Four

This is the final of the Da Vinci Dreams series (four was the intention from the beginning); Tuesday’s Torrent stories will continue depending on time and “creative clutter” while I return to the work-in-progress manuscript. I want to thank Annika Ruohonen for this collaboration. Her photographs offer a sensitive and unique perspective and stand in a class all their own.

Da Vinci Dreams :: Quietus

“Of the shadow that moves with: there shall be seen shapes and figures of men and animals which shall pursue these men and animals wheresoever they flee; and the movements of the one shall be as those of the other, but it shall seem a thing to wonder at because  of the different dimensions which they assume.” ~ from “Prophecies” by Leonardo Da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, George Braziller.

 

Photograph Courtesy of Annika Ruohonen

 

 

“Is he a God?”

“A God? Have you lost your damn mind entirely,” Frank answered and then immediately regretted his choice of words.

“I probably have,” replied Merrick.

“Come on, man. I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant—”

“No, you are right. Only someone who has lost his bearings would even ask that, even as a joke given the circumstances,” said Merrick.

Frank couldn’t help thinking maybe insanity and death weren’t so far apart after all: both made one reach out to some unknown entity, God by whatever name, regardless if one had ever prayed or believed beforehand. This thought was followed by the quick realization that he had inferred that Merrick’s problems, his friend of thirty years, fell on some spectrum of a mental illness. Frank then realized he had referred to Merrick’s experiences as problems and just wished he could stop thinking.

Frank recalled what his ex-wife had once said: it is the devil that leads one to God and Merrick and him both “attract evil, evil, evil, so I pray it is only so as to lead you both one day to meet God while still living.” The divorce was finalized twenty years ago and Frank was disappointed to find himself thinking of that particular exchange, especially now.

Frank couldn’t help thinking maybe his ex-wife was right. That Merrick’s callous womanizing (not all resulting in physical affairs) over the last fifteen years had finally lead to this identity crisis were his dreams haunted him, he felt as if he was not even alive, that he was dead and just an observer. That maybe his ex-wife, who Frank had never considered religious before he married her, was right that what you do to others “starts eating your insides.”

Merrick wasn’t a bad man and in fact had done many kind things for many, Frank considered; it was just that ever since he could recall, Merrick had had a way with women—some due to his appearance which was handsome by most standards, but that mattered not since time never offer favors to anyone—and he didn’t hesitate to assert this side of him. The side to which Frank could never relate.  The side that always divided them as Frank-but-Merrick ever since he had known him. Merrick had married once and the duration of the marriage—six months—ensured him never to take that risk again. “It’s not for me,” Merrick had said.

The two friends didn’t see each other as often when Frank was married for ten years. “It’s different when you care about someone, Merrick,” Frank used to say.

Apparently, didn’t care enough, Frank thought and again wished to freeze his thoughts.

 

The two men cut through the frozen wind trying to reach Vishuddha Creek. The trek was frozen over with ice on top of old snow and although both men were dressed in proper attire to combat the gusts of wind, the cold was still abrasive against the uncovered parts of their face.

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Three

Da Vinci Dreams :: Time Blur

“Of the lights carried before the dead: they will make light for the dead.” ~ from “Prophecies” by Leonardo Da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, George Braziller.

Photograph Courtesy of Annika Ruohonen

 

 

I once asked Sarband “How do leaves dry?” and she, being hard of hearing at her age, heard “How do leaves die?”

“They don’t die!” she replied, more agitated than I would have expected regardless of the question.  She continued, “The plant or the tree kills them off! Become a burden. Not as efficient as they age.”

Sarband always held onto the broom as if the broomstick really could do more than sweep the dock.

“Some leaves just change colors and wake up again though. Some are recycled to go back as food for the roots. Those leaves the light can no longer reach or they can’t make much of the light that comes to them  must shed though, regardless what becomes of them,” Sarband added.

