Luz: book i: comings and goings (Troubled Times 1) (18 page)

Water. Visions of water consumed me. As I lay in my room
in the shadows of some unseen flame, I thought my delusions would transport me to the water. Not the soft and sultry water of day. Not that warm blanket fluffed by the sun, but the cold black water of night, those soaking wet sheets left damp by the moon. I felt certain this fever would transport me to the water that I longed to be submerged in, which would relieve my pain and force my body temperature to drop. Yet it was not water I saw or felt, but air: a warm balmy air that felt good. At first I basked in this air, feeling the raw exhilaration of its warmth.

“It’s because of this fever,” I reasoned. “It’s because I’ve never had a fever this high and my spirit longs to be quenched by it, yearns to be purified by flame.”

This air turned warmer and denser, but I didn’t mind it at all; it felt good. As in all delusions, feverish or not,
things that aren’t are and things that are aren't
, and I realized I was not burning from this air, but being comforted by it, glowing from it, even if, for an August night, it felt not warm enough, not hot enough, propelling me once more to bolt up in my bed.

The window! The messenger must have left some window open, and a breeze had caused my room to go cold. In my feverish state, I got up to close it. I wanted to lock all the doors as well, but it was too late. There was no time to act. This air was no longer cooling down but heating up, throbbing in intensity. Why could I not see it? Why could I only sense it? Air this hot was always visible, always! What with its waves of rising heat. With its rays of weltering warmth.

Why could I not see it and only feel the vibrations of its flames, the throbs of its shockwaves? Why could I only sense it whirling and spinning somewhere about me? It had to be another dusk of illusion, some partial state of insanity. Who in their right mind had never seen such a phenomenon? Air that spun and turned on itself and could be sensed but not seen. Air that almost felt like water as it overshadowed me even without light in the room. Air and water. How different the two elements were. No wonder one evaporated into the
other. No wonder one repelled the other. I wanted to locate this whirling plume of air, but I couldn’t find it and soon realized why. This air was not out in the open, but inside me, deep in the crevices within.

I wanted to seize it, to clasp and embrace it. But how could I? How could I grab a hold of this air moving within me? It was warm and thick, so hot and dense that, suddenly, I could breathe again. In and out it went, yet it was not my lungs inhaling it, but my body. The very pores of my skin expanded and soaked it all in, surging and leaving me to hope this feeling would never end.

I had blown out the very last candle on my dresser, but now another light took form within: a soft glow that circulated and coursed inside me and I needed to nourish this fire. I needed to fuel its raw exhilaration before it extinguished itself. As long as this force had insinuated itself inside me, I would not permit it to escape, not even from the house. Once more I sprang up in my bed, hoping to lock all the doors and windows when, just as quickly, I stopped at the sound of another voice, my own.

“Stop!” I ordered myself. “Just stop!”

So I did just that. Whether I was still feverish or whether my body temperature had finally quelled, I stopped. There was no need to lock anything in, no need to lock anything out. I felt the flames of one fire subsiding, the embers of another now simmering, some embryonic cinder smoldering and firmly being planted.

I could no longer move. I couldn’t even think. The mystery embedded in this message had left me that siphoned, that spent, as if all the mass and matter of my innocence had evaporated into some perfect storm of disintegration. If I could make no sense of this right now, come morning I hoped to. By then I planned on deciphering the reason behind tonight’s encounter and trusted in everything to be fine—todo bien. I knew one thing already. Miracle or not, mix-up or not, I was going nowhere tomorrow—nowhere at all!

The water—the one place where my spirit no longer
wished to go. The water—it no longer coaxed or cradled me, but swelled with whisper and warning.
Stop, Clara! Just Stop!
And I would do exactly that: stop everything!

Even if, by some other miracle, or even if by some otherworldly intervention my prospects were to change and, suddenly, I were presented with an airplane ticket or passage on a ship that guaranteed me absolute freedom without the slightest chance of any risk or peril, one thing shone incandescently clear within me and without. Come morning, I would not be leaving Cuba. I could no longer conceive of it. No matter what anyone said or anyone did, I no longer harbored any notion of departing from my homeland. Whether this had all been a vision, a hallucination, a dream or just delirium, for the moment I bore no concept of leaving—none whatsoever!

