are still attainable to a diligent labor.
The area (Washington Heights in NYC) is much better because the state-machine, NYPD and the Department of Safety of Columbia University have been steadily at work to keeping things going smoothly and peacefully. Thus, the once notorious reputation of the drug-stricken areas of Washington Heights, has now become one of burgeoning scenes of trendy stores --all along Broadway Avenue, and thanks to the public transportation, the potentials and profits cannot be overstated.
Nevertheless, though we can finally breathe content in the blessed-assurance of much better days to come, we still need to rely on the trustworthiness of our friends to reaping the best fruits of our harvest.
There is much to say in a "bona-fide power" that is wielded to us (or to our friends) solely based upon our good conduct, or bestowed upon us on the unquestionable benefits of good reports, friendship, the Magic Stick of Recommendation and Prosperity: excellent work-ethics, hygiene, mental sobriety, probity, transparency.
These priceless qualities should be the main focus of our inquiries. The retailer, the client, even the pastor and the parishioner, thus trained, if he or she is intelligent, would build his-her wealth of blessings upon the bonds of trust, probity and excellence. Building wealths upon lies, duplicity and mischief, so common among the vulgar and the avaricious mind, would ultimately crumble by the gravity of its own cumbersome loads of errors.
The Business and the Client:
The client, for the most part, is too intelligent to detecting lack of integrity, character, consistency, and probity in the continue flow of services: little by little, this magnificent river, integrity, if we are lucky, would swell to an abundance of blessings, prosperity, peace and success.
The worse course of all, as it happens with some, the street peddler, or the greedy retailer blinded by the rapid promise of easy wealth, would be to demean ourselves, our products, by lack of wisdom, hygiene and commitment to excellence, and thus we end up bargaining the best of products and virtues for a meager price: ten nickels.
Few Years of Hard Labor - At Most 40 Years!
Finally, it is also a waste of time, even a mortification to our peace of mind, to build palaces or castles without due recognition or celebration, for in a few years, our wealth is then squandered by the follies of fate (bad luck) or the ill-management and vanities of profligate relatives. And when we have worked for so long, my goodness, and our efforts have only amounted to burdens, endless court appearances, or an ironic twist of event (the prospect of divorce or the dangers of lawsuits lying unforeseen in the pit of unpredictable circumstances) then where is our wisdom?
Not only are we at the mercy of illnesses, which could strike us at any time, but consider how some people (especially wealthy people devoid of wisdom but only for making money) spent their whole lifelong accumulating wealths without enjoying the fruits of their labor, or in some cases, bequeathing such ever-growing wealths to a wasteful inheritor in less possession of the virtues of frugality, prudence, foresight or excellent administrative skills. In a few years, everything is gone to naught.
Therefore, it behooves a wise wealthy man or woman, a prudent Good Shepherd, to instruct his-her subjects (children of family) on the art of accumulating wealths not only in the tangible substance of fiats, assets and cash-flow in the bank account, but also in the priceless wealth of wisdom which is compared to gold and silver in the Book of Proverbs of Salomon.
Modern Society vs Prehistoric Society: The Caveman at the Crossroads of Millennia
by Eddie Beato
I dedicate this short essay On Cave-Paintings to a great human being, today, a marvelous cave-dweller, a wonderful, indefatigable artist, a great cook, a tenacious survivalist! He lived thirty thousand years ago, but his artwork continues to fill us with hope and inspiration!
Since I have been confined to my solitude for more than thirty days, and knowing that so many others have perhaps escaped the scourge of our times, my existence has rather been marked by short intervals of peace, I shall say interludes of music, preludes to my soul, scarcely disturbed by the noisy winds of the world. Most importantly, of much concern has been the well-being of my friends and family, because I am not oblivious to the real dangers haunting us all.
