We never know how much time we have left. I encourage you, my audience, to begin where you are to build a life of great meaning, of greatness, of awesomeness. The path will be as diverse as you are: painting, selling, writing, traveling, charity work, baby sitting, keeping your home neat and sparkling, visiting neighbors, praying, taking a class, whatever. Just do it!
Go deep, go high, go wide, go far!
“I Sit in Silence Next to the Angel of Death”
A short story.
I sit in silence next to the Angel of Death while they lower my aunt Lola down to the hole in the ground. The little angel sits next to me, white plaster, mostly smooth, except where the rains and the heat have taken chunks off him. He plays a guitar, but no one hears. The relatives around my aunt cry and wail lifting their arms up to the sky and lowering their heads toward the descending coffin, in a blur of red, black, white, and flowery yellow and purple. They have to be the biggest liars. Haven’t I heard them countless times talk about how horrible Aunt Lola was? I even heard her oldest son, Rogelio, once say she deserved to die. Well, there you have it! She is as dead as Captain Bill, the man whose bones turn into dust underneath my feet. Father decided to build a two-room house right over Captain Bill’s tomb, one room for my brother Julio and me, and another for Mother and him. We cook outside on a metal sheet with coals underneath, and we make our necessities in a deep hole Father dug behind those trees over there. Julio and I play around the tombs when we come back from school, running around, and hiding among a couple of hundred monuments, being careful we do not destroy what other families have built. That is what you do when you live in a cemetery. Our teacher says the city is overpopulated and that the poor people have no other place to go.
The cemetery stretches far into the distance. There must be hundreds of families living here. A neighbor takes a bunch of us kids to the school in town in his horse cart, down the road where they brought Aunt Lola, the one they use for the important dead. Aunt Lola was lucky because the woman she cleaned for, the one that lives in the mansion on the hill gave her a plot where we can bury her. She did not care Aunt Lola had done it with her husband and had children with him. She really was a good woman. I pray my mother is not so good with my father, if she ever finds him, like I did, in their own bed with another woman. I peeked behind the curtain and saw my father’s hips rise and fall, slowly, on this unknown woman, while Mother was out selling her tortillas. Miserable creep! He is a liar too. I ask my Angel of Death why all these people behave so. His silence tells me much.
His silence teaches me to wait, to be patient, to be different, to know nothing around me is real, that everything one day will disappear: the people, the town, the huts in the cemetery, the cemetery itself, the lies, the gossip, the hate. His silence tells me what my grandmother told me many times: You are not stupid, you are special. Keep dreaming; keep your wild side; keep staring at the clouds. And when you have lived a while, and you have plump breasts and curved hips, forget everything we have taught you and be a child again. That is what she told me many times before we lowered her to the ground. Maybe grandma lives inside the angel.
My brother asks me why I call this little plaster baby, the Angel of Death. What else could I call him? We live in this cemetery, and this is where I met him, so soft to the touch, so white, so quiet. Do you not see he plays for all the dead, and since the people started coming here to build their huts, running from the law and who knows what else, he, my Angel of Death, plays for the living too? The Angel of Death tells me, in his silence among the tombs that one day my little brother and I are going to leave the cemetery, and that the world is not going to trap us in its lies. He says we are going to be free to be who we truly are. He tells me we are going to be truly alive, like the dead under our feet.
When all the people are gone, my brother and I remain by the freshly piled dirt, where Aunt Lola lies. We should forgive Aunt Lola, and Father, and everyone else, isn’t that right, little Angel of Death? Yes, we should, just in case no one else will.
[There is always that moment; that decisive moment when you have to choose a path. Mine has arrived, and I take it with a mix of courage and trepidation. I think we all do.]
J. G. Herrera, Copyright 2023.
Saving the world
When I was little, I wanted to be Superman. I guess what I really wanted was to save the world from destruction. Now, as I reach what many call the golden age, I still want to save the world. And I have to tell you that I have found an easy way to do it.
It starts where you are, with a simple look at what surrounds you, your home, your husband or wife, your children if you have any, your other relatives, your neighbors, co-workers, classmates, etc. and from deep in your mind and heart, you say to them: “I love you, and I am happy for you, for your life and right now I am sending you all the good that a human being can send another.”
Now, I would start there because I think it’s easier to look outside of ourselves. But then, sit quietly and look at yourself. You have come so far, and you have done so well! You are amazing and you should be loving yourself tremendously. There is no one in the Universe that has your characteristics and that means that your purpose and mission is unique. You may not have seen all of this until now, but you cannot deny that it is true. How about all your mistakes and wrong turns? Oh well, you had to learn somehow, right? All lessons that served a purpose, yet now they are in the past.
