Parables of Reconciliation (Spirit of the Beehive)

 

 

 

Our imagination is populated by the characters found in fiction. We think in terms of characters, and plotlines, and the tropes that characterize our fiction. It is certainly the case that many of us see ourselves as characters, and we weave storylines that bear a strong similarity with we have seen and read.

Many times, the two meld together. There have been times when I find my life reliving a plotline I have encountered before, and I find myself temporarily wondering at the confluence of the two, eagerly awaiting what is to come next. It isn’t necessarily a case of déjà vu, which we have all felt, and refers to a feeling of already having had a certain experience (a temporary glitch in the virtual reality created by software, in accordance to the vastly stimulated film The Matrix), but instead of slowly seeing the pieces fall into place. It is like recognizing a pattern.

The retreat into fiction is a notable trope (formula element) in much of modern fiction. The retreat into a private fantasy realm is one that occurs frequently, and I used to associate it with some of my formative experiences as a child, when watching Japanese monster movies. It is, of course, an example of escapism, and I am endlessly fascinated by the idea that is constitutes a needed coping mechanism, a parable that allows us to confront and not escape from our problems.

These observations were brought to the fore after watching the 1973 Spanish film The Spirit of the Beehive. For a country that was still living in a culture of repression, thirty years after the end of the Civil War, it is natural to view it as a way that art has helped popular audiences cope with the aftermath of traumatic events.

 

Over half a million people died in this war that lasted from 1936 to 1939, and which, as has been emphasized over and over, was a prelude and preparation for World War II. It was a prolonged and gritty war, one that witnessed many episodes of heroism but also incredible savagery. It was a war that, in many ways, responded to longstanding conflicts that had never been truly resolved in Spain, and that harked back to the 19^th century and the advent of liberalism and the hopes that were frustrated by the returning king Fernando VII, a divisive and autocratic ruler who was out of step with the changes being seen in the rest of Europe.

There were international brigades who volunteered to fight against the Nationalists. It was a cause celebre, one that inspired socialists, anarchists, and those who believed in the coming worker’s utopia. It was also a war that was fought, according to the Nationalist forces, to preserve a union that was seen as coming apart, and the second Republic under Manuel Azaña took on a tragic air.

The film deals with the immediate aftermath of the war. It is the year 1940, and the country has been pacified. There is a spirit of crisis, and this reflects the reality in the country at this time, as the country struggled to recover from economic devastation that was further accentuated by the isolation into which the country was plunged. Franco kept Spain out of the European war, but Spain lived through terrible times, with food shortages and a country that was sputtering along economically, with little access to international capital that was desperately needed.

We are introduced to the magic of cinema, that of small-town itinerant peddlers who travel from time to time, screening films to audiences who are starved for entertainment. It must have been quite a spectacle, and it recalls a few of the stories I heard told by my parents, who grew up in rural Mexico in the 50s and 60s, and who also eagerly awaited the arrival of mobile cinema. The peddlers would arrive, and of course, word would spread quickly, and sheets would be procured for the evening function, and everyone would get their chairs ready to show up in someone’s corral. “¡Hay balazos!”, the word would ring out, for everyone loved movies with gunfights, and my parents told of taking chairs and enjoying these evening small-town spectacles, where audiences derived as much enjoyment from the running commentary they shared as from the movie itself.

The film, in this case, is the American classic with Boris Karloff, Frankenstein. We have an adaption of the Mary Shelley novel of the early 19^th century, a product of romanticism and one in which we have a much more frightening and articulate monster than that encountered in the film. The children are excited, and one imagines, it is a way not only to escape from the drudgery of the town, one that seems painted in black and white, but also, a way to give a name and form to projected desires. The monster is not what is seems, and the girls, especially the younger one, Ana, is much taken by the mystery of this relationship between monster and child.

We are referring, of course, to mysteries that haunt not only children but adults as well. These adults seem to have carved out a semblance of normalcy, and little mention is made of the tragic war and the suffering it produced. It is as if everyone is making an attempt to avoid the topic, almost as if people wish to erase this episode from their consciousness. Ana, though, is entranced by the spirit of the monster, and by the idea of reaching out and exploring what she seems to perceive as a state of affairs that somehow seems off kilter. What is beautiful is just as likely to kill as to nourish, as she learns from her trips with her grandfather (played by Fernando Fernán Gómez) to hunt for mushrooms.

There are invisible things out there, things that will come if you call out to them, as her older sister Isabel tells her in their earnest conversations at night. There are monsters and deadly things, the spirit of unresolved traumas, and ghosts that, one must say, are inevitably representations of wrongs that have not been addressed or acknowledged. There must be many ghosts populating Spain after the end of the Civil War, but Ana puts it into more familiar terms, and she seeks our private spaces, seeks to investigate and call forth these ghosts.

The mom is, evidently, yearning for contact from a lover, and her father seems, at times, strangely distant, seeking as he does to maintain his holdings, he being some sort of functionary who furthermore keeps bees at his estate. Sweetness laced with peril, of course, and he goes around in his own monster suit, his protective wear, which brings up other parallels with Frankenstein. One takes it that for him to have preserved as much of his estate as he did, he must evidently have fought on the side of the Nationalists. What manner of suffering did he occasion during the war?

Spirits are, indeed, called forth by the young child, and we see particularly in the arrival of the fugitive man to what seems to be an abandoned shed out in the middle of the fields. It is winter, and he jumps off a train, and takes shelter. Ana finds him, and not only is she not afraid, but she shares her food with him, then brings items from her father’s household (his coat, his watch) to give to him. What kind of danger does this man represent? Is he one of the last and forlorn holdouts from the Republican side? Is he just a common criminal on the run? What gives her the courage to approach and befriend him?

 

This is a divide that proves endlessly fascinating, for it speaks of parallels in which distance drives people to acts of violence and repression. The husband and wife are evidently estranged, and we see as well a society in which people are ill at ease, as if aware of the restraints and the repression that accompanies the Nationalist victory. In a film such as Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, we see a similar fable, in which a young child escapes into her own private realm to escape from the reality of a repressive father and family circumstances that seem perilous. She needs to deflect her worries by disguising them, something which the psychologist Bruno Bettelheim has maintained is very much the determining factor behind the appeal of fairy tales.

These tales, it must be added, deal with acts of extreme violence. People are eaten, placed into ovens, consume poisoned fruit, are maimed, and suffer all form of physical punishment, in addition to the mental suffering that is provoked by the lack of attention and love. These are parables that seem instantly recognizable for most of us, because they capture the feeling of being unwanted, of lacking the security we all crave, but also, through their resolutions, promise a feeling of satisfaction that often proves to be elusive otherwise. We don’t all have fairy godmothers or magical talismans to save us when we need to confront the next big challenge.

