viento nocturno

A gentle day battered the ground. Where heat and pavement become one, the city demands its tribute. And there was rain. Mingling with the junk of the alleys, this night was a pleasant embrace. No, there was more to it. Tonight, we don’t deal in pleasantries, he thought. Rather, we return. But something left him aghast. How to return if you never leave. Or better: how to ascertain direction, intention, when the organism lives through and with you.

No, tonight is not the time for logical perplexity. There we were, in a taxi. He fumbled in his bag. Carefully nestled beside him, the few continuities of existence travelled with him. A book, or two. Paraphernalia of thinking, of forgetting; of escape– you never know. We are not to talk about him, though. There is a strange sensation I barely recall. Is it mine, or his? Who am I if not him. And who is this other mountain of a man if not a vehicle of this strange, barren plain, where thought and sentiment copulate. These things should be transported in another language, one that is lost. And one that has been brutally implemented but adapted, moulded. However, there, from the back seat of a speeding vehicle, no language was needed. We returned, or he returned, and I joined. They shot through streets, inhabited by the sleepless, the ones without teeth, the ones with. Not before long, they were to reach something, somewhere, the restless rest.

Yes, I am consumed. By obsolescence, and the vacuity of a perpetual motion. Demands, left and right. Mundane obligations. Pressed clothing. Gas in a tank that leaks; the creaking leak of age and recklessness. Money every only in short supply. And vengeance, lurking at the next corner. A toads grin, luring me into a foreboding abode. A lizard body, shapeless.

Plighted by age and the musk of the city, the taxi driver dropped us off. We scurried away, moths, drawn into the light. Then, without further ado, the march began. To apiece a raging hunger, to tingle a demanding thirst. They walked in unison. Inspected by the glances of the dawning night, they turned corners, wafted across streets. An odor, or gust of wind, you choose. But elusive, and yes, this is where they cultivate the little pride they have. In a garden of nightshades.

It is no flight, no withdrawal.. Maybe belief in the occasional, but this would put them in dubious company.

Ha, among the dubious, they sometimes rest.

And he would joke about purity. There, in his timid heart, he clamored: the fray of disinterest gathers tremendous energy. One of these friends, for they were two, raised a fist. You shall go there, and show them. For you will be heard, you shall be heard. The other, sank his hands into his pockets, he marched in fried slumber, in speechless joy.

There was a line, reaching out to the street. You didn’t surmise where it reached. But there were expectations, sure. Most likely, there were winding steps, reaching into dreadful depths. Down there, most acquired delicacies boiled in sullen pots. Don’t ask too much, though. For these steps only lead downwards. And this brings us back. Why ascend? And where to. Mostly the latter inquiry captured him. His inner fortress had thrown open its gates that night, but he only peaked out slightly. Red eyes, glimmering from an indiscriminate depth. It was their turn. And they tossed themselves upon their plates. They emptied heaping cups. Chalices of sweet temptation. If it were to end now, so it shall, they thought. They threw their arms upon each other, until the night consumed them.  

Strange, how they were greeted by death. Nothing new, these salutes. No, finitude was their rattail. They did their best to hide it under tattering attire, but it was of no use. It always protruded into speckless skies, clouding the empty chatter of the well-intentioned. One of them left for the rites, the other peaked into existence; there, in front of these windows that shook in their frames, dancing to the stomping life below. One of them, lowering his eyes, turning them inside; the other, raising them to a sky that had no answers, that only bristled with the tension of promises.  

Soon to rejoin, yes. To scamper through the streets. Along roads, where the smell abducted them. Into wheeled cubistic cans, circulating the innards of the city. He kept a close eye on his brother. This dubious odour of cleanliness could not but attract attention. Morose stares. But no, there was nothing of the sort. Only the slumber of drudgery, sustained by moist bodies. Briefly, you could rest, kept afloat by a bulging mass of flesh.

What to do with that guy, he thought. A strange one, no? Purified by suffering and carelessness. Driven by odious dedication. But dedicated to what, they both did not know. And it was of no importance. Therein lies beauty. Their terrain was a common one. A vagabond plain, he once talked about.

Together with the mass, they defected onto the streets. Beauty, moist ground, eminent tremor. Pillaging music, steaming plates. Steps, one after another. There was more, certainly. Power, benediction, praise, patchouli, feathers, pirouettes. Impressions, not to be documented. Art, removed from perusing glances. Viento nocturno. There were bulging bellies, sated by gold, there were swollen pelvises, pleased by power. And always: viento nocturno.

Strange, certainly. After all, they weren’t heralds of history. However, there, in this night, impregnated by symbols and desire, they could not but feel all that had been lost. They stood there, and the breeze caressed their sobriety. Their path was a long one. He promised a cavern, bristling with life. Beautiful pledge, is it not? Where the worms find reprieve, hiding from the slaying peon. Rifles and monuments, the cry of the bard. In anticipation of cerebral implosion. In anticipation of the few irregularities needed to let him stumble, the lover of habit.

