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DEDICATION

  Before the first word of this laborious work is read, I must pay homage to the four people have influenced me and all creations from me.
 
* George Harrison.  My spiritual muse!  Hare Krishna George - You never leave my heart!

* John Pemperton (inventor of Coca-Cola) - My physical muse!

* Tiny Tim - My artistic muse - I miss you daily!

* Jacobus Lister - My intellectual muse and greatest friend!

                 "A blank peice of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God."
                                                                - Sydney Sheldon

                                                           The Crossing

                                                                Emanuel

        My guitar case releases from my uncoiling fingers and flops onto the red clay road.  A small crimson explosion emanates at my feet.  A brisk morning wind sheds my long hair away from my face.  I love wind.  I inhale it's grace just as I now inhale the grace of the ancient abandoned metropolis of Vera City that affronts my morning vision.  The city's sublime image enslaves my ego.   The pulchritude before me is humiliating and vicious.    
    The morning dew and has liquefied the dirt streets of red clay into glistening blood.  They splinter into five outlets like a stretching hand of a bleeding cadaver.  Squatting atop the bloody finger roads rest long and lean buildings of amber clay.  They're stacked one atop another, some three, four and five units high.  Their narrow window eyes squint in a vain defense against the barrage of morning sun rays which crown a glowing halo around the buildings.  Like stacked blocks of gold they glow against an embryo sky, soft and cloaked with a deep purple velvet robe of clouds.  Morning birds behind me rejoice.  No modern city of glass could ever reign as magnanimous as Vera City.  Her beauty can't be eternally lost in it's past vivacious culture.
    I stand now respectfully before the majestic village, pondering the grandness of it's kingdom past, the silence of it's lonely now, and the wonder of it's future, delicate and fragile.  I wonder how she has maintained such introspective isolation.  How has she maintained a defense against the money machine of tourism?  Will she ever allow for life to inhabit her once again.  Maybe she's saving her future for an elite populous whose not lost in a synthetic homogenization of an endless parade of strip malls.  For now, she lay herself before me, like the continent of Atlantis or a Salvador Dali painting, silent and alone in atonement and indemnification.  I exhale long breath of thanksgiving in this moment, for this moment. 
      I wish I could spend my sabbatical here.  It's seems so perfect - quiet, solemn and truly isolated - but the Old Man insists the sheltered cave in the Sierra Norte Mountains shall be my sanctuary.  I didn't question.  I know I'm better off to follow his wisdom more than my personal wants.   I reach down and grab my guitar case.  I hear a distant bellowing of a sole dog cry.  His vocals ring constant like a tolling bell.   
        I'm anxious and nervous, like a boy going to his first day of school, as I head out for Ecave, a name christened it by the Old Man since I will be the lone resident.   I reminisce about Salvador and Eartha.  I miss them so much already.   I'm still too confused about my mom to miss her yet, but I know I will soon.   Ready am I to heal and to travel my lot.  I am ready.  Ready am I to discover and rediscover who I am, who I was and who I shall be - the Messiah - me.
   
    I flung my hair and my guitar over my shoulders across the back of my black Abbey Road tee shirt and exited the red damp road out of Vera City.  I trekked through the surrounding cemetery, opaque and dead as it's inhabitants.  Long silver moss drape from towering white trees.  A morning fog float over the tombstones like lingering smoke.  I pass through the grave yard, past several rural farms with crumbling, wooden buildings.  A half-dozen miles later I arrive in Monte Alban. 
    I pass the few scattered, slumbering huts and finally reached the antediluvian temples and courtyards.  Limited tourism has found this abandoned metropolis, but with a minimum of explotive effect.  Thin clouds nip at their feet of the giant temples.  A large figure is resting just ahead of me upon a giant boulder that was once part of a great royal thrown.  Now it's relegated back to it's natural duty of being a big rock.  I didn't have a watch but the day is still pretty young, a couple of hours before noon.  I remember the fat angel telling me the tourist bus arrives around 11:00 a.m., so the figure ahead of me is probably a local.   The figure lunges from the boulder and plops on the ground.  Unable to retain his balance, he rolls over himself before lifting back himself back onto his feet before me.
      "Wassup fool?"  the fat boy bellows.