Days and nights! I have paced my room, back and forth, with pensive steps, going around the same narrow circumference of my thoughts, but the prodding ticks of time has not, as yet, harrowed my placid assurance in the comprehension of my heartbeats' anticipation, for they seem to keep a "moderate tempo" in the unrolling scroll of my life. In other words, I am still optimistic. Books and food are still coming-in to replenish my inward shelves, and I am still activated by a sound health, a blessed frame of mind, which is enlivened by its own supply of warmhearted thoughts as yet waiting for better days to come.
While living in solitude, I can say that I have not been wanting of faithful friends, indispensable companions of existence, whose love for me has been the most attentive, caring and helpful in times of trials and tribulation. The haunting ghosts of foreboding and vexation I have been able to ward-off, but I have often fixed my doubts-stricken eyes upon the lingering hours of the calendar's slowly turning pages, and as I mark the passing days, a multitude of huddling feelings, a sense of prophetic urgencies, have pressed on within me with an incomprehensible mixture of uncertainties and thrills: an unfolding new I am, occasioned by fleeting shivers of enthusiasm! Eastern is soon approaching, and would Mother Nature deny herself a colorful skirt of blooming flowers and roses?
Meanwhile, the continuation of time, human history as conveyed to me by the Cave-Artworks of the ancient people, so rubbed by the long-wailing winds of the elements and millennia, has caused me to pause in meditation and reflections ---my heart contracts, as though pierced and shriveled- off by the cave-solitude of one thousand years. Fixed in cogitation deep, the meaning of those errant winds, messengers of woes and trepidation, could still test the mettle of any mortal.
Cold winds are still buffeting the sore gullets of my inner fortification, but they have not chilled me into a melancholy frame of mind, nor have they frozen my heart into a pessimistic worldview on the general condition of human existence.
I am still activated by a "deep-seated stir," a spirit of curiosity has taken grasp of me, and I am willing to come to grips with a caveman, and let us the two compare the ages, and if he is found to be happier than me, then let him instruct me on the source of his happiness. But if he is to be found wretched, lonely and barking all daylong like a dog, then let us come together and perhaps find solace in this mutual conversation across the wordless language of millennia.
The caveman is within me, but I am not constrained by duress or by any such instinctive irrationalities, or protocols of modern society, to either stifle the civil man within me, or to chase away a barbarian with strong leanings for the arts. My main aim is to find a reconciliation, a mutual understanding, between the two: the noble and the barbarian.
Today I wish to strike kindred with such a caveman, and let us the two descry the other scenes of human existence, and may we relish a warmhearted soup of conviviality, for history, like art and philosophy, is like a balm to my soul. My partner turns out to be an excellent cook, a hunter-gatherer, but also an artist, and he knows how to make good use of the gazelle, the bull and the cow, the deer, and all such creatures for the most utilitarian of purposes.
Such animal paintings could be said to be spotless, flawless, accurate. Their well-seasoned meats, when put to roast with the sputtering flames of the all-consuming fire, could fill this cave with a smoky exhilaration of tastiest smells from the ashen ovens of the past. I love it!
Indeed! The hearth of this ancient cave exudes an enchanting sense of liveliest homeliness, and I feel somewhat overwhelmed, as though possessed with a savagery instinct, to give free outlet to an animalistic cacophony of grunting phrases, yes, and nay, intoned in wildest diphthongs of howling glissandos, which, in the candid speech of Mother Nature, may convey an inexplicable hankering homeward return to primitivism.
A boisterous celebration of life could turn this caving-hole into a noisy kitchen, no doubt a mad place from the luxury of modern society, but it also impresses me as a studio for some crazy artist. The cave-canvases are besmirched with strangest hues, some resembling bloody splotches; other substances, assuming the most abstract of conceptions and blotches, are somewhat mottled with yellowish hues, orangish, reddish pigmentation, as drained down from the tissues, sinews of animals' carcasses, or from the vegetative decomposition of organic material.
