Ana

We were sitting at a café in the massive, beautiful Agora Mall.

You need to make a family nest. She said with a serious face.

Have you made a family nest? I asked. I deliberately used the literal mistranslation from Spanish (we are using google translate) because it sounded more profound than standard English.

Yes, I have, but I was not able to keep it to the letter. She answered.

Another profound mistranslation.

The words “to the letter” stared at me. It was clear she was a divorcee.

And I asked her how many kids she has. I was already shaken that she had kids. She looked so young, innocent and flirty. That was one hour ago. I have already accepted that she has children.  

But when she said four, I was totally bewildered. Quatro? I asked.

Yes, she said. And she took her phone and showed me some pictures.

It didn’t make sense to me. There were three children – one around 11, another around 6 and another younger.

She had told me she was 32 but still I was totally confused to see a picture of a boy taller than herself.

And they were not four either. So I asked her, how about the fourth one?

“He is in the ground” – again another mistranslation. Or is it?

I knew it meant the kid was dead, but I was not 100% sure she meant that. But I did not dare ask. It was clear from her sound. Only a mother could still count a kid long gone alongside the living ones.

After our coffee, she said: now I have to go.

We walked downstairs together.

The metro station was to the opposite of the street so we headed that way.

Then a teenage street kid called her name and started chatting with her. Apparently they knew each other before.

He sold her a few lollipops. I suspected his was a usual routine, taking sweets for the kids.

She gave me one. It was heart shaped.

I thought to myself, my life has become a fable.

It is too much even to reflect about.

This girl reminded me of someone I know. But that was not it. She was more. She looks like someone I knew from another life. If I had to locate her, she has the looks of Mekdelawit – a typical Ethiopian face – and the gesture of Maggie. At every moment the familiarity of her movement startled me.

Earlier, I told her she looked like an Ethiopian girl. She shook her head vigorously and said, I myself looked like a Dominican. It was obvious we are both mixed blood. Somehow, we look like we are family.

See you tomorrow, she said as we approached the entrance of the metro.

I gave her a hug and said, see you tomorrow.

We have apparently agreed to meet the next day. It will be my last day at Santo Domingo, so it will be a farewell. 

As I walked to my hotel, I smiled at a joke she told me earlier.

Do you like your job? I had asked her.

Yes, I like my job, she  said. The only thing I don't like is all the time I am spending there.

Such a succinct summary of the paradox of life. 

Divided

Sometimes you see a sort of order

Laws of relativity rules of gravity

Men seeking out love

At home, at work, on the streets

Some even at the temples 

Talking of a loving God

Of eternal salvation

Of Oneness and peace

And absolute order.

Then within a blink

You see it all falling apart

Men turning on each other

Cities crumbling 

Hatred, anguish, anger

Confusion, disaster

Children crying under

Homes reduced to rubbles.

Before I finish my smile

I have to cry again.

I can’t solve this problem

I can’t pretend it is not there.

It is some kind of mockery

On my own existence

Two divided souls

Fighting inside me

A war without a winner

But sure enough 
To paralyze my existence.

Keep quiet

Keep quiet

The purpose of the summer

Is to give place to winter

Keep quiet

The reason for your fear

Is to subside and disappear

Keep quiet

The destiny of the flower

Is to dry and shrivel 

Keep quiet

The finale of each desire

Is to be fulfilled and expire

Keep quiet

The outcome of all movement

Is to collapse into silence

Keep quiet

The ambition of the river

Is to disappear into the ocean

Keep quiet

Even if you would

Feel lost and confounded

Watching this grand life
Persistently disprove itself.

Mind body

I dreamed of a fantastic scene. 
A future full of bright colors 
And mesmerizing scents.

And thus was time born.
Where was this future before I dreamed it?
Hadn't I dreamed it 
Would it have remained naught?

Time is a toy of the mind
And space is home to the body
But without the mind to note it
And without its device of time 
To brush colors on it
Space is only inert.

And so the mind with its time
And the body in its space
Compose the entity of me
A dance of experiences
Happening in a matrix
Endowed with self-devised meanings.

But who is the first born
The cause of time and space
The primal origin
Eternity before the dawn of time
Formlessness before the birth of space?

The City

In a city
That is in love with its dreams
I am a man
Lost to his connections
Human or divine.

I and the city
Have no meeting place
When I wake up

To walk its streets

The city sleeps.

In the throbbing quiet

The moon shines

Its graceful light.

By the time

The city has woken up

I am gone

Into my own delirium.

Metasis

The romance 

Faded out of my life.

The stars 

Fell off my shoulders.

And darkness 

Descended upon my eyes.

I walked along abandoned streets

My life was as empty.

My story

Turned from ecstatic poetry

Into a sour prose.

Not a tint of happiness

Visited my desolate spirit

Not even sadness 

Could find a place

In my lifelessness.

In this emptiness 

As ravaged as the Sahel

Only a faint memory remains

That, there was life, once

And an even fainter hope

That in time 

What was lost, will resurrect.

Titbits 2

Then the Oracle said the most incredible thing I ever heard her say. I was bemoaning the unfairness of Death when she declared:

~ But you have Sex as a compensation for Death.

~ What? -- I cried out. ~ Sex as a compensation for Death? How fair is it to compensate a loss of eternity with a pleasure of an instant? 

~ The more you do it the fairer it becomes! Said the Oracle

~ If every instant of life could be an orgasm, it wouldn't be fair enough.

~ Well-- she said again, ~ in the end that was your choice.

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What progress? (She said) What change? What growth?

Your life itself is borrowed from death. Your days are stolen from darkness. Your joy from your sadness, and all of your thoughts from nothingness. You can never sum them up and arrive at any thing positive. It will be zero -- from nothing to nothing.

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I went to the kitchen holding a giant bowl that was heavily greased with the oil from the stew I just ate for dinner. The microwave was on, heating up something. The timer on top of it indicated that it will run for 4 more minutes. I was busy washing up the oily bowl when the microwave peeped five times to indicate that the time was up. At that moment, it struck me that I just spent 4 minutes of my life washing a bowl. Four irreversible minutes consumed with a trivial task, without being consciously lived.

Time is finite, but the choice for action is almost infinite. And sometimes the arbitrariness and the triviality of the choices strikes you with an eerie sensation. 

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When the man dies, his teeth say 'Now let's take break!'

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What if a woman's love is just an advance payment for the future service of raising her kids?

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A hungry heart would mold a lover from mud.

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The first rule of writing is, she said, to write in first person form. Do not hide behind abstract subjects and passive forms. Write as a person normally speaks, and state your ideas directly. Loose-ended statements and half-finished arguments indicate that you are afraid to take a position. Open up and be vulnerable. Be willing to be refuted wrong.

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You are a small nerve ending of a giant living universe.

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What if the Big Bang was a Laughter of God, or maybe a Cry of Man?

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What is life but a combination of gimmicks and tricks to remain sane and relevant?

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The parks, the libraries -- and the real world in general -- are the first victims of the internet revolution.

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An apparition is warmer than a facebook friend. In the floods of information it unleashed on me, facebook drowned itself. Like tumor, it is growing too much to kill itself.