      "Oh my God!  Ha ha, well if it's not the Fat Angel.  What are you doing here?  Tell me you didn't come out just to see me off?  I know you're an angel, but," I say as my voice trickles off as his voice bolsteres forward over mine.
      "Fool, I be doin' better than that!  I be yo guide down the mountain and through the jungle.  Your sorry ass sure as hell would never get there without me! I not be no regular ass angel - I be yo bad ass guardian angel."
      "Are you kidding?  Angel, you don't have to do this.  It's like a three day hike right?" 
      "I do have to do that, well, you know, um, cause the Old Man is kinda makin' me," he mumbles as his head begins to drop. He suddenly blurts loudly, "But I be glad to anyway.  This be like a four day hike, but for me it be like five or six days.  Sorry Eman!"
     I laugh.  He seems somehow pathetically admirable, "Awesome, well let's go my friend.  You see, you really are an angel."
      "Than it must be true what they be sayin'," 
      "What is that they be sayin'?" I chided.
      "That you are what you eat, cause fool, I be eatin' a mountain of angel food cake,"  he blasts into a loud machine gun laugh as he shook his oversize belly with both hands like Santa Claus.  I try not to suppress my laugh, but I can't.  I try not to laugh at stupid jokes, but I always do.
    Since I'm in Monte Alban I want to climb the steepest stone staircase to the highest Zapatec temple atop the highest point on the mountain's peak.  The angels waits below.  The thin scattered clouds filter away below.   I stand at the top of the sky and look out over the desolate valley below and the dense mountain region beyond.   The wind once again give me breath.  sweeps across the majesty of the earth I want to smile but I don't.     
      For three days we trample across the valley floor, through impatient streams and unmanicured fields, with hip scratching weeds  as burly as the homeless.  Eventually we reach the other end of the valley and enter the lonely, rugged Sierra Norte, introverted and content to be so.  We were far, far, far away from any traces of civilization.   After three more days hiking over hills and mountains,  we walked beside a cliff as tall as God, below lie the most extraordinary emerald jungle.  The tops of the trees were bunched and sprouted like broccoli crowns.  They must be 2000 meters below.  Between the jungle and the mountain lies a river, hustling down a snaking path  like a mob of women hurrying toward a shoe sale.  The cliff we're hiking is rising higher and further from the jungle and river below. 
      "Angel, we're going higher not lowering.  Don't we need to get down there?"
    He nods, as he obviously is straining to hike our steep ascension.
    "Well how are we going to get down there?  I don't see how we can at all.  Oh, and don't give me some smart ass response like 'jump pinche way!'"
      "I'll get you down Ese." 
      "How?"
      "Fool, I say I get you down.  Trust a Mexican.  I just need two peoples help to get down there," say the Fat Angel as he stopped and began rubbing his legs which were as tight as over-aired balloon wrapped in rubber bands.
      "Two people?  There aren't two people within a hundred miles.  Even if there were you think two people are going to lower us on a rope.  God Himself isn't strong enough to hold a rope for you,"  I joked as I punch his arm.
      "Ha ha, you be thinkin' you be a funny Jesus, don't cha?"  as he feigns a pout.
      "Sensitivity suits you not," I reply.
      "Fool, I no be sensitive.  I know who I am.  I be fat, but I also be hot!" he says as he begins to twist and shake his torso in some sort of ritual dance.  "Remember, you promised me when you go back to the world you will send me some hot disciple chicks."
    "Oh, yes of course.  For sure I will.  I will descend upon you my blessings of all my hot disciple chicks." I say as I roll my eyes.
    "Come on. We only have a short ways to go," he says as he motions for me to follow.  "So Jesus, how you like being Jesus and all?  I mean kids be singing songs about you at Christmas, churches be having your picture and statues of you  all over the world, and you momma, you momma be a Saint!  And she be a virgin!  How crazy be that?"
       I kept staring over the cliff's edge, focusing on how in hell we were going to get down.  I'm not into Mexican cliff diving if that's what he's thinking.  No way!  "Well, I haven't had a lot of time to really allow myself to think about too many of those things yet.  It's all so overwhelming.  I'm just trying to adjust to just being this other person and all that baggage that's been piled upon me over 2000 years.  It's just insane to even think about it really.  Why do you think I'm in Oaxaca?  I need lots of time to deal with it all.  You know the virgin birth thing is really interesting though, That hadn't crossed my mind until you just said it."       "Hell yea it be interesting.  Yo momma don't get fucked and yet, here you are.  How that be happenin'?"  asks the Fat Angel.