I fancy to comprehend the prophetic meanings of such meandering hieroglyphs, living entrails from the womb of time, whose formless shapes and dribbling characters could perhaps adumbrate the history of humanity as an endless cycle of recurrent events. The Book of Ages is understood by the caveman. Should I ask him to instruct me on the moral lessons of the past?
Like the ancient tools of an ogre, I also made out sharp knives, but also fine-cutting tapering stones, whose tips and edges could peel the skin smooth and clean. Further in view, lo and behold! the rusty utensils of millennia, pans, kettles, bones, skulls and teeth, still intact, clattered, rang and gnashed with such felicitous vibration of propelling whirrs, verve and joy, that I soon took pleasure to finding myself in the agreeable company of such rustic stuff of primitiveness.
Hoorah! On a cloudy day, I had the rare privilege to be seconded as a scullion under the tutelage of this admirable chef of tastier, roasted vitals and guts, a savage, but a man with a penchant for the culinary art. On one such occasions, I was heartily treated with some daintiest bites of venisons, whose clean delicious mutton, soon cheered my heart for the trophies of a barbarian life.
With tickets in hand, let us now have a riveting jaunt into the Caves of France, and, if possible, let us finally salute our distant comrades with the handshakes of millennia and solidarity.
At the basic level of survival, such old mysterious paintings, often engraved in the time-stricken walls of the distant past, may speak volumes on mankind's earliest attempts to laying down the cornerstones of civilization. Or, and in all likelihood, such primitive artworks could be indicative of early human hardships in the caves of isolation, primitivity, and ignorance. They could also warn us of stranded stragglers in the serious battlefield of existence, whose only hope was perhaps to record their awful chronicles in the hard canvas of stonewalls.
What major event could have thus ended their existence?
As bleak as the moral lessons of the past in the unrolling scroll of fate, I may infer the meaning of such ancient paintings as extant remainders that human evolution is not always linear. There are countless pitfalls along the precarious paths of existence. The cave-artists of ancient times, whose sentinels could speak more eloquently than the best book on history, today never cease to amaze me. They are as relevant as the latest news or inventions of modern society, for such extremely ancient paintings, as those found in France, could reconstruct the earliest assembly of humans and their challenges in the logistics of survival.
However subjective, when I set my eyes at the creepy aspect of such ancient works of art, I cannot evade an element of apprehension and dread when trying to comprehend the persistent enigma of the ages: what is the true story of the human race. These outreaching hands, as though emerging out of the wall, may continue to defy our understanding.
True! The caves of this world are replete with masterpieces, bearing witness to the mysterious artists of the past, their names lost forever, could claim a preeminent place alongside artists the likes of Phidias, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, but the formers are doomed to remain in the obligated nights of the past.
Theirs was not an academia based on unerring accuracy of proportion, as those of the Rennaissance Artist, but the caveman of the past possessed a most subjective, I would say, a profounder approach to the universal figments and mysteries that haunt us all: the uncharted territory in the long wanderings of the human race on the surface of the earth. Therefore, lying deep in the unconscious reaches of our collective psyche, there is to be found a veritable treasured-trove of human experiences, memories and knowledge, whose moral lessons, perhaps could help us overcome some of the most frightening threats to human existence: plagues and pestilences.
It is noteworthy that some artworks, as those creepy figurines and goddesses, could be said to encapsulate the psychological tapestry of a world overrun with the haunting figments of fear, isolation and dread.
Art, nonetheless, might have had some transformative powers in the worldview and prospect of the lonely ancient artist. Nay, for the cave-artist, so disconnected from the outside world, and long tried in the sequestered quarters of isolation --often punctuated with hypochondriac bouts of mental vacancy, despair and nihilism--- perhaps the cave-dweller (s) were a bevy of survivors at bay, and so they left us these plethora of artworks, whose meanings could perhaps point to a tragic end. An unknown mysterious people still trapped in the caves of the world. This may explain the seeming devilish grotesquery of the caveman's oeuvre, but would you say they don't deserve a place next to Picasso or Van Gough?
