Antoni Miró, “Football Stadium” (oil on canvas)
1
It would have been natural for him to do it. He was well positioned. Yet whether he did it or not we will never know. Or for that matter whether he will do it, or is doing it before our eyes, without being responsible for doing it. He is the essence of Fiction, Possibility Itself.
He was about to do it. He was about to become someone who had never existed, for though he was a book made out of books, he was also Imagination Itself, which conceives a book that has never been written, cannot, or never will be. Except here on the page.
Miami Beach. “Beauty of the Future.” Costa Galanda. “The Playground Keeps Getting Bigger!” Author seated on sands freshly raked free of detritus, a copy of BEACH: The Herald in his lap, a large gull floating in for a landing. “Always at Hand.”
“The birds know Bob Byrd.” It waddles to within fifteen feet of his towel. “And they know that Bob always has food.” From his backpack author withdraws a new copy of El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha and an English translation.
He steps to the bar. “The usual,” he says to the waitress. “The usual,” she replies. Imágenes de Améríca Latína lies open to a picture of Cristóbal Colón, a caption beneath him reading, “planeó su expedición como una nueva ruta de acesso a las Indias Orientales.”
From Capítulo 4: “Los antecedentes del Descubrimiento” he flips backward to Capítulo 1: “Las relaciones interamericanas,” where a picture shows the president of Spain smiling alongside a dour Fidel Castro. Only across the page begin “Las relaciones interamericanas.”
Collins Avenue stroll reminiscence: Eden Roc, Versailles. “Beach Club Lawsuit Withdrawn.” A white car has been parked at immaculate curbside. “Beach Museum Seeks Old Home Movies.” Fontainebleau Hilton, Vendome Place.
“There’s No Place like Miami” (from the 1940s). Whitecaps cresting a creamy surf in aquamarine. “The Fountain of Youth” (Center for Cosmetic Enhancement). “New Film Memories: Help Erase the Wrinkles.” Ocean Drive.
He was one of the men most wanted. “A Venezuelan Comedian Hopes to Unseat Chávez.” For what, we are not quite sure. (Caracas, Aug. 13.) He was a Man of La Mancha on a shining white steed. “Just when laughter seemed in short supply, along comes Benjamin Rausseo.”
A huge sword grasped in his right hand. “Venezuela’s best known stand-up comedian, he plays on television a rube who has a raunchy sense of humor.” Before the mic he adjusts his floppy straw hat. “This modern Sancho Panza also happens to be a self-made millionaire.”
Miami Beach beauties have been photographed seated in front of the clock on Ocean Drive [the clock reads ‘Dec. 12, 1960’].” “Beautyscene.com.” Author reclining on white condominium towel. “Dance in the New Year Millennium Party!”
A yellow, orange and red sail on the strand’s horizon. “Drum Roll, Please, for Seniors who Enjoy Rhythmic Harmony.” Author’s grey and white New Balance running shoes, white and grey Nike socks, parked atop black and white Miami Herald.
The Quixotic Fidel had died and been buried by his Panzean brother, Raúl, but not before the Don of Cuba had conceived a brotherly relation with another Sancho, Hugo of Venezuela. “Mr. Rausseo, who has five children, said that an epiphany had thrust him into politics.”
Since nothing that is human is eternal but is ever declining from its beginning to its close, especially true of men, and since Don Quixote was not endowed by Heaven with the privilege of staying the downward course, his own end came when he was least expecting it.
“Thomas Kinkade: Painter of Light” (Gallerie Luministe). Osaka, Kyoto, Tokyo already behind author. “Dog Savior Hopes Lost Owner is Found.” Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina still ahead. “Where Miami Meets the Mediterranean.”
Chile and Perú. “Fine Dining Indoors or Under an Umbrella.” Barcelona, Madrid, Córdoba and Sevilla. “Exploring our Roots and Routes.” Setúbal and Lisbon. “In Miami today the temperature is a cool 72 degrees Fahrenheit.”