     "Man that is so freaky," says I as I kick a rocks over the lurching cliff.  "Man, check this out Angel.  You see when Jesus..."
    "You mean you?"
    "Yea, I guess so.  When Jesus, me, was born, I'm talking about the first time back in the day, I wasn't really born of virgin birth.  There were lots of ministries whose leaders claimed divine conception in that time.  In fact, nearly all of them.  I certainly wasn't the only one.  In fact, both religious and philosophical gurus convinced their followers they were a human product void of parental hoochie coochie.  They felt it necessary to have a perception of piety above all other mortals.  John the Baptist, Moses, Mohammed, The Buddha, even Socrates, dozens of others were said to have mothers pure of seedling deposits."
    "You mean they all be havin' virgin mommas?"
    "No, but everyone of them said they did."
      "No shit? So the virgin Mary - yo momma -  was plugged and pumped?  Best not let my Aunt Maria hear that shit.  Her momma named her after the Holy mother and she spent her whole life keeping her slot machine free from any deposited coins in honor of your old momma.  She gonna be freakin' like a horny midget looking upward in a land of naked giants if she heard that.  you best not let her find out!  It won't be good.  I don't want to be there if she does,"  said the Fat Angel shaking his head.
    "I wouldn't worry about it just yet.  Here's what's so weird Angel.  I actually was born of a virgin birth this time.  My mom impregnated herself with my original DNA.  I actually was born of a virgin birth."
     "Holy Shit!  That is fucked up Eman.  Maybe my Aunt Maria should just change her name to whatever your momma's name is now.  What is her name?" he asks.
     "Angelica," says I.  "Hey my fat angel friend, how are we getting down this fuckin' cliff?  There's no way off of this as far as I can see."
     "I get you down there Eman," replies the Angel as he kept walking.
    "How?"
    "That's how,"  said the Angel as he pointed upward.
    "Oh crap!" I exclaim.  "Is that a fuckin' wire?  It is a fuckin' wire!  How did that get here?  It's a fuckin' miracle - a divine apparition.    What it's called?  A zip line, that's it.  It's a mother fuckin' zip line.  Totally ravage!  So where does it start?"  my eyes followed one end of the cord descending down the cliff, over the river and into the trees.  I looked up to follow the other end the disappears over the trees just ahead of us.
     "Eman, it ain't so easy?" says the Fat Angel.
     "Of course it is.  I've seen it on television, you just put on a harness, run and slide your ass on down."
     "Fool I be sayin' it ain't so easy.  I  sayin' it's controlled by the twins.  We got to get permission from the twins and that aint be easy."
     "The twins?"  I ask inquisitively.  I cock my head.  "What twins?  There's no God damn twins."
     "Fool there be God damn twins - the fuckin' Sartre twins.  They live over there where the wire starts."  He pointed where the wire descends over the trees just ahead of them.   I ran following the wire where it dropped into a closed take-off platform area that's gated and pad locked.  Hanging above the chains and locked gate door, a small wooden sign with shredding grey paint hung.  "No Exitos,"  it says. 
    "I'm not trying to exit, I'm trying to enter.  Besides that's a scary sign.  Does it mean they're not going to let us use the zip-line or are they going to kill us?  I guess that's where they live?"  I asked as I nodded toward a log cabin. 
    "No they be livin' in the mansion around the block!  Course that's where they be livin'!  Come on," he says as he heads toward the mountain cabin.  We knocked on the door.  We knocked again.  Several moments passed.  I knocked a third time a bit harder. 
    "Shit are they not here?  They have to be here. They have to be here.  They have to be here!"  Fingers long and boney grips my shoulder.  My knees collapse in freight as I aired some verbal utterance.  "Holy shit! You scared the hell out of me."
        "They scare me too and I saw 'em," says the angel with his hand gripping his chest. 
