Technology conglomerates will access transcendental languages, localities, and emotions. Digitization shall enable nations to eliminate tactile human engagement to speed up global development – scaling and management…sans human capital. User culture will become multi-sensory, as digital technology transcends behavior responsiveness.
Shapeshifters teleport deep into the human psyche as post-mortem cyborgs intuitively track user migration toward unnavigated web sectors (ergo eternity). Virtual designers post-construct our digital experience and, in the process, self-/co-create and viralize the omniverse. Human thought is rendered obsolete as augmented data decimates theoretical relativity.
As post-apocalyptic users, how will we feel and process the inevitable – an existential shift from organicity to digitopia? How shall we determine and our browsing instincts sans emotionality in the midst of the digital monetization of conglomeration? Extending beyond collectivism – this Internet (War) of Things (IWOT)..or is it the Internet War ON Things (i.e., the digital piratization of tactile spaces mutating into an emotionless omnipresence)?
We gather in front of a blue bullet-pocked building near the central park. Women of the Madres de los Héroes y Mártires sell home-made plastic flowers. A late-afternoon summer wind blows.
Soon we are a procession, honoring the memory of Leonel Rugama. That seminarian, teacher, poet. The guerrillero who helped finance the Revolution by robbing banks. He and two compañeros were trapped in a safehouse. Surrounded by tanks, by hundreds of troops. For three hours the shooting went on. The planes bombed. That was 15 January 1970.
His petite and spry mother leads us to the cemetery. In song and conversation we go.
After a simple commemoration at his grave, we wander around the yard alone, in groups. The Mothers visit their heroes’, their martyrs’ tombs.
A professor from the States says to me, “Stop and listen. It is time to listen.”
His students find a series of turquoise crosses. The people all died about the same date. We are told they were victims of a Contra attack.
Almost four and a half years later, I return to face those graves that have haunted me.
Do they really exist? Was it a dream? No. I have the journal entry. What were the dates? Fourth to sixth of June 1987? Or ’86? I don’t remember.
It is a scorching late-dry-season day. For several hours I wander, trying to find those sea-blue markers.
I encounter Combatiente Juana Elena Mendoza’s site. She fell on the day of Liberation, 19 July 1979.
You walked without resting
the long road of liberation
with the recompense
of seeing your people
In Freedom
And I come across that simple white marbeline cross surrounded by a white wrought iron gate: Leonel Rugama R.
My memory remembers that sea to be to the right. But it is now crowded with newer tombs. I cannot find what I’m looking for.
I ask a grave digger, standing chest-deep in a fresh hole. He shrugs, “Go ask the pantonero.”
“Ah, yes. It is over there, to the right.”
Again, I do not find those 30, 40 turquoise crosses. I give up. For today.
“No, he’ll show you there,” the caretaker says, nodding to an assistant.
I am lead to a section of simple concrete crosses, and of tiled ones. Of blues, yellows, greens. Of combatientes, subtenientes, tenientes, sargentes.
I spend several hours more, copying the names and dates of these 57 heroes. They fell in battle against the US-Contras between 16 October 1983 and 8 January 1985. The majority in those two Octobers, Novembers, Decembers. Four in July 1984—the time of Congressional budget hearings, no?
First Sergeant Sixto A. Moreno did not see 1984 arrive. Subteniente José Angel Calderón Ordónez fell on Nochebuena—the Good Night—Christmas Eve. Ramón Arier Rizo Castillo died a week after his 19th birthday.
But I know this isn’t what I witnessed four years earlier.
The doubts, the uncertainty gnaw at my mind. After several weeks, I go back to Estelí and ask several Mothers.
I went to look for it, but I can’t find it. The workers showed me to the Armed Forces section. But it isn’t what I remember.
“Do you know of such a place?”
“It must be that common grave,” one says leaning in her chair.
“Yes. They were all victims of a Contra attack,” the other says, running her hand over the counter.
“There’s a common grave?”
“Yes.”
