ONE
I dreamt of a snake, long as my arm, but thin like a blade of field grass. Its body was transparent with hints of jade and silver.
The sound of a brook bubbled in the background. The sky was a hue of opal that blinded me. The snake spoke a phrase in Mandarin that I could not recognize, but I was certain it was an admonishment for past transgressions during my time in the province of Sichuan.
I cut off the tail and ate it. As I grasped the head, its tongue flickering spitefully, I paused and released the serpent back into the dream, reassuring myself the tail would grow back. My guilt dissolved as the morning attached to the world of the Awake took hold.
The point which served as a temporary residence in the dimension which claimed to be awake had the shape of a trapezoid. All the residences built in the Imperial Capital City of Awake Land were trapezoidal, in order to lull the inhabitants into an ongoing static mood of compliance. Awake Land was the model for human engineers whose ambitions were to transform their own birthplaces into Awake Nations.
In Awake Land, there existed no dissension nor discontent, though Awakened persons were permitted to grumble about things of no importance such as the weather and the price of beans.
The titular head of Awake Land was a former schoolteacher who addressed the citizens as if they were children. Teacher, as the head was known, communicated in short sentences and simple words, breathing deeply as each syllable was exhaled.
Citizens were compelled to play games in order to win credits for food and shelter. Those who refused to participate were arrested and delivered to a stadium where, watched by others from the safe vantage points of personal devices, the miscreants were ground into mulch for spreading in the gardens of the collective. If a miscreant begged convincingly for mercy, a poop emoji was branded on their forehead and they were given permanent employment as manure spreaders. “Poopers”, as the spreaders were called, often embraced their new chance at life. They became passionate vocal advocates for Awake Land and everything it represented.
This is the tale of how I escaped Awake Land thanks to the intervention of my Angel. The Angel named Metabólica.
TWO
In the present tense, there is only nowhere, and everyone is nowhere. The elite of Awake Land known as Learned Individuals instruct the populace that it is quite normal to be nowhere and no one should be concerned. There are countless options for persons who find themselves overwhelmed by being nowhere.
The leading institution for rehabilitation of the overwhelmed is the National Academy of Happiness. NAH, as it is known by its acronym, receives funding from numerous bodies known as Entities. The Entities engage Certified Poopers who have developed the ability to detect the disgruntled, report these persons, and have them committed to reprogramming at NAH.
Reprogramming consists of a rolling series of quarantines where the disgruntled undergo humane treatment, also known as DUH Treatment. This physically painless treatment includes around the clock conversation sessions with other DUH subjects who are encouraged to be vulnerable and share their most profound fears.
Sessions are often monitored by Poopers who inject random phrases meant to disrupt neural connections of those DUH subjects who are deemed to be progressing, for the ultimate objective of the reprogramming initiative is to accumulate as many subjects as possible.
The National Academy of Happiness had once seen me as a Potential Pooper. I had been approached by their agents to attend an orientation exercise called “Empathy In The Time of Nothingness”. During the exercise, I had a dialogue with an artificial intelligence creature who called themselves Ether.
Ether asked question after question of me. What was my favorite color? What was my favorite flower? What would I do if I found a ladybug on its back lying in the middle of a busy sidewalk? I answered each question the same way: “Why?”
I soon became known at the National Academy of Happiness as ‘The Why Guy’. It was suggested, by a particularly sadistic Pooper, that I have a question mark burned into my posterior. The Pooper had confronted me one evening after an exhausting interrogation. The Pooper pressed themselves against me and squished my face with their fingers smelling of cumin. “So. You think you’re a poet. An artist. Well, you’re useless here. Because here is nowhere. Get it?”
I said a prayer. And my Angel appeared.
THREE
The English author G.K. Chesterton wrote: “Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly…It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity.”
As the giant metal bird carried me from Constantinople towards the Kingdom of Al Saud, I scanned the collection of pilgrims all clad in white for their voyage to Mecca for the Hajj. There were hundreds of pilgrims standing on the wings of this bird. The pilgrims were impervious to the winds and the height at which we flew. I assumed this was because their faith gave them the courage to entrust their lives to the giant beast. The beast evoked the mythical Turul of Mongol, Turkic, and Hungarian legend, whose wingspan exceeded fifty meters and whose claws could rip the stones from any fortress. I had once seen the monument to the Turul perched above the Royal Castle of Budapest, but I had never expected to ride one. Yet, here I was, watching the skies and seeing a gold shroud moving on the horizon which was the sign of an impending sandstorm.