        The two boys, about 17 years old, stood naked very close together.  I thought it odd until I saw the skin of the their bodies connected just above the waist.  The twins stare silently and motionlessly.  I feel afraid or at least some shallow sense of uncomfortable uneasiness at their physical mutant body.   I stare back trying hard not to focus on their connectedness.  I breath deep trying to compose myself from my frieght and fear.   "Um, how are you?"  I extend my hand toward them, but they don't move to accept it.  I guess they've had enough of joining themselves together with another person.
      "Well, um, me, me and my friend here just need to get down the cliff over there and across the river you know, to the bottom over there.  We were wondering if we could use your zip line - you know, if it works and all.  Would that be a problem?"   he asked as he stared at the  connection of the two.   The boys glared without response.   "I'm Emanuel and this is my friend."  The boys remained unresponsive and my initial fear is evolving into irritation.  I turned toward the Angel, "Why don't they speak?  Can they hear me?"
      He responded by punching in in the arm, "You think they be speakin' english fool?  Heeeell no!  They don't know what the hell you be sayin'.  They be Zapatecs.  They only speak Zapatecianisticalism or something like that.   They don't be speakin' no english fool."
      "Well who the hell are these guys?  Why are they naked and why are they out here in the God damn twilight zone?"
      "I told you they be the Sartre twins.  They be born in this little bitty village west of Monte Alban.  Their momma kick 'em out the day they was born.  She say they be some demon that came out of her cause she screwed some missionary priest.  You know her husband wasn't even pissed when he found out she screwed some priest.  He just be so happy they weren't his kids.  He didn't hit her or nothin'.  Well somebody took 'em and brought them to the Old Man.  He raised 'em and he teach 'em.  This one here,"  he said pointing to the slightly taller boy on the right, "He be Jean, some Frenchy name.  His brother be Paul.  The Old Man named 'em.   They always be serious as starvation and they hate people.  You know people be all starin' at 'em and running from away when they come around and they be teasin' 'em and callin' 'em names and shit.  So on their 13th birthday, the Old Man sent 'em out here to watch over the entrance. They been here for years now."
      "The entrance?" I ask.  The twins remain standing and staring at us during this conversation.
      "Yea, the entrance to where you be going fool!" replies the Fat Angel.
      "Ok, well, can you tell them we need to get across."
      "I can," he says
      "Ok," I reply.
       We all stood staring at each other without motion, words or thoughts.  Silence dominated long moments. "Well, are you going to ask them Angel?" I ask. 
      "I said I was."
      "How about maybe doing it now?  Can you speak Zapatec?"
      "Do I look like I be a stupid?  Course I can,"  He finally converses with the boys as he points at me several times.  The taller boy on the left,  I think he is Jean, responded with long reply, while he waived his arms and shook his head.  His brother Paul remains stagnant.
      "What did he say?"  asks I impatiently.
      "He say before you cross you must answer a question?"
     "What?" I scream in surprise.  "What kinda question?" 
      After another verbal exchange between the Angel and the twins with neither twin releasing their visual lock on me, nor did I turn my attention away from them, like boxers engaging in a leering contests before battle, the Angel spoke again in English, "They say to get across you must tell them who you are."
      "Ok, did you tell them who I am?"  asked Eman.
      "No," he answers.
      "Why not?"
       "They asked you, not me and you only get one answer a day."
       "How many chances do I need.  Geez, just them I'm fuckin' Emanuel Darby.  Damn this is super weird."
      "You sure?" asks the Fat Angel.
      "Am I sure?  Of course I'm sure."  I reply with agitation.   This scene is just getting stranger by the second.  "Just tell it to them."  He relays my response to the naked twins.  The attached boys walked passed us into the cabin and shut the door behind them.   I face the closed door for several moments in silence.
       "Are they going to get the key to the gate?"
      "Don't know Eman," replies the angel.  I rap my knucles on the wooden door anxiously.  It opens and the twins stand silently once again before me. 
      "Well, are you going to let us through?"  I ask.  The angel translates from behind me.  Jean says a few words before Paul shuts the door.
    The Fat Angel pulls on my shoulder.  "He say you no answer right and come back tomorrow."
    "What?  What do you mean I no answer right?"  I'm really feeling nonplussed.  "I told him who I was, that's all he asked!"  
