A Hundred Grand an Hour….

It was a curious spectacle of reality and cynicism. Yes, the killer was at last shackled, and led off to prison.

He was also free four hours later, after Daddy, senior federal judge Salvador Casellas, forked up 400,000$ in bail.

It raises questions. Had Pablo Casellas ever seen the place, the Bayamón Regional Prison? Most likely not. It’s out of the way—no reason to happen on the place, you have to seek it out. 

But in fact I have seen the place, and not because I sought it. If you take the público (the lowest form of mass transit in Puerto Rico) you frequently are sidetracked there. The van will have eighteen people crammed airlessly in it, and will slide from Cataño through Juana Matos. For every victim the van discharges, another is picked up. On one side is a ramshackle community sprung up on a flood plain—squatters who have been there generations. On the other side, a housing project routinely raided for narco-traffickers.

You creep toward Puente Blanco, and then pass B. Fernández, distributor of the island’s number one beer. And then someone calls out: ¡La Regional!

You’ve suspected it, of course. There are days when the público fills up quite quickly—not waiting in the 90-degree heat for those 18 passengers.

Mostly, it’s the faces that give them away. Tight, wary, constricted. Also, of course, weary.

The body as well—add 10 pounds for every five years after age 25. 

And the sex—always women.

They tend to come in pairs—mother and girlfriend. Occasionally trios—a baby that will be passed from the back of the van to the front when the van bumps its shockless way down the pot-holed road to the prison.

At that point, 16 of the 18 people get out of the van. 

Is any prison pretty? Maybe in Norway, but this is as dreary as are our public schools. The only difference? The razor wire atop the 16-feet cyclone fence. 

I used to contemplate it, the lives of these women going to see their son or boyfriend in jail. Passing the baby, I would peer into its face. A boy, and he would be here in twenty years.

Rather—there, inside the prison.

A girl, and she would be here, in the van with me….

It was intense heat, humidity, and silence—those mornings in the van. No one talked, no one chatted. And this, on a compulsively loquacious island.

The mothers dressed drably, the girlfriends coquettishly. They started in a group to the front gate of the prison, opening their purses for inspection by the guard who awaited them.

The van would turn around—the pavement had petered out, it was now dirt, if not mud. I would stretch, lunge for the window, breathe.

I was going to write, today, about the judge. There are good reasons to suggest that he resigns. He was at the crime scene, and that scene was altered. But my mind goes back to those far-gone days when I was number three of four people crammed in one of the banks of the mini-van.

Yes, Casellas fils has seen more than I of La Regional. But I have seen by a stretch much more of the people who fill it up, who languish there, who are forgotten except on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when mother and girlfriend wake at five in the morning to await the two or three públicos down from the mountains to a flat, flood-prone, sun-drenched hell.

Casellas Wived

Readers who don’t know the story of Candid Flowers won’t get it, so let me show you the picture:

Yes, after almost two months in which it was glaringly obvious who slaughtered Carmen Paredes, her husband has at last been put in esposas (wives or handcuffs) and charged with first-degree murder, lying to a federal agent, and destruction of evidence.

The New Day is following it minute by minute. The morning radio is flooded with the story. And yes, it does raise questions.

My questions, though, may not be the ones everybody is asking.

OK—let’s review. Carmen Paredes was a successful insurance broker, married to Pablo Casellas, the son of a senior federal judge. Paredes was killed on July 14^th of this year.

According to her husband, he returned from visiting his father early in the morning, saw an intruder leaping over a ten-foot wall, and went to get his guns. Casellas is a marksman, and has permits for 33 guns. (Rather, he had—the permits were revoked after the murder.) He fired several shots, but the intruder fled. Casellas then found his wife dead, sitting by the side of the pool.

To say that the story was flimsy is to be generous. It held together like wet toilet paper. 

The vegetation on both sides of the wall was un-trampled. There were bloodstains in Casellas’s car. The bullet used was from a gun that Casellas had reported “stolen” after he had left the shooting range. Which, by the way, was closed that day.

That’s an oops!