“There’s another one, too, in Cemeterio El Carmen. A mass burial of combatants of the April Uprising,” the second informs me.
“During the Insurrection,” the first clarifies.
I ask myself out loud, “Could that common grave have been disappeared by those newer ones?”
The Mothers look at one another and shrug.
But still, my memory remembers not one marker. It still sees so freshly a wash of 30 or 40 turquoise crosses.
I return to that part of the cemetery and widen the circle. More groupings of dates I’d missed before, among the newer sites of this decade.
There’s a tall, blue-brick pedestal with a black iron cross:
MARIO RANDEZ CASTILLO
4 February 1988
The bullets of the Contra assassins
may have killed you
But they did not kill your faith
The rain drizzles. The dripping weeds are slick. The earth is soft.
Still I cannot find them.
I ask Rugama’s cousin, who works here. “Ask the pantonero.”
The caretaker does not know. He swears there is no common grave. He asks the Rugama.
“Look, we’ve both been here only a few years,” the cousin apologizes.
The pantonero points to the western part of the yard, the opposite direction from the others. “Over there are burials from the same era. Perhaps it’s there.”
In the petering rain I enter the sea of crosses. Into 1985. Soon their dates group. Scattered here and there are combatientes, first lieutenants.
There are so many dozens from May 1985. How many just between 17th and 19th? One, two, three, six.
I weave back and forth through.
Another group: 2 to 7 August. One, two, four—again, six.
I climb between the closely packed graves.
Silvio A. Chavarría Méndez—fell in defense of the fatherland in Miraflores, Estelí, 20 May 1986. And entombed next to him are more people killed on that same day. Three from the Talavera family.
Oh, god.
I continue wading through these mostly blue crosses, scanning them for dates.
28 July 1985—so many, it seems. One, three, six, eight—nine.
I begin to swoon, ready to vomit. My solar plexus is hollow. I almost sink to my knees.
This is it. I remember this feeling. The same I had four years ago.
I want to stop. But I continue strolling through this jumble of graves.
How many died 7 September 1985? In May ’86?
I want to scream, “How could you do this?”
How many hundreds of graves are there? I dare not count.
How could we do this?
And those velvet storm clouds rumble overhead. A chill wind blows. The sprinkled rain has stopped—for a while.
Lorraine Caputo is a wandering troubadour whose poetry appear in over 200 journals on six continents, and 14 chapbooks – including Caribbean Nights (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014), Notes from the Patagonia (dancing girl press, 2017) and On Galápagos Shores (dancing girl press, 2019). She also authors travel narratives, with works in the anthologies Drive: Women’s True Stories from the Open Road (Seal Press, 2002) and V!VA List Latin America (Viva Travel Guides, 2007), articles and guidebooks. In 2011, the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada honored her verse. Caputo has done literary readings from Alaska to the Patagonia. She journeys through Latin America with her faithful knapsack Rocinante, listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth. Follow her adventures at facebook.com/lorrainecaputo.wanderer or latinamericawanderer.wordpress.com.
Let Principle cohere focus As unconditional Love
Entirely allowing
Focus appreciation
Through all perspective's
Intervibral coincidence,
Enjoying
Allow I self the hand of preference.
Born Free
Sense
Know
Less resistance
Allowing, You're Worth it.
Get caught, Satisfied with your own natural grace.
Turn time on a dime.
Freshen your focus,
NOW.
Once upon a time, in a village near the forest, lived a man with very dark hair and a serious countenance.
He was living alone in a wooden house. He was making everything with his bare hands. Every day he walked, before sunrise, deep into the forest.
He picked the highest tree and worked from day to night. All his furniture, even his plates, spoons and forks, was made of wood.
The man did not have a lot of friends, or neighbors, and the closest house was miles and miles away. He never married and he spent all of his life working the wood. His work made him famous in the nearby village and they came to him and ask him to repair everything that was broken. And the man gave all his time and attention to the wood and it was as if he and wood understood each other. The wood was given new life and became a beautiful table, a beautiful chair, or a very nice door.