And here comes the action related to saving the world. You are still sitting, looking out and in. Then you decide that from this moment on you are going to be compassionate, kind, truthful, patient, happy, forgiving, helpful, hardworking, joyful, funny, servicing, a good listener, and faithful actor of the best you that you can be. You do this to yourself and to others, and as you do you teach by example, never forcing others to follow you, being so contagious that your actions and attitude leave an undying legacy and a brew of world savers.
And before you realize it, you are flying high, with or without cape, among millions of other human beings that with you, are saving the world from destruction.
An Instant Hero: A Short Fiction for Cuba
“Roberto!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. Their 5-year-old son Tico cried uncontrollably holding on to her Calvin Klein jeans. She must have screamed his name so loud that big black birds perched on roof tops flew away.
The man ran toward the crowd of chanting Cubans that had gathered dozens strong at the intersection. “Libertad, Libertad! Patria y Vida!” they chanted, and their voices were strong but muffled by their face masks. When Roberto reached them, they were already beginning to sit down on the broken pavement of the Havana street.
“We are going to sit here, and they are not going to move us, you all hear me?” their leader said. He was a slim bald young man. “Even if they cut us up into little pieces, you all hear me?”
Libertad, freedom, the wave rose and the sound of it made the old pre-1950’s buildings shake with excitement, the excitement of the new era that was being born that day. Roberto’s heart was racing; this was the moment he and his neighbors had been waiting for, and no one knew who had gotten it started, but it was here now. Then Roberto realized something as he looked around to the other rebels sitting down, men, and women, young and old. Every single one of them was wearing a mask, a mask that muffled their chants for freedom, a mask that was still the symbol of oppression everywhere in the world.
He began to stand up, slowly, and his slinky figure stood out and up. They were looking at him now; was he going to back down and run home, run home to his misery?
No, he was not. With his right hand he unhooked the mask from the left ear and brought it slowly to the right, revealing dry lips and broken teeth no one had seen for almost a year. Roberto took the mask, crumpled it, and threw it up in the air. The mask seemed to fly, never to come down again. Then the crowd roared and taking their masks off, threw them up to the heavens.
The revolution had begun.
The Most Important Thing, Every Moment
This is going to be a short piece because it is 7:30 in the morning and I still have things to do before the sun rises over that branch out my window. Let me tell you what I’ve done so far: I sat in bed and stretched, I washed my face and brushed my teeth, and I sat “you-know-where”. I let Margarita, the Chihuahua, out of her box and covered her with her favorite blanket when she jumped on her own chair. I fed the cats and changed their water, and I cleaned their litter boxes (the big cat goes on the little box, and the smaller feline on the large box). I prepared my daughter’s special nutrition, her medicine, and got her feeding tubes ready (her dolls sometimes are fed like this as well; it is so natural to drink your milk through your stomach). I opened the blinds, tied up the last garbage bag and took it out with the bin to the curve, I checked some emails and erased a bunch.
Then, in the semi-darkness, I went back to bed, just for a moment, just to regain some strength. My wife slept soundly; our daughter next to her stirred (she always comes in around 4 am and jumps over me to lie down in between us). I faced the ceiling and placed my arms by my side. Then it really dawned on me that we spend our lives running here and there, but rarely know what the most important thing is we need to do, at every moment. I don’t purport to be a sage, but what occurred to me then was genial. I became in touch with my life. I took a couple of deep breaths and became very aware of my entire body, part by part. I recognized I was alive, as an ephemeral being as well as an eternal consciousness. It was brief but profound.
The most important thing you need to do, every moment you can, is to recognize your life, both physical and spiritual. And perhaps you’ll do what I did this morning before I dashed to my other listed chores: I said, “Thank you!”
I have a dream
“The universe which we study with such care is a dream, and we the dreamers of the dream, eternal dreamers dreaming non-eternal dreams.”
Neville Goddard, The Search
In a few days, exactly on July 25, I reach the milestone of being in this, the United States of America, for 52 years. The dream was forged in Cuba, back in the late 50’s as my father, my mother and I flipped through the pages of an even older issue of Life magazine. I remember a black and white picture of a family, just like ours, small, one child, on a yacht, speeding through hills of foamy water. My father said, “When we live up north, we will have a boat and do this as well.”