 

 

Ever since I can recall living next to Sarband she has been old; so I don’t know exactly how old she is. When I was twelve I used to wish she would not be out cleaning the area around the deck because if she saw me she would not stop talking. That is also when I decided if I was going to get old—at twelve you think you have a choice—I was not going to talk a lot. I even have a journal entry from other seemingly hollow accounts of those days, “I am never going to be one of those old people who never shuts up when they are old.”

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Two

Da Vinci Dreams :: the cradle of stories

“Men shall speak with and touch and embrace each other while standing in different hemispheres, and shall understand each other’s language.” ~ from “Prophecies” by Leonardo Da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, George Braziller.

Photograph Courtesy of Annika Ruohonen

All stories come from fog. That is what Noor Baba told me.

A few years ago, on my way to explore Point Reyes National Seashore Park, I met a man named Noor Baba; I never made it to Point Reyes National Seashore Park that day or ever since.

Point Reyes National Seashore Park is a 70,000-acre national reserve which offers several beach walks and hiking. Point Reyes is a cape on the Pacific Coast of Northern California, approximately 30 miles northwest of San Francisco.

I used to live in San Francisco.

That is where I was headed, Point Reyes National Seashore Park, because it would do me “good”, when I stopped to fill up gas in the town of Point Reyes Station.

The town of Point Reyes Station, although not actually located on the peninsula, nevertheless provides most services to the vast Seashore Park, though some services are also available at near by towns. The even smaller town of Olema, about 3 miles south of Point Reyes Station, serves as the standard starting point for a visit to the Point Reyes National Seashore Park.

Now I can’t recall if I met Noor Baba in Olema or Point Reyes Station or between the two small towns.

Maybe I think I met him at Point Reyes Station only because I was at a fuel station.

Point Reyes Station is located along State Route 1. It is a small town that is recognized only because it holds a small population, barely 300 people; it lacks a separate municipal government or legal incorporation under the laws of the state of California.

“They filmed a movie there at Point Reyes National Seashore Park back in the 1980’s—some stupid story because fog is supposed to scare you,” that is what Noor Baba said after I told him where I was headed.

Although the fog had not impeded visibility yet, it was slowly descending quicker than I had anticipated. Having lived in San Francisco Bay area I was used to fog but I had been warned that it gets ‘pretty bad’ around Point Reyes.

“I haven’t seen that movie,” I had replied.

Noor Baba’s skin was paler than mine and I know I am a very white guy. Close African-American friends even jokingly call me ‘whitey’, that is how white I am. But his paleness, unlike mine, was a patchwork of rosy cheeks and mountain wrinkles spread proportionately throughout his round face. He could suit up for Santa Clause and I would remain invisible, one of many. I don’t usually notice men’s eyes but I just couldn’t help staring at his. The soft pale blue shade was frosty and burst forth as if the horizon was staring across at you instead of you looking up at the sky.

I waited for the gas tank to fill up as Noor Baba decided to clean my car’s windshield. I noticed his dirty uniform and the oil underneath his nails. I didn’t ask him how long he had been working at this fuel station.

I felt bad that a man twice my age was cleaning the windshield on a car that was old enough to retire in a junk yard but I didn’t say anything, recalling my father’s voice when I would have to clean my father’s car as a young boy, “Everyone has a job to do.”

The bulls of memory are strong. I don’t know why I thought of my father that day given he had passed away over ten years ago.

“So you from here?” I asked him given the silence was as wet as the foggy air.

“Yes, some three towns down. Not a bad commute if there is no fog. But usually the hour I have to come in there is always fog.”

I detected a slight accent but didn’t inquire.

“It’s a lovely place to go explore if it doesn’t get too foggy. Some times it can get very foggy,” Noor Baba said. I appreciated his attempt at conversation. I wondered how desperate I looked.

“Yes, that is what I am doing. Came here because some colleagues said it would do me good. After they shared the news with me that I was just let go from my job.”

