Journey - 1995

JOURNEY- 1995 Weren’t we hauling ass? The sheep, the olive trees, sentinel windmills, the woodlands and fields, the rivers, the creeks, the undulating topography like the musical score of a landscape melody riding on the rhythms of a percussion ensemble of steel wheels and rails, the white-light blue sky of Castilla-LaMancha blowing by us like a film on fast forward Draped over his seat, easing into sleep, his form and demeanor were a narrative sculpture, a cold rocky coast of beauty and grace chiseled by storms so far out to sea that no one can see and even at rest his body was somehow too fluid for his clothes Once envied and loved, he had learned hard lessons, had crafted his life as a righteous extension of his parents’ investment in a labor of love, forged a hard resiliency in recurrent encounters that had blistered his soul but melted his anger with the purifying precision of a refiner’s fire on the Day of the Lord And he’d discovered a woman who wore long loose dresses on a classical body, who painted her toes, worked magic in the garden and rekindled his love like renegade lightning in a drought-stricken wood As train moved south, the bright day receded, and as the September moon dropped cool silver light like a fine lace mantilla through the craggy brown summits of the Sierra Morena, I thought of my friend as like the big locomotive that pulls the “Garcia Lorca” from Barcelona to Granada: A powerful presence regardless of conditions, quiet, electric, always at your service! Emanuel Carter