Coral with Patria

On my writing dune, alone. Just reread day one of the Encampment. This morning after Julia and Taina had gone off to the Senoras and Machi had gone back to sleep, when I was just getting started writing, Patria showed up to take me with her to Coral. We walked there. When we got there the Justice Works storefront was bolted and locked. “Good sign. They must be at the Tribunal or at the Camp, doing something.” She took me to a pharmacy with a coin operated copy machine. She had me make one copy of Ori's photograph and wrote for me with a felt tip pen, Han Visto a Este Hombre...and my cell phone number. Then we made 20 copies, one at a time, one Island medio coin each. We walked back to Justice Works and taped Ori's photo in three places with Patria's tape. “Now, let's go to Guardia hangouts in Coral.” We put up photos by a bar called La Llorona and a fonda called Migajas across from La Plaza. I studied the faces, mostly men, photos and copies, some just up, covered with tape, others faded and tattered. Then Patria looked at her watch and sent me back to the Encampment alone. I watched her walk toward the hill. I expected to be asked to her casita, so far she always came to me. I felt lost. I headed the way I thought we'd come and soon was literally lost. I walked the narrow maze of stone streets of Coral, no sidewalks, pastel colored houses wall to wall, doors flush to the street. I stepped around huge rain gouged holes. I imagined I was walking to the sound of the surf but found myself again at the plaza. I sat for a few minutes on a bench across from La Llorona watching young Guardias go in and out. Some stood and studied the wall of photographs of the disappeared. I was in a trance of watching and hunger when someone sat himself beside me on the bench. “Dona Marina, bendicion.” He leaned to kiss my cheek. I turned to hug Franz. So happy to see him. He invited me to join him for lunch in La Llorona.
We sat at the middle table. I studied the vinyl flannel backed table cloth white with a design of clusters of huge purple grapes. I could see the bench I had been sitting on. “I haven't found your husband yet but that doesn't mean he's not there. I'm not everywhere. But my people are everywhere. Somebody will have seen him and if he's there we'll find him.” That phrase, 'if he's there' silenced me. I could feel him read me. “Is there a reason he would be in the high security sectors?” He didn't need to say it, the high mortality sectors. He kept looking at me. “How would you know? A month ago several Island freedom fighters went on hunger strike...” I nodded. “What did they do with them?” Franz had ordered two lunch plates for us and now ______ brought a mound of rice and beans and pulpo. “Near the Camp hospital, where they can force feed them. I've got a guy there.” Franz walked me to the old Carretera Naval and pointed me in the direction of the Encampment. Machi was just waking up when I got home. Julia had taken Taina to the Senoras' complex of shacks to play with other little girls while the women worked on the rice, beans and meat for the evening meal. I told him my story as if all my findings had been by intention, not that Patria dragged me into Coral and Franz stumbled into me in the plaza. He'd texted Franz several times and gotten no response. He took off into Coral himself.
Writing alone on the dune. Two young women are sitting a few feet away from me, engaged in intense conversation. I get their tone, intimate and urgent, but not the words. Closer to the sand another pair of women, still younger lean toward each other speaking with their hands. I wish I had Patria with me and could be talking with her and not myself.
I've waited all my life for the day when I'd have time to write and now that day is here. It's time to begin to take a look at the few old journals I packed, what I stored in my cruzer, what's in my laptop. Penstrokes and keystrokes that mark my life, on purpose and with intention or in spite of purpose or intention. The sand is hot, the olive green seagrape leaves glisten. If I am in paradise, let me notice.
10.WRITING ON THE DUNE
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Week later show time
Machi came back with Taina. He must have gone by the Senoras on his way back from Coral. They raced past me straight into the water. He said nothing of his errand into Coral. I watched them from my writing dune. Machi avoided my gaze. He did that when he was out most of the night. I avoided his, afraid to set him off, show my confusion and sadness that looked to him like disappointment and judgment. He yelled at me again before he left last night about not getting off my ass to look for Ori. So I showed him when I had news for him when he woke up. Did he think I could't just go to the Camp gate and ask is Ori in? Or could I? Now at least I knew how to find Justice Works.
This morning, like every morning,Taina woke him up. She jumps on top of him first thing. He had maybe two hours of sleep. He pushed her way, gently and Julia scooped her up. My brain was lit up from inside so maybe his was too.) I was never fully asleep. Someday soon my body was going to crash and I would get sick. But for now, I was awash with brain glowing adrenalin. Sometime today I had to find a way to get online and report to unemployment. It was Wednesday and I was due to report in. Machi said there was a branch of NeoBank in Coral where I could get my money. Whom to ask where there's wifi, or an internet cafe? Was my laptop still charged? Where to charge it?
Today we went through our morning routine. (We already have one.) We ate rice and beans left over from dinner, even Taina. Then Julia went off to sort beans and clean rice with her new friends, Las Senoras de los Frijoles the Bean Ladies, who cook huge vats of beans and rice and sometimes fish. Julia thinks one of them will somehow lead her to finding David.
I like to write while those two play in the water. I've nearly filled one notebook. Where will I buy another? Writing as always is my only constant. Figuring out how to build our shelter didn't make me forget to write. Surviving usually distracts from art, except when everything else has been removed it seems. What will I do when I run out of the blank notebooks I brought with me? I didn't run across any quincallas today in Coral. Machi said there was nothing in the town, the stores in Coral are almost bare. Should I be writing in my laptop? How would I ever recharge it here? Machi has figured out how to charge our phones. Another problem Machi will have to help me solve. He's made friends who help him find fish and water and tarps. He's found electricity and keeps our phones recharged. Ask A if there's a way to get wifi when it's secured? Wld a smartphone have online access in such an Island..Wld the navy's towers be accessible.
Tech generally: Machi's smartphone...Wifi hotspots...cell towers...pho ne time sellers at streetlights