    The Fat Angel shrugged,  "That's what he say fool.  We best find a spot to sleep."
    "Won't they let us sleep inside?" I ask befor my vision caught the 'No Exitos' sign.  "Nevermind, let's just find a place in the woods again."
    We made a pallet of shrubs and leaves and bed for the night.  The next morning I arose eager to reach Eman's cave.  I awoke the angel and once again we headed to see the twins.  They were waiting for us standing at the door of their cabin.  They neither wave nor greet us.  Jean spouted a few words directed toward the angel.
    "He asked the same question," he tells me.
    I roll my eyes and tugged on my shirt sleeve before I reply, "Tell him I am an artist and I am the Son of God in search of supreme enlightenment.  That's the answer they must be looking for don't you think?  The Old Man must have sent them word who I was and that's the answer they want to hear, don't you think?"  The angel shrugs.  "Just tell them that and we can go."
    He translates as I nervously continue pulling on my shirt sleeve and glaring at their boyish faces, hoping to see them smile or nod or for any sign of positive inclination they are about to let us enter the zip line.  The boys converse without allotting me any clue.
    "He say you sure you are son of God?"  says the angel.
    "Yes I'm definitely sure.  Tell him I'm sure.  Sweet!  They just wanted to verify who I was.  We are in Angel!"  I exclaim.  He tells them.  Jean and Paul looked at each other, then once again turned away and shut the door. 
    "So they're going to get the keys?"  ask I.  The angel lifts and drops his shoulders and tilts his round head.
      "Guess not," he replies after waiting a couple of minutes. 
    "This is some shit," I exclaim as my fist pounds the door.   Jean and Paul reappear, spit a few words and shake their head negatively before withdrawing inside. 
      "He say come back tomorrow with right answer."
    "I know what the hell he said," I replied as I brushed him aside and headed back to the forest.
    "Don't be gettin' all mad at me.  You be the one that makin' me spend another night eating leaves and sleeping on the ground.     "Yea I know.  Sorry.  I'm just so perturbed and perplexed.  I'm sorry Angel."  I exhaled deeply with aggravation and confusion.  "What answer could they want?"  I scream to the wilderness.  "Who am I?  That's what they wants to know. Who the fuck am I?  I know who you are - you're demons! You're naked demons. Put some clothes on!"  I yelled toward the cabin.  The remaining part of the day I  moped silently, deliberating, pondering what possible answer could be required.  Just as dusk was setting in and darkening the bright colors of the Sierra Norte mountains and forest I find my answer.  I'm not that confident if it's what they seek, but I have decided what my answer shall be.   The angel showed me more etable vegetation and we found some fruit and berries for dinner before we bunked down for the night.  I arose quite early with great energy and spring.  I decided to let the angel sleep a bit longer.  I gathered some fruit for our breakfast.  I sat alone, imagining what my life would entail during my stay in Mexico and afterwards when I returned to America.  The now seemed peaceful and the future horrifying.  I stayed for a while with my mind living only in the moment.   Eager, I finally awoke my snoring companion.   He swallowed a few bananas and mangos, then we headed toward the cabin.  Once again the boys stood upon their porch awaiting our arrival.   I smiled and waved.  They remained comatose in expression.. 
  "Tell them I am God."
  "What?" shrieks my round friend.  "First you be the SON of God and now you be God?"
  "Didn't I tell them yesterday I was the son of God and didn't we sleep while groping bugs and insects?" 
  "That be true.  I don't be wantin' to sleep with 'em again.  I want my bed.  I want my home.  I want my food - some enchiladas, some fajitas, some chimichangas, some pescado, some pollos!  I be hungry for lots of cookies, even more pie, and gallons of brownies. All for me!"
  "Yea, yea, yea.  You tell them I am God."
  "Holy mole this sucks!  In Oaxaca that be meanin' somethin' fierce!  My sexy fat ass gonna be sleepin on the God damn leaves again tonight!  Shit," he curses.
  "TELL THEM!" shout I sharply as his defiant eyes grow narrow, half in jest and half serious.
  "Ok, ok, I be tellin' 'em."  
   I stood proud before Jean and Paul Sartre.  I stared eye to eye to eye with them, returning their defiant attitude with my own  administrative arrogance.  They turned to hear my words from the angel.  They stepped back inside and closed the door, once again leaving me and the angel standing alone on the threshold.   