CONCEPTIONS

A
sister!
Did I hear correctly, Father? I’m going to be having a sister? Why didn’t you say anything earlier, Father? Why didn’t you tell me?”

It was a beautiful night in the Heavens. A stunning but solemn celestial night. Glowing winds soared through the stratosphere. Galaxies far and wide shone in spiral incandescence. In all the infinite vastness of the universe, there was nothing as glorious as the radiance of outer space. Nothing as exalted as its luminous panoramas, or as soothing as its lustrous sweep of astronomical delights. But despite the grandeur and serenity of all this weightless splendor, the Creator of the Universe appeared baffled by his son’s barrage of questions.

“Why, Son, I just assumed you already knew. I mean, you are the Son of Man, aren’t you? That means you know everything I do.”

If the Son of Man could tell by his father’s tone he was being toyed with, he was in no mood for games right now and made it perfectly clear with his own tone—an angry one!

“No, Father, it doesn’t mean that, and you know it! There’s plenty you keep from me, plenty I don’t know! And please, Father, if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times. Do not call me the Son of Man anymore! You know I can’t stand that name! You know how much I hate it.”

Off in the near distances, Earth and her companions spun and orbited in quiet contentment around the tiny halo that was the sun. But off in the far distances, swirling galaxies tossed and turned; clusters of constellations formed towering volcanoes and giant pyramids lit up the skies. Despite the exhilaration from these invigorating views, the Creator of the Universe managed to keep Himself calm and constrained. The Son of Man was simply baiting him, but He would not take the hook. Not with tensions as strained as they had been lately between Father and Son.

“But Son, how can you hate that name when you were born for man’s sake? When you were born to save him from his sins and offer him salvation? You know that, Son, just as you know you can’t escape your destiny.”

The Son of Man had no interest in any lectures right now. He’d been hearing the same outmoded sermon for the last two thousand years. Normally, he acquiesced to his father’s notions and even bent to His will. But not tonight. Tonight the Son of Man was all charged up. He felt the eruptions of a thousand solar flares stirring within him and felt like challenging the Creator’s views.

“His sins, Father? Man’s sins? How about Man’s stupidity? How about his selfishness? Or how about his complete lack of conscience, Father? Man has absolutely no conscience. Who’s going to save him from himself, Father? Who?”

“Well…you are, Son, and you know it.”

If the Son of Man didn’t like being toyed with, he liked it even less when the Creator took a condescending tone with him.

“No, Father, I will not! I tried it once and it didn’t work, and I’m not trying it a second time. Honestly, Father, I don’t know why you made
anyone
for man’s sake. What good did it
do? I mean, look at the mess that man has made down there. Look at the mess that man is and always will be!”

Just then both Father and Son looked down toward pathetic planet Earth. In all the enormity of the universe and its bursts of boundless brilliance, plastic planet Earth seemed the only blemish in all of creation, a pimple on the face of the galactic sky. But it hadn’t always been that way. Once, not long ago, Earth had shone too, quite luminously even, especially for not even being a star. But that was
before
man.

One glance at Earth these days revealed its true dismal state: the only heavenly body mired down in muck and misery and drowning in its own excrement. Earth had evolved into nothing but a conduit for consternation and conflict. While all the other heavenly bodies emitted a radiance of light and energy and glowed resplendently, Earth looked tired and tarnished, enveloped in a dusk of dirt and pollution, engulfed in more than a partial state of darkness. Even from light-years away, its many flaws shone shamelessly for all to see: all the conflagration, all the clashing and contamination. What a sorry sight. What a nasty shame to see the once-glorious Earth obscured by a thick nebula of petty narcissism and self-loathing.