“Let go?”

“Yes, as in fired, but not really. It’s a long story.”

Noor Baba nodded but I don’t think he understood anything other than I was fired.

Some lies are spontaneous; others are planned. I think the spontaneous lies are most adjacent to the truth. The truth was I had quit my job two years ago, same year after my ex-girlfriend left me because she couldn’t “handle” that I still wanted to be with her despite her being diagnosed with terminal cancer. She died a year later, now a year ago. Job or no job didn’t matter. I made ends meet going as far as my car could go around this great land that is apparently not enough for our government.

“So what are you going to do now?” Noor Baba asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you have family to support?”

“No. No. Nothing of the sort. Luckily.”

“How is that lucky?”

“Well, I mean, I don’t have to worry about others you know?”

“It is lucky to worry about others,” Noor Baba replied.

I changed the subject. “Where are you from? You don’t sound like you are from here?”

“Oh. Originally originally? From Afghanistan,” he said and smiled at my surprise.

“The country with the war going on?”

“There are many countries with a war going on. I am from one such, yes.”

Noor Baba had been in northern California for the last seventeen years and had not returned to see his wife and children for the last eight years given the “war going on.”

“But I talk to my wife every day. Every day,” he said proudly. “After Obama gets elected I should be able to visit her again.”

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even believe Barak Obama would get elected.

“Well, that is good that you still talk to her. My girlfriend of four years left me given I couldn’t see her for two weeks.”

“Girlfriend? Four years and she wasn’t your wife?”

“Well, I mean that stuff takes some time you know,” I replied and decided he didn’t understand due to cultural differences. I was overcome by the fact that I was lying to this stranger, all the way from Afghanistan standing in front of me in the middle of a town recognized only for census, while there was a war going on.

“Well, women don’t come back. You want her you have to go back. Or maybe you will find a new one,” Noor Baba said jovially.

“I wanted to write a story or something like that about her now that I don’t have a job,” I said truthfully.

I quickly tried to dismiss the recollection that flashed unexpectedly, as it often did, of the day I found when Alina died.

I fell to my knees after my mother had called to tell me the news and couldn’t force any tears and felt angry for not being able to cry. It was then I realized praying would never be enough. And just like people have a moment where they can distinctly recall feeling “Grace” or “something” that changes them into a believer of “God,” that was my moment to stop believing.

I saw the sky in Noor Baba’s eyes stare at the volcano inside me.

“All stories come from the fog. But you can’t do much though if you are afraid of what you can’t see,” he finally said.

My gas tank had been filled for quite a few minutes.

I reached for my wallet without intending to go inside the station to pay.

“While fog is a type of a cloud, the term ‘fog’ is typically distinguished from the more generic term ‘cloud’ in that fog is low-lying, and the moisture in the fog is often generated locally such as from a nearby body of water, like a lake or the ocean, or from nearby moist ground,” Noor Baba said.

He continued, “Shadows are cast through fog in three dimensions. The fog is dense enough to be illuminated by light that passes through gaps in a structure or tree, but thin enough to let a large quantity of that light pass through to illuminate points further on.”

He paused to say hello to someone who passed by that I didn’t even notice and then he proceeded, “Fog can form in a number of ways and there are many types of fogs. Fog is a reflection of our hydrosphere, found on, under, and over the surface of this planet in many different forms before it actually becomes what we call fog. Stories, like fog are a continuum encircling this Earth.”

He told me it was probably not a good idea to drive to the Point Reyes National Seashore Park now.

“You should stay at some place around here because it will be too foggy to come back safely,” he said.

“Yes, I think so. Don’t want a foggy story,” I tried to joke.

He didn’t laugh.

“Men don’t lie about things they know little about,” Noor Baba said.

I wondered why I was unable to tell any truth to a stranger I was never going to see again.

“Stories are the saints of desperate cases and lost causes,” said Noor Baba.