Believing that the knight’s condition was due to sorrow over his downfall and disappointment at having been unable to accomplish the disenchantment and liberation of Dulcinea, Sancho and the others endeavored to cheer him up in every possible way.
“Through the formation of his own party, Piedra (or Rock), Mr. Rausseo said that his priority, if elected, would be redirecting Venezuela’s oil wealth to domestic spending instead of ‘lavishing it on overseas alliances. I would like to exchange guns for books,’ he added.”
“Limo Driver in South Beach Ticketed for Parking in Handicapped Zone.” A white skiff marginalizes the proximate horizon. “Today a Bal Harbor security guard called police regarding a suspicious person yelling something incomprehensible.”
It passes on northward. “Police arrived at the scene to find Eldon Morrison lying in a driveway praising the Lord.” Tankers ride motionless at a serene distance. “Police sent Morrison on his way without any further trouble.”
Raúl and Sancho were relieved. For though Fidel and the Don had caused much grief – and celebration – by their passing, both knew that the masters would live forever and perhaps forever cause that sort of consternation that we all know is good for human aspirations.
Don Quixote slept more than six hours at a stretch, so soundly that the housekeeper thought that he would never awake. At last he did, however, crying out, “Blessed be Almighty God who has given me so many blessings! Truly His mercy is not limited by the sins of men.”
Two Spanish-speaking girls arrive. “Jazz Up Your Lesson Plan.” Spreading large green towels on the sand. “The Greatest Selection on Earth.” A zinc-white gull, its wings tipped black, overflies reclining author at an altitude of five meters.
“Ringling Bros., Barnum & Bailey.” Reminiscences of Madonna’s “You, the Powerful Woman.” Czech and Swedish beauties. “Everybody Rides.” Alessandra from East Tennessee. “Social Security Disability.” The Polish Beata.
Havana, Cuba, Oct. 29, 2006. “The ailing Fidel Castro appeared on Cuban state television for the first time in more than a month Saturday, looking thin and tired but fully capable of walking and volubly ridiculing the many recent premature rumors of his death.”
“It would be well for us to go in now while he makes his will.” At this news the housekeeper, niece and good squire, Sancho Panza, were so overcome with emotion that tears burst forth from their eyes and their bosoms heaved with sobs for Don Quixote de la Mancha.
“It’s beginning to smell a lot like Christmas.” VCR background “still,” of two full-breasted blond lesbians cavorting. “Sunny Supermarkets, Meat Department.” A photo of a depleted male on a couch. “Basted Butterball Whole Turkey.”
“Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice.” The surf rolls ever closer. “Community Happenings: Lectures and Workshops.” Our Hispanic beauties descending into it. “Is There Love Beyond Life?” The tide dampening the crotches of their swim suits.
As has been stated more than once, whether Don Quixote was plain Alonso Quijano the Good or Don Quixote de la Mancha, he was always of a kindly disposition and for this reason was beloved not only by the members of his household but by all who knew him.
“Cuban Officials Say Castro is Recovering.” “High-ranking Cuban officials worked hard Monday to put out the message that Cuba was stable after the transfer of power from Fidel Castro (who remained out of the public eye) to his younger brother Raúl.”
“Music: Reggae Shock ’99.” Both girls emit high giggles. “Dade Special Events: A Circle of Holidays.” As they splash one another (using four hands). “Miami Beach on Film and TV.” Laughing, they smile at author, at one another, at everything.
♥
“The intuitive estimate of democracy is that it is something more than a political concept. Insight into the essential unity of life, or into integral living as we may call it, carried democracy far beyond the status of political freedom or economic equity.”
He turned to Sancho: “Forgive me, my friend,” he said, “for having caused you to appear as mad as I by leading you to fall into the same error, that of believing that there are knights-errant in the world.” “Among Cuban-Americans, the Hyphen Remains” (Miami, Aug. 2.)