      "Damn it fool!"  says the fat angel.  "What kinda ridiculous answer is that?  You tell me that ain't be stupid!"   Aggrevated, he kicked the leaves beneath his shoes nearly losing his balance and falling.   
    "Try not to fall," I tell him.  "You know if you did, then you would be a falling angel!"  I laughed hysterically, mostly vomiting my frustration at the twins.  The angel begins to march back into the woods.   I stood in pure contemplatively  perplexed.   I exhale long, hard and deep.  Suddenly the cabin door opens and the twins emerge, naked and unashamed to shelter their bodily nexus.  They brush me  aside and head toward the gate.  Jean held up the keys high in the air while Paul motioned for us to follow. 
  "What the...? begins the fat angel as he squints his brow above his two cheeks protruding like a pair of pregnant bellies. 
  "Woo Hoo!"  exclaim I.  "Tell me I'm not brilliant! Tell me I'm not the genius!  Who is the bad ass?  ME! Not you, ME.  I am a bad ass!  Was I not right angel?  Yes I am!  Tell me I'm not God!  Tell me!"
  "I sooo don't get it."
  "It's elementary my dear Watson."
  "Hey, hey.  I graduated elementary and Jr. High. Why you call me Watson?"
  "Ha, don't worry about it.  I wasn't referring to your educational progress my friend, just a literary reference."
  "Best not be or I be layin' a sumo wrestling slam on your ass and I been practicin' too?"  he says as he girates his body acting like he picks me up and slams me down.  "How did you know that answer?  What do you mean you be God?"
      With as God-sounding explanation as possible I unleash a torrid explanation,  "In order to propitiate the interrogative of the conjoined doppelgangers who rendered me nonplussed for two days, I simply inductively reasoned.  After eliminating all possible answers of equivocality, the answer they sought must be of the highest ontological nature.  You see my first response I proffered was the obvious of who I am in terms of  my individual embodiment recognized and known on earth as Emanuel Darby.   That answer was counter-factual to their acquiescence.  Yesterday I proffered my identification conceptually and historically - a collective personality of homo sapien legend with the grandest abstract cognitive capacity - an answer of identification through an envisage mind.  That response found a similar grave fate.  Thus the only conclusion left was definitiveness of my character as a metaphysical entity.  Eastern  and western didactic religions philosophize the persona of me - each of me - you and everyone is comprised and is a derivitive of the original source - the One, the grand Creator, the Alpha, that source which is known by hundreds of names, He whom we personify as God.  It is this essence that constitutes who I am, whom you are.  Biblical passages boldly manifest God made man in His own image.  Well, if He made us like Him, then we are not unlike Him;  Therefore, we cannot be lesser than God if we are like God.  If we were than that would make us unlike Him - which we are not.  He is the creator of His world as we are the creators of ours.  We are loved, worshiped, hated and damned by others, the same as God, because we are God.  There was no other possible answer of veracity," I stated, feeling cocky and holding my chin a bit higher than usual.
   "I don't know what the fuck you just said, but if you be sayin' we be God, then I be Buddha" said the angel as he grabbed his engorged belly and jostled it up and down.   Jean Sartre smirked, while Paul never broke his apathetic expression.   "Eman, You go now by yourself. You can find your Ecave easy from here.  You not be far.  You be reachin' it by noon.  I come back soon sometime and check-up on you."
  "Angel you're not afraid of the zip-line are you?  It can hold you I'm sure."
  "HEEEEELL NO Eman! I no be afraid.  It's just that you can get there now by yourself and that's why your traveling here right?  Besides to get back up here takes a couple of days to hike around the cliff.  You not be needin' my help anymore."
    We talk for a short while before we exchange a short hug before the twins fastened the harness around me.  I grab the straps above me and took off running.  I leaped off the ground and soared down the zip-line.  I flew over the cliff and slide down the wire far before descending over the river onto the landing area that fronted the jungle.  I finally arrived on the opposite shore - the isolated shore.  My pilgrimage now begins.  The twins reeled the harness back to the top of the cliff and once again locked the gate beneath the wooden 'No Exitos' sign.