 

This, then, brings to mind the perception of muted danger. It is evident not only in the gun that is carried by this mysterious man, but also, as mentioned before, in the watch that is stolen, and that ordinarily would have been considered an implement of power. The watch plays beautiful music when opened, and it somehow seems to have a healing power, for it entrances those who have it, and operates much as any other portal of escape. And, of course, we have the bees, busily producing their honey, but able to string savagely, and the mushrooms, the ones with the fanciful names, those that can kill if one isn’t careful just as effectively as any gun. (There is a scene in which the young girl Ana, after having run away, goes back to the mushroom patch, and would seem to be on the verge of consuming one of these deadly mushrooms.)

Conflicts, then, come to the form, for there is no retreat from the dangers of this or any other circumstance. It would seem that the film is, of course, a reflection on the dangers of repression, and an attempt to exorcise ghosts that continue to haunt our imagination. Frankenstein had a tender scene in the old film in which he meets the young girl by the side of a lake, and she shares with him a flower that entrances them both. Why he would kill the girl seems to be one of the unresolved mysterious of this and any such encounter, and what brings out the monstrous in us is just as much a matter of concern. The monster seems as much the victim as the criminal, and we will of course always harbor the impression of a childish entity, one who is unable to comprehend his own power, but who wishes, nonetheless, to be understood.

The young man who has taken refuge is discovered and killed, and the child runs away after an encounter with her father at the abandoned building where the young man had been hiding. Who was the real monster, in this episode? Why did the man have to be killed? Would we have seen a reenactment of the movie version of Frankenstein? She had given the man her apple, what gift would he have given her in return?

In the end, after a haunting sequence in which the monster visits the child who has run away to the countryside and is desperately being sought by her parents and the town authorities, we are left to wonder as much by this fascination with the monstrous quality in all of us. Where does it lurk, and what brings it forth? The child is traumatized, much as the entire country is traumatized, and her silence mirrors the inability of the town to talk and deal with the consequences of what is evidently a stifling spirit of repression. We have to remember that, in Spain, when this film was released (1973), we were nearing the end of the Franco dictatorship. Artists were addressing the question not only of what had taken place decades before, but also, of what came next.

It is, thus, logical that the movie would end with a child who is just as obsessed as she ever was with the haunting mysteries that confound her, mysteries that point to the way in which her society and her family itself has been damaged. She is probably as much of a ghost as any of the magical or fantastic creatures that consume her imagination, and she glides along, earnest and serious, and prepares to commune with other ghosts, calling out to the monster once again.

Maybe there is a way for Frankenstein never to have to kill the girl. Maybe justice means that they both have to be saved, rather than both of them dying. Otherwise, what hope does she have?

 

OGRomero © 2013
(Copyrighted by OGRomero, 2013) 

La fiesta de balas (A review of Los de abajo)

 

La fiesta de balas

There is no such thing as objective history. It is an act of fiction, one in which the writer shapes and forms the material they have both gathered and received to formulate stories. As much as we may give credence to the persistent illusion otherwise, we have as much difficulty agreeing on what is happening now as we do with what happened in the past. Narrative shapes history, because narrative underlies the way in which we assign meaning.

The Mexican Revolution of 1910-20 is one that has been mythologized extensively. It is certainly the case that it changed the country, but it may also be viewed as a narrative of emancipation. It was a long and chaotic process, with many forces put into contention, and with a whole cadre of heroes and villains. It also helped to shape the course of the subsequent 80 years of Mexican history, for it heralded a new ideology that, as in the title of the ruling country that held sway during that period, sought to “institutionalize” this revolution. As such, it is a foundational period, one that marked an end to the previous period.

Even we, children who were born and raised in the United States, but who have parents and grandparents who came from Mexico, have a vague sense, imparted to us by our parents as well as popular culture, of the processes and characters involved. I remember encountering my father when I was a child singing in the garage with other men, and even though they were born in the 40s, they still sang corridos that recounted the exploits of regional revolutionary figures, not just Pancho Villa, but of the leaders that sprang up almost everywhere in vast mestizo and Indian heartlands of Mexico. It may not have been entirely clear to us all, but we heard Pancho Villa, the centaur of the North, and Emiliano Zapata, the dour Indian peasant of the south, and of course, we heard of figures such as Francisco Madero, the martyr of the Revolution, and the dictator and tyrant, don Porfirio Díaz, who was overthrown. As young people who chafed against parental control as well as the discrimination we suffered as children in the school system here in the USA, many of us sympathized with the revolutionaries, those who came from marginalized sectors, those who looked like our peasant ancestors, who spoke a colloquial Spanish and who had famous phrases of liberation attributed to them, from “¡Tierra y Libertad!” to such a lapidary remark as that attributed to Zapata, “It is better to die on your feet than to continue living on your knees”. This was when we weren’t giving expression to our revolutionary impulses by listening to rock music, to Pink Floyd and Van Halen and Led Zeppelin, which scandalized our parents to no end.

But the Mexican revolution, as much as it has seeped into our consciousness, was a process that was multi-faceted, and that had several stages. It had its martyrs, foremost among them the afore-mentioned Francisco Madero, the rich hacienda owner from the north who was influenced by democratic ideals and who proved unable to govern once he toppled the dictatorship. This is no way detracts from the aura that accompanies him in the popular imagination, for his idealism was evident from the very beginning, in his championing of the need for land redistribution, and in his true underdog struggle to topple a long-standing tyrant and champion the ideal of a more representative government, one not beholden and serving the interests of elites who were arrayed into camarillas (factions). (It is always endlessly fascinating and ironic that Madero himself came from this elite class.) And we have our villains, in a process that saw much meddling from the outside, principally by the United States, who with the meddling of President Wilson and his representatives helped to support Huerta who had overthrown Madero and had him and his brother killed in a tragic episode known as the “decena trágica”.

This process was polarizing, and was reflected in literature as well as historiography. The official account that is promulgated by the ideologues of the new Mexican government was that it was a bloody but necessary process, even if it witness untold destruction and it resulted in the migration of millions of Mexicans to the United States. We have, thus, a celebratory if at times somber recounting of this episode, one which, in reality, is a sequence of episodes that have been stitched together so that we preserve in a way a triumphalist account that doesn’t end with the murder of Madero, but instead, with the practical and necessary triumph of leaders such as Carranza and Obregón who crafted the new state, and who provided the ideology that would hold sway and would be associated with notions of Mexican nationalism. It is portrayed, thus, as a fight for liberation and resistance, liberation from internal forces and the caudillismo represented by Díaz and Huerta, and resistance to external intervention on the part of the only real external foe that Mexico has had since its independence, the United States.

This polarizing quality is evident in the famous novel by Mariano Azuela, Los de abajo, which was published in 1915. The novel purports to present a different perspective, representing as it does a fictionalized account that of the popular classes who joined in the revolution. It is a novel that incorporates a skeptical narrator who comments on and criticizes the events and actions of the characters involved, and if anything, it recalls powerfully another model that was immensely influential in Latin America. It is, thus, the Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism of Mexico, a version of the famous book that was written by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento of Argentina and that chronicled the rise of the figure of the Latin American despot.

