THE WASTE LAND

I get disoriented when it comes to my degreed or not practice, where I went, who I cured, how did I cure them, was it really medicine that I practice? Be that or not it was certainly charity; I never made a buck from any souls, my patients must have cost me more money than Consuelo’s place. I remember the Waste Land a place that was hurting for a doctor, as much as I was hurting for patients. I got there on a bus, a seventeen hour bus ride to nowhere. After one has been on a seventeen hour bus ride, one has done all the traveling that one will ever need do or want to do. I would of course continue in my travels, but it was not because I hadn’t traveled enough.

I got off the bus, into a middle of the night bus stop that was empty, just me, there was no bus stop, it was just a street to nowhere, in the place to nowhere, where a bunch of nowhere people lived, they were all asleep now, but later I would learn that they never slept, that this were the most here and now people I would ever meet, all two of them. For me, a creature that has never even been to nowhere or anywhere, this would be somewhat interesting, and more so because I would never want to experience it again. There is something remarkable about experiences that do not encourage repetition, remarkable that they exist at all.

My night welcome into the Waste Land was somewhat scary, I was petrified thinking, not feeling, that someone was going to kill me, granted that there was no one in the area, that the place was empty, sparsely populated by buildings and plant life, if someone wanted to advance upon me I would have been able to see them for miles before the attack. Still I was able to muster fear, enough so as to seek refuge underneath a rock, the least motherly object in the universe, I crawled and squeezed myself somewhat underneath it, asking her to roll over me, to act as if I were there, she did not move.

Underneath this insensitive rock, was fine grain sand, it had a light charcoal texture and the cold winds were a lure that this sand could not resist, yet nether wind nor sand emptied. Very soon, my ears were trapping sands, my eyes, my nose, and it was so speckle fine and light that it did not really stick to me, nor to other grains of sand but for gravity, so each would just fly into me and crash on its way to wherever, a place that I was buffeting sure was not to far from here. The rock and I stood immobile, that was all we had in common, which in this place was more than any one thing wanted to have in common with any other thing. I managed to fake some sleep, and then the sun, which never quite seemed to enjoy shining into this place, brought shadows and a gray dingy vision of this place, a vision that the night had politely hidden.

I woke up from my non-sleep, and made my way to the center of town which I discern to be three ghost town buildings, registered with city engineering some time before building codes and building registrations became mandatory. The fact that they were still standing I thought was ample evidence of how needless building codes are, but then it is harder to tax property that might fall apart, keep it together through regulations and you can tax it a lot longer. These buildings had never been taxed, tariff man had not been born anywhere near this place, not enough rascality in these spaciousness.

Sandy light charcoal streets everywhere, hour glasses were emptied here, the buildings grew in size and fragileness with proximity, the closer I got to them the more likely that it seemed that they would fall apart, their glassless windows were jet black, pits into the unknown, you did not want to climb into them, you did not want to throw a rock into them, it might just extinguish an entire civilization; pains me to say it but all of the dinosaurs died when someone threw a rock through one of those windows. I entertained myself trying to guess which one, I even contemplated throwing myself a rock and banishing something, but having just that night slept with a rock, I begun to even feel how insensitive it was to sling them. Hurdling is an act of detachment, I just wasn’t that detach, I know rock did not care about me, and I know that the protection I felt was more induced by my actions, but she made them possible, without her I would have had a more difficult time fooling myself.

The winds continued at their constant pace, about twelve kilometers per hour, I sat on the wooden deck that was in front of the biggest building, must a have been, at one time, a huge trading center, buy your shovel, buy your grain, see you in a couple of months. Those were the days when people lived out there somewhere, when there were no addresses, the places disappeared, an address keeps you in place, it tells you where you are all the time, these places banished, there was nothing to keep them in one place, places are mobile auras, directions lock them up nicely, but here the sands of time had accidentally discombobulated themselves, you could not see through those jet black windows but you could see through the walls, everything was moving away, it was just doing so very slowly, when time gets lost it happens that things reach a level of disappearance which makes them exists much longer than their remains; ghost towns are such. The last part of any existence is always the longest.

I was waiting for whomever had called me to this place, waiting to be taken to my doctors office, waiting to be introduced to the socialites that would be eager to meet the new doctor and credit themselves with marrying me or assisting me in such compliance, but I did not see any horses or carriages, or even water buckets, save for some urine that I had left along the way there was no immediate sigh of water. But as the day grew midway long, there dash into my ears a quick up beat, bar town melody, it was quick and happy, and not the type of music that you dance to unless you happen to be from the Netherlands, a place where dancing has died but people still habitually do it when they hear music and one wishes they wouldn’t. Conking concatenations.