In spite of all these pejorative comments on the ancient people's artistic simplicity, there is a more optimistic assessment to the question of existence through the power of art, and it is, nonetheless, the most justifiable of all human endeavors, nay, it is praised as a form self-expression, even when this human activity does not always obey the principles of objective reality, a polisher culture as conceived by the noblest of the ancient people, especially the Ancient Greeks. After all, there is always an audience for the marvels of the ancient past.
Hence, art is either a lie or an illusion, which, by some happy twist of moral necessity, perhaps an archeological discovery, or a preferred fashion in vogue, could ultimately enjoy a place of respectability and prestige in a world where truth seems to be but a matter of relative perspectives.
Regardless of the epoch, approbation, or snarky criticism, the creative artist could ultimately be compensated with due recognition. Most importantly, for the isolated artist, whom is the least concerned with worldly success, life's existential challenges could be transformed into blissful moments of aesthetic contemplation and delight. True, as much as we try to understand the ancient artists' motives, their ethos, all we can do is to grope and fumble into a distant world so separated by the missing lacunae of thirty thousand years into the mist of time. Therefore, any answer to such baffling questions could be elicited but on the high-flown wings of wishful conjectures.
A psychological evaluation of such ancient artists' frame of mind may be frowned-upon, laughed-at and forthwith dismissed as a joke, but some would not underestimate the surrounding influences, milieu and clime, when spinning speculations on what is scarcely plausible, or discernible, from the premises of our times. Such theories, " the mental state of the artist, " however useful when applying it to the other fields of human learning and disciplines, do not win my sympathy, but one ought to be open to such scathing criticism.
Thus, so we are told, enervated by the rough conditions of a tough existence, the cave-artist's aesthetics, according some critics, should be assessed but in conjunction with, or as an expression of "tremendous psychological tension," a mere representational conveyance of conflicts and wars in the struggle of existence.
This may not seem a too preposterous appraisal, but we all know that most artists are said to suffer some form of mental disturbances, mental illnesses, but to degrade the value of artistic merits, or output, based on current social parameters to defining the width and length of human creativeness as the sole patrimony and prerogatives of my contemporaries, is to underestimate the high-pitched intelligence and mental fortitude of the ancient people when coping with the equation of existence. Of course, the cave-people had to fight their shadows in the dark hours of human desperation, fear and dread in the unutterable pages of history.
According to some critics, such ancient artworks could be accessed but as the output of a people gone mad and wild, or as the dilettantism of an uncultivated people scarcely rising above the level of savages. Such was the blinkered worldview of the ancient Greeks when passing judgment upon those tribes living in the hinterlands of barbarism and bestiality. The caves of the world are filled with the junks of humanity.
Finally, if I were to draw any conclusive opinion on what is the true meaning behind the artworks of such mysterious a people, one would be bound to admit, notwithstanding my perplexity when fronting or deciphering the riddles and conundrums of the past, but as a political manifesto in the struggle of existence, yet written in the oldest language of humanity. However uncanny from the comfort of modern society, such artworks could warn us of the decline and collapse of urban society even in the dawn of history.
Kindly!
Eddie Beato, New York City - 2020
It seems as though the wealths of NYC has been lavishly bestowed upon its privileged citizens. Unfortunately, the gap between the wealthy and the poor, throughout history, continues to be the normal state of things for any society...
Socialism, and even communism, on closer inspection, has only enriched another class of oligarchs advocating the plight of the poor. Therefore, and in the last analysis, the Wheel of Fortuna, how capricious are her fleeting riches, as much as we dislike to speak of good or bad luck, may still determine a chunk of our precious wealth and peace of mind in the dusk of our existence. But I personally believe that diligence and productivity could secure a greater share of happiness than the idled life of the lazy and careless.
