She approached us formally, her bearing slightly aristocratic yet, almost gliding across the floor like a dancer. Had she been the favorite daughter of some Spanish Grandee, who had owned more land then Croesus had gold? Richard made no secret of his attraction. He makes no secret of anything about himself; one of the most refreshing human beings I’ve met in a long time, his forthrightness and honesty is like water to the thirsty. In these times of challenge, his willingness to take charge when needed gives you hope that we all have such a capacity.

As she began to circle our table, she queried innocently, probing to understand this strange family of travelers, whose moods she must now master. How odd a group we were, representing three different ethnicities, languages, and races (if such a thing even exists), and four countries of origin; and we were having way too much fun. Boisterous, in fact, not the usual table of formal diners unless we’d been drinking. But no, this was our natural state, the most conspicuous group in the room and perhaps the most natural group in the room, and not a bit shy about showing it.

Methodically, but subtly she sorted us out, discovering who was married to whom, and who were the “Alphas” who must be catered to. Richard happily escaped from his second marriage, thank you very much, asked Ester where she was from, and after she’d left the table, I mused to Richard, “I can see her as a Spanish dancer, commanding the floor in some capitol city evening bistro.”

“You’re right,” Richard said. He’d been to Madrid several times and seen the Spanish senoritas dance the Flamenco, whirling and taunting, tossing the hems of their skirts as they stomped out rhythms; their hands positioned challengingly above defiant heads.

“You should ask her if she’s been to Madrid.” I said, “Impress her.”

Richard, more accomplished than myself, didn’t hesitate to jump at this suggestion, and when Ester returned, her reaction was delightful. She must have been thinking, ‘Careful senorita, this is the dangerous one.’ And yet, a spark was struck.

Now Richard, slightly dehydrated from our day of Jamaican rum in Ocho Rios, kept asking Ester for tea with honey, and prodding her with invitations to Madrid, Cuernavaca, and did she know anyone in Phoenix? Meanwhile Irv, our benevolent Alpha Male Zen Master, was, much to Yvette’s irritation, giving Ester pure hell.

“What is this?” he demanded, “I didn’t order this. Take it away!”

When Ester leaned over my shoulder to place my appetizer, I turned my head and whispered in her ear, “Don’t let Irv scare you; he’s really just a big pussycat.” Ester giggled in surprise, clasped my shoulders from behind, running her hands down to my elbows, as one would do to a beloved uncle, and thus her dance began.

For the next two hours, she engaged all at our table with her wit, charm, delightful humor and professional skills, one of the most accomplished dancers on any stage. And yet, were her skills displayed for us, or perhaps for the benefit of the dangerous one? The Flamenco dancer casting dark haughty eyes upon the one watcher who had caught them, teasing him with a hand placed lightly on someone else’s shoulder, a look of appreciation and warmth, tossing her head in refined laughter at someone else’s joke, chatting casually with Maria in their lyrical Spanish language, tilting her head in answer to another’s question, “Oh senora, you see, I have a different boyfriend in every port,” playing the coy but knowing coquette, then revealing her true heart by cradling a stack of menus in her right arm as if they were a loved infant. First hiding behind the curtains at Irv’s latest outburst, designed to test her poise and confidence, she then delivered to him a special diet dessert menu with only blank pages. “You see senor,” head held high in mock defiance, “I am not afraid of you anymore.” Yes, she could match wits with our Alpha males. And then to Richard she said, “With your tea, would you like some more of this, honey? She had become the youngest little sister to this shipboard family of diverse travelers.

You never know what you’ll get, in a senorita from Mexico City.

Copyright 2009, Thomas Sandor.