I do not remember what I felt, really, but I imagine it must have been a good, hopeful, light, encouraging feeling that our future was going to be a bright one. Lots of hills of foamy waters have been left behind of many boats throughout all these years, yet none of those boats have been mine. No, I have had cars, many, but no boats. Still, dreaming has kept me alive, and as I enter my 69th year of life, I realize how many dreams have come true, and continue to come true, from the kernel of that initial one.
We must learn, or re-learn to dream, to use our imagination to build possible futures, and we must teach our children to dream also. And it is with our present that we build out future; we take small steps, that sometimes we retrace, of change their direction. I have traveled a little bit, not much really, but my love of the world, and of other cultures started when I used to go to the foreign embassies in Havana, on my red Champion bike, to ask for travel brochures: Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Romania, etc. I used to fall into a dreamy state as I browsed through the pictures of far away lakes and mountains, and of peoples and buildings.
The Cubans of today are forging a dream of freedom as their shouts arise toward the broken facades of decaying buildings, barely standing after 62 years of dictatorship and corruption. Parents in front of school boards continue to forge the dream of true equality by protesting the “reverse racism” teachings of the so-called Critical Race Theory. Patriots everywhere online and offline forge the dream of fair, legal and just elections. Law enforcement everywhere forge the dream of safe communities and of the end of child-trafficking across the globe. Regular, hardworking folk forge the dream of fair baking and taxation.
Dream of good and wholesome things, places, and practices. Dream of achieving your wonderful plans. Start young, but do not stop, even if you are my age or older. Do not give up, and don’t regret anything from your past; the past is no more.
Let us now remember the words of Martin Luther King, and I quote:
“Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends. And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!”
It is Christmas Eve. I take an early morning drive to the supermarket to get more eggs, bread, coffee and bananas, some of the staples that have disappeared from our kitchen. I come back, have breakfast, wash dishes, take a few pictures of our tree and of our daughter. She dons a red blouse, stretchy jeans and boots, and I think she is the most beautiful creature in the world.
But then another beautiful creature shows up from the bedroom: my wife. She has on a deep blue blouse and matching grey tights. She smells of heaven. Wow! My kids linger in the living room and kitchen; they hug and kiss me. Merry Christmas, Papi! They say. My married daughter will be visiting later, however, she will miss me because I will be gone to work. I will imagine the excitement when everyone opens their gifts and the goings on as they eat my wife’s delicious cooking. All is well. I have been having my Christmas for a while now. Being reborn to a new day, a new life, to more love, to more passion and hope.
I go to my meditation spot by the lake and sit in one of the lanai’s plastic chairs I pulled out there. There is a cool breeze. The sky is overcast with bi-colored clouds, yet I know “there are no clouds above the clouds”. The association has repaired a fountain that spews water to at least 10 feet high, and I submerge myself in the movement and sound of the streams falling back unto the surface of the lake. I breathe. Ducks run from the shore and splash on the water. Suddenly two flamingos streak their pink bodies right over me, flapping rhythmically toward the south. I wonder if they from a couple or are just friends.
I am a very fortunate man, having been a participant of a beautiful family, a rewarding life, and an amazing world.
This Christmas, I am extraordinarily conscious of the birth of a new me. Without taking anything away from the traditional and religious meaning of the celebration, why couldn’t the new child in the historical, as well as spiritual manger, signal the birth of the best human beings can offer to this great life?
Open your eyes to life in a way you have never dared to do. Take on all the challenges with conviction, love and valor. Say yes to opportunities, believing you will achieve. Love others as you love yourself, and if you don’t yet, start doing so.
Let this Christmas, be the birth of you!
Copyright 2017, J. G. Herrera
By the time I went to bed, that night of my 60+ birthday, I was so worn out I could not even turn in bed to my favorite side. Face up, I took a few deep breaths and reviewed the events of the day.
It began with the sheer knowledge that I had reached the age when a lot of men are at a loss as to what to do with all their free time, having retired from a long and rewarding career, and I, I could hardly find the time to do some of the things I liked: writing a blog, editing a few short stories I have written, planning a vacation, walking barefooted in a neighboring beach. It was my birthday and I was lucky that it was also my weekday-weekend, and my wife could honor me with a great meal. You see, I am still working, and more than that, beginning in a brand new industry. However, I turned this apparent negative into: I am keeping my mind active, creative; I am staying physically fit; in my job I meet lots of interesting folk, and give a good and needed service.
Next, as I shaved, I realized I had to dig a little deeper to get those last hairs hiding in some of the wrinkles on my face. What the heck (learned this phrase from my daughter!), this is an interesting face, one that I dared plaster on the cover of my last book.