While the former work, published approximately 80 years earlier, was a hybrid work that was as much autobiography as cultural critique and an exercise in costumbrismo (the description of national types), we preserve from that work the enduring motif of a clash of civilizations, and of an imputed savagery of a public (the rural classes, the workers) who, in the polemical argument of Sarmiento, were thought to be unprepared to govern. This is an argument that is reproduced in an explicit way in Azuela’s novel, in the bitter reflections of the revolutionary Solís who, we may take, is a spokesperson for the author. This character, in an encounter with another elite turned revolutionary, Luis Cervantes (el curro), who describes the forces unleashed in the following way:

(quote)

Pero hecho, gestos y expresiones que agrupados en su lógica y natural expresión,   constituyen e integran una mueca pavorosa y grotesca a la vez de una raza…¡De una raza irredenta!..(…) Me preguntará que por qué sigo en entonces en la revolución. La revolución es el huracán, y el hombre que se entrega a ella no es ya el hombre, es la miserable hoja seca arrebatada por el vendaval… (p. 69)

(end quote)

It is a pessimistic and destructive judgment rendered, and in the same way that Sarmiento does, it dismisses the potential of an entire social class, by referring to arguments that were based as much on a pessimistic reading of Latin American history as on the notions of scientific racism that were so common during the 19th century.

We have, then, the spectacle of an “irredeemable” people, and this symbolism is mirrored throughout the narrative in items that seek to underscore this interpretation. We have, for example, symbols such as the rolling stone, one that, once unleashed, can’t be stopped, and the volcano that has erupted and can only be allowed to run its course, as well as the wind-up clock that is so prized by peasant general Demetrio, and suggests powerfully that these upheavals are cyclical. The view is very clear that what we have is a novel that alludes to these powerful arguments from the past, ones that project, it may be said, a perspective that was not truly shared by the popular classes who genuinely chafed under the conditions that held sway during this epoch leading up to the revolution.

The story is furthermore elaborated in the story of two characters, the general Demetrio Macías to whom I first alluded, and the figure of Luis Cervantes. We have characters who are involved in movements that may be visualized in terms of ascents as well as descents, where the poor peasant characters which to overturn the existing order and thus move up, and the elite or bourgeois groups (represented by Luis) seek to appropriate these energies by seeming to join the revolutionary struggle, but in reality, are waging their own rear-guard action to control and benefit from the revolution. As one of the most enigmatic characters in the novel, La Pintada, proclaims,

(quote)
¡Qué brutos! (…) ¿De dónde vienen? Llega uno a cualquier parte y no tiene más que escoger la casa que le cuadre y ésa agarra sin pedirle licencia a naiden. Entonces ¿pa quén jue la revolución? ¿Pa los catrines? Si ahora nosotros vamos a ser los meros catrines… (p. 86)
(end quote)

It is this vision of an overturning of the existing order that holds sway, and it constitutes a vicious indictment of the revolution.

We see this in the way the movement of the revolutionaries is tightly circumscribed by their circumstances. They don’t have any real understanding of the ideology of revolution, that which was formulated by celebrated figures who have entered into the hagiography of the revolution, figures such as Ricardo Flores Magón, an advisor to Francisco Madero. The novel emphasizes over and over that these are simple men, with a limited vocabulary that is furthermore laced with expletives and colorful metaphors, in which the characters lack any real ambition other than to lay hand on their next quota of “avances”, the spoils of war. The character of Luis Cervantes tries to impart some notion of the revolution as a fight against tyranny, but in the portrayal offered by this novel, the humble peasant soldiers are unable to fully understand or conceptualize the process in this way.

Thus, we have intersecting movements in which characters from a higher social sphere (the bourgeois Luis) formulate and help to channel the energies of the revolutionaries, and the revolutionary energies are in turn sidetracked and thwarted so that, in the end, it is principally a movement in which the lower classes eliminate themselves for the convenience of the elites. While the revolution seem to be on the ascent in the first part of the novel, which leads up to the famous assault and conquest of Zacatecas, we see a dissipation of these energies in the second part, as no program of justice is implemented by the conquering revolutionaries who prove, on the contrary, to be just as savage as the federales.

We have mirrors, then, that are at play in this novel. The first scene involves the arrival of the federales to the house of Demetrio Macías, and the killing of the dog (the popular classes are continually compared to starving dogs) and the attempted rape of his wife. Demetrio manages to overpower them by surprise, and in an act of restraint lets the federales flee while being urged all the while to kill them. But in the end, Demetrio becomes the same as those groups in power against whom he was struggling, and in a famous scene not only does he exact retribution on the old cacique who had persecuted him before (don Mónico), but in the end allows his men to kill and rape the poor, as happens in other notable scenes such as that where his men steal the food of the citizens of Guadalajara, or threaten to shoot the poor campesinos of the sierras who have hidden from his forces.

There are both external as well as external struggles, and it is clear that by the second half, Demetrio is losing both struggles. He has ascended to the position of general, but in an orgiastic scene in the restaurant, he finds himself joined by disreputable individuals who will compromise his position, and in the case of the güero Margarito, we see the ascent of the authentic psychopath.

This güero Margarito is a vicious character who, we may say, is consumed by a need for vengeance. If the revolution is compared to a destructive force, he is the embodiment of this violence, and he seems to be kept barely in restraint. His associate, La Pintada, is just as self-centered, and is just as bereft of any idealism. It is thus noteworthy that these characters find the appropriate moment in which to join forces with Demetrio, who accepts them out of necessity if not out of any genuine sympathy. Over and over, we see the violence perpetrated by Margarito, a violence that offends the sensibilities of the reader and that can only be likened to the hyper-violence of the savage rural classes in Esteban Echeverría’s classic story, El matadero. (A story in which the representative of high civilization, a man who is part of the Unitarians, is tortured and killed by a rabble that supports the caudillo.)

These episodes, as well as the increasingly skeptical tone and harsh language of the narrator, who criticizes these actions and denounces Margarito explicitly as “malign”, serve to forward the argument that the ideological foundation of the Mexican Revolution eluded the understanding of the common soldiers who were involved in the movement.  This foundation was present , and within the novel was expressed in the arguments forwarded by Luis, but it fell on deaf ears, and was supposedly not as powerful an incentive as that of the promise of “avances”, the spoils of conquest, or revenge, as in the case of Margarito who holds a grudge against the ruling and bourgeois classes. As Demetrio responds when he is asked by Luis to restrain his men who seem too eager to pillage the households they encounter, he justifies them by saying that it is their only reward for the risks they are undertaking, thus establishing the notion on the part of the skeptical narrator that these revolutionaries were devoid of any allegiance to a higher ideology of liberation.