Sometimes even in a place where everything is supposed to be equally fresh and new, a single item can jump out, catch your eye and send you captivated down a series of clues, questions and possible answers, like a young naturalist pursuing a butterfly, or in this case,

A PIECE OF CLOTH

The tiny girl child, dwarfed by the citizens and tourists, in the main plaza of Antigua, was intently studying every eye, searching for contact with her next customer. She was one of twenty or more mountain tribes’ women, most with trade goods or infants slung to their backs and chests, in the brilliantly decorated shawls they wore. Like their long wrap-around skirts, these shawls were woven in a riot of colorful, Guatemalan patterns, so brightly chaotic they overwhelmed the background color of the fabric itself. Distinct from the rest of Central America’s largely mestizo population and with their culture still somewhat intact, these remnants of a once great Mayan empire, had somehow survived their collision with European conquest and plagues. Echoing the movement of the tectonic plates in this volcanically active, transcontinental part of the Earth’s crust, the European culture had slammed into the Central American culture, pushing the Mayan from the coastal plains, up into the mountains to the northwest. A grinding process, this resulted in a pyroclastic explosion of color throughout those highlands. Now, in order to restore their nation’s wealth and vitality, these Mayan remnants were flowing back through the mountain valleys, into the tourist-friendly, Spanish built towns, bringing in from the rich volcanic soils, a harvest of produce whose colors of pineapple, papaya, melon, cane and ripe coffee bean, decorated the everyday cloth they wove.

The plaza, about 100 yards square, was bestrewn with scores of flowering plants, a fountain, trees, park benches and surrounded on three sides by large, beautiful colonial buildings and a cathedral. The Mayan women, jaguar-like in their colorful dress, blended into, as naturally as they stood apart from, the plaza’s flora. This was a slightly decaying, photographer’s paradise, which kept my wife busy tracing ever widening circles around my slowly advancing position, snapping pictures as she went, of the architecture: that created by God, as well as man.

The plaza, at one time new and starkly bare, had been used for military drill and formation, directed by the smartly dressed, aristocratic, Spanish officers, who had built it and many others, after destroying the original, indigenous centers of culture – a culture they had dismissed as inferior to their own. Today, however, instead of the sounds of horses’ hooves, stomping boots, and the slap and click of bare hands on muzzle loading rifles, all timed to the beat of drum and bugle, I heard the wafting tones of a marimba from the far edge of this tree lined square. As I approached, the music sounded like thumps on hollow, hardwood logs, ripe melons and gourds. The small cloth-covered hammers held by three musicians, bounced off the hardwood tone plates, atop this ornately carved wooden instrument, echoing sound vibrations through hollow, wooden cylinders hung beneath. Like goats jumping from one rock outcropping to another, the hammer hooves held by six flashing hands, jumped up and down the three levels of the marimba’s hardwood plates, chasing each other across high notes and low notes, creating a simple infectious melody. It was a perfect background rhythm for the lyrical bustle of the plaza’s human commerce.

I stopped an older girl, in the center of the plaza, and asked her about the hand-woven look of her colorful skirt and shawl, and if she had any actual, hand-woven cloth, not the foot loom or machine woven types which made up most of what was seen here. I bought a piece even though I knew it wasn’t what I was looking for. I would have to go outside of the main plaza, away from the tourists, who like myself, were mostly content to buy anything. I was searching for a clue to solve a mystery, which was beginning to consume my imagination. Why did these Mayans remind me so much of the Mountainard tribes I had lived with four decades ago in the central highlands of Vietnam? Was it wishful thinking, some kind of survivor’s guilt, for not being able to stop a possible impending tragedy? Or was there something else going on here, something I couldn’t quite fathom? The pure-blood Mayan, I had seen in a copy of National Geographic earlier that morning, had the epicanthic fold, on the medial corner of his eyes, signaling his Asian ancestry. Could these Mayans be some lost tribe of a once united Southeast Asian people?

The tiny Mayan girl child, looking too small to be out of her mother’s sight, and who had seen me buy from the older girl, followed my wife and I out of the plaza and down the narrow cobblestone streets, hawking persistently as I pushed ahead. She stood barely mid-thigh high to me, and had a mouth like a longshoreman.

“Mister, you buy this from me, you rich, you can buy!”

“I don’t know – that cloth looks machine woven to me, No Gracias.”

“You lie mister – my mother made this with her own hands. See.”

“Oh yea, maybe on a machine,” I accused.

“You lie! You lie! Maybe you buy necklace for your wife, yes?”

“Look! Over there,” I pointed. “Your sister has three customers. Go help her!”

“She not my sister, you lie.”