Well, there’s a saying in Puerto Rico: you fart in San Juan, they smell it in Ponce.

So I wasn’t surprised when I ran into someone who had seen Pablo Casellas throughout his youth. And the report wasn’t flattering.

Nor, I’m sorry to say, was the report on the judge.

Because it’s he, more than his son, that plagues my imagination. The judge was permitted into the crime scene. OK—I can get that. A distressed father, a confused situation—what parent wouldn’t rush to his child’s aid?

But where was Pablo on the morning he summoned? At his father’s house.

Here, I say farewell to the judge. For I am sure that my father would not have harbored me had I done what Pablo Casellas did. And I hope I would have the backbone to do the same, had I a son in such a dilemma.

I think it was V. S. Naipaul who said that the tragedy of the Caribbean is that it doesn’t have a narrative, a story it tells itself that guides it, provides the framework. But it may be untrue. We have a terrible story of piracy, of violence and greed. And in the Spanish Caribbean, we have some unpleasant leftovers from Spain: arrogance, cruelty and entitlement being three of them.

The person who witnessed Pablo’s childhood was reticent, not wanting even years later to speak much. She did say that he was a little monster.

And I will say—he grew into a big one.

Oh, and Candid Flowers? Here’s a link….

http://www.bokorlang.com/journal/31amusements.htm

Stupid Days

Readers—beware! You’ll get nothing of value from this post!

How can I be so sure?

Well, it’s a stupid day, or a nothing day, as Franny used to call them. That is, a day when nothing works, nothing goes right, nothing will be accomplished.

Well, it could be worse. The Norwegians have a concept—the nothing YEAR! Yeah, a whole year in which you spin your wheels, accomplish zilch, create a big zero. It drives you and everyone around you to despair and madness.

There is—I can tell you, because I searched heroically—NOTHING good in the news today. OK—so what to write about? Music?

Well, I listened to a new piece—well, new to me—of music, but that’s sort of ho-hum. So was the music, actually—and that’s nice. There is after all a place for average in music. Not everything has to be great.

Right—then my student cancelled. Sears was coming to repair the roof. Well, I understand that. When Sears impends, you postpone!

(Yes, I can hear you wondering about that ”impends” up there. Well, why not? If it’s not right, it should be!)

And now, to top it all off, I can feel my editor going crazy in Tobago!

She’s taught me a lot, this sister of mine. In the past, I used to go absolutely nuts about technical issues on the computer. I should say—I’m neither a whiz nor an idiot when it comes to technology. In the days of Wal-Mart, I once created a complete “web-site” in PowerPoint. I learned how to “program” in something called VBA. I started in on HTML, and was actually getting somewhere when the guillotine fell.

And it wasn’t easy. Because my first response when something didn’t work?

Fury!

“If you have a button that says ‘enter’ then you should enter, dammit, and not give me this stupid message that you cannot enter because the script contains a deleted variable!!!!” That’s what I would scream, at the beginning of it all. 

Later?

Get up from my desk, go walk through the parking lot, look at the bamboo, address the iguanas. Screaming at a computer is like screaming at a cat. Unless you enjoy it, it’s pointless.

Also counterproductive.

I know this because of Miss Taí! She has two amazing qualities that I have slightly adopted. The first is patience.

The second is absolute fiendish determination.

This lady will NOT give up.

An example?

“Ah, the curse of being a religious, if you have a gold candle stick, it should be melted down and given to the poor.”

That’s a sentence from Iguanas that became a curse.

Look, it wasn’t that great a sentence. But doña Taí got it in her head—the average reader would be confused. What was “a religious” anyway?

I explained. A scientist, a doctor, a religious! See? Simple!

She dug in.

I sent her a link to thefreedictionary.com in which “religious” is called a noun—the name of a person practicing religion.

But Charisse—a canny lady indeed—had never heard of it! And if Charisse…

No, it’s my book, I’m the author, it stays.

Yes I know, ok, fine, but….

Taí!

“It’s just that….”

Well, the trench was six feet and Taí had an inexhaustible supply of grenades! And one hell of a throwing arm.