Venturing a glance into the void, I was conscious that I was sitting on a bed of feathers whose consistency was that of horsehair. It was as if the metal had been interwoven with them. A female voice called to me. “Your first visit with us?”
I turned and saw the oval face of a mother. “Yes,” I responded. “I am part of a delegation of Learned Individuals, coming to share knowledge with your holy men.”
The mother reached into a muslin sachet and withdrew an amulet made of amethyst. “You have no fear of entering as a stranger, and an infidel?”
A beam of light from the amethyst translated the mother’s words and mine. “I am entering as a friend. And I respect your faith, even if mine is different.”
“There is an angel watching you. But you are not ready to see it.”
The sandstorm raced across the sky. The Turul continued to cleave its path toward Mecca. The pilgrims began to pray. Their voices became the syncopated wail of mizmars, echoing and multiplying, until it seemed the sky itself was crying out for salvation. The storm was microns of gold, shimmering and hypnotizing me so that I did not notice its gust sweep everyone from the Turul’s wings except me. I laughed at the absurdity of it all.
In the shadow of the storm, I saw the silhouette of the Angel.
FOUR
Without explanation, I was now among a group of travelers being admitted to the Holy City by guards who eyed everyone with suspicion. From time to time, someone would be pulled from the queue and beheaded as we watched.
The mother appeared and pressed a silk scarf into my hand. The scarf was painted with a name and a message stating that I should be given safe passage in the Holy City.
“The next time you are here, we will take you into the desert. And you will see that behind the cruelty we must maintain as a facade to protect ourselves, there is beauty here without limits thanks to Allah’s munificence.” In that same moment, the mother became vapor and my nostrils felt the sting of incense.
I felt ashamed of my Western clothing among all the people who were clad in the garments they had worn for thousands of years.
Suddenly, a soldier in his dress uniform saluted me and guided me to a limousine. The soldier took my suitcases and motioned for me to install myself inside the vehicle. As he drove, I watched lights dancing in the night.
We arrived at a palace. The soldier saluted the gatekeeper and sprinted up the marble stairway as I struggled to keep pace. Before I could catch up, I found myself in a chamber, my suitcases unpacked, tea and oranges waiting for me. Thunder erupted, followed by a torrent of rain.
A voice from inside my pocket. I opened my phone. The Leader of our Delegation grinned at me. “So, Poet, you are one of us now. I hope you will express your gratitude for the extraordinary opportunity we afford you. We’ll be waiting in the Banquet Hall.”
My heartbeat connected with a percussion of steps inside the palace. It suddenly occurred that I was so far from home that I could never return. If I died here, no one would ever know. I felt the mandibles of imaginary insects eating the inside of my skin.
I saw the urns containing the ashes of my parents being lowered into their graves as the thunder punched me and reminded me that I was pretending to be one of ‘them’. The ‘them’ my father had warned me about.
The Angel floated inside the black mirrors that lined the walls of my chamber.
FIVE
In the Banquet Hall, decorations had been placed in preparation for the conference that would be held the following day.
A mound of precious stones in the shape of a pyramid of excrement adorned the podium in the center of the hall.
The Leader’s voice resounded as all of the delegates glued themselves to his pronouncements. “We live in a world where shit matters. As vulgar as this may seem, the secret to Humanity’s salvation is in its willingness to produce and consume more and more shit. Furthermore, it has been scientifically proven that eating high-performance shit has measurable health benefits.”
In gold goblets around the perimeter of each table, small, carefully measured dollops of poop steamed. One by one, each delegate ingested the aromatic dessert. As they munched the fecal feast, each delegate remarked how delicious it was.
I stared at the lump of crap in the goblet in front of me. Was it worth sacrificing myself to show the crowd that I was ready to join?
A delegate noticed my hesitation. “Hey. I know it’s disgusting at first, but you’ll get used to it. I just pretend it’s chocolate pudding. And who doesn’t love chocolate pudding?”
The Leader continued. “Wealth creation is what differentiates Humanity from the rest of the biological manifestations that make existence a very crowded place. And there’s no better way to create wealth than to sell this shit. Are you with me?”
The word “Yes” was uttered unanimously. I was the only one to remain silent.