It is the case that, in the end, we circle back to where we first started. The first battle that was won by Demetrio was an ambush of Federalist troops, and the final battle is also ambush, but one in which the revolutionaries are slaughtered by the Federalists. The revolution is going badly, and the wise buffoon, Valderrama, offers proclamations that indict the savagery of the revolutionaries as well as the course of a war that has left them incapable of feeling the suffering of the populace. Valderrama, the brilliant but instable drunk, seems to hold a more realistic notion of the revolution, in which it is not as much a jockeying of position by powerful men as, instead, a vital force:

(quote)

―¿Villa?...¿Obregón?...¿Carranza?...¡X… Y… Z…! ¿Qué se me da a mí?...¡Amo la revolución como amo el volcán que irrumpe! ¡Al volcán porque es volcán, a la revolución porque es revolución!... Pero las piedras que quedan arriba o abajo, después del cataclismo, ¿qué me importan a mí?... (p. 139)

(end quote)

And this formulation seems to prefigure what will happen, because it is an enduring symbol that has been repeated over and over in the novel. What we have is a movement in which social groups scramble to ascend as well as endeavor to avoid descent, in which eternal processes are once again on display, and in which sacrifices are made continually and with little reason. Demetrio has had his lover Camila, an innocent and initially unwilling peasant from the countryside, murdered by La Pintada, and his assistant, Luis Cervantes, has abandoned the group in order to exile himself in San Antonio, Texas, where he seeks to deploy the capital he has stolen in order to set himself up. Villa has lost the battle of Celaya, and now, the peasants and poor city dwellers deny him and his forces any hospitality, and instead chafe when asked to provide supplies to the revolutionaries. The end is still some distance away, but when Valderrama abandons his, after he (Demetrio) abandons his wife and child once again to continue to continue this marathon of suffering (the rolling stone that keeps rolling until stopped), we know that it can only end in one way.

And, thus, with no sense of idealism, and with a reluctance but as well a resigned determination to continue on his path, we see him lead his forces into an ambush, which will serve to bookend this novel and invest this narrative with the aura of an anti-revolutionary work, one that demystifies the revolution and portrays it in a grimmer light, one divested of the aura of idealism. There is no grand cause in play here, at least in the conception of the peasant revolutionaries, for whom such a conception is far too abstract to be understood, and we the readers have the sense that this process is one that is defined by futility, for the clock will surely be wound up again and we will start where we left off, with those who are “above” exploiting those who are “below”. Demetrio dies trying to defend his position as the bullets (further mortal rocks or lethal metal “pebbles” , i.e. gunshots) rain down upon him, and we have the sense of a promise unfulfilled.

 

OGRomero © 2013
(Copyrighted by OGRomero, 2013) 

The Deep Land (intersecting story, pt. 1)

The Deep Land

No one doubted that Maluak would find a way. He wasn’t going to be left behind. His was an iron will, and had long been known to chafe at the restrictions placed by his father. While he would invariably obey, and while he listened as his father explained over and over that the restrictions were meant as much to teach him patience and obedience as to allow him time to prepare, one could see the child brooding. They knew that there would be a war party sent to the west, for the signs were in the air, and had been building for the past few years, and he would not be left behind, even if he was a scrawny and undersized eleven year old.

What he lacked in brawn, he more than made up for in wit and craftiness. For being such a young boy, Maluak had often proven himself to be resourceful. He was a solitary individual, and had been content to spend much of his time with his twin brother, but now things were different, and he was forced to fend for himself.  He never reacted with haste, and always carefully watched and evaluated his circumstances. One could see him preparing to strike, and like the stormfronts that lashed the savannah during the late summer, there was a palpable feeling of impending release, of coiled energy waiting for the precise moment to strike. And he had been thinking about the war party for quite some time.

Storms were a natural part of the savannah during the wet season. After the scorching summers that blinded and suffocated them and baked the landscape, leaving a cracked parchment that crumbled under their feet, it represented a welcome relief. The storms arrived to find a land that seemed that was somnolent, a brown land that seemed to cry out for release, having been grazed during the past few months by gigantic herds of bison and lacking the water needed to replenish itself. The few rivers that crisscrossed this vast land were inevitably reduced to patches of damp mud on a river bed that seemed like one vast scar, and these were watched over with zeal by his people, who depended on these patches as repositories of what little moisture could be drawn from the land during this period. They would cover over the best patches with hides weighed down by stones, and on a daily basis would scoop up the mud and wait for the water to slowly seep up. They conserved what little they obtained carefully, using it to supplement what they had saved in jars in the village. By now the land felt almost abandoned, for the big game had migrated north, and they were left to themselves, waiting for the rain, calling forth the clouds during long summer nights and telling sad stories, as if to remind themselves of deeper troubles than those that affected them with the season.

Maluak was young boy but had an iron will. Although small in stature, and somewhat scrawny, he was always watchful, able to spend time out in the searing heat of the day, away from the shade of the sparse trees that dotted the landscape, able to bury himself if need be in dirt and to scoop out abandoned termite mounds to find what little sparse nourishment could be obtained when alone out by himself, out in the deep land. He had the makings of an excellent tracker, able as he was to live out in the vast savannah and fend for himself, the way trackers need do, on the lookout constantly for signs, keeping watch for bears that ranged from time to time out in this land, or a pack of wolves, or the passage of hunters that were forced to forage. He was also excellent at concealing himself.

He could start and keep a fire if he needed to defend himself. He almost never used the fire to cook, for e was used to drying what little meat he could obtain out in the open, or eating it fresh. He never carried very much in any case, for it was foolish to think that it would escape the notice of other animals, especially of the hawks and eagles but also the carrion fowl that circled overhead, and would give away his position and bring danger upon himself.  He had covered a considerable range, and was intimate with the topography, and with the location of termite mounds, and bushes were edible herbs took refuge, and stores of particular kinds of rocks, and nests found in locations preferred by the many small rodents that shared the land. He also was familiar with the many snakes that lived out in this landscape, although he tried never to kill them, for the snakes spoke to him, and shared much of their history with him. And after the last struggling bison had crossed the land on their journey north, he would leave the land and join his family once again, to savor the stories that the elders told at night, stories that obsessed him during the day.

The boy had learned to look for hidden signs, and others in the village had remarked that he had the markings of a natural watcher. He was attentive to what the land told him, and knew enough to trust what it told him directly, and not to rely on the interpretation of others. The land spoke, and it had not just one voice, but many voices. He would listen, and he would do his best to distinguish between the different voices that he heard, and the many conversations he overheard. Everything had a voice, the snakes had voices, the mice had voices, the bushes had voices, even the clouds had voices and the sun spoke with an intensity that would drown out almost everything else, except for the fact that the sun also took the time to listen, and no one thing or being or object was ever truly silent.

