Rumi and the Cholo

I was up too early this morning, awoken by the strange sound and technicolor tinge of a broken neighborhood. I decided to walk through my backyard down to the cave. It was cold, like hace frio de puta madre cold! Especially because I forgot to put on my socks, and the grass was crunchy from frost instead of dewy, like a wife.

Why was I going to the cave so early in the morning? It’s where I keep my bunnies. Though the bunnies aren’t really mine; they’re contracted. The bunnies lay all the jelly beans and colored eggs I need for this time of year. My plan was to hide jelly beans for the neighborhood kids and homeless and the colored eggs I was going to sell to the nouveau rich on the streets for $13.50 a pop. And I had well over 50 well-incubated pink and yellow eggs, even a couple purple and green ones, and a rare black one (from the black bunny).

Things didn’t go as planned. When I got to the cave the boulder covering, the entrance was removed. Did I forget to close the cave last night when I was drunk? But I didn’t last night.

Then, how did my bunnies move such a large boulder?

I went inside the cave and the bunnies were gone! Not even a trace of fur! I immediately went back inside and picked up the phone to dial 1-800-Lost-My-Bunny, but I could barely speak because I then noticed the tapestry hanging on the wall that I bought in India was torn in two.

I dropped the receiver, looked out the window. Day had turned to night and I could just barely hear the voice on the line, “Can you please hold…estimated hold time is…4…minutes.” Well, I didn’t want to wait that long, so I hung up.

Rngggg!!!!

I grabbed the phone again. It wasn’t dial-a-lost-bunny, but someone more important: my cousin in Oklahoma. He said there had been sightings of bunnies all over the countryside and the bunnies were surrounded by a faint light and music. People were saying “They have come; They have risen!”

“Well, tell me, what kind of music?”

And he said, “Some say disco, but I swear I heard sitars.”

“Hmmmm.”

I told him about how my Easter plans had gone awry, about the crunchy grass and boulder and the empty cave and the torn tapestry. “You don’t think that possibly…” We didn’t think the impossible. We both were quite creeped out. But since I was tired and day had turned to night, I wanted to back to bed. I knew I wasn’t going to be selling colored eggs today anyway.

“Well, cuz, I’m gonna catch some sleep. Let me know if you hear anything else about those bunnies.”

I put on some socks and climbed into bed hearing sitars and thinking, I’ll fix that tapestry tomorrow.

“Everything is so fleeting…”

This thought stabbed me as life drained slowly away.

It’s quite surprising what goes through your mind as your blood pools and collects around the shards of glass lying within your crooked gaps on the wet concrete.  Things like, “I wonder what would have happened if I would have been a dentist?”

And “I wanted to at least tell her I loved her.”

And “If I were to raise dogs, I’d raise miniature schnauzers—no, schnauzers of all kinds,”

And “You know what sounds good right now? A grilled cheese sandwich.”

It’s not what you would think, that whole review of one’s life.  I only recall one such episode presenting itself vividly before my mind.  I was jumping off a bridge.  I must have been 9-10 years old.  I was happy. Carefree and happy.  I wore bright red shorts and no shirt and the bridge must have been only 5 or 6 feet high over a small creek but it seemed so high because I was afraid…and exhilarated.  I don’t know why I saw it in 3^rd person.  It was like I had a telescope from afar zooming in on my own childhood fun, but I remembered it so vividly that moment.

If you were a bus driver maybe you would crash and crack your skull and if you were a mountain climber there is a good chance you would freeze to death or fall in a crevasse.  But for the rest of us, it’s a question mark, and it won’t be something exotic either.

“No one knows how it will come, it’s NEVER WHAT YOU EXPECT,” I thought.

But all the other thoughts were questions like “I wonder when the last time was when I had my mom’s peanut butter cookies?” and “I hope they forgive me for dying like this.”

Then I might have let out a chuckle.

The last thing that passed into my consciousness before darkness conquered me was:

“Did they kill me because I fell in love or because I told the truth?”

From the dusty, deserted steppes I swear I distinctly heard laughs carried by the eastern wind. But from the other direction I heard the sound of man destroying himself with his instruments of aggression and self-loathing.

The wind and the songs of the wind were confused.

“Why do they love death?”  asked the softly-spoken song of the south.

“Maybe they can’t help it,” whispered its undercurrent.

“Ha! This strange animal seems convinced that it is NOT.” The suddenly sober easterly gale.

“NOT what?”

“NOT worthy, NOT of this earth, NOT an animal.”

“To think!” said a whistle in the wind, “A worthy animal of this earth thinking it is an unworthy non-animal from somewhere else!”

“That is the true self-betrayal!” said a fresh bold wind blowing from the north.

“The human–the animal that tries to be more than what it is, yet uncomfortable in its own skin,” it continued. Read the rest of this entry »