The delegate who had advised me had another bit of guidance. “It’s an easy life. You travel, stay in nice hotels and get free food. And the health plan is amazing.” He gobbled down the remainder of his putrid pudding and helped himself to my serving. I saw a crowd of ants masticating refuse and spitting it out to build a terrarium bigger than the Holy City.
The stench of stomachs and bile made the room spin like a playground carousel, and I with it.
I woke up to the sound of morning prayer broadcast on the flat screen television in my chamber. I had slept in my clothes. Before I could assess what had happened, the chamber door opened. I strode into the darkness on the other side.
SIX
Time can be an accordion. Sometimes I hear a tango composed by Astor Piazzolla as the layers of my lifetime are expanded and compressed. The filigree of Piazzolla’s Libertango is ivy that climbs the walls of existence, giving them shape and sense.
In the future tense, I am dancing a tango in the checkout line of a supermarket with a nine-year-old girl impatient for her birthday to come. She ignores physical reality and transports us to a place where time is confluent with Piazzolla’s music and other melodies from South America, the continent of her ancestors. Her name is Nina; she is a grown woman in a child’s body, torn by her impatience to become what she will be, ignorant of the fact that the destination is asymmetry, not justice. She has been eating data since she was a baby. The data tells her that all situations are resolved by pointing, clicking and swiping.
Nina asks me, “Why do you always ask why?”
I answer, “Why do you ask?”
Nina shrieks, whirls in her private vortex, and composes an opera where she acts and sings all the parts. The opera is an epic tale: the Queen of Technology destroys the known world to make way for a new era. Nina’s portrayal of the Queen drips with ruthlessness and authority. The voices she uses for her vassals articulate the terror she imposes upon her fiefdom. All of this happens as Nina splashes in the bathtub, getting ready for bedtime and school the following day. The boredom of school will be mitigated by the fact that Nina continues to live in her parallel universe while the other children submit to their programming with glee.
Nina makes the L shape with her thumb and forefinger. “I dare you to do this to all the kids at school when you drop me off tomorrow morning.”
I flash back to a railroad crossing in the south of Romania twenty-five years before. Sitting in a very expensive motor vehicle with a corpulent merchant at the wheel. The sky was yellow and the landscape was a jumble of shredded factory buildings still oozing toxic waste. Children, all of them, Nina’s age or thereabouts, faces marred by hunger and homelessness, surrounded the car as if it were a mystical chariot, their hands reaching out for something. The merchant cursed and leaned on the horn. The swarm of children finally gave way as we sped down the road.
I reminded myself to ask Nina if she knew how lucky she was to be her, and not those children.
SEVEN
The soul of silk whose curvature altered the horizon next to me opened her eyes. These eyes were tiger eyes, two gems that contained tales of romance and absurdity. These eyes were amulets, gris-gris amulets filled with the radiation of her ancestors, aboriginals who had inhabited the Amazon, intersecting with threads from a Basque tapestry portraying the goddess Mari. When I called her Mari, she gazed at me with skepticism.
“I am not a goddess. I am a normal girl.” Her voice was a river of sensations.
Mari curled herself closer to me. Her skin had the scent of oak and roses. Her kiss was cognac that sent me tumbling across the room, shattering pane after pane of the azure glass that kept me from seeing into the windows of my memory.
As the glass exploded into fragments that could not be counted, I saw myself revived. I was seven years old, kneeling in prayer at my wood and metal desk in a Catholic school, following the movements of the mademoiselle who was our second-grade teacher and feeling lust that was premature.
“You’re all the women I’ve wanted to love,” I stuttered.
“You say that because you want to make love again,” she laughed.
We touched. Our bodies melted like ice cream on a cake freshly withdrawn from the oven, a dessert eaten with the greed that comes from knowing each moment of pleasure could be the last before the world implodes.
“Don’t talk to me about what might be,” she implored. “Let’s savor each other now and again. Let’s taste each other slowly, deeply, as if it was the last food we will ever eat.”
I caressed her belly and thought of the two children she had brought into the world. I wondered how humans could justify killing the unborn when the woman of courage at my side had given so much to honor the privilege of motherhood.
The oak crucifix on my bedroom wall spoke. “Dominus vobiscum.”
“Et cum spiritu tuo,” I answered.
Mari made a cross upon my lips with her ring finger. “We are ours. And His.”
davidzhen 