Some hardworking, decent folks of excellent work-ethics, are said to be reaping the blessings of a virtuous life. In very few exceptional cases of persecution or martyrdom, a virtuous life, so lived untarnished or irreproachable in the complex business and transactions of existence, could end up suffering the stings of guilt, remorse or anxiety --the main culprits of our wretchedness. Peace, health, safety and love, on the other hand, could be more preferable than all the golds and silvers of Constantinople.
For some, wealth is one of peace, intellectual progress, sanctity, well-being, healthy leisure and success in the higher temples of spirituality with the boons of Mother Nature. I may subscribe to this latter view, more so, because, after all these years of capitalistic indulgences, we have outgrown our childish silliness to believing material possessions, or the accumulation of money, as the only fountain of youth (well-being). The good news is that the blessings of well-being and peace are still attainable to a diligent labor.
The area (Washington Heights in NYC) is much better because the state-machine, NYPD and the Department of Safety of Columbia University have been steadily at work to keeping things going smoothly and peacefully. Thus, the once notorious reputation of the drug-stricken areas of Washington Heights, has now become one of burgeoning scenes of trendy stores --all along Broadway Avenue, and thanks to the public transportation, the potentials and profits cannot be overstated.
Nevertheless, though we can finally breathe content in the blessed-assurance of much better days to come, we still need to rely on the trustworthiness of our friends to reaping the best fruits of our harvest.
There is much to say in a "bona-fide power" that is wielded to us (or to our friends) solely based upon our good conduct, or bestowed upon us on the unquestionable benefits of good reports, friendship, the Magic Stick of Recommendation and Prosperity: excellent work-ethics, hygiene, mental sobriety, probity, transparency.
These priceless qualities should be the main focus of our inquiries. The retailer, the client, even the pastor and the parishioner, thus trained, if he or she is intelligent, would build his-her wealth of blessings upon the bonds of trust, probity and excellence. Building wealths upon lies, duplicity and mischief, so common among the vulgar and the avaricious mind, would ultimately crumble by the gravity of its own cumbersome loads of errors.
The Business and the Client:
The client, for the most part, is too intelligent to detecting lack of integrity, character, consistency, and probity in the continue flow of services: little by little, this magnificent river, integrity, if we are lucky, would swell to an abundance of blessings, prosperity, peace and success.
The worse course of all, as it happens with some, the street peddler, or the greedy retailer blinded by the rapid promise of easy wealth, would be to demean ourselves, our products, by lack of wisdom, hygiene and commitment to excellence, and thus we end up bargaining the best of products and virtues for a meager price: ten nickels.
Few Years of Hard Labor - At Most 40 Years!
Finally, it is also a waste of time, even a mortification to our peace of mind, to build palaces or castles without due recognition or celebration, for in a few years, our wealth is then squandered by the follies of fate (bad luck) or the ill-management and vanities of profligate relatives. And when we have worked for so long, my goodness, and our efforts have only amounted to burdens, endless court appearances, or an ironic twist of event (the prospect of divorce or the dangers of lawsuits lying unforeseen in the pit of unpredictable circumstances) then where is our wisdom?
Not only are we at the mercy of illnesses, which could strike us at any time, but consider how some people (especially wealthy people devoid of wisdom but only for making money) spent their whole lifelong accumulating wealths without enjoying the fruits of their labor, or in some cases, bequeathing such ever-growing wealths to a wasteful inheritor in less possession of the virtues of frugality, prudence, foresight or excellent administrative skills. In a few years, everything is gone to naught.
Therefore, it behooves a wise wealthy man or woman, a prudent Good Shepherd, to instruct his-her subjects (children of family) on the art of accumulating wealths not only in the tangible substance of fiats, assets and cash-flow in the bank account, but also in the priceless wealth of wisdom which is compared to gold and silver in the Book of Proverbs of Salomon.
