Author: miguel

I know the truth.
Forget all other truths.
No need for people
anywhere on this earth
to struggle.
For what? Poets?
Lovers? Generals?

Look: it is evening,
Look: it is nearly night.
The wind is level now,
the air is wet with dew.
Soon all of us will sleep
Beneath the earth,
We, who never let each other
Sleep above it.

Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941)

None of us are strangers to darkness. I don’t mean the darkness that ends each day with the sun setting in the west like a postcard photograph. I don’t mean the even darker darkness of Nature, the rising rivers that overflow towns, the winds that roar throughout the night uprooting trees and blasting our homes into splinters and heaps of bricks and twisted metal.

I mean the darkness of other humans who invade our lives against our wishes. I mean drones and tanks and guided missiles that deliberately annihilate human beings and destroy their hospitals, schools and homes and churches. I mean lawmakers and politicians who regard the murder of children as the normal, acceptable costs of “doing business” in freedom’s land and bravery’s home.

We’re supposed to light candles, not curse the darkness. Sometimes it feels impossible not to curse darkness; there’s so much of it. And lighting candles seems so useless and inadequate: do prayers and candles ever bring back the ones we love from their graves into our arms?

Candles come in many forms. Every Spring, tulips bloom and then their petals wither and collapse back into the earth. I hope a year from now we all will still be here to see again the light they bring into our lives.

Perhaps the title of this painting seems inaccurate. After all, the image many people have of California, especially those who have never been here, is one of beaches, Hollywood, palm trees, convertibles and sunny skies. When I painted this scene from the side of a hill years ago however, I was more interested in other visions of this state that has been my home for more than half of my life.

But that was then, and I haven’t returned since to the hillside to see what the view looks like now. Undoubtedly Route 160 still exists, and so does the power plant and, in the distance, the Antioch Bridge crossing the San Joaquin River. Without the slightest doubt, there are more cars on the freeway.

Perhaps the lunar landscape carved out by dirt bikes and ATVs in the center of the painting still exists. But California being California, I imagine the orange trees and everything else have all been plowed under and paved over with housing tracts and strip malls. Does a hillside still overlook the view? I wonder if I should return and paint it one more time.

My names are not important, nor his. I am a mystery he has loved for years. We swim in the sea together like twins in a womb. When he forgets that I am present within him, there is no joy or laughter in his life.

I feel warmth from the sun and a breeze from the sea that brushes the curtains against my skin. He tells me Winter will be here soon. But I am indifferent to hours and afternoons. Days pass into years without my notice or care. The towers above the cliffs will crumble into specks of powder and drift in the wind. The cliffs will plummet back into the sea.

I am beyond passing. My hair has never lost its glow. My waist will not thicken, my breasts will never sag, my beauty does not fade. He will die, like all my loves. I will not. I am as old as I will ever be.