My first mistake was to make eye contact; my second was conversation. I knew I had to ignore her completely, to be free of this full-court press, which would have embarrassed the Laker’s Derek Fisher, but these Mayan mountain girls made me curious, the way they dressed so similar to the mountain tribeswomen of Vietnam. The way the contentment shown on the faces of the elderly grandmothers seemed somehow eerily familiar. Familiar also was the way a mother’s eyes lit up when I asked to see an infant slung close to a breast, by the bright shawl that she wore. I would be shown an actual hand loom by the older Mayan woman, I was later to meet that day; this hand loom was almost identical to a Southeast Asia counterpart I had seen beside a Mountainard village hootch four decades earlier. Was this all a coincidence, a case of parallel evolution, or something else? Was there some real connection between these two peoples, buried deep within a prehistoric past as old as the rain forests that protected them on opposite sides of the globe?

There were just too many coincidences here: the way the women folded the large continuous circle of cloth back onto itself cinching it with a cloth belt about the waist, the way the males had largely abandoned the cloth with its clan-distinct woven colors for North American pants and t-shirts, even the way the women would hold open the arm’s width diameter of cloth around one who needed privacy while she relieved herself out in the fields or in the hills. The most glaring difference with these Mayans, of course was in the eruption of colors typical of the Mayan cloth, jarring yet somehow harmonious, as compared to the conservative black field with modest stripes of color used in the cloth woven by indigenous Southeast Asian tribes. But wasn’t this overflow of chaotic color appropriate to a part of the world where the Pacific and Cocos Plates were crushing tectonically into the Caribbean Plate, pushing up mountain ranges pregnant with red hot magma flowing from perfectly conical volcanoes, which burst from verdant, yellow sun washed, green rainforests. The volcanoes of Southeast Asia, like Dragon Mountain, were scores of millions of years past their prime and had long since ceased sending their spirit into the atmosphere and across the plateaus. Their strong but muted presence replicated itself in the quiet integrity of Mountainard weavings.

Had the first ancestors of these Mayans come across the Pacific on some huge floating snag? Had they somehow dispatched their captors, after being enslaved by some Neolithic seamen, and then drifted in their newly commandeered boat, across the huge Pacific Ocean on the warm equatorial counter current that leads directly from the Philippines to the Central American Isthmus? Were they hastened by a strong north wind, which this one time only, had overcome the Mid Pacific Doldrums, to deliver them, to new coastal plains, enriched by river flushed, volcanic highlands?

The second glaring difference was what came out of the mouths of some of these Mayan girls. It was a complete contrast to the modest and demure speech of their Asian cousins, rivaling the contrast in colors, of their cloth weavings. After two blocks of persistent hawking and “No gracias,” my wife and I turned to face our tiny nemesis, but my wife’s thirty-four years of dealing with Los Angeles high school juvenile delinquents, which she had condensed into one laser-like stare of disapproval and rebuke, could not even make a dent in this one who had made herself at home on these streets.

“Excuse me, I’m talking to your husband,” the tiny girl tossed matter-of-factly.

So, with my hands on my hips, I stared down at her sternly and scolded, “Donde esta su madre?”

“I don’t have any mother!” she shot back defiantly into my eyes, forgetting the one who had woven cloth with her own bare hands. So I ignored her completely, no eye contact, no response, nothing.

As she reached up with tiny asking fingers, stroking the ample hair on my forearm, I thought of the old man of the forest we had been riveted by two days earlier. He was stationed alongside the Mangrove River, amidst the egrets, the caymans, and the black hawk, bragging overhead, with a fresh caught fish in his talons. The hair on the old man’s forearms was thicker than mine, and repeated across his legs, back, chest and stomach. His huge black eyes were shining amidst his leathery black face and his chin was dripping of fruit pulp and juice, as he sat upright in a mango tree. Belayed by a prehensile tail, wrapped around a branch, he had reached out to the very ends of slender twigs, for orb after orb of red and green fruits, which he stuffed into his mouth one after another. How many people had he seen coming and going, through his forest, these past twenty thousand years? How many human cultures had risen and fallen, how much human potential had been lost or realized?

I thought of the Slum Dog Millionaire, whose movie we had seen aboard ship the previous night. Would these Mayan girls, with their back-sass and street smarts, be like the beggars, thieves, and con artists of Mumbai, made motherless by war, orphaned, organized and sent out into the towns and cities, by crime syndicates? Would they live off the charity, gullibility or moral depravity of whoever they could find? Was this mid-thigh high girl, with her over the top persistence, destined to become some pimp’s property? Or would she somehow, through family support, be able to hang onto the best of her traditional culture, while merging with the demands of a modern world? Surely she didn’t talk this way at home, to her family, if she indeed had a family.