I still don’t know whether I believe in saints, angels, or a God, but I believe in stories because I am a desperate case.  And maybe not a lost cause just yet.

A few weeks ago while walking on the Upper West Side in New York City, I stopped by a used book store to look for a children’s book from my younger days. I couldn’t find it but I came across an old used copy of Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebooks and purchased it.

I read a few chapters but since the book spans over 1000 pages it is not one of those books one reads from front to back. One night I came across the section in his notebooks titled “Prophecies” and was stunned by what he had written. Of course much is open to interpretation which naturally makes plenty of room for incorporating research into fiction. ; )

I have always been fascinated by and drawn to boats and when I saw this “quiet” photo by Annika Ruohonen, a distinguished photographer from Finland with whom I have recently connected thanks to Twitter, I couldn’t help exploring a story in the photograph.

I will be working with three more of Annika’s photos in what I have decided to be the unrelated series titled “Da Vinci Dreams.”

One

Da Vinci Dreams :: Phantom Heart

“Of dreams: Men shall walk without moving, they shall hear those who are absent, they shall hear those that do not speak.” ~ from “Prophecies” by Leonardo Da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, George Braziller.

The waters where boats dock harbor a murky stillness.  Perhaps this is because light never quite reaches those corners where some boats never leave and others never return.

“She fell into the ‘in between’ world so I know who she is but I don’t know who she is,” Andreas whispered, his eyes stretching wide open as if held by thumbtacks.  His eyebrows were deeply dark despite a head full of grays that resembled a thin silver sheet when combed back with Brylcream hair product.

“Everyone in town talks about you taking out two boats yet you won’t let ma come with you.”

“Because she is not your ‘ma‘. She is not my wife.”

Although Litiya was familiar with this exchange with her father she remained stumped by the hurt it caused her each time.

Eight years ago Litiya had accompanied her father far out of their small harbor village to see a psychiatrist that specialized in “unusual neurological disorders” who was in the capital city for a medical conference. Although doctors never saw patients during conferences, as was the custom in the profession, Litiya had requested special arrangements with one of her friend’s father who knew someone who knew the president of the university hosting the medical conference.

“Capgras delusion involves the distinct feeling that the people around you have been replaced by impostors,” the American doctor had said. He had extended his stay for another week after the conference because he was genuinely intrigued by the symptoms and the disorder was a mere footnote in the profession.

“What do you mean delusion?”

“Your father thinks your mother—his wife—is not his wife. She is replaced by another.”

“I know that much. But how is this possible?”

“This can be brought about by a variety of conditions—changes in brain chemistry associated with different mental illnesses, or physical trauma to the brain—but really no one is certain of the underlying cause of Capgras.”

“No one is certain of the cause of a disease…a disorder…?”

“Unfortunately no.”

“Then why even have it? That is absurd! On one end you are telling me my father is delusional which means there is something wrong with him and on another end you are saying no one knows why and yet you even have a name for the why!” Litiya said, unable to place a lid on her bubbling anger and anxiety.

“Recent research has shown that it may be caused by psychological dissonance.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“In some extreme cases, a change in the character of another or a newly noticed behavior can just be too difficult to accept, to integrate into the whole. And so, rather than reframing our sense of who that person is now, our brain just says, ‘he or she must really be another.’”

“What? You really consider that a medical explanation?” Litiya tried to hold back her tears, recalling much of her mother’s angst for the past eight years because her father had come home one day and said, “You look just like my Petka—but you are not my Petka. I know you are not.”

“Well, there is latest research that also says it could be a structural problem in the brain. When we see someone we know, a part of our brain called the fusiform gyrus identifies the face. That message is then sent to the amygdala, the part of the brain that activates the emotions we associate with that person. Patients who experience Capgras, this one psychiatrist’s views hold, the connection between visual recognition and emotional recognition is severed. So the patient is left with a convincing face but none of the accompanying feelings.”