Long past the heights of energy, they awaited a spectacle. One of them, endlessly patient. The other, descending deeper into internal reprieve. Sitting in a slumber. An ecstatic few, populating a hole. As most often, he fled into subtleties. Into odd emanations of lives that are not his own. Driven by a motion he does not share. Besides him, a towering sage, taught by extremities.

Moreover, there was a third one. An envoy of another world. One, directed by simpler coordinates. Success, and the binary. And he was lovely, doubtlessly. Seeking reprieve in the depths of liquor, to curb the confusion. Confronted with two vagrant minds, lovers of strangeness; what would you do? And finally, before the grand finale, he had to concede that his spirits had left him. There is a deep well inside him. But if he stares for too long, they take him, to the depths of forgetting. Together, they stumbled through a delicate night. Plans were formed, to regain property. Offers were made, to seek the authentic. Friendly chatter, honest humility.

Then, the sleep of the noble. Where coma and rest become indistinguishable.

Now rise, for it is time. Off to a breakfast of intoxication.  Off to the beauty of life, carefully arranged on white porcelain. If we were to perish now, so shall we. There they sat, removed from the others; purveyors of secrecy, seclusion. As if cloaked by a veil, insurmountable distance shields them. One of them, easily rejoins the mundane, the other is caught in his web. Occasionally, the latter thinks to be close to them, only to realize that he speaks an alien tongue.

The sage led the way. Despite his frustration, some will call him a priest. It is curious, for he meticulously recapitulated the rites; the reading of scripture, decapitation, the perforation of the thoracic cavity. One of them raised scrupulous inquiries. But mostly, his brother remained awestruck. Held hostage by another world. It should have surprised him the least, but to this day, the deities ask for their tribute. Where mundane and divine power converge, we tread on profane terrain. Nevertheless, this secretive connection has lost nothing of its intoxicating sheen, of its opioid allure.

Tourists, dumbfounded. Lost souls, peering at monuments of vanquished spheres. Simple catholic minds, studying the materialization of their memories. Kids, manufacturing baroque identities from marvellous fragments. And it occupied them both. How to interpret these bizarre grounds, where practices only subsist in translation, where gods perform similar functions.

No responses, no need for anthropological inquiry. No, we are not looking for a logos. The sage rather purported a mythos (one should not discount that, despite a prominent fracture, these are not opposing forces). Yet, they were to arrive, in a removed corner of this magnanimous hall, they commemorate Tezcatlipoca. They watched out for their feet, for they know what the earth demands. Now, one of them trembled. When lust and terror coincide, we confront a crucial motive. Where the mirror exposes enmity, and knowledge of self. Where the byways of life summon a meaningless end. In a way, the disciple could not listen. In a way, the sage explored nothing but himself.

That day, they tired him. For he had to revisit all that had demanded a tribute. Many lives, compacted into one. Too much pain, translated into a demanding cry for peace. A relentless sun, following him. Until the sole response is to become invisible, to hide among the quotidian, to become one with a desolate environment. That day they tired him. For it has been many years that he waited. To finally relieve himself of a long-grown burden, the burden of prudence. They left and the warmth of their union caressed them. What else would they ever need?

Meandering through this enclave, they both tended to their wounds. In his blue, unassuming jeans, he felt stranger than otherwise. But it shouldn’t matter, for his friend was eager to disclose little. The stranger, from some indecipherable region, shall not be visible. The slightest hint of vile thoughts was to be silenced, it was time to caress their empty bowels. Coal fumes wafted out to the streets. Along the wall, they aligned. Taking their seats at a counter. Boing, boing.

Certainly, this was an obvious feast. The distinguished for the distinguished in search of the vulgar. He could not but laugh. Impregnated by fumes, they moved deeper into their labyrinthine love. Memories, braided into dense thickets. Despite his secretive demeanour, one of them was a responsible soul. The other, arguably, was a strange entity, seldom accessing something like a communal sphere. His comportment was more so guided by certain imagery, nourished by literature and a fine mother. Or, in other words, he was illiterate when it comes to custom, and the quotidian corruption of the social sphere. His responses came by ominous byways. Responses were to be deduced from something like an intellect. Not from experience, not from good-hearted sense. They would spend uncounted hours in the measurement of these barren pathways. Hence, one of them, once distanced from a moribund humour, was a warm soul whose rays caressed the most barren ground. The other radiated as well, but it was an artificial light of unknown providence. Sometimes, his structures occluded the most imminent.

Where is this strange place where realism and symbolism coalesce? After the glory of grease had settled a bit, they heaved themselves through another cathedral. This time, it housed the art of recent days grappling with a monumental past. Assembling the fragments to forge the present. Sometimes via exquisite lines from which the vivacity of life speaks. Sometimes in broad, violent strokes from which drastic reduction announces itself. And it was not long before his wit would mount another strike. He recited his proposal: choose inclusion, choose liberal equivocation, choose the colourful plumes of dissenting identity. If you do, the heaving doors will be thrown open. For you to enter and to never leave. His friend could say little. He brooded over his inner tinctures, engulfed in a steady simmer. How easy it seemed, to reach for the stars. A matter of choice, of rough and ragged strategy.