After having ignored away our tiny stalker, and after having discovered the old Mayan weaver, in the back of an off-plaza Mercadito, who had shown me how to tell the difference between hand, foot loom, and machine woven cloth, who had sold me a sample, and asked me questions about those other mountain tribes people, seven thousand miles away; we retraced our way back. As we reentered the main plaza, there she was again, the tiny Mayan tourist hawk, or was it her twin sister or another holding up a brilliantly decorated tote bag, exploding with embroidered Mayan motifs?

“Mister, you buy this. Yes?”

“No gracias, it’s probably made in China anyway.”

“No! You made in China! This made Guatemala!” she blasted back at me.

If only we could harness this pride and defiance for the betterment of humanity. And, perhaps we somehow are. The Mountainard have survived continuous wars and advancing immigrations and invaders. These Mayans are surviving as well. Both are becoming a twenty-first century tourist phenomenon. Is this just another cosmic coincidence, or is the convergence of almost extinct indigenous peoples, from the far corners of two or three continents, at this one point in history, a sign to be taken note of?

I remembered another scene from my time in Vietnam, a velvety hanging on the wall of an African American soldier’s billet. It depicted a late-teen Mountainard girl, sitting on a rug, in a much too short, tribal dress, looking straight at the viewer, through the upper halves of her deep slightly downcast eyes – a modern day Pocahontas, but with her indigenous features and hair mixed with the blood traits of Africa.

Was this merely some soldier’s personalized pin-up fantasy, or was it a much deeper yearning for some semblance of the unity and peace, within our human biosphere, which had been promised to us, by God and Gene Rodenberry?

Uhuru, where have you gone?

Copyright 2009, Thomas Sandor.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

As I walk on the pavement, pouring rain.
Rain pours in buckets,
Never so much rain in this Golden State,
Cars speed on the highway, splashing water like speed boats.
Clouds hang heavy, dark and wet.
Plucking and squeezing squirts of life force.
Everybody and anybody is busy or looks busy, helter and skelter they go
Cars pass with splashing water and mud,
Joggers jog paying no attention without even a nod,
Gutters overflowing, gale force winds crushing the trees
As I scurry along, scanning the walkway to clear off any debris
I catch a glance,
The wind howls like a freight train,
I move closer and closer
IT IS OLD GLORY!
Lying on the side of the road with twigs intertwined,
Silt and soil stained from the gushing water.
People pass, cars pass . . .
Nobody bothered to pick her up!
A mist hangs with this somber moment.
I pick her up, all damp, dirtied.
She felt warm to my touch as a lover would.
One night I dreamt of her,
Never to expect, a sudden chance meeting so soon,
I felt my emotions rise with anger, as nobody cared to take her to safety,
Generations bled for her glory,
As I caress her colors, the wilted stars of the spangled banner,
Memories transpire of lost images of yesteryear,
I rush to the warm glow of my home sweet home.
There I rest her in eternity of that meeting on that fateful day, remembered.

Copyright 2009, Charles I. Perera.

As a young child, I sit proudly
upon my uncle’s pony Prince
posing in the bright light
while visiting my grandma’s farm in Illinois
how innocently trusting we are of this animal
whose reins are not even tied to a post
as my Mom shoots my portrait.

In my young teens we move
out to this middle of nowhere
to live on a nearby dairy farm.
One day while riding with friends
this same pony shot off like a rocket without warning
through the neighbors field
breezing past all the rest of the horses
(that were only casually galloping
while their riders conversed)
Prince was determined to win the race
in his own competitive instinct.

Fast, faster then fast as lightening
Prince bolted while I lost hold of his reins
grabbing around his furiously rocking neck
feeling his strong muscles straining against my arms
becoming slippery from the sweat of his soft red fur.
Unnervingly, swept away with his pure unbridled energy
the melodic sound of his muffled repetitious hoofs
on the enormous open field
the barren field
which became a blblurrrrrrrr
and seemed to stretch out endlessly.