Yet these days something more troubling worried the Creator: man’s penchant for pollution, his uncanny gift for contamination. These dubious talents of man had extended to outer space; they had begun to soil the galactic sky with annoying contraptions that now junked up the Heavens and threatened to turn it all into a celestial cesspool: satellites and rockets, shuttles and space probes just to name a few; buzzing, floating insects that not only disturbed the weightless beauty of the universe, but spied and beamed down mysterious data back to man for his dark and malicious motives. Not to mention all the particles of dust and gas released by the exhaust and fuel for these gadgets. Where did man think it all went? That it just evaporated into nothingness?

How it broke the Creator’s heart to witness all this desecration, the tons of floating debris both on the Earth and
high above it. From its very inception, the Creator had taken great pride in Earth’s potential and reveled in its beauty. But to see it now was to commiserate over beauty diminished, beauty disgraced. Why couldn’t man accept his limits and be content with what he had? Why was man always defiling and defacing everything?

“Honestly, Father, I don’t know why you just don’t destroy the Earth and put it out of its misery. What’s stopping you?”

The Creator looked aghast at such a suggestion. “Son, how can you say such a thing? How can you even think such a thing?”

“Don’t feel bad, Father. It’s no big deal. Why don’t you just look at Earth as your one and only mix-up. There are plenty of other planets out there thriving and actually doing well. Earth was just a bad seed, Father—a weed. Pull it from the garden and destroy it! Snuff it from the garden of light that is an otherwise perfect universe.”

The winds of the universe immediately evaporated. Sound itself instantly disintegrated. The Creator of both couldn’t believe what He was hearing, even if He certainly suspected the source of such warped and wanton views.

“What’s the matter with you, Son? Where in the world are these radical ideas coming from?”

“They’re not radical, Father. They’re quite sensible, actually. Remember my parable about the prodigal son? Well, Earth is the prodigal planet, Father. Except this prodigal planet seems destined never to learn and should not be welcomed back by you. Destroy it, Father! Get it over with and destroy it!”

Before responding, the Creator diverted his attention for a moment toward those great distances that, for Him, were easily within reach, but for everyone else stretched into mind-numbing infinity. He stopped and stared at a black pinprick in the central distance, a violently spinning abyss that sucked in and devoured anything light-years within its reach. Black holes, as man liked to call them. Vacuums of violent gravity.
The Creator couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but He wasn’t terribly fond of black holes these days, even if He had created them. These days they conjured up all sorts of unpleasant thoughts and images.

“Of course I won’t destroy it, Son. How can you even conceive of such a thing? What’s gotten into you?”

“But it would be so easy, Father. See that black hole over there? The one you keep looking at? That’s exactly where you should send Earth: straight into the great garbage disposal of outer space. Isn’t that what you created them for, Father? For ultimate annihilation?”

The Creator diverted his attention back on His son again, but in dismay and disbelief. What was going on with the lad? Even the Creator was shocked to hear such extremist thinking, and He had heard it all.

“No, Son. I absolutely
won’t
do it! The Earth may be a prodigal planet, as you say, but underneath all that perdition and confusion is much promise still, and I won’t abandon Earth—not with all the work I put into it.”

“You put six days of work into it, Father—six days! Maybe that’s what the problem’s been. It was all a rush job.”

The Creator of the Universe wanted to pray for continued self-control right now, but realized the only being He could pray to was Himself, and there would be no point.

“Yes, Son, but I’ll kindly remind you it was six days of straight, tireless, nonstop work, and never once did I take a break. Besides, you know I made a contract with man. After the Great Flood I gave my word never to destroy Earth again, and I plan on keeping that word.”

“Please, Father.
I
should ask what’s gotten into you. You destroy and create and destroy all the time. Why should this be any different?”

“I just told you, Son. I gave my word and I plan on keeping it. Don’t forget that, I not only
am
the Word, I
keep
my word.”

Before contemplating his next volley, the Son of Man
turned his attention toward a dazzling shooting star arching wide across the Heavens. He certainly had no need for making any wishes, but he made one anyway.

“Well, good luck then, Father. I’d just as soon see you annihilate it all, but this is your baby, as they say.”

The Creator of the Universe shook his iridescent and splendiferous head. He couldn’t help but be astounded and shocked by so unrelenting a condemnation of that which he had fashioned in His own image: man.