“I just think….”

Dammit!

Well, as I say, I can feel her spinning around down there, a terrier worrying a technical rat.

Here’s the problem:

Beautiful, hunh? And designed by none other than my editor herself. That MFA came right out! Even the name is spelled correctly!

Now then, how to stick it into an email, and link it to amazon.com so that I can avoid the fate of starting a little shoeshine business, just to keep body and soul together!

Gotta sell some books….

Well, she’ll do it, I know. She’ll nail that problem and explain it to me and I’ll nod my head, not understanding or caring in the least. Why should I? When Taí is there?

Oh, and about that sentence? “The curse of a religious?”

Got changed….

Click anywhere on the image to get your copy….

Banner design by 2012 © Taí Fernández All Rights Reserved

(Vector art courtesy of Mauricio Duque of snap2objects.com, through a Creative Commons 3.0 license.)

The Craziness Marches On

Well, it’s a day when religion seems to intrude itself.

Maybe it started yesterday, when I read the lovely and teaching story of Marriott's undergarments. Yes, there is a Marriott; yes, he’s chairman of the board of you-know-what; yes, he’s a Mormon.

And listen to what he said!

“I related to him how I’d been involved in a very serious boat accident, here  in New Hampshire,” Marriott said. “I caught fire; my polyester pants had burned off all the way to my waist. But my undergarments from my waist down to my knees had not even been singed. There wasn’t a mark on them. And I said, these holy  undergarments saved my life.”

¿Bíjte?! (as we’d say down here—“see”?!)

Of course, it could also have been yesterday, when I walked past the capitol with Raf. There’s a huge group of people, today, who are clamoring to God. And they’ve stuck up a huge “Christian” poster, completely obscuring half of the capitol’s northern face. Got the Jesus, got the sheep, got the cross! And they’ve got the quote from—I think—Ezekiel about the clamoring….

This, of course, used to set my Madison sensibilities howling. These crazy evangelicals who are anti EVERYTHING except personal-read-financial enrichment are being given the use of the preeminent public building on the island—I’ve paid for a block or two of the marble several times over, thanks!—and nobody whispers a word of disagreement?

Can we—gays and lesbians and women and just about everybody who isn’t insane—hold an alternative festival next week?

You know the answer.

Well, well. Mental hygiene. Breathe, Marc.

And then, it turned out the Reverend—wait, why did I type that!—Sun Myung Moon died at age 92 yesterday. Well—certainly had to check in on that!

And it is quite instructive, the life of our reverend. Born in 1920, he encountered—literally, he says—Jesus at age sixteen. (That’s Moon, age 16—sorry, writing about religion so often induces bad grammar, or maybe just thinking….)

Well, Jesus had a message, as he so often does. Moon was to go forth and complete the work that Jesus had left unfinished 2000 years ago. Sets up the Unification Church, and grows it by preaching family values.

The family often being the result of two strangers of different cultures being “blessed” in a mass ceremony.

Remember Madison Square Garden in 1982?

Well, Moon did what any sharp guy would do. Got rich, acquired money and power! The New Yorker Hotel, a ski resort—all manner of bangles on the guy’s bracelet.

Oh, and curious friendships—with Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, and George H. W. Bush. As well, of course, as the dictator of North Korea.

I could tell you as well about the Church of Scientology (capitals by convention only) interviewing girlfriends for Tom Cruise.

But the brain tires.

Here’s the thing. 20 % of the followers of this blog—there are five—go to church faithfully (was about to say religiously, but thought not).

Her name is Susan.

And I respect Susan’s beliefs as she respects mine. I would also argue that she is the best sort of Christian, and that she, and her church, do good in the community. I cheerfully grant her and her church the right to be tax-free, and I shoulder a bit more of the burden April 15 for that dispensation.

But these crazies?

Needing a breath of fresh air, mentally, I turned to Mark Twain. And here he is, on the Book of Mormon:

All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the "elect" have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it.  I brought away a copy from Salt Lake.  The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so "slow," so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration.  It is chloroform in print.  If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle--keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate.  If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certain ancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he declares he found under a stone, in an out-of-the-way locality, the work of translating was equally a miracle, for the same reason.