Riding like the wind
fearing for my life
worried that I would strangle the poor beast
I grasped for something else to hold on to
His mane was too difficult to hold on to at that speed
the sweat on my hands made it worse
Next thing I know,
I was flying in a backwards summersault
and hitting the ground so quickly
that I thought that I was dead {pause}
as I had knocked out my breathe. {big pause}

I don’t know how long I lay there
motionless, completely winded.
But when my breathe came back
I stood up and noticed
my friends had caught up with me.
I walked over and took Prince’s reins
who had amazingly stopped on his own nearby
remounted and rode home.
I didn’t dare tell my parents what happened because
I was afraid–
so afraid that they wouldn’t let me go riding again!

Copyright 2009, Georgette Buckley.

After winding down from a busy day at work, my buddy Saurave, his wife Winnie, and I head out to P.F. Chang’s – a routine watering hole in Torrance, California. Specializing in Chinese food, their concept is akin to mixing Blues and Hip Hop, a cross between the old world culinary secrets and modern day conceptual interior designs. A place that attracts the wallet with Feng Shui methods, it is kind of ironic to be spending through your nose. Oh, what the heck – that is the cost of having good friends, I suppose. A few iced apple martinis with Grey Goose vodka and some cherry plum wine will do the trick of calming anyone’s nerves.

The décor is decadent and delectable in Chinese themes, with huge horse statues at the entrance attracting the most discerning of clients like moths to a flame. The hostesses are youthful, chiseled like Michelangelo’s Greek demigods, with sharp features and they may greet you with a luscious smile that envelopes you with vigor; you have to pinch yourself, so that you do not become speechless. Or hear the smack swishing past your head that almost gives you a hairline fracture, as you duck your friend’s wife, who is mouthing the words “eyes front.” Oh well, the joys of being single. Enjoying God’s creations with my eyes only, I hope that it’s not a sin to just enjoy the moment, as I am a devout Catholic.

We are ushered to a table overlooking the bar, well stocked with poisons of your choice. I have to have my usual apple martini well chilled. We order our drinks with spicy pomegranate tea as a supplement to axe the hangover. We scan the restaurant, as we like to people-watch while we select from the menu. The table is bare minus the table cloth; the marble top glistens from being polished and reflected by the candle that stands at attention as if hearing our conversation. Then there are the chopsticks, knives and forks with ivory plates. Crisp napkins are neatly folded to match the design of a waiter’s cloth. Three glass bottles stand in unison on the table top next to the candle, containing chile paste, hot mustard and rice wine vinegar, with two small jars containing soy sauce and pickled onions. Splurge!

I know the menu by heart, a frequent customer to this brand, but not this location. I already know what I will have: the “Kung Pao Shrimp and Scallops,” accompanied by a small bowl of white rice. I have to mind my manners, so I wait for my friends to decide. So here we go, as an appetizer we will enjoy the chicken lettuce cups for the three of us. The main courses: Kung Pao Shrimp and Scallops for me, my friend Saurave has the Catfish in Black Bean Sauce and Winnie sticks with Sweet and Sour Chicken. All accompanied by white rice. The drinks are brought to the table by another server who has a very sweet personality and is very flirtatious. If looks could kill – she must be an import from some other exotic location. Well, I think it has to do with the diversity of ethnic cultures in Los Angeles.

We make small talk and watch other patrons’ progress with their meals and merriment as we order another round of drinks. I always gaze at the Chinese horse paintings above the bar which depicts a horse sale, where Chinese noblemen are trading and examining the majestic specimens. Their servants are scurrying around with attributes of caring. I am always mesmerized and transported to that era despite the hustle and bustle of this restaurant.

The smells, the sounds, infants crying, parents disciplining their children, the laughter are like a synchronized symphony of an orchestra at play – going through their sheet music in continuous repetition like a well-oiled conveyor belt.

The food arrives and makes a grand entrance, made more enticing by the eloquence of the server who dispenses with lighting speed and a quick explanation of each plate as it hits the table top. We are hungry and send our cares to the wind: dive in. Now it is the other patrons’ turn to watch and critique our posture, using of utensils and the consumption of the meal.

The meal was divine – no dessert this time. Time to pay and part our ways, for another busy day awaits in the concrete jungle of the offices that pay for this meal.

