Present Tense Recuerdos

Once upon a time Chuang Chou dreamed that he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting about happily enjoying himself. He didn’t know that he was Chou. Suddenly he awoke and was palpably Chou. He did not know whether he was Chou who had dreamed of being a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming that he was Chou. Now, there must be a difference between Chou and the butterfly. This is called the transformation of things.
--Chuang Tzu

After a long day of classes, Mirya Estrella throws herself down on her tattered sofa and becomes one with it. She is an Eastern Classics grad student, after all. Why shouldn't she become one with her sofa? She has stretched across this beige and blue sofa so many times that it now has a comfort nook made especially for her. As she sinks into her nook, her untamed hair overtakes her body, the arms of the sofa, portions of her face. All are gently claimed by streams and webs of dark brown loose curls. One moment is enough to bring her back to life.

“Hey, hon,” Sean says, shutting the door behind him. He puts his briefcase on the floor by the table which holds their TV and some of Mirya’s favorite decorations: a painted Japanese plate featuring a Geisha girl with bright red lips, a turquoise Kokopelli which is actually an incense burner, and a small statue of Buddha meditating. “Have a good day?”

“Yeah. Pretty good. We were working on translating some Confucius, and it stirred up a lively discussion about political and familial allegiances,” she replies, looking past Sean at the wall behind the TV. She thinks again about how much she dislikes his diploma and that Andrew Wyeth print being up there. They don’t seem to go with the freeform Asian-Southwestern style which her influence has spread over the rest of their house.

Sean goes to her place on the sofa, bends down to kiss her cheek, then heads back to the kitchen to start some dinner.

For over three years, Mirya and her boyfriend Sean have shared this one-story white adobe house on Acequia Madre in a residential area of Santa Fe not far from the center of town. A traditional Southwestern chain of dried peppers hangs outside their door.

They met when they were freshmen at the College of Santa Fe. Sean was a computer science major who worked twenty hours a week on top of his full courseload. He grew up in New Mexico, but had always wanted to leave. He thought hard work and a computer science degree would get him a better life in the Silicon Valley. Mirya studied psychology, mostly for the art therapy concentration they offered, and was often seen dancing around the campus in her vibrantly colored flowing skirts, while hoping to inspire some other CSF women to run with the wolves. The only thing she knew was that life should be lived intensely.

Sean and Mirya’s paths crossed only rarely until the start of their sophomore year. They were in the same Intro to Social Sciences class and were immediately taken with each other. Professor Delgado de Torres had announced that the class would be broken up into pairs to work on presentations which would focus on a particular aspect of the social sciences through the course of the year. She had suggested that the pairs should meet immediately to determine their plan of action for this project. Sean and Mirya were sitting next to each other; neither knew anyone from this class very well, so they decided to become partners. On the first of September, Mirya suggested that they work outside and enjoy the beautiful day. Day turned to night, and very little work had been done on their project despite the fact that they had to turn in a topic announcement in two days. They simply lay on the ground together, looking up at the stars. They have gone out to gaze at the crisp New Mexico sky every year on September first since then. It’s their favorite tradition.

Now that they have graduated, Mirya is busy studying Eastern Classics and waiting tables part-time at The Hideaway, and Sean works long hours at St. Vincent’s Hospital doing technical support. With their demanding schedules, they can’t spend as much time together as they used to. They haven’t been out hiking in a while, haven’t sat around drinking coffee and skimming through the periodicals at Downtown Subscription. Their summer road trip out to the former stomping grounds of Billy the Kid -- Las Vegas, NM, a town that is a breathing ghost town, with shops and people and even a school or two, but stuck in time, a lifeless shell -- that road trip is the only recent thing they’ve done as a couple. Their relationship is not the same; they are no longer inseparable. But they are comfortable together.