The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament.  The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint, old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James's translation of the Scriptures; and the result is a mongrel--half modern glibness, and half ancient simplicity and gravity.  The latter is awkward and constrained; the former natural, but grotesque by the contrast.  Whenever he found his speech growing too modern--which was about every sentence or two--he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as "exceeding sore," "and it came to pass," etc., and made things satisfactory again.  "And it came to pass" was his pet.  If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet.

The Dead Finger

Readers of this blog know about it. Last May, as we were celebrating the second anniversary of Franny’s death, someone put her finger on the test button of the smoke alarm.

Recap—the Zanas had come out and brought food. The talk turned to mystical matters—how Bess always associates her mother with deer, and how, in speaking with her sister about this, she went to the window, to pull up the shades. “Wouldn’t it be weird,” said Bess, “if there were a deer…”

Don’t have to tell you. There wasn’t one.

There were fourteen.

And that’s when, in the Acres, the smoke alarm went off. And of course, there was no smoke in the house.

I took the damn thing outside, where there was a strong breeze.

Wouldn’t stop….

I finally took the battery out. And apparently unwilling to violate too many natural laws, Franny relented. Then the Morning Glories held their affair, to which they graciously invited us! Well, no Newhouse cannot NOT have the last word.

In this case, it was 17 minutes of Beethoven, the Heiliger Dankgesang. It, like Winterreise six months previously, had been haunting me. 

Well, that put an end to THAT party. Not much you can do after that. So I took a walk with Cheryl, our hosts cleaned up Franny’s house, and they departed. “Wow,” said  Eric, “wonder what an outsider would have thought of that.”

And then, an outsider turned the porch light off.

Wondering why I bothered, I went out to examine the empty porch.

(For a fuller account of the whole affair, as well as a wonderful performance of the Dankgesang, click here….)

Well, well—I knew about the dead hand (or thought I did), but the dead finger?  Because this morning, the Schumann I had decided on for the daily trot wasn’t to Franny’s liking.

She changed it to the Brahms’ Piano Concerto number two. 

Well, it was either the stupid shuffle button or the dead finger. But here’s the deal.

She wants Brahms? She gets Brahms.

And it was curiously appropriate. Because the second pregnancy began with another Brahms’ piano concerto. The first, of course—there are only two.

The first pregnancy ended with her death, which spawned a book. The second pregnancy ended with my death, and set off the writer. And now, in the curiously jumbled way things happen, Franny is born again, for the ten or ten thousand people who may read about her.

She’s out there stirring around—no more jangling for her!

I wrote, some paragraphs up (can’t be back…), that I knew about the dead hand. Seems I didn’t—thefreedictionary.com defines it thus:

dead hand

n.

1. The ever-present, oppressive influence of past events: "Psychotherapy explores the ways in which the past has shaped people, and how its dead hand continues to deform their lives" (James S. Gordon).

2. Mortmain

[Middle English dede hond, translation of Old French mortemain or Medieval Latin manus mortua, mortmain.]

Well, I knew the first definition, but what’s the skinny on the “mortmain?”

mortmain [ˈmɔːtˌmeɪn]

n

(Law) Law the state or condition of lands, buildings, etc., held inalienably, as by an ecclesiastical or other corporation

[from Old French mortemain, from Medieval Latin mortua manus dead hand, inalienable ownership]

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003

mortmain

transfer or ownership of real property in perpetuity, as transfer to or ownership by a corporate body like a school, college, or church.

See also: Property and Ownership

This makes dim sense to me. Looked it up, further, and got an interesting account of the struggle in medieval times of property between the Church and State. 

But I was hot and sweaty, exhausted as much by the trot as the labor of two pregnancies. Plus the Brahms was washing through my brain, still. I decided to skip any further investigation of the dead hand, or mortmain.

I’ll take the dead finger instead….

On Corelli and Champagne

There’s a rule in the house—you have to have a bottle of champagne at the bottom of the refrigerator.