Copyright 2009, Charles Perera.

I still see the robe – a coat of many colors. I had come into this men’s store looking for something special for my husband. And there it was, hanging on a rack, becoming to me. It reminded me of pictures of Joseph’s coat of many colors that I had seen as a child. Since his middle name was Joseph, it was perfect. Little did I know what the robe would mean to me.

Needless to say, he loved it and called it his Joseph’s coat. Many years later, when he was suffering from lung cancer, he said his magical coat eased his pain and comforted him. When he died I hung it on the hook in the bathroom, thinking nothing of it.

Now I was alone – first time in my 70 plus years – a new feeling. I could eat whenever and whatever I wanted, sleep when I wanted, dress or not dress. About six months of this and I was overwhelmed with a dark cloud. I was lonely and wanted to cry. Not thinking, one night I slipped into his robe and an immediate calm came over me. I noticed that it still smelled like him. So for a year or so, I snuggled in this magical robe. This worn and frayed magical robe comforted me, lifted my spirits, and I knew I was not alone!

Copyright 2009, Nancydee Golberg.

It was the year I turned 16; my junior year in high school to be exact. All summer I thought about how wonderful it would be to own and wear a pair of Jordache jeans. I admit I didn’t have a lot to think about in those days. Jordache jeans were the big rage, and all the “cool kids” owned multiple pairs. I don’t remember ever asking my parents for them, but I thought about it a lot.

Stylish clothing wasn’t a necessity in our household, so the basics are what we got. A good portion of my clothing came from the VFW Thrift Store. I didn’t care, well, at least not until my junior year.

My early years found me quiet and shy. I dreaded being the center of attention. The only way I would express myself, aside from my writing, was through dance. I felt free, and my body allowed me to do things that you generally didn’t do walking down the street. That’s why I auditioned and joined the dance and drill team. I felt like I belonged to a group. The only thing missing was that prized pair of jeans. I was reminded of this every time I saw Melissa and Gabrielle; their perfect looks only embellished more in the Jordache embroidery splashed across their perky teenage backsides.

My sixteenth birthday was fast approaching and I knew from past experience I would get a new outfit. I was having a pizza party, so I wanted something special. You can imagine my surprise when we arrived at the Oceanside Mall. I don’t recall the store, but I perused the racks and there they were, a large display of beautiful, dark blue denim Jordache. I casually picked up a pair in a size six and sniffed the new fabric.  I was trying them on before I realized it. The denim kissed my legs with a subtle whisper that said, “You have arrived.”

I wore that pair of jeans to my small birthday gathering. Six schoolmates shared my celebration, all of us sporting our favorite version of Jordache. Mine had bright blue metallic embroidery on the back pockets (at least that is what I recall). I purposely tucked in my shirt so the sparkle would pop from my not-so-perky backside. The night was great, but you know, most of those girls didn’t become real friends.

I probably wore my Jordache a couple dozen times. The waistband cut into my belly and they were so form fitting that the fabric creases hurt when I sat. My old, worn in Levi 501s started looking fabulous. The prized Jordache jeans quickly become hand-me-downs to my younger sister.

To this day I am not a fashion maven. Comfy sweats and pajamas are my fashion mainstay. In fact, as I write this, I am snuggled up in an old, raggedy pair of flannel pajama bottoms once owned by my dad. They are my favorite, maybe I should have written about those.

Copyright 2009, Corrie Ann Gray.

Two slender tree limbs had been lashed horizontally, to the short ladder, leading to the opening of her small, thatch roofed hootch, which was elevated above the dry earth on six stilt legs. Stripped of their bark, worn and smoothed by years of use, the upper member supported the coarse black raw silk threads that rose from its twin below. There she worked at this simple loom, aware, but without obvious recognition of me, the soldier at her back, watching carelessly as she performed this ritual that such a soul, so disconnected from its roots could not possibly understand.

There was no seat or mat before her work station. She squatted on the bare earth, not on the balls of her feet like a catcher behind home plate, but flat on each bare foot, which hugged the beaten clay soil. Clad in the same raw black raw silk cloth now coming to life upon her loom, her upward pointed knees, supported the brown, weathered arms, whose hands worked the shuttle back and forth across the threads. This Mountainard squat, from the central, rural highlands of Vietnam, where the first invaders were now embroiled in a civil war with each other, though uncomfortable to us westerners, was as natural to her as crossing a leg.