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Maybe by then I will have gone native and forgotten how to write.

I like to watch Machi (Cheito) and Taina play in the water. They spend hours every day on the beach. A few minutes ago Taina let go my hand and ran into the water calling out, “Titi Marina You're walking too slow.” I see it's true. I'm walking slowly. When did I step out of that speeding City body? I've only been here a few days and already I've lost track of exactly how many days. For Taina this is paradise. I am in paradise with her and Machi right now until my eyes drift to the right where the mesh fence of the prison Camp glistens in the sunlight. Before he followed Taina into the water Machi looked at me, my notebooks, and shook his head. He wants me to get off my ass and start looking for his Father. Can't he tell I don't know how to begin ? I am not a woman of action.

After Taina ran into the water and Machi ran after her I slipped off my sandals, walked barefoot, dug my toes into the packed wet sand. I walked away from the shore and the dry sand burnt my feet and so I ran to the dunes, my writing dunes. Already I'm finding my hiding places here, this spot in the shade of the seagrapes where I can watch over those two playing. I wish I was like Machi, convinced we will find Ori and get him free.
02 16, 1711
How did I get here? Would I ever have gotten free of the burocrazy if it hadn't come undone? If Machi's urgency hadn't coincided with another round of layoffs? It was so fast. After almost 20 years the end was so fast. Solly called me in first thing one morning, asked me if I would make a “personal sacrifice” because I am old enough to retire. “Will you take a humanitarian layoff so several teachers will not need to be laid off.” She made it clear it was a choice. I could choose if I made the right choice. So I did.
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Even here at the Encampment where everything is strange, there is the quotidian. I just thought of Ori someplace in that Camp and the quotidian vanished and I am in the raw. Ori was my husband, is my husband, if he still lives. Where is he? I can't picture it. Can't picture him anymore. My mind falls into the raw inner place, that nobody's home inside me place, that just got raped, just immigrated, just got hit, or just hit my own son place where I'm gone...

Taina calls to me from the water. She's a hand reaching into the sinkhole. I put the notebook back inside my bag and carry my possessions to the water. You never know who may be lurking in the seagrapes that anchor the dune, ready to steal my secrets.