Modern Society vs Prehistoric Society: The Caveman at the Crossroads of Millennia
by Eddie Beato
I dedicate this short essay On Cave-Paintings to a great human being, today, a marvelous cave-dweller, a wonderful, indefatigable artist, a great cook, a tenacious survivalist! He lived thirty thousand years ago, but his artwork continues to fill us with hope and inspiration!
Since I have been confined to my solitude for more than thirty days, and knowing that so many others have perhaps escaped the scourge of our times, my existence has rather been marked by short intervals of peace, I shall say interludes of music, preludes to my soul, scarcely disturbed by the noisy winds of the world. Most importantly, of much concern has been the well-being of my friends and family, because I am not oblivious to the real dangers haunting us all.
Days and nights! I have paced my room, back and forth, with pensive steps, going around the same narrow circumference of my thoughts, but the prodding ticks of time has not, as yet, harrowed my placid assurance in the comprehension of my heartbeats' anticipation, for they seem to keep a "moderate tempo" in the unrolling scroll of my life. In other words, I am still optimistic. Books and food are still coming-in to replenish my inward shelves, and I am still activated by a sound health, a blessed frame of mind, which is enlivened by its own supply of warmhearted thoughts as yet waiting for better days to come.
While living in solitude, I can say that I have not been wanting of faithful friends, indispensable companions of existence, whose love for me has been the most attentive, caring and helpful in times of trials and tribulation. The haunting ghosts of foreboding and vexation I have been able to ward-off, but I have often fixed my doubts-stricken eyes upon the lingering hours of the calendar's slowly turning pages, and as I mark the passing days, a multitude of huddling feelings, a sense of prophetic urgencies, have pressed on within me with an incomprehensible mixture of uncertainties and thrills: an unfolding new I am, occasioned by fleeting shivers of enthusiasm! Eastern is soon approaching, and would Mother Nature deny herself a colorful skirt of blooming flowers and roses?
Meanwhile, the continuation of time, human history as conveyed to me by the Cave-Artworks of the ancient people, so rubbed by the long-wailing winds of the elements and millennia, has caused me to pause in meditation and reflections ---my heart contracts, as though pierced and shriveled- off by the cave-solitude of one thousand years. Fixed in cogitation deep, the meaning of those errant winds, messengers of woes and trepidation, could still test the mettle of any mortal.
Cold winds are still buffeting the sore gullets of my inner fortification, but they have not chilled me into a melancholy frame of mind, nor have they frozen my heart into a pessimistic worldview on the general condition of human existence.
I am still activated by a "deep-seated stir," a spirit of curiosity has taken grasp of me, and I am willing to come to grips with a caveman, and let us the two compare the ages, and if he is found to be happier than me, then let him instruct me on the source of his happiness. But if he is to be found wretched, lonely and barking all daylong like a dog, then let us come together and perhaps find solace in this mutual conversation across the wordless language of millennia.
The caveman is within me, but I am not constrained by duress or by any such instinctive irrationalities, or protocols of modern society, to either stifle the civil man within me, or to chase away a barbarian with strong leanings for the arts. My main aim is to find a reconciliation, a mutual understanding, between the two: the noble and the barbarian.
Today I wish to strike kindred with such a caveman, and let us the two descry the other scenes of human existence, and may we relish a warmhearted soup of conviviality, for history, like art and philosophy, is like a balm to my soul. My partner turns out to be an excellent cook, a hunter-gatherer, but also an artist, and he knows how to make good use of the gazelle, the bull and the cow, the deer, and all such creatures for the most utilitarian of purposes.
Such animal paintings could be said to be spotless, flawless, accurate. Their well-seasoned meats, when put to roast with the sputtering flames of the all-consuming fire, could fill this cave with a smoky exhilaration of tastiest smells from the ashen ovens of the past. I love it!
Indeed! The hearth of this ancient cave exudes an enchanting sense of liveliest homeliness, and I feel somewhat overwhelmed, as though possessed with a savagery instinct, to give free outlet to an animalistic cacophony of grunting phrases, yes, and nay, intoned in wildest diphthongs of howling glissandos, which, in the candid speech of Mother Nature, may convey an inexplicable hankering homeward return to primitivism.