These last few days, they reached too close to the sky. The valves were opened, the streets inundated. Among the roaches, they hasted from shelter to shelter. Now, they were looking for the poor. As an object of their perusing glance, they were to mingle with the decrepit, the disregarded, the foul. Considering the wise proposal we just witnessed, we could regard this a first step towards success. Radical food for the radical mind. Two heaping bowls.

Are you happy now?

Among the squalid rat chasers, the garbage troupe and the lovers of vengeance. Among these, you want to stuff your face with the simple fare. Caldo de gallina.  

I am happy now.

Soon thereafter, the two would lounge in the backseat of a car. Calls from another existence, a loose friend asking for direction, for feeling, to be collected like some trinket, somewhere at the border. Then, sleep. And, alarm.

He was sure to mention the continuity of the market. The objects have changed, but the relations subsist. A comment on history. Soon, minced meat and morality? You be my judge. Pickled heads, loose fingers. The culprit was a wretched fool, he stole from the destitute. Feel misery to feel less miserable. The sage scurried through masks. Through books. First scattered and then neatly assembled. Other worlds, staring at us. And therein was beauty. To witness how he worked the archive. Vendors, thinking to sell to the heedless. All but that. Spread below our feet, innumerable riches. One sipped hand-squeezed secretions.

Then, cardinal sins. One jug after the other to soothe their sore souls. Jesters here and there.

There were stairs, mounting into the air. Not before long, another addition and another addition. And then, as usual, a mighty cover-up. Building over the remnants that one would rather forget. That should have never existed, according to some, that should at least be purged, according to others. That should be seamlessly rejuvenated, according to a few. He could not but gasp, a fish tossed onto the hot ground. Attempting to breathe in a last sorrowful attempt to persist.

And maybe, if we grant him but one qualification, it is this: in front of insurmountable structures he does not retreat towards familiar grounds. Neither does he engage in a sweeping conquest in which he radically fragments the unknown to render it palatable to the stray dogs of his mind. No, he can let it persist, can accept his ignorance. There was no need to soothe the hounding hunger of illiteracy.

Another car, another route. Moving past rag pickers, lounging in garbage trucks. Along the circuitous veins of a city, feeding on a luscious past. Another day, another seduction. Within an hour, the loose verticality of the promiscuous shifted towards a denser metropolitan fabric. Promenades turn into winding alleys. Black bitumen sweats into compressed mud. Gradually, the gates of another city closed behind them. Old demons danced above their heads. One, in his loving naivety, shifted into a festive demeanour, praising the newly assured continuity; for the first time in a winding life. At once, the other, thus far resting behind his sprawling beard, sent ripples through his body. A change in ambiance, an obvious message. Glances through the rear mirror.

Soon, they were ejected from the city. A burlesque shift in appeal. They entered the barge, their ferryman awaiting them.

He; recently divorced. Thinking that it would be a worthwhile trip. The other; tense, eying him from the back seat. A shadow, filling the car with a dense, apprehensive haze. Arriving in an unknown neighbourhood, other fiends approach from the dark, join the seeping shadow. They drag him and they hit him. Reduce him to a squeaking pig, terrorized by the premature dawn of life. He asks to be dispatched with, for the pain is too much. Laughs, exaltation. Tell us more. They reminded him; that particular day, he was not to choose. The eggs were not to his liking, and thus, in search for the searched, they beat him more. Until their splendour wilted. They took what they wanted, and they let him be.

A few gaping lapses of memory. More sweat bread, chocolate and a crucial inquiry. How to articulate that which needs no articulation. How to let matters unperturbed. How to affirm the integrity of a cave which demands no ascent. Of dwellers that are neither content nor repulsed, that simply are where they were tossed and seek to remain where they are. Why resort to lofty archives? These questions inflamed him. With sugar-coated fingers, he cried: why not merely enjoy this peaceful moment. Nevertheless, he could not deny the astute character of these questions. At times, they surfaced, then he would demand an apology for brutality, the illiterate. This itched his brother, for it required elaboration.

And since we are already here, where biscuits are served, we might as well tend to other occurrence. A day before, having helped themselves to a beautiful meal, served from steaming casseroles, they stumbled into a bookshop. After some benign scouring he spotted a catalogue. Photos, exposing suffering. Photos, summoning a world of nefarious thuggery. Exploitation and steaming bodies. These impulses would return. But first, they had to continue on his hunt for the poor. Soon, they were to arrive, where the owner beats his child, where the mother stares from her little closet, where the peon cuts the tongue. He swallowed what was served, and demanded a drink. To the amusement of all, he was quick to empty the fermented, and the lukewarm.

These details aside, where the biscuits are served, they confronted another conundrum. They debated the generative, the expropriating, they inspected the tunnels, connecting one to the other. They spoke of shortsighted art, solely delving in pain. And they stumbled homeward.

They felt a dawning departure. Towards a promise and a provisional home. Unsure, they fed more. One last time, they returned, towards the abode of the gods. They sent their disparate roots into a shared terrain. The ground trembled,

in anticipation.