The flight of the condor

A novella in seven acts by Gordie Swartzman

Infused with the septum of possibility are we all in the free nights before the dawn, when the chill penetrates to the marrow of sensitivity and we cuddle in the warmth of our last dreams. Chinko, rested easy knowing that tomorrow held nothing out of the ordinary; more of the same in this country is just a blessing in disguise. Overly, so. Overly so she thought, trying to rack her mind for another brain fart, another stimulating ounce of possibility from this, her penultimate dream of a wan night. Travel instills the quality for my dreams, she thought, half a mind to turn over and go back into it, showing them her mettle and half indicating the meaning behind her statement in a slow drawl excuse the the lab “Caught dreaming” she thought.

A day, a night and yet another day pledged to further the cause, yet somehow lacking in detail, like the shimmering of an imagined spirit or aura around us all. Can you imagine that people actually saw things like that in the days of ‘belief’. Chinko longer for those days like something out of a book; happy ending and all, visualized by that epic of all time ‘Gone with the Wind’. I can hardly imagine a time of such insufferable caring and romance, she sighed wistfully. She thought of her own ‘bro-mate’, Kuster, his serious devotion and almost didactic insistance on equality in everything – like dishes, clean up and even auto repair. How she was to deal with the manuals again is uncertain. Last time she had omitted to reconnect the gas pump and had gas over the whole back of the garage. Still, he insists on parity in this. In this and ‘all things’ he would say, seemingly unaware of those simple biological facts that made them different in wiring, let alone disposition. No wonder I want to continue the dream. At least its my own thing. Kuster would try to muscle in on this act if he knew about it, she thought.

Well, girl, time to kick it into gear. Time to sort out the cookies from the crumbs and claim the day. She slowly careened from prone to akimbo, carefully lifting limbs singly and shaking them out like acorns off an oak. Feels good to move and groove, she thought. Kuster has been up an hour or more, sitting trancelike in prajna forensics, or whatever his latest craze was. Time our for zen always preceded life for him. He has tried tantric stupors, criya sits and zitzes, lakshmi movement and now forensics, like somehow the secret is in changing zen suits every six months. And then laying it on me until I told him I was doing prone-botics and found something about it on the web. Now he can’t know for sure when I’m sleeping and I can claim hours of robotics in the wee hours. Cold comfort for the shit I get from that man, she thought. Did I say claim the day. I’m still hosting the past. She slid into a svelte wrap and careened around the corner of the bedstead, hell bent for the shower and her familiar warm cosy’s – her duck soap and bear sponge that were faithful as parents in the shower – there for her alone because Kuster was way beyond such sentimentality. Still, they were always there to greet her and for that, in this time of ambient cacophony, was a blessing. The OM tone of the forensic chant accosted her faintly as it was drowned by the shower drone and the hot lobs hit her, sending her back, for a moment, into her dream. If only. Travel warms the mind and feeds my dreams she thought. Travel and the day of the condor; a day so long ago but seeming like yesterday. Why do the dreams carry more weight than reality? Why can’t I actualize, impel my life the way of my images. No more Kuster, no more Bush hegemony, no more inept malice; just pure action and reaction. Time and the way of things. Ain’t like a chance for it, she thought. The shower, slowly faded to the towel as she rubbed incessantly, wondering what she was rubbing in or rubbing out. Water! Well at least we still have that; though warnings from the surgeon general that water was now damaging to health rang in her ears. But who believed him since he announced that there was a terrorism gene in semites and advocated for rounding them all up and having them genetically excised. Seems like a bad dream, she thought and then wondered if it really was one. But that shower felt so warm on her skin and left a sheen of almost contentment as she faced the next insult. Breakfast now consisted of a rice packet with miso crisp, sold under the name of “Organniex” and breathing of corporate greed. It was the minimum protein at the maximum possible cost; now that breakfast became a trade name and joined dinner in controlled certitude. Lunch was certainly next; only left hanging by the difficulty of bringing the same alimentation to the office as now force fed to the home. The office, oddly was the last bastion of individuality; as company lunches ran their course and were replaced by creative outsourcing and eventually free form lunch, strongly discouraged but tolerated because surveys showed there was no money in it; and advertising went instead toward coffee klatches and elevenses; a hyper bar designed to fill in everything except that deeper hunger which no sauce could assuage. They can take it all and leave me hungry, she thought as she skipped the packet and prepared instead a lunch of bacon rinds and creem-cola, torte with a twist she thought, with an apple, cored, bored and stored as it said in the Wa State adverts (so clever). The trick always was to remove the adver-wrap with its high stick profile, from the apple without blotching the skin. She checked the year on the apple, because nowadays they are trying to unload ancient history on us with the reduced output this year; the bulk going toe China for outsource debt payment. Funny, the Chinese don’t get the ad-wrap and won’t take it. How do they get away with it? She thought. Something in the deep past that bothered her; like going to the bank and finding she could only get paid in yen or take food instead. She had a yen to see through the damn yen, which could be used but were taken only grudgingly.