Everything had significance out in that vast land. Maluak could read the signs commonly overlooked by others, and could interpret everything from the passage of a shadow that as it glides over the landscape with an invitation to follow it, to the sharp glint of reflected light on fractured rocks, so different from that present on smoother surfaces. He took note of the persistent creaking underneath, as the land shifted and stretched and rippled in subtle movements, or the sly voice of the breezes, those that announced the presence of the invisible ones who were out and about.

It had been remarked by others how uncanny it was that he had never been taken by surprise by the approach of others, although he knew that he couldn’t as yet hide himself from experiences watchers such as Eluak-sa-ti, or Benata-sa-ti. But he knew when others were approaching, and could hide his trail, and blend in with the landscape, and at times he came to view it as a form of entertainment, to disappear into the land, but to follow the unwary adults or children, and to watch them and hear their conversations. He never thought for a moment whether others might similarly be watching him, but soon he would learn that he wasn’t as invisible as he thought he might be. He had the signs of an expert watcher, and this had been noted by his parents, who took little notice of his prolonged absences from the household, for they knew that with one who was called to be a watcher, it was futile to try to twist them into becoming what they were not suited to be. It had been a trait that had been shared by his twin brother when he had been alive.

 

A Desperate Escape

The boys had grown up needing little in the way of company other than that which they offered to each other. Their father was a hunter, and was often away, out in the deep land, following the herds during the hunting season, or away practicing ritual combat with the warriors of other tribes. Most of the boys wanted nothing other than to join their fathers, to know the thrill of pursuit, and to learn how to handle the spears and the slings and the small knives that were carried by adult men, even the elders who no longer participated in the hunts nor in the rituals combat, but who bore their scars proudly. There would come a time for these boys to join their fathers, but in the meantime, they battled with each other, and hunted in small packs, and played with mock seriousness. But not Maluak and his brother, who had an instinct for isolation, and who had long ventured out on their own, drawn first to the stories of the elders, and then to the mysterious arrivals of the watchers, who came unaccompanied and never at set hours, and who invited a throng of men who would wait and listen to the information that they brought with them. And they were mesmerized by one tracker in particular, by Waltuak-sa-ti, a serious men like all trackers, who during two years, when they were six years old, had returned wounded to the village, limping noticeably, and told the people of an encounter with a band of desert people who had ventured deep into the savannah.

Waltuak-sa-ti was an accomplished tracker, and he was capable of defending himself if attacked, but he also knew that it was his job to watch for signs, and to convey this information to the bands of hunters who convened at set times out in the deep land, and to assist them as they identified prey and hunted. But Waltuak-sa-ti had himself been hunted that year, and had managed to kill an opponent who had closed in on him after a desperate week trying to evade the band and trying to divert them away from the village. The desert people were known to be accomplished warriors in their own right, and what was more frightening was that they seemed to move with incredible speed, being used as they were to cover vast distances without tiring. It was a mark of the skill and knowledge of the savannah, and of the difficulties presented by this landscape that offered all manner of barriers not commonly encountered in the desert lands, that he had managed to avoid them for as long as he had, and if he had only managed to conceal himself better, he need never have engaged in battle with them.

The boys were entranced with the tales of pursuit, and the resourcefulness of Waltuak-si-ti, who relayed his experiences with no hint of boasting. He described how he managed to weave and slip out of the encircling traps laid by this band of warriors, and how he had ridden on the back of a bison who had buckled and protested mightily, but had finally consented to being ridden, and had affected his escape in this manner, for the desert people were swift, but they were not familiar with the ways of the bison, and had little experience in the ways of avoiding a charging mass of angry bulls. They had followed the herd that had been spooked, and the tracker had managed to slip away and himself narrowly avoid being gored by other bulls in the herd who were not as amenable as the one he had ridden, and he had run in the direction of the remaining tall grasses that might provide a measure of concealment, leading them away from the village. And when he had thought he had escaped, he was set upon by one lean desert warrior, and he was mightily wounded, having been pierced on the side by a long and jutted stick which was aimed at his groin but which instead was lodged in his hip, and somehow, he managed to kill this warrior after desperate and silent combat, using as he did his own knife, and his own skill at throwing stones, and sliding this way and that in the manner of the snakes, who were wise creatures and who were much admired by Waltuak-sa-ti.

He suffered many blows to the head, and the pointed stick was not to be pulled out, and it pained him greatly to the point that he felt he might lose consciousness, but his blood made him slippery, and it made his attacker less cautious, and maybe it was because of the cry of a hawk overhead or the rustle of the breeze that whistled through the branches, that he managed to save himself, and to deal a fatal blow to this opponent. After which he had stumbled away painfully, after hiding the body as best as he could, for he knew that to leave a dead body was to invite a throng of circling birds and predators who would reveal the presence of the body, and might attract other warriors from the band of desert people. And he dragged the body painfully to a nearby hallow, while trying at the same time to staunch the flow of blood, and while he knew the herbs that would staunch this flow, he felt it was imperative first that he try to bury the body, for each minute meant that predators would soon arrive, and so he dragged the body to the hallow and dig his best to cover it up with rocks and clods of dirt, and it was essential that he raid a termite mound to gather the dirt that he needed, but he worked quickly, and after he did this he had limped for most of the remaining day before losing consciousness.

And somehow he had arrived at the outskirts of the village, where he was found by hunters from the tribe more dead than alive, with a fighting stick still sticking out of his wound, and a dark wound that had spread up his side, and he talked more than he had ever talked before, and Maluak and his brother had been there, listening to the tale of pursuit, and the narrow escape, and the meaning of a band of desert warriors that had ventured as deeply as they had into the savannah. Waltuak-sa-ti had lapsed into a fever, and been unable to take any water or nourishment, and had died shortly thereafter, but his story and the manner of his death had impressed itself deeply on the two boys, and they admired the bravery and resourcefulness of the dead tracker.

The hunters were immediately mobilized and notice was sent to the other nearby tribes, and an organized party was quickly sent out to try to track down the band of desert people. They had ranged over the land for the better part of a month, but they never caught sight of them. They managed to locate the buried desert warrior, and indeed found the site where he had been hastily buried, but there was no corpse left in the hallow, nor any bones. They did find the stones, however, that had been scattered disdainfully, and the presence of dried blood on the earth, and it was apparent to them that the band had managed to find the body and had carried it away. It was uncanny that so little evidence was left of their presence, and they swept out in organized parties, but soon returned without any explanation for the presence of this band. This episode dated to the first year of the draught, and they were on watch for several seasons after this, wondering if they would have to go to war with a peoples who were already half-legend to them, and were considered a fearsome foe.