A boisterous celebration of life could turn this caving-hole into a noisy kitchen, no doubt a mad place from the luxury of modern society, but it also impresses me as a studio for some crazy artist. The cave-canvases are besmirched with strangest hues, some resembling bloody splotches; other substances, assuming the most abstract of conceptions and blotches, are somewhat mottled with yellowish hues, orangish, reddish pigmentation, as drained down from the tissues, sinews of animals' carcasses, or from the vegetative decomposition of organic material.
I fancy to comprehend the prophetic meanings of such meandering hieroglyphs, living entrails from the womb of time, whose formless shapes and dribbling characters could perhaps adumbrate the history of humanity as an endless cycle of recurrent events. The Book of Ages is understood by the caveman. Should I ask him to instruct me on the moral lessons of the past?
Like the ancient tools of an ogre, I also made out sharp knives, but also fine-cutting tapering stones, whose tips and edges could peel the skin smooth and clean. Further in view, lo and behold! the rusty utensils of millennia, pans, kettles, bones, skulls and teeth, still intact, clattered, rang and gnashed with such felicitous vibration of propelling whirrs, verve and joy, that I soon took pleasure to finding myself in the agreeable company of such rustic stuff of primitiveness.
Hoorah! On a cloudy day, I had the rare privilege to be seconded as a scullion under the tutelage of this admirable chef of tastier, roasted vitals and guts, a savage, but a man with a penchant for the culinary art. On one such occasions, I was heartily treated with some daintiest bites of venisons, whose clean delicious mutton, soon cheered my heart for the trophies of a barbarian life.
With tickets in hand, let us now have a riveting jaunt into the Caves of France, and, if possible, let us finally salute our distant comrades with the handshakes of millennia and solidarity.
At the basic level of survival, such old mysterious paintings, often engraved in the time-stricken walls of the distant past, may speak volumes on mankind's earliest attempts to laying down the cornerstones of civilization. Or, and in all likelihood, such primitive artworks could be indicative of early human hardships in the caves of isolation, primitivity, and ignorance. They could also warn us of stranded stragglers in the serious battlefield of existence, whose only hope was perhaps to record their awful chronicles in the hard canvas of stonewalls.
What major event could have thus ended their existence?
As bleak as the moral lessons of the past in the unrolling scroll of fate, I may infer the meaning of such ancient paintings as extant remainders that human evolution is not always linear. There are countless pitfalls along the precarious paths of existence. The cave-artists of ancient times, whose sentinels could speak more eloquently than the best book on history, today never cease to amaze me. They are as relevant as the latest news or inventions of modern society, for such extremely ancient paintings, as those found in France, could reconstruct the earliest assembly of humans and their challenges in the logistics of survival.
However subjective, when I set my eyes at the creepy aspect of such ancient works of art, I cannot evade an element of apprehension and dread when trying to comprehend the persistent enigma of the ages: what is the true story of the human race. These outreaching hands, as though emerging out of the wall, may continue to defy our understanding.
True! The caves of this world are replete with masterpieces, bearing witness to the mysterious artists of the past, their names lost forever, could claim a preeminent place alongside artists the likes of Phidias, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, but the formers are doomed to remain in the obligated nights of the past.
Theirs was not an academia based on unerring accuracy of proportion, as those of the Rennaissance Artist, but the caveman of the past possessed a most subjective, I would say, a profounder approach to the universal figments and mysteries that haunt us all: the uncharted territory in the long wanderings of the human race on the surface of the earth. Therefore, lying deep in the unconscious reaches of our collective psyche, there is to be found a veritable treasured-trove of human experiences, memories and knowledge, whose moral lessons, perhaps could help us overcome some of the most frightening threats to human existence: plagues and pestilences.