“Ah master,” cried Sancho, “don’t die, your Grace, but take my advice and live for many years to come, for the greatest madness that a man can be guilty of is to die without good reason.” “When Pelaya Duran left Cuba, he had only a cigar, plus the clothes on his back.”
“Democracy to the artist or the poet or scientist is founded not on legislation but on the basic ‘potential’ within each of us. Whitman called it ‘deific identity’; Paul called it ‘Christ-in-you’; the artist calls it the creative self.
“There are hundreds of definitions in our literature for this thing we here call ‘the super-personal, striving entity.’ Intuitives in all times and all places agree that there is a body used by the inner Self, a sensitive, driving force.”
“Not so fast, gentlemen,” said Don Quixote. “In last year’s nests there are no birds this year. I was mad, and now I am sane; I was Don Quixote, and now, as I have said, I am Alonso Quijano the Good. May my repentance restore to me the place that I once held in your esteem.”
“Still, like many other Cubans who fled the island, Miami was only a stopover for Mr. Duran and his wife. ‘I always said that we did not come to stay,’ he claimed, ‘but to leave.’ That was 50 years ago. Today he stood by his wife’s grave beneath the unforgiving Miami sun.”
“The man (or woman) who in some great emergency finds courage to transcend all self-interest or physical safety and achieve some act of selfless devotion looks back to such a time with a nostalgic desire to experience that courage again.
“He recovers the sense of a new Self with new powers and vision. Anyone who has experienced genuine inspiration, the intuitive intrusion of a true, new and significant idea, will always long to re-experience a higher dimension of mind.”
The first generation that fled Cuba after Castro came to power was always sustained by the dream of seeing its homeland free of the Communists. But in time its members balanced their lives on the hyphen between Cuban and American, remaking themselves and this city.
And now let the notary proceed: “ITEM. If my niece Antonia Quijana should see fit to marry, it shall be to a man who does not know what books of chivalry are; and if it shall be established that he is acquainted with such books, then she shall lose all that I hereby bequeath.”
“For us, religion at its best has always been a technique whereby the rational mind is ‘married’ to the intuitive, whose freedom, wisdom and beauty, once experienced, even momentarily, leave the brain with memories and longings.
“These in their aggregate have motivated all human quests for the good, the true and the beautiful. It is on this level of consciousness that all intuitives recognize man’s equality and his consequent need for democracy.”
“Castro’s Younger Brother is Focus of Attention Now: What Will his Leadership Bring?” “With the mysterious illness of Fidel Castro this week, attention has turned to his brother Raúl, the new provisional leader of Cuba, a man whose personality is little known to Cubans.”
“ITEM: I entreat my executors, if by good fortune they should know the author who completed a history under the title Second Part of the Exploits of Don Quixote to beg his forgiveness in my behalf, since it was I who unthinkingly led him to set down many absurdities.”
“Nothing that stands between a man’s mind and his intuition can pass for religion, nothing that offers to do his thinking for him. There is no class or caste of men specially endowed with the means of reaching truth, goodness and beauty.
“The more highly evolved can only point the way that they have themselves traveled, teach the techniques of self-evolution, reiterate the reality of the intuitive faculty and leave it to others to set their own pace on the road to realization.”
“Cuba Perks Up at Venezuelan’s Foiling of Embargo.” “As Raúl Castro takes up the task of leading Cuba in his brother’s absence, there is, surprisingly, one less thing that he has to worry about: its economy. Credit goes to the economic lifeline thrown by Hugo Chávez.”
After he received all the sacraments, Death came at last for Don Quixote. The notary who was present at the event remarked that in none of those books had he read of any knight-errant dying in his own bed so peacefully and in so Christian a manner as the Man of La Mancha.
“Einstein, the mathematician, was a mystic, though he was not a merely personal mystic. He approached the mysterious without aching for some touch that would illumine his own life and its problems but rather on behalf of his fellow man.
“‘The most beautiful thing that we can experience,’ he said, ‘is the mysterious. It is the source of all art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead.’”
Miguel Muñoz, “Don Quixote” (computer drawing)