The boys were obsessed by this episode, and they took all the more to tracking out into the surrounding land, eschewing the training in the ways of war that were shared with the other young boys. They knew that what had saved the dead tracker was his resourcefulness, and his ability to read the land, for otherwise, what hope had a lone tracker arrayed against a band of twenty desert warriors? The land had spoken to him, and the land had helped him, as Waltuak-sa-ti had proclaimed over and over as he lay dying, and this affirmed their decision to rely on the land and to learn its language.

And so the two boys had ventured out in earnest to learn more about the savannah. In particular they loved to watch the patterns of the soaring birds as they flew overhead in the late afternoon, knowing that the birds were the natural trackers of trackers such as themselves, and that they had best learn how to read the signs that they offered. There were of course birds who stayed closer to the ground, and who seemed to only fly from tree to tree, and there were other more diminutive birds that accompanied the vast herds of bison, and who in a natural way accomplished what Waltuak-sa-ti had been able to accomplish, which was the feat of riding on the back of a bison. Those birds sampled and fed on the insects that infested the hides of these majestic animals, and they spoke to the bison, as the bison spoke to the birds, and perhaps this was the bond that kept them together. But it was the hawks and the eagles that mesmerized them, for the hawks were at once trackers as well as hunters, as they moved with a sort of serene intensity, even in moment of courtship, when their play traced out complex patterns in the air, great circling movement as the eagles wove and circled and drew their rivals out, only to circle back and pounce on them. This was a great lesson, they felt, although at times they admitted that they simply loved the sight of a hawk floating up in the deep air, just floating, as if resting on the back of an invisible one, for the invisible ones were like the bison that migrated across the savannah, and they also bore riders if they could come to an understanding with them, and what else were the great windstorms but the sign of the stampeding invisible one who were traversing the sky? Were they being pursued by hunters as well?

The hallmark of most animals was that they were cautious in their movements. They moved under the impetus of the landscape and their fellow creatures, and the herds relied on each other. The sprint of a bull was enough to send the herd into movement, and the same could be said for great flocks of birds, and for the long lines of beetles and termites and ants that seemed to swarmed if their lines were interrupted. Lizards were quick to dart from one place to another, and even if they didn’t congregate in herds, they seemed to take their cues from any of a myriad constellation of other animals and insects. But hawks and eagles were solitary creatures, and they admired that sense of self-reliance, for they aspired to it as well, although they trusted in each other.

At some point, they would be driven to the east, to confront the mystery of the dead tracker, and they felt that this journey was already beckoning to them, for they had a natural curiosity. But they had first to become thoroughly accepted by the land, and to learn as much of its ways as they could.

 

 

OGRomero © 2013
(Copyrighted by OGRomero, 2013) 

The Emotional Weight of the Past

 

 (Written on Sept. 17, 2013)

We have a resplendently full moon tonight. As I was exercising in the cool of the early evening, I couldn’t help but notice how it grew brighter and brighter as darkness descended. The moon rose gracefully until it dominated the landscape, one of the few celestial objects able to pierce the atmospheric haze, and as it did, I felt the tug of the past once again.

According to whimsical legends, the moon is supposed to affect us in unusual ways. In past centuries, before the advent of widespread artificial illumination, when we were forced to rely on bonfires and lighted candles, it must have been an eerie and dominating sight. Before gaslight fixtures in our major cities, before cities were anything more than collections of ramshackle buildings arrayed in a haphazard fashion, interspersed here and there with monuments to powerful institutions, most people lived in the countryside, and night must have descended upon them like a hawk, smothering everything in blackness. It governed our daily rituals, and life back then must have been wearying enough, if most of our ancestors were peasants who lived in straightened circumstances. Such a bright disc suspended up in the sky, in a firmament that was furthermore perceived to be dotted with a myriad of stars, and the glorious vision of the Milky Way, back when our nights actually were dark and not glowing with the reflected lights of our vast cities. No wonder that legends arose about people being driven mad by the influence of this vivid specter, one that is almost ghost-like, and why we associated it with transformations, as people became overpowered by fear, anxiety, and panic.

It is hard for us, we who are used to the widespread illumination of the modern age, to countenance how those in the past must have reacted. We are attuned to different rhythms nowadays, and for the modern sensibility, we tend to imbue moonlight with a certain romanticism. The young feel a certain thrill at being able to divorce themselves from the daytime drudgery of school and less-than-satisfying jobs, and plan social outings for the night hours. We are different at night, more glamorous somehow, creatures of artifice like the sweeping panoramic view of skyscrapers at night, and we find the moon romantic. We have need of different symbols, those that allow us to distance ourselves from the glare of what we perceive to be literalism taken to extremes (such as our imprisonment in cubicles during the day, a predicament calling out for release).

But the sight of the moon affected me as well. For some reason, on this early evening, it transported me out of myself, as I was walking around the track with a small crowd of hardy individuals who also exercise during the early evening. I was thinking, in particular, about ghosts, and about the imprint they (and we) leave on this world. Can we not view the moon, after all, as a type of ethereal other, Selene, not as beguiling young woman but as old crone whose profile some of us are able to see, the grandmother that we associate with the past, looking down on humanity with a sort of detachment and dispassionately viewing the flow of the centuries, the roiling passions and energies that boil over but that then are dissipated, over and over, time after time? Do things ever really change?

It prompted me to think of the people I had known before, for I ascended for a few seconds of eternity up to join the moon, and to look back as if from a height at the panorama of my own past, the planet below around which I orbit. I may not measure time in millions of years, but the epochs of my life have become distinct in my imagination, and I could not help but return, obsessively, over and over to the period of my late adolescence, to those final years in high school, where I yearned for nothing other than to be able to escape the grip of my current circumstances, and to find my destiny somewhere else, anywhere else but this town that I thought back then constricted my possibilities.

We think about the people we met, many of whom we never truly leave them behind. They pull on us with their own gravity, and if I may say so, this gravity is felt in terms of emotional weight. There were times when I wish I could disencumber myself of unpleasant memories, of slights and insults I received when I was a child, wishing to forget times to erase what I had done, to go back and shake my younger shoulders and try to bring sense to play. Back then I felt that the world was hurtling forward inexorable and leaving me behind, here in this backwater town of Corona, a town on the outskirts of our great metropolitan center, a sleepy town of citrus groves and small dreams. But for a moment, my vision was expanded, and I was able to reflect on the world with a grander scope, and yes, to perceive more clearly the ghosts that haunt me.

I was thinking in terms of history, and the panoramic view that it represents. With regards to this academic field, the idea is that we are able to look back on our past (viewed in terms of grander cohesive units, in the movement and experience of communities, groups, institutions and, much later, civilizations and nations) and parse it into periods that are understood in terms of the elaboration of certain factors in play. For a young man of 15 years of age, I thought it offered a framework that would help me to escape the prison of my own personal subjectivity, by looking at moments and phenomena in the past that were piercing in their significance. It is a commonplace to think that history involves the study of momentous events, turning points that have lasting consequences, moments when battles were won, treaties were signed, empires were established, new people were “discovered” and social movements as well as economic patterns shaped our way of life and our very identity. It isn’t the story of individuals, although so much of history is studied in this way, with textbooks that used to offer us a never-ending pageant of kings and princes and generals and inventors, because they represented stories that were easy to understand.