The program for the day was a familiar one: my kids visiting me and hanging around me a little longer than usual, the delicious smells of my wife cooking, hugs, kisses, cards, gifts (I confess two from my wife I had already opened), pictures, the singing over a cake, a little wine, and maybe a kick-ass movie with the boys.
Everything happened as expected. Let me add, that I spent half and hour thanking a lot of Facebook friends that took the time to congratulate me on my special day.
But this was a different day. And what made it different this time was my realization that in a very small way, I was touching people’s lives with my own. Whether they were my offspring, or my wife, or my wife’s family, or my friends (Facebook and personal), they were all touched by who I was on this Earth. This humbled me tremendously. Furthermore, all these human beings, on my birthday, defined in a very particular way, who I was.
Sometimes, I want to be an island, but I am not an island. I am humanity, and so are you. We are connected through love, birth, death, cakes and candles, food, gifts, hugs, Facebook emoji, postcards, phone calls, children and grandchildren. And even though I sit alone by my tranquil lake, behind my house, I am sitting there profoundly linked to hundreds, if not thousands of individuals.
Then, at the end of it all, I realize that a good birthday, like a good life, should be exhausting!
Copyright 2017, J. G. Herrera
Just now, as I was finally, at last, sitting to write some thoughts down, my little A… asks me for chicken nuggets. She has done this several times this morning, while I prepared her special nutrition formula which we give her by g-tube, while I installed two light bulbs in my wife’s closet, and then set a new rug in the lanai, and then put the ladder back in the garage, and then put a diaper on her.
I guess this is who I am. A father, a husband, a furtive writer.
I have started reading Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert, and was touched by the sentence: “Why did I feel so overwhelmed with duty, tired of being the primary breadwinner and the housekeeper and the social coordinator and the dog-walker and the wife and the soon-to-be mother, and–somewhere in my stolen moments–a writer…?”
I wondered if my wife has felt like that. I know I have felt like that. And it dawned on me: To have a happy marriage or relationship, you have to know who you ‘have’ to be in that relationship; yet, to be a happy person within a marriage, or relationship, you have to know ‘who’ you are. Who am I?
Reaching my mid-sixties, this has been the most pressing question in my mind, in my heart. I am determined to get an answer, to find myself. I urge you to do the same, whatever your age is right now.
Then again, we may all be searchers, wanderers through life in search of meaning, in search of an identity, in search of a reason for being itself. Could that be the meaning of the parable of the Prodigal Son?
And as you walk through this amusement park called life, remember to enjoy every ride you get on: the husband and wife ride, the son and daughter ride, the mother and father ride, the student, laborer, writer, creator, inquisitor, observer rides; they all will lead you on a journey to find yourself.
“Water? Yes, A… give me a moment.”
Copyright 2017, J. G. Herrera
I work next to a guru.
I don’t think anyone knows this but me. I observe him, listen to him, let him do his thing without interfering.
“What are you reading?” he asks me when we have a break.
I show him the book. It’s one of the many things I am currently reading to try to understand my life, the world, the universe, where I am going and where I come from. In summary: my mission.
We talk about words. The universe I see and feel is made up of words, he says. Only 26 letters in English, make up libraries upon libraries.
I want to ‘comprehend’, I say. In order to understand and to express what I understand, I use words. I am a writer, I tell him only in my mind, because, somehow I don’t want to show off in any way. This is a man who has lived, who has done so many things, who has been to so many places. Who now, humbly, works in a service environment I actually feel is beneath him. But he told me once that his mission is to serve. I can see that in everything he does.
We go back to words. He tells me to empty myself, that when I don’t have any more words to try to express life and the world and me, I will have found who and what I truly am: One with everything that is. The OM. The beginning without beginning. The end without end.
I close my book. Sitting by the lake behind my home is wiser.
I do it this morning. Quiet. Still. I give myself Reiki. I breathe. No books. Fleeting thoughts come and go easily.
The stone floor of my lanai is full of mold and the plants are now all dead. I pick up a safe detergent, a broom and garbage bag and clean the entire area, throwing away all the dead plants and sweeping away with fresh water the green-black mold.
Did I fulfill part of my mission with a broom and a bucket? I believe I did; for now. No books, or poetry, or comprehending. I just did it and it feels good.
Thank you Guru Incognito.
Copyright 2017, J. G. Herrera
WONDERFUL SIMPLICITIES By Author J. G. Herrera 