People were starting to come to him from far away,
from the big city, asking for more furniture and other decorations.
One day he was preparing a wooden chair, and he was out in the open air, when suddenly a rare perfume came to him. He looked around but nobody was with him. So, the man continued to work the chair and try to give it a nice shape and wanted to put also some beautiful colours..
Again the perfume made him turn his head and then he noticed on the earth a very beautiful strange flower with several colours…
“I do not remember seeing this flower before” he said. “No, you don’t. Because I was a seed and some days ago a sparrow brought me here from a foreign country. But as the sparrow got tired from the long journey, he hid me in the earth, and he thought that he would come and eat me later…. But he forgot. I am a seed and if u bury me I will grow up and become a… “ “A beautiful flower that smells so nice” said the carpenter.
“Yes, but I smell like that only if I am happy.. Some minutes ago an ant passed and we spoke.
He gave me news about my family, so I am more happy.”
The perfume was exceptional. It was like the perfume of the orange flowers with a bit of ylang ylang. The man had never thought he could speak with a flower.
“I must finish my chair, I have a lot to do. I must
finish before night comes, ” said the carpenter and
started again to work on the chair.
“Why are you so hurrying to finish your chair? I see nobody else here with you. Do you have family, a wife or children?”
Asked the flower.
“No, I am alone and I am very busy. So do not ask me silly questions, I must work because I have a chair to deliver….” “How is possible to work in such a beautiful day, Look up, the sky is so blue, look at the forest and the trees, such a beautiful picture.” said the flower, and continued ” I need some fresh water and if you have some more grass, you can bring it close to me, so I will have company. “
“Love yourself… “, said the flower and turned his petals to the sun.
“I feel much better, but I really need some water..” repeated the flower again.
“Ohh OK. I will go to bring you some water.” The man left and went to the house. He took a big vase and he put some water in it. Then he went out and he threw the water onto the flower.
“Ohhhh you almost destroy my little petals. I tell you, you really never love anything or anyone. You just threw the water, with all your force. You must be gentle with my petals.”
The flower explained to the carpenter for hours the gentle way
he must water him. And that he must from time to time change and cultivate the soil. And he asked the carpenter if he would find some other seeds, and plant them close to him, so he will not feel alone.
Then the carpenter had a better idea, to take a big pot. He put some soil inside and he suggested to his friend the flower to grow in there so he will not be alone anymore.
The carpenter and the flower became friends; he was strong enough to carry the pot with him
even when he went to the big city for buying new tools.
After months passed the carpenter was so attached to his flower that he started to read books about gardening and every day tried to make his friend happier. He bought a new pot and he placed it near the window so his flower could have a sun bath all day. When he went to the forest for cutting wood for his work, he carried the flower along in a small wooden wagon
so they were always together.
They spoke a lot about everyday life and sometimes about the future. But the flower always said that we must show our love now, not in the future”.
Today is so important for the flowers, from the first sunshine that catches us, we must take as much light we can, and drink water, and have someone to care for us, as we are so fragile.
The flower grew up and became even more beautiful.
And his perfume also became so popular that
when neighbors visited the carpenter, they asked for the name of this flower, so they can also find the seeds and plant it in their garden.
The carpenter told his neighbors, “My flower is very rare and I do not know if you will find the same seeds. I named my flower “Love”. But as this flower has a deep impact on my life, I give him this name. Because he helped me understand that today is more important than the future.
And love is a free energy and the more we give away, the more comes back to us. “ The carpenter and the flower stayed friends for a long time. And the carpenter always left some hours free after his work for gardening, as he got so many secrets from his friend, that he could grow any strange seed and see it grow into a mighty tree or lovely flower.
His garden was very famous and people came from all over the country to see it. And when someone asked him about the secret of this beautiful garden, the carpenter responded, with a smile: “Love, is the secret.” The End
Translated from Arabic to English by Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