“How can we fix that?” Litiya asked, interested in the doctor’s last explanation as somewhat remotely rational.

“We are so dependent on our emotional reactions to the world around us that the visual perception is weak and the brain’s most logical compromise to rationalize is that another has been replaced by an “impostor”. There has been one case where the patient is able to recognize the person if speaking to them on the phone because our visual and auditory system have different connections to the amygdala. But when the person appears face to face they are again labeled as an impostor.”

“So there is no real solution,” Litiya stated more than inquired, “This has been going on for eight years now.”

“It’s incredible really. Very rare.” the doctor replied.

Litiya raised her eyes to meet the American doctor’s and couldn’t bring herself to wish him ill for his lack of interest in their ailments: how her mother cried herself to sleep every night for the first two years, how her father told the neighbors that his wife had been “snatched” from him and replaced by another who looked just like her, or how recently her father had started hearing his ‘real’ wife speak to him in his dreams despite the “impostor’s presence in the other room.”

“I am sorry. There is nothing I can tell you. It is not like a phantom limb scenario. Every part of the body’s surface has a corresponding point in the brain. So, let’s say, once an arm is amputated the area in the brain mapped to the arm is deprived of sensory inputs it is used to receiving and so it becomes hungry for new sensations. This is not like that.”

Hungry for new sensations…Litiya repeated the words without saying them aloud.

“We will be leaving now. Thank you much for your time. My father and I appreciate your help,” Litiya spoke without much thought.

Litiya and her father made the long journey back to their small village in Marmara Island. Outside of this “impostor” problem, Andreas was typical and loving. There was neither a significant change in his relationship with his daughter nor his friends with whom he fished and rented out boats as part of his small business.

Litiya admired her mother’s perseverance to stay with Andreas no matter the challenges. Many women in the neighborhood had insisted she should separate. Litiya never once blamed her mother as the reason that she had not been able to pursue her university studies like her friends. Litiya had wanted to stay behind with her mother or so she had said it often enough that she couldn’t be convinced otherwise.

The American doctor hadn’t related the anecdotes from his research that most who suffer from Capgras delusion often emphatically insist that another “looks and acts just like the real person, but …but… some essence of the person is missing, almost as though the ‘soul’ of the person isn’t there.” But the doctor refrained from sharing this information given he didn’t quite believe in “soul.”

When Litiya returned home she didn’t share everything that the American doctor had told her about Andreas. She kept it simple: “There is a structural problem in the brain and there is no fixing it.”

After an early dinner Andreas went to “check on the boats” like he did every night. Petka hugged her daughter as she was doing the dishes for understanding and caring. Litiya wanted to tell her mother that what hurts her the most is not what people say, or her inability to leave her parents to live her own life, or even Petka’s loneliness given she never knew what to expect when Andreas saw her each time—sometimes ignoring her and other times agitated and scared by her—but his recent sharing of dreams of the ‘real’ Petka. This ‘real’ Petka reminded Litiya of a mother that she barely recalled now but was sure they weren’t just dreams her father had but lost memories anchored in a time her mother really felt alive.

Petka felt the painful silence in her daughter’s eyes and the shoulders that wouldn’t give into breath and finally said, “You know why I love boats? Most people can’t tell one from another, yet if they love boats, they just love boats. I know your father loves me.”

Petka and her mother both didn’t address the fact that her father had been making boats since he was twelve and eight years ago Petka too loved boats.

No. 18 in the series Tuesday’s Torrent.

This story will serve as a pause in the “Tuesday’s Torrent” series.

Dedicated to the woman behind the glass ticket booth at Szechenyi Baths in Pest, Budapest, Hungry.