Who knows when something good might happen?

Or something bad. In which case, you can also celebrate. Certainly did the day they canned me from Wal-Mart. Yes, I learned this trick years ago; you really can’t let fate decide what’s good or bad. You decide.

But yesterday seemed pretty clear. The book is out, the cover is right, my work is done.

“That’s two pregnancies,” said Raf, last night, after I told him it had been 18 months of labor.

So maybe that’s the reason for the listlessness, fatigue, agitation I feel. Same thing as after a big performance. So I took a long walk this morning, and listened to Corelli. (I needed something utterly formulaic, cheerful, and a little majestic…). And thought about the two pregnancies.

I’ve written elsewhere that I gave my mother her death, as she had given me life. But yesterday a good friend, Jaime, sent me a review of the book, and referred to Franny as, well…Franny.

It took me aback just for a second. And then I realized why—he didn’t know her.

And now he does.

My version, at least. 

And so in some ways I’ve given her birth. And she was up to her usual tricks this morning—pointing out a ridiculous sign, wondering about the woman jogging ahead of me, noting the colors of the sea.

She trotted along beside me, making jokes, pointing things out.

Oh, and the second pregnancy?

A teacher turned into some sort of writer….

Done

Well, it took about 18 months, two and a half computers, endless coffee, a few emotional storms, and a lot of hand-holding (some physical, most figurative) from doña Taí, but….

…it’s done.

It’s out there, or will be soon. Life, Death and Iguanas is “in review” on the KDP bookshelf. In 12 hours or so, the book will be available on amazon.com.

I’m exhausted.

No, nothing physical. Just emotional. Franny’s death was hard, but curiously public. There was almost no moment when someone else wasn’t there. She stirred around, even in her dying.

Recreating her life and death—as much as I have, as well as I have—was numbingly private. Raf, perhaps, was snoring in the bedroom, those Saturday mornings when I started the book. Or working, those days after I was laid off. Taí was reading, ten islands down the Antilles. Only Loquito, the cat, and I did it.

“You have a lot of energy,” a therapist once told me.

Yeah?

Not enough for this project! Which continued up to the finish line. I added a post yesterday to the blook, explaining what I had been doing in the Wal-Mart Home Office those seven years. 

Seemed like a reader might like to know….

And then this morning, at 9:36, I hit the upload button.

And then, predictably, went into worry mode.

I thought I had uploaded the wrong cover!

Doña Taí, in one supremely dyslexic moment, had sent me a revised cover—excellent in all things except orthography. Which is to say, she misspelled my name!

Well, that’s a trivial affair. Jack, my father, was also a little uncertain about it. He had wanted “Mark” after Mark Twain. Franny wanted “Marc”. She prevailed—except in Jack’s head. He once got it wrong three times on a plaque. 

And Wal-Mart had a hard time of it, too. In fact, the nameplate on my door said “Mark New House” for seven years.

Did I care?

Nah, just stick the money in the bank….

Well, in twelve hours, we’ll know about that cover. No way to tell now.

So, the world has a new book. It’s a curious thing, to click a button and send my life, my Franny’s life, and the iguanas’ lives out into the world. Today, as I write, I’m a little sad.

Another milestone, another step forward, as she remains behind….

The cover with the misspelled name….

Wonderful wonderful people

Confession—I spent seven years hectoring my students on rule number one of writing….

Consider the reader.

What does he know? What does he need or want to know? It’s not about you, the writer. It’s all about the reader.

Yup, banged that drum for seven years as loudly as I could!

And then?

Was completely deaf to it.

I wrote a book, you see, all about life and death and iguanas and some other stuff. Then, I concluded it with my getting laid off at Wal-Mart. I mentioned throwing pencils at the students, about not going back to say farewell to my room, about not getting to say farewell to my students.

Well, I sent off drafts to people, and people mostly liked it. Not surprising; is a friend gonna write and say, “Jeez Marc, you’ve written a dog! Couldn’t get past the first chapter!”?