Still stretched out on the sofa, Mirya gazes up at the mural on the wall behind the sofa. It’s a mural she painted almost three years ago. Zozobra. A hideous beast of a man with thick red clown lips, oversized ears, frighteningly yellow hair in a clump atop his head, and large green eyes with a small bead of white staring through a black pupil. A window situated in the torso region of his suit gets excellent daytime sun and is home to some pots of herbs Mirya decided to grow. In her mural, the bottom of Zozobra’s white and black suit is succumbing to the flames. The sight reminds her that Fiesta is coming soon. Santa Feans burn the fifty-foot tall Zozobra bogeyman each year over Labor Day weekend to ring in Fiesta and cleanse their lives of all the previous year's troubles and bad karma. Ah! A clean slate.

Clean slate. Tibetan sand mandalas. A Zen rock garden. Definitely not Mirya’s mind. Funny how studying Eastern Classics isn’t as Zen as you’d think it’d be. As Mirya is thinking about her next Chuang Tzu reading, Sean calls out from the kitchen.

“Mirya! You eaten yet? I’m getting ready to cook up some flautas.”

“No. Sure. That’s fine,” she says, distracted by her mind’s recitation of The Litany of Homework.

It’s been like this with Sean and Mirya for a while. They talk in generalities anymore, just filling the air while making dinner, or acknowledging each other in some vague meaningless way. Sean’s mind is occupied with computers or the promise of the West Coast. And with Mirya mostly it’s school or her art. Sometimes she hears his voice like it’s a recording on the other end of the phone. Something she’s heard so many times before, saying exactly the same thing, yet she can’t hit a button and bypass it. She can’t get back to the old days when Sean would say things that mattered, when she could say things that mattered. She wishes he knew who Chuang Tzu was, or at least would ask and appear to really care. She wishes she could stand to hear about the ins and outs of the computers at St. Vincent’s, but she can’t. He talks and she nods. She talks and he nods. The worst part of it is that, most of the time, they don’t even recognize that they’re doing it. That they live in each other’s periphery - acting more like housemates than soul mates.

Mirya rises from the sofa, looks at the bookcase on her left, and pulls out a volume of Proust. She blows the dust off and flips through it, wishing for time to read something for pleasure alone. Eh, what’s the use? She puts it back and heads to the kitchen.

The flautas are ready. Sean and Mirya sit down at the small table pushed up against the wall and start to eat.

“Crispy,” Mirya says between bites.

“Yeah, they turned out well,” says Sean, “Try a little guacamole, too.” He pushes the dish toward her.

“Sure.”

Mirya remembers chopping fresh avocados with Sean the week they first moved in together. He kept putting the knife down and looking into her large brown eyes -- pushing her hair behind her ear, kissing her. She fed him some avocado instead of saving it for the guacamole. He kissed her gently, rubbed his hand across her hair, and returned briefly to cutting. They haven’t cooked together in a while.

“Thank God it’s not cloudy tonight,” Sean says, smiling, a little string of chicken stuck in his teeth.

“Oh, yeah...September first,” she chews her food and smiles. “Want to go down to the park or further out?”

“Let’s go out to the park. It’s only a few blocks away; we can just walk over and back.”

“Cool.”

They sit at the table, sometimes staring off at the repeating pattern on the linoleum floor, sometimes lost in their thoughts. Very little more is said except little bits of food talk and assorted mmm’s. Sean reaches over and touches Mirya’s hand as she dips a flauta in some guacamole. He looks at her with a look from the past. A look of tenderness. Mirya thinks back on that first day of September four years ago. It’s always better on September first.

They get up and take their dishes to the sink.

“So, you ready to head out?” he asks.

“Sure.” She rubs her hand across his back and walks toward the door.

Santa Fe River State Park isn't big, but it seems to be a getaway nonetheless. Running in a narrow strip along the edge of the Santa Fe River, the park has some picnic tables, benches, and lush green grass - quite a treat in the mountainous desert region around Santa Fe. Trees provide a much needed canopy of shade from the hot desert sun, yet there are not enough trees, or lights, to impede the view of the spectacular night sky, bursting with phenomena to amuse astronomers or UFO enthusiasts alike.