Arpad was neither a devout churchgoer nor a committed atheist.  He devoted his Sunday mornings to a shot of espresso, one cigarette, then another shot of espresso, and then another cigarette. After the second round Arpad would take a short break and look out the smudgy cafe windows until the waitress—Kaitln, the only one of the three who worked at Cafe V willing to serve him, given he would never as much as say “hello” or “thank you”—would bring him the morning newspaper and scissors.

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No. 17 in the series Tuesday’s Torrent.

I wrote this story without any access to internet research. First for me. It was written on the Delta flight from JFK to Prague. There was no wifi connection on this particular Delta flight. I had a choice to not write—good excuse—or see where the mind goes when you have minimal information in front of you. I did have access to the New York Times and the Duty Free magazine.

Initial research from an article titled “Kansai Confidential” by Deborah Caulfield Rybak.

Dedicated to Sixto from Ecuador.

 

I liked Nara when she told me her very first story. Her English wasn’t perfect but I understood her without fault because I loved her from the moment I heard her speak.

It was her shortest story: “My father named me after a Japanese city and he have never been to Japan. The town Nara is home to 1,1000 Sika deer.”

 

I met Nara in New York City, a place quite far from the small farm town of El Chota, Ecuador where she was born.

 

The second story was about a Japanese myth which holds that the god Takemikazuchi came to Nara—the city—on a white deer, so the animals are considered messengers of God. Nara liked to joke—or I liked to think she was joking—that she too was a messenger of God.

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No. 15 in the series Tuesday’s Torrent.

Photograph courtesy of Tim Corbeel.

kinein,  from Greek, to move

All memories belong to a Love that can’t be named.

Ovidio Ozseb Hermann, a retired Physics professor, was known for bicycling around town, a small village town not distinct from neighboring towns near Dorking, south of London in Surrey, England.

Ovidio often rode his bicycle on a small road surrounded by rapeseed crops—a tall, rough weedlike plant bursting with coarse yellow flowers—which draped broadly and brightly across an always neutral landscape. Some days he would stop by Ari’s Shop, a coffee shop that only served breakfast on Mondays. Ari had decided this would be his contribution to the small town—breakfast on Mondays—because no Monday was worth remembering, but a good breakfast could be.

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No. 14 in the series Tuesday’s Torrent.

Photograph courtesy of Tim Corbeel.

intuit
verb [ trans. ]
understand or work out by instinct.
ORIGIN late 18th cent. (in the sense [instruct, teach] ): from Latin intuit- ‘contemplated,’ from the verb intueri, from in- ‘upon’ + tueri ‘to look.’

They say somewhere near Inishrush, Ireland, there is a nameless, whistle-stop village, alongside Clady river, just upstream from the ford on Ford Road between Clady and Inishrush.

There you can find a man who tells you about horses’ hooves and if you can understand him you understand everything about your life.

Aindriu Manus is his name and he is hard of hearing and even harder to decipher.

This is what he says:

My name is Aindriú Manus and I know horses. And that’s about all I know. I suppose if you knew about horses you would say that is all anyone needs to know.

A horse’s hoof is a structure evolved into a single weight-bearing digit of each of the four limbs.  Single weight-bearing digit. You got a single weight-bearing digit?  I can’t even bear my weight on my two feet with ten digits. But you do got a single weight-bearing digit.

Ever heard of “no hoof, no horse”?

The horse hoof is not at all a rigid structure. It is elastic and flexible. Just squeezing the heels by hand will demonstrate that. No one knows that. Unless you know horses.

The hoof is made up by an outer part, the hoof capsule, and an inner, living part, containing soft tissues and bone. The walls are considered as a protective shield covering the sensitive internal hoof tissues as a structure devoted to dissipating the energy of concussion, and as a surface to provide grip on different terrains.

Since a single digit must bear the full proportion of the horse’s weight that is borne by that limb, the hoof is of vital importance to the horse. The phrase “no hoof, no horse” underlines how much the health and the strength of the hoof is crucial for horse soundness.

I have told you the most important thing you need to know about horses and yourself.

That’s all he says.