As we age we recognize that there are of course hidden institutional factors at play, and that it is too simplistic to think in terms of narratives, even though we are hard-wired to think in this fashion. Rather than think in terms of the Age of Capital, it is easier to think of industrialists, and of inventor of the cotton gin, of the steam engine, of Eli Whitney and James Watt, and of the framework provided by theorists such as Adam Smith and the elaboration of the theory of markets. When we think of episodes such as the Civil War, we think of compelling personalities, of Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee, of emancipators and rebels, and of great causes, when history was in fact much more nuances. We might review economic factors, and also, general ideological impulses as well as institutional factors, for institutions also exert and defend their interests, but this demands a perspective that is more in tune with structuralist theory, that which is taught in our universities and is endlessly quoted by university students in clumsy term papers.

I was thinking more along the lines of stories, and what it meant to study history and to appreciate it as a form of moral but also uplifting and, yes, entertaining instruction. I had been fortunate to have a teacher in junior high school, Mrs. Cotnoir, who had fully recognized the potential of history to entertain us, and we had regaled us by dramatizing in her own way the Age of Pericles. We as young students loved the pageantry and drama of her approach, and she brought to life the characters involved in the era of the Persian Wars, describing the invasion of the Persian emperor, and the way in which the Greeks had banded together if only for one brief moment to repel the outside invader.

We heard about generals while she drew diagrams of bays and harbors and the disposition of naval forces, doing her best to draw those ships of the classical age, the triremes, and to evoke the otherworldly quality of the oracle at Delphi, the one of the inscrutable prophecies that warmed of disaster to come, but also seemed to speak of the possibility of being safeguarded behind wooden walls (that of the triremes, of course, and not any walls constructed around any city). She described the strategies of generals such as Themistocles, and the haughtiness and discipline of the Spartans, and the brilliant but also quarrelsome nature of the Athenians, they with their messy democracy that we were to inherit over two thousand years later.  We students enjoyed these lectures, especially since we were not encumbered with any obligation to adhere to strict historical protocols, to a dispassionate view of history, for of course our modern history was taught from the vantage point of what were considered “western” values, and it was easy to reduce the Persians to the status of barbarians, a line of thinking that scholars have noted signaled the commencement of what Palestinian scholar Edward Said was to brilliantly describe as an “Orientalist” mindset.

It was a memorable year for me, but by the time I entered high school, I was ready for another approach to the study of history. By then I think I had already discovered the show “Jeopardy”, and had heard of historians such as Barbara Tuchman, and felt the power of being, so to speak, a privileged and somewhat detached observer of human endeavor. I still believed and continue to do believe (we are hardwired as a human species to do so, once again) in the power and seduction of stories, but I thought that there was also a vision that could encompass a more scientific approach, something along the lines of what I had read in the famous Foundation series of books by Isaac Asimov.

In that series, which encompassed a narrative that extended far into the future, when the human species had expanded to the stars and had formed a galactic empire, I was introduced to the idea of history as a psychosocial process that could be analyzed in accordance with certain scientific principles. It was a way of divesting it of a certain chaotic nature, converting it, on the contrary, into a predictive science. We could predict the scope of human history if we understood the underlying social and institutional impulses, a view that was, when you think of it, inherently conservative, for it posited that we as a human species would never be able to transcend in a fundamental way certain universal principles that defined our social dynamic. This is still the view that is posited, in slightly different form, by certain social scientists, notably those who publish books that wish to posit an evolutionary framework behind our most fundamental impulses. I have to admit, it does sound convincing when I read these books and these theories, but I think that at times, it is actually much too flexible a theoretical framework that can be stretched to encompass every single human act, almost a tautology to say that we do things because we “evolved” to do so (the triumph of Richard Dawkins’ Selfish Gene).

Maybe I am not such a confirmed materialist, after all.

But I was ready for another approach, and when I entered high school, amidst all the other turmoil involved in adjusting to another hostile and indifferent habitat that involved its’ own dynamic of insiders and outsiders, I was left to fend for myself, and I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of Mr. Zadra. He was my American history teacher when I was a junior, and he made a lasting impression upon me.

There was something old-fashioned about him. He seemed very much to come from another age, and didn’t have the typical relaxed persona or patterns of speech of a dyed-in-the-wool Californian. He was a tall man, maybe in his late fifties, and he had a rather prominent nose and a nasal voice to match. He would lecture to us without the need to “ham it up” or dramatize the episodes we were studying, taking care to note the importance of the periods and the circumstances that were at play. Of course, we had a different type of textbook at that point, a high school textbook that was more in line with a more subtle and formal understanding of historical phenomena, and we were able to read about the great processes (by great, I don’t mean to suggest appreciation or admiration, but only, to speak in terms of a grander scope) of American history. He opened my eyes, and stimulated my critical faculties.

As may be imagined, high school students were still, by and large, squirming adolescents who were little able to concentrate at times on the subject matter being taught. In my worst moments I thought that all teenagers were incapable of letting go an opportunity to belittle or ridicule someone else, and it was a difficult time for me. I sat in the front row, and I took notes, and I responded to Mr. Zadra, all of which earned me reprobatory and jeering looks from so many who sat around me. I would stay to discuss current events with Mr. Zadra after class, or drop in during lunch time, and I always appreciated that he would take the time to give serious consideration to my questions and to offer thoughtful responses. I never obtained a sense of where his political inclinations lay, if he was a conservative or a liberal, although I do remember that he did seem to question the educational priorities of the Reagan administration. He told me, after all, that Jimmy Carter had been “good for education”, when I was falling into the trap of criticizing him for our domestic as well as international policies.

I remember that we would hold what were known as history tournament a few times during the academic year. I can’t describe how much I looked forward to them, and we would be placed in small teams, to compete against each other in what would be considered a game-show format. It was a nice change of pace, and I bounced and squirmed in my seat, desperate to answer each question, and being a little dismissive of the rest of the students involved in the tournament. It gave me an opportunity to emerge from anonymity, for I knew that wherever I was placed, my team would always look to me to provide the answers, and we almost always won. It is embarrassing for me to think about my mindset now, and now I squirm to recall how I behaved. I mentioned that during that year my team won almost all the contests, because it was the case that we did lose one. It happened when I found another opponent I had never seen before, a blonde and lanky teenager who wore glasses and who must have joined the class in the middle of the year. He similarly answered all the questions for his own group, and it narrowed down to a duel between the two of us.  I was a little too overconfident, and that loss hedged on one question the answer to which had escaped me back then because it was offered in what seemed to be a footnote in our text, but that has been engraved in my memory since then: Who invented the first elevator? Elisha Otis.