There aren’t many people out in the park tonight, so Sean and Mirya easily find a place to lie down. They lie next to each other, not touching much. Not like the old days when Mirya would curl up against Sean or rest her head on his chest. Tonight they just look up at the sky. Draco the Dragon is stretched out, challenging Hercules to battle.

"Y'know, they all might be dead," bursts Mirya.

"What?"

"The stars we're looking at. The constellations. The Little Dipper. Big Dipper. Cassiopeia. All of them. They might not really be here anymore."

"Mirya," Sean says, sitting up, "what are you talking about? Just look up. Of course, they’re there."

"Well, not necessarily. You know, they're so many light years away. The only thing we can really know when we look up at the sky - the only thing we can know is that we're looking up at images of the past,” she pauses, feeling the awe of the moment. “Perhaps the ghosts of something that died many years ago."

She continues to lie on the grass, her eyes scanning the night sky with childlike wonder. And sometimes her eyelids close, and she gets whisked away to a land of no words, no thoughts, just ether. Lying motionless and reflective on the grass. All analysis gone. Just being.

"Ghosts? They're stars. Okay, so ‘light years away’ means that we’re a couple of years behind things, but the stars aren’t dead. They’re always there, every night. Little specks of light that make the night sky glimmer. Why can't you just leave it there? -- Or even say that stars are distant orbs of fire and intergalactic matter or whatever. Anything but ghosts,” he lies back down. “Dead? Pfft. That philosophy school is really getting to you.”

Mirya still gazes up at the sky. Air which had traveled through countless beings before getting temporarily trapped in her lungs is slowly released in a gentle flow over her tongue and between her lips. Out.

She ignores his last comment and just flows along with the stars. Hopping from the North Star up across Draco to Vega and further along, imagining new formations, hoping to see a shooting star.

Now and then Sean points out a constellation and Mirya simply replies “Uh huh.” He reaches over to run his fingers through her dark hair; she lets him. Sean feels her distance but doesn’t understand the reason. He thumbs the velvet-covered box in his pocket and wonders whether now is really the right time.

Eventually Sean breaks their silence. “It’s getting late. Do you want to go back?”

“You can go ahead. I want to lie here a little longer.”

“You sure? I can stay.”

“Yeah. Go home. I won’t be long.”

Sean kisses her goodbye and starts walking home alone. He takes the box out of his pocket, opens it, and looks at the ring. September first. He thought it would be the perfect day to ask her to marry him. He thought that after her graduation in May they could move to California, he could get the job of his dreams, they would have it all. Maybe she’ll seem better when she gets home. School stress always bothers her; she wants everything done well or not at all. Sean opens the door of the house, turns on the TV, and sits down.

Under the glimmering sky, Mirya shuts her eyes, wondering if she should believe the thoughts in her head. What happened to us? She sighs. I don’t know the man I’m living with. I’m in love with a mere memory. Oh, come on, Mirya! That’s just your inner actress talking. You’re making a big deal out of nothing. Trying to create some drama. She laughs sadly. Why did I say it anyway? Looking up at ghosts? I need to go home and get some sleep. Still thinking it’s exciting to watch the past unfold, Mirya takes in the night sky one last time and gets up to go home.

She walks the few blocks to Acequia Madre trying to keep her mind occupied. Her attention turns to the festivities that are on the lips of everyone in Santa Fe. Fiesta this weekend. If I’m gonna enjoy it, I have to cram a lot of work in tomorrow night. To combat the tension building in her usually loose limbs, Mirya needs Fiesta, needs to release into a community-wide celebration with wild dancing, Indian flutes being played on the corners, and a giant effigy burning. Just two more days until Zozobra burns, she thinks, as she opens the door and sees Sean watching TV on the sofa under her mural.

Zozobra burns.

And last year’s troubles burn with him - leaving a fresh clean slate.