It is noteworthy that some artworks, as those creepy figurines and goddesses, could be said to encapsulate the psychological tapestry of a world overrun with the haunting figments of fear, isolation and dread.
Art, nonetheless, might have had some transformative powers in the worldview and prospect of the lonely ancient artist. Nay, for the cave-artist, so disconnected from the outside world, and long tried in the sequestered quarters of isolation --often punctuated with hypochondriac bouts of mental vacancy, despair and nihilism--- perhaps the cave-dweller (s) were a bevy of survivors at bay, and so they left us these plethora of artworks, whose meanings could perhaps point to a tragic end. An unknown mysterious people still trapped in the caves of the world. This may explain the seeming devilish grotesquery of the caveman's oeuvre, but would you say they don't deserve a place next to Picasso or Van Gough?
In spite of all these pejorative comments on the ancient people's artistic simplicity, there is a more optimistic assessment to the question of existence through the power of art, and it is, nonetheless, the most justifiable of all human endeavors, nay, it is praised as a form self-expression, even when this human activity does not always obey the principles of objective reality, a polisher culture as conceived by the noblest of the ancient people, especially the Ancient Greeks. After all, there is always an audience for the marvels of the ancient past.
Hence, art is either a lie or an illusion, which, by some happy twist of moral necessity, perhaps an archeological discovery, or a preferred fashion in vogue, could ultimately enjoy a place of respectability and prestige in a world where truth seems to be but a matter of relative perspectives.
Regardless of the epoch, approbation, or snarky criticism, the creative artist could ultimately be compensated with due recognition. Most importantly, for the isolated artist, whom is the least concerned with worldly success, life's existential challenges could be transformed into blissful moments of aesthetic contemplation and delight. True, as much as we try to understand the ancient artists' motives, their ethos, all we can do is to grope and fumble into a distant world so separated by the missing lacunae of thirty thousand years into the mist of time. Therefore, any answer to such baffling questions could be elicited but on the high-flown wings of wishful conjectures.
A psychological evaluation of such ancient artists' frame of mind may be frowned-upon, laughed-at and forthwith dismissed as a joke, but some would not underestimate the surrounding influences, milieu and clime, when spinning speculations on what is scarcely plausible, or discernible, from the premises of our times. Such theories, " the mental state of the artist, " however useful when applying it to the other fields of human learning and disciplines, do not win my sympathy, but one ought to be open to such scathing criticism.
Thus, so we are told, enervated by the rough conditions of a tough existence, the cave-artist's aesthetics, according some critics, should be assessed but in conjunction with, or as an expression of "tremendous psychological tension," a mere representational conveyance of conflicts and wars in the struggle of existence.
This may not seem a too preposterous appraisal, but we all know that most artists are said to suffer some form of mental disturbances, mental illnesses, but to degrade the value of artistic merits, or output, based on current social parameters to defining the width and length of human creativeness as the sole patrimony and prerogatives of my contemporaries, is to underestimate the high-pitched intelligence and mental fortitude of the ancient people when coping with the equation of existence. Of course, the cave-people had to fight their shadows in the dark hours of human desperation, fear and dread in the unutterable pages of history.
According to some critics, such ancient artworks could be accessed but as the output of a people gone mad and wild, or as the dilettantism of an uncultivated people scarcely rising above the level of savages. Such was the blinkered worldview of the ancient Greeks when passing judgment upon those tribes living in the hinterlands of barbarism and bestiality. The caves of the world are filled with the junks of humanity.
Finally, if I were to draw any conclusive opinion on what is the true meaning behind the artworks of such mysterious a people, one would be bound to admit, notwithstanding my perplexity when fronting or deciphering the riddles and conundrums of the past, but as a political manifesto in the struggle of existence, yet written in the oldest language of humanity. However uncanny from the comfort of modern society, such artworks could warn us of the decline and collapse of urban society even in the dawn of history.
Kindly!
Eddie Beato, New York City - 2020