I was killing time, in ’69, after a routine outer perimeter patrol, searching for signs of these civil warriors. My M-16 and M-79 dangled casually from my shoulders, and a bandolier of launcher grenades, hung diagonally across my front. Despite the lack of a common language, or any reason for normal curiosity, my almost omnipresent, mental annoyance was somehow lulled to stillness, by this sliver of village life, which washed over me in the late afternoon breeze, like a meditation. It created space in a polluted mind, for the haunting, voiceless dialogue, which would echo, during the coming days of boredom, frenzy and infrequent sleep.

“I weave the shuttle in and out of the standing threads like the bird that makes a home for its young. Then I change threads, creating the colors of the forest spiders which taught the first of our people to weave the red and gold and green patterns, distinctive to our clan, and identical to all the cloth woven in this village. I compress the threads tightly as Grandmother and mother taught me, and as their grandmothers and mothers taught them. In these days of the fire winds which scatter the people like forest leaves, it is vital that I make the cloth tight and strong.

“Some have abandoned our cloth for cast-offs of the new invaders. The women who weave must convince them to carry the cloth of our clan always with them. How else will the ancestors recognize them from the spirit world? When they wander to the wrong mountain or the wrong valley, and their bodies are taken apart by the thunder that falls to earth, how will the clans know who their people are, and where their bones should be returned? Will not their souls wail forever, without bits of our strong, clan-distinct cloth amongst their parts, to give them a name? Like the wind that searches for its beginning, their spirits will never find the place of all the people who were, and all who will be.

“Our ancestors have protected us since all of time, even amongst invaders, but we dare not break the chain of their protection. We must keep the cloth which names us as one of the people. In these days of falling thunder and liquid fire, when orange death drifts softly from the great bird flocks, to cripple the unborn, and the dragon that flies, grinds its teeth over the sacred hills. We will remain.

“I worry for none of this; within the continuous circle of woven cloth, there is nothing to fear. When my need comes, in the fields or on the hills, my sisters unfold and open the circle of cloth, to the span of my outstretched arms, and I return to the earth, a portion of its gifts. The women who surround me, draw protection from the wind, the sun, the earth and water. I am safe then, as in the times before and after breath is taken. When I refold the circle of cloth, back onto itself, and cinch it about my waist, I repeat the cycle of protection within the small circle, as within the infinite.

“Grandmother told us that the cloth of our people, when properly woven, has the power to alter the spirit of others, and that even the heart of an invader, can be changed forever, when he sees a woman weaving the cloth of our people, uniting our ancestors with the living, opening the ears and the eyes of his trapped soul to the message, of they who are forever. I will see if I can open this one at my back.”

When we have a great many
The meaning of each is small,
But when we have only a few,
The meaning of each is great.

Copyright 2009, Thomas Sandor.

I have a leather jacket that has a sentimental value. And have been wearing it ever since I bought it nine years ago. It has aged drastically, small rips not noticeable, faded in some parts but it has stood the tests of time. It is hard to come by such good work, which is durable as my brown leather Alfani Jacket. Guess where it was made? It would be your guess as mine — in China. Hey, but you have to give these Chinese the credit; they are very versatile in making profit. For once they have a produced something very durable.

I bought this jacket when I was employed at Macy’s. It was on sale and to top that off I had my employee discount which saved a few dollars. But in the end it was a good investment. Shell: Genuine Leather, Lining: 50% Nylon, 50% Acetate. Filler: 100% Polyester WPL 8046. So think of this as many parts coming together to make this genuine product for a Men’s clothing line. From Paris to Rome, Milan to New York the best product for the cheapest bling.

Copyright 2009, Charles Perera.

Photos from workshop:

Nancy and Corrie work on their New Mexico-inspired collages.


Linda puts glue on an element that will become part
of a collage that depicts how a move to England changed her life.


Georgette stands behind her large mystical work of art.


Charles asks others to contribute their reactions to his portrayal
of war-torn Sri Lanka so as to make it an interactive piece.


Anne begins to pack up after working on a large map of her life.