OK—the book is coming out on Saturday. We set up—my partner in literature and I—a little page on Facebook. There was a sample chapter. And then I realized. I talked about the building. I talked about the iguanas behind the building. I certainly mentioned that Wal-Mart cheer!

What didn’t I do?

Mention what in the world I was doing at Wal-Mart in the first place….

Marc? Duh…..

Didn’t bother my friendly readers—they know the story. But wouldn’t a stranger be a little confused?

So here’s what I should have written.

Nothing was more improbable in my life as the fact that, every day between 6:30 and 7AM, I walked up concrete steps, ducked the dive-bombing grackles, passed the alarming cars, and entered the Wal-Mart Home Office.

I knew how it had happened, of course. Ofelia, my old boss and a cherished friend, had sent me off to teach in a trailer in a parking lot in Bayamón.

“No, Ofelia, this is too crazy. I mean, I’ve done the rum factory. That was fun. I’ve done the executives and their wives of the third largest bank on the island. And what is Wal-Mart, anyway….”

She sighed and explained.

Well, needed the dough, and a gig is a gig.

“So how did it go,” she asked, after that first day.

“Ummm, I think I blew it.”

“Oh, dear,” she said.

“Look, you know I’ve been teaching ESL for ten plus years, right?”

“Of course.”

“Well, what you don’t know is that I become a completely different person when I’m in a classroom….”

“Of course, it’s called the teacher’s persona…  So what happened?”

“Well, I get there and introduce myself to this lady, Elizabeth, and she’s completely unimpressed. I go into this little trailer straight from Arkansas, and begin the class. And then, I hear this clapping from next door and someone shouts ‘Gimme a W!’”

“Oh, the company cheer,” she said brightly.

“Well, I was dumbfounded,” I said. “Didn’t know what to do. So then I said ‘What the hell was that?’ And they said what you said. So then I lost it and said, ‘well, do we have an English class cheer?’”

“Oh no,” breathed Ofelia. “Marc, you didn’t. Marc, tell me you didn’t….”

“Yeah, I got ‘em all on their feet and clapping, and I shouted ‘GIMME AN E, GIMME AN N. GIMME A G’ all the way through the word English, and then I shouted ‘WHAT DOES IT SPELL’ and then ‘I CAN’T HEAR YOU’ and then ‘WHAT DO WE SPEAK!’ and then….”

Here I noted that Ofelia had her head in her hands.  

Curious that the company hadn’t called, demanding a change of teacher, I went off to do more damage the next day. And met the president of the company, coming out the trailer door.

“Great cheer,” he said, introducing himself. “Loved it! You’re really part of the Wal-Mart family now!”

Completely sincere!

Well, the disasters multiplied. Tired of teaching, I turned to presentations. Get the kids to talk! (All students of any age are my kids…)

Great—first presentation was about the Florida Keys. I noted confused faces. And did something that I should never do.

Try to be a teacher….

So I jumped up, grabbed the magic marker, went to the flip chart, and started to draw.

I drew Florida, I drew the keys, I created what looked for all the world like an obscene graffitum on a men’s room wall.

Worse, I saw myself do it!

It was like a train wreck—I saw it coming on, I saw my hands creating it.

Couldn’t stop!

Never confessed that to Ofelia.

Well, I started off my Wal-Mart days as a contractor—Ofelia is the head of a very good little language school.

Then Elizabeth, apparently more impressed, phoned me, offered me a job. They had created a position for me, and wanted me to be the fulltime English teacher.

“Great,” I told her.

“Wonderful,” I said to her.

“SHIT!” I said, after hanging up the phone.

Didn’t want it, but knew I had to take it. The benefits? Great!! Salary? Excellent!

Marc in the corporate world?

Nahhhhh!   

For two years, it drove me nuts. Then, I relaxed. I began roaming the halls with my ruler, pretending to be a traditional teacher. I put a ridiculous yellow duck on the door of my room, and called it my VPI—the volume producing item so beloved of Sam Walton. I instituted the ‘cultura de la clase de inglés’ one tired day after hearing the “Wal-Mart Culture” invoked for the umpteenth time.