I relished being in Mr. Zadra’s class, the way I would come to relish other teachers who similarly stimulated my imagination, and who let me escape for a time from what I considered the dreary social pageantry of high school, the routine cruelty, the anti-intellectualism and the lack of what I would consider was a grander historical vision. The kids were quick to insult and mock others, and everyone was a target. I even saw a drug sale take place in one class, and I question whether the teacher actually missed seeing this act or chose to ignore that transaction as I saw her become more and more discouraged during that semester.

It is probably the case that many public school teachers fail because they can’t make the mental adjustment necessary for teaching in public schools. They are all college graduates, and they are used to the idea of discipline and to the respect that they themselves gave to their college instructors. As I was reminded by one of my friends during a recent lunch when we were discussing a junior high teacher we both had, one who was famous for expressing what could only be considered open hostility towards all students, she (and other beginning teachers) can’t get into the mindset that most classes in public schools are not approximations nor analogues of the college experience. We are talking about wholly different animals, two entirely different species, those 18 and younger, and those 18 and older. The psychology is different, although at times I am willing to recognize that there are high school environments where the experience is much closer, an intermediate zone so to speak. When asked, I always say that I consider my year taking English classes with Mr. Philips at Corona High School as my first real experience of a college class.

But in Mr. Zadra’s American history course, despite the best efforts of our teacher, there were moments when student behavior became somewhat uncontrolled. I remember one instance, in which he asked a student to discontinue her disruptive activity, and she lashed out verbally at our teacher. It seemed shocking to me, because it was occurring with a person who I respected so much as a mentor, and who was very mild and could hardly be said to merit such treatment. He tried to defuse the confrontation, and thought me a lesson that it is never in the best interest of classroom dynamics to engage in arguments or to answer in kind. It is a lesson that I am ashamed to say I forgot over and over when I was a substitute teacher for two years, leading to many unpleasant clashes that lingered in my memory.

On the last day of high school, I remember that I was released from certain classes and was allowed to go to library or to visit with other teachers rather than to take the final exams. This was the case in Mr. Engle’s Chemistry class, as I was able to verify when reading my high school diary, part of which I have uploaded to the web. One of the noteworthy things that I did, to compensate for so many other mistakes when I didn’t reach out to individuals or take a more active in the social environment or when I wasn’t as supportive as I should have been of school spirit, was to go to visit a few of my teachers. I recall that I visited Mr. Zadra, and I thanked him sincerely for his instruction and his support. His class had meant so much to me, and more than the gentle but respectful way in which he had taught the subject, I appreciated that he saw something in me, and took the time to continually encourage me. He always did have a gentle and hearty bearing, if somewhat formal, and it is hard for me to see him as a military officer, although I did know he had served in that capacity. I think I circulated around the campus and thanked a few other teachers as well. I was in a daze because I would shortly be entering the summer school program at UCLA, and this was the culmination of so many of my dreams of finding a more compatible environment. I also would venture to say that I felt what we all felt, a certain amount of sadness at leaving these teachers behind.

While at UCLA, I took a few history courses, although this was very much discouraged among engineering students. My first year I remember that I took a course in modern European history with Professor Wohl, and performed very well,  writing with abandon on my blue book.  I always thought that if I had been born under different circumstances, I would have liked to continue my study of history, but it was a luxury that I didn’t have as a working-class student. I thought my deliverance would come with solving formulas, the traditional kind, not the ones that were based on psychosocial and quasi-scientific principles a la Harry Sheldon in Asimov’s Foundation trilogy.

I found out while at UCLA that Mr. Zadra had passed away a year after I had graduated, when I had a chance to chat with a fellow Corona High School alumnus. It filled me with sadness, for it really felt as if I had lost a part of my soul at that moment. It also left me with regrets over not ever having taken the time to go back to my high school, and to reach out to my former teachers, to thank them once again for their support during that trying time of my life. It was a battle that, like the incursion of the “barbarians” upon the Greek mainland so long ago, had been won against long odds, and it was an experience that, decades later, I had come to recognize merited its own Greek historical epic, in the manner perhaps of a Herodotus who combined strict observation with fanciful explanations that involved the intervention of the gods (i.e., science and storytelling melded together). Well, I am joking, of course, but I still think there is much to be gleaned from this experience, and I find it frustrating that I haven’t found the way to share my emotional experiences with other students.

As I was telling my childhood friends Frank and Richard during a recent lunch, in my mind, emotionally, I harbor the illusion that things have not changed since I left Corona High School. I know intellectually that they have, for I have seen the campus transformed dramatically, and have furthermore been to the campus to attend not only the graduation of two of my nieces (a third is set to graduate in June of 2014), but also to complete a few substitute teaching assignments a few years ago during that inglorious period of my life. There are parts of the campus that seem excruciatingly the same, and when I was on the campus, I found myself walking about as if in a dream.

It is easy and, perhaps, emotionally comforting to think that were I to sit around long enough, I might see familiar figures on campus. I don’t think anyone from my time in the 80s remains on at that school, but I can imagine that if I were to sit in the central quad area long enough, during an early evening as the moon shines brightly above, a night such as tonight, I might see the ghost of Mr. Zadra walking along to his classroom, he wearing a dark blue blazer and dressed formally as he always seemed to be dressed, carrying his textbook in one hand or maybe a briefcase. I imagine him taking note of me as well, another disembodied spirit on campus, looking down from the vast distance of three decades past, and seeing how I wished that we could have had all the discussions such as we used to have when I was his student. We could have both shaken our heads about the wonders we have seen, about the scope of historical events since that period in the 80s, commenting as we would about the dissolution of the Soviet Empire, and also about the rise of China, one that had been made possible by the reforms instituted by Deng Xiapeng, a leader whose rise to power he would have seen. We could have discussed the impact of globalization, and the way in which we seem to have entered a new Gilded Age in this country, one of robber barons in the guise of Wall Street technocrats who so willfully gambled and nearly brought down the economy, and in which income disparity has increased to levels that were only seen 100 years ago.  And we could have discussed the enduring saga of the Middle East, and the epic struggles that have been witnessed in that region, and the way in which so much of history seems to depend, once again, on hidden but enduring paradigms, where autocracy, for example, has been reestablished in countries where social movements sought to abolish it, as in the earnest but failed revolution in Egypt.

It seems as if I am a million miles away, floating in space and orbiting my past, and it is difficult to say who is more unreal, whether I am or the memory of past friends and mentors. Looking at the moon put me in this reflective mood, and it made escape, for a moment, the sullen grip of the now, to dream once again about another unearthly period of my life. I miss Mr. Zadra, and wonder if we are not all ultimately phantasms in human history.

Will I haunt anyone when I am gone? The moon carries with it, as ever, a heavy emotional weight.

 OGRomero © 2013
(Copyrighted by OGRomero, 2013)