I splashed in the water with Taina and now I'm back on the dune, restored to the present. Thank God for children. What a burden it must be for them to save adults from our terror again and again. Maybe theirs is the hardest job on earth.

colluding with your own oppression ws 4

BUROCRAZY TRANSITION
Week 35
Machi is crawling on all fours in the surf, following Taina who crawls in the shallow water to pretend to swim. I love to watch him with her. He's like the boy he was, the boy who climbed onto my lap and threw himself into my arms and called me Mami; the boy I took long walks with to the donut place, bought roller blades with. We learned to roller blade together on the river walk or he learned and I tried...the boy whose best friend I was, with whom I stayed up until two in the morning watching heavy metal bands on tv. Head Banger's Ball

The boy who told me the names and adventures of his imaginary friends (Bullet, Bwocket, Black, Nick, Skyman and Jingle Bell), that vast collection of people with their big and little and good and bad alters...And here he is restored, returned. Let him play for a few days free from the burdens of manhood.
(Taina ran to me from the water, lifting her knees, calling out, “I barely touch the sand.” She threw her wet body against me, dripped on my notebook. “That's a mini notebook.” She peered at my scribbles in green ink. She gave me her brilliant grin. “The ink is making a beach where I wet it.” She laughed and was gone and my journal has a watercolor of the sea.
She challenges Machi to a race and they race into the surf, his knees pump up and down, until the water comes to Taina's waist and no further because that's as far as she will go. The water is flat and clear and blue green all the way to where the sand bar makes a yellow stain. Beyond it is a deep blue stripe and there the sky meets the sea. So many blues. I look away from the glinting fence of the Camp in the far distance to my right. Is Ori there? Ori is there. Do I remember him? Do I miss him? Do I long for him?
I long for my baby boy. My Machi. I long to go back in time and undo his hurts. I want to have been another woman than I was, to have known then what I know now.
Will I ever understand where the other boy came from? Street Machi..My red diaper homeboy, red diaper thug...What does he know that I don't know? Where has he been and what has he seen in those places where I can't go with him? He grew up into a world that has no use for him, one of the 80 percent superfluous. I was of the class who has a job because others don't. He is of the class who doesn't and never will. (Not unless, until we make the revolution. Not until we change the whole thing, change away from this system of work being the fewest number of people working to produce the most of what can be sold, so that fewer and fewer can get richer and richer, change to a system of work being everybody doing what must be done to make all of our lives go well)..I look around me and everywhere there is work that needs doing, there is work being done. Will we create a society organized around the work that needs doing before the society organized around making billions for a few destroys us all?
While we puzzle out how to get to Ori (if he indeed is in the Camp. I still have moments when I believe he finally just got sick of me and left me), I've set myself the task of piecing together a memoir of my wage enslavement, or maybe it is of my wage liberation. I have to make myself read the few journals I brought with me from the burocracy days, before it became the burocrazy...and of the burocrazy when it went rogue and then dead ...(Or before I could tell it was crazy...) If I can figure out how to charge my laptop I want to go through files I barely remember. And I have my thumb drive. What did I save there? About or from my whole life. Can I make that avalanche of documents make sense?... I order myself to get over the humiliation and embarrassment of revisiting my thoughts, the same thoughts over and over, my hurts, the grooves and recordings of my mind. I hear my Papi's voice, the question he used to ask me when I looked sad or dared to complain about my school, or my block or above all, exile, “What did the Lord put you here to learn?”
Taina called to me. “Mira Titi Marina...casi nadando.” She floated on her back cradled by Machi's arms. I waved to her.
I'd plunged into the raw again. The idea that we are here to learn, where does it come from? The need to impose narrative on everything, moral narrative...Here I was, here we all were, essentially homeless, living in a lean to, exposed to rain, wind and each other, not knowing where our next meal was coming from, settled alongside a torture prison camp...What does the Lord want me to learn now? What was the Lord thinking? I envied my Papi his Faith...Although I saw him struggle to hold onto it whenever he landed in the raw, whenever the thought fought to emerge inside his brain, as it did in mine when we first lived in the City and nothing made any sense, “either God is evil or he doesn't exist.”
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