Among other items, students had to breathe audibly in and gaze upwards when I pronounced the name of Sam Walton.

Someone wasn’t taking it seriously.

Oh, except for one thing.

The students. Those wonderful, resilient, amazing people who told me their stories, shared the joy and pain in their lives, showed me the pictures of their kids or pets. The kids who put up with my nonsense and dodged the pencils I threw at them, and said “333 jewelry thieves” and hid under their desks when they heard me approach, smartly tapping the ruler against my thigh.

Wonderful, wonderful people!

Two kids, one gone

“We need a filter,” said my shrink on my last visit.

We were talking about the news, which—I know, this is dog bites man!—is horrible. The city of New Orleans is under meteorological attack, the Republicans are doing whatever they do, and the news in Puerto Rico?

Well, front page of The New Day is about the death of Lorenzo, a ten-year old kid who saw something he should not.

And who died an hour or two later.

Today, I’m the filter. I read as much of the story as I could. Anyone reading Spanish can do so as well.

But I don’t advise it.

It’s a curious thing, our morbid interest in these affairs. The senseless killings, the misdeeds of the rich, the random violence and the shattered lives.

Let me tell you about another kid, also ten years old.

Her name is Naia, and she’s totally cool. And she’s the daughter of a lady named Lady and a French man. Lady is a poet, her husband is an artist. But that’s not how I met them.

For seven years, I was constantly seeing and talking to people. I was awash in a flood of 500 people. There were faces everywhere.

Then, I was alone in an empty apartment.

Well, the first thing, of course, was to do the trot. Get outta the house, see people, say hello.

But the trot only lasts an hour….

OK—what to do? Put myself on a schedule. After the trot comes the post. Then lunch and Sudoku.

Right—but the afternoons?

Then came the heat wave, right after we returned from Britain. And solitude and heat don’t make a pretty combination.

So I did what a lot of guys without jobs or with too little work and too much time do.

I made a café my office.

Worked out well, too! They make a good sandwich, they have excellent coffee, and the Internet works.

And there was air conditioning, as well….

And then I noticed Naia. She was busy being home-schooled in the back of the café by her mother, the owner of the café (as well as poet).

“What’s the capital of Oregon?”

Remember state capitals?

Of course I do. What I didn’t remember, of course, was the capital of Oregon. So I waited for the answer.

“Portland?”

“Try again….”

“Umm—give me a clue?”

“It starts with an s.”

“Springfield?”

Well, I knew that wasn’t true—that’s Illinois. 

I’ll spare you, it’s Salem.

Half an hour later, I passed them—still hard at work—on my way to the bathroom. And of course I had to interrupt.  

“What’s the capital of Oregon?”

Mother beamed at me.

“Salem!”

Naia, you see, is completely convinced that the world is a good place, a gentle place. A strange guy can enter her classroom, ask her a follow-up question, and of she answers. No fear!

“OK, so what’s the capital of California?”

That one was harder, but she got it—Sacramento.

Well, yesterday it was multiplication. Six times eight?

Naia blinked six times, and responded correctly.

Right, each blink was an addition.

So I explained a useful trick—ten times eight is eighty, eighty divided by two is forty, add the additional eight and you get 48.

So we played with that for a while.

For reasons that I cannot understand, little girls like me. 

“Tell me a story,” Raf’s niece once said. We were waiting to get off a cruise ship and were bored. So I told her the de Maupassant tale of the horribly, horribly good little girl whom everybody adores. She gets eaten by a wolf at the end.

“Now you tell me a story,” I concluded.

Well, she bested me immediately.

“There was once a little girl who lived in an island of puke and her brother lived in an island of snot….”

So I’m not surprised when Naia comes with her pet dinosaur and tells me about it. She sits uninvited at the table. We chat, until I shoo her away. I ponder, at times, what life as a father, rather than uncle, might be. And I marvel how kids, now, effortlessly juggle their own childhoods and the intersecting lives of adults. Much better than I did, as a kid….

Oh, and guess what?

There was only one Lorenzo. But there are millions of kids like Naia.