The music was ripples perky, breaking and recomposing itself at once, chatter and clash, “move along the drinking of that whiskey buddy, hop on my swing babey, look under my skirt I squirt you silly boy, wish me a lot of trinkets so that I can forget all my troubles, life is a parade of overfilled wishing wells …and we are wishing rebounds babey …we are wishing everything… but tune and soul. …Gold fillings and bullets hoopla me into drunkenness, carnival climbs into my bed with me but I forgot the tickets.” Anywhere else you can’t go bald and be happy with your fat whiskey girls.” There is nowhere else in nowhere.

I was disturbed by my ass feeling the soreness of the old weathered wood, soreness stays fresh, when the rapid fire spitting music came to an absolute hold and before me stops a truck that was not as old as this place, but old indeed, probably the third truck ever made after they perfected tires. It is gray too, just stressing to rust, everything here matches, the environment shapes you, two whiskered and partially toothless men are sort of serious but almost not, but really they are not telling jokes they just seem like they know this place, they pick me up, for some strange reason I really only see the driver, I consider the possibility that I might be the other man, but after seeing his toothlessness and gums I oppose the idea. Still I can only see the driver but I know, I am telling you that there were two of them, and the driver confirmed this by talking to the other without addressing me, in a language which seemed extremely familiar, only all I could here was the chatter.

And so sitting in-between these two, we emptied the gas tank into the advancing dust road, and they begun to describe the territory: “Don’t go there that is the wasteland, don’t wander over there that is the waste land, don’t step beyond the left side of the road, that is no man’s land.” You can get lost in the sand but more likely something terrible will happen to you before you get lost.” You could die of hunger, nothing grows out there but you will probably die of something else.” The incessantly repetitious scenery kept on subtracting itself, the closer we got to anything the more sand it would become, I saw nothing that called for attention to detail or that even catered to fostering the color spectrum. These guys were not telling me something that the environment had not already told me. I tried to tell a couple of jokes to soften their indifference to me, but they did not understand humor. I finally stepped off the truck, at some point in the road, my ride was over, I walked into the sand expecting to find a doctors office somewhere unexpected. My shoes kicking the sand, and reminding themselves where not to enter everywhere.

I ended finding a hut, size easily fitting for one dweller and two cats. One of the cats was half belly up dead, just as if begging for tickling had caused death. The one living was standing next to the dead one, staring at it, not even molesting to look up when I entered. There was no furniture in the place, no waiting room, the doctor was in and waiting for patients. I remember feeling hunger when I saw the cats, but my urges did not encourage effort, I sat to watch the cats. The dead cat wasn’t moving, the live cat wasn’t either, one was dead one was a live, both were immobile. I sat on the floor to watch them.

They were both gray, both seemed healthy, at some point I discerned that they were companions and that the inopportune death of one had deeply disturbed the other into a living stiffness. For a brief instance I contemplated reaching for the living cat and comforting its emotional absenteeism, but I had instant visions of the wild cat arching and scarring me with its nailed paws, finally with me dying from a slowly decaying infestation. I just watched them, occasionally I would snarl my nose, but the cats remained motionless for days.

Then on the third day, I saw the living cat move his head, I say him but I don’t know, the one laying on the ground was partially belly up, so I could see it was a male, I somehow also concluded that the living animal was also a he, and that was that. His head moved gently downward so as to look closer at his dead buddy, and it stayed in that position for a few more hours. Then I saw his tongue licking his snout, and then again we were back into a stalemate of being. I slept until the fourth day awakened me with the renewed grayness, always a welcomed sight of sameness. On this day cuatro cat, still not acknowledging my existence, in the cold of the morning, begun to gently kiss and clean dead cat. It was a very moving moment, and this lasted until the late afternoon. Where once satisfied, the stoic stare begun yet again; then I could see him looking at the dead cat that was the only action that I could capture. Late into the evening, I was dozing into a sort of muted sleep, when I was awaken by sounds that though not very intense were still large in comparison to the silence. And then my eyes caught sight of he cat biting flesh and licking blood and bone from dead cat, perniciously consuming the remains, still never looking at me, never searching for competition, cat ate cat, ate cat.

I walked out of the cabin, I had had enough! They wanted me to cure cat, and I did not know which one of the two was sick. That is the only time that I remember being called to practice medicine. I crossed the sands into the wasteland and I still haven’t died there, and here at least people look at me, even cats look at me.