Entropy

You leave this Doramir through the southern gate, the Gate of Birth, with a caravan full of tobacco and a heart full of rue. To love only as long as your feet allow—will this be the way of your entire life? Why wouldn’t she come with you? She was not young, but she was younger than you, healthier and stronger. She wanted a home, a family. But the road can be a home. You would have been her family…

Beside you, a broken jar assembles itself on the pavement, leaps up to a shelf and pushes a man’s elbow back from an accident. A cloud of smoke gathers from nothing and returns itself to his lungs. In this Doramir, all the things which have been lost will be regained. All except memory and experience, which are erased by the backwards-flowing time, as old men proceed towards mindless infancy and onwards into the consciouslessness that bookends a human life. Even in this Doramir, death is inevitable.

You carry on into the town, walking forwards but living backwards. You’ve been here for twenty-eight days, and you will be here for twenty-eight more. There was no moon when you arrived, there is none now, and there will be none when you leave again. Right now you have a complete knowledge of the streets. The tight and winding ways of the city suit you as well as the tight and winding ways of your own brain.

You follow your own path backwards, towards her embrace, yet it is still regret that you feel. You’ve already left her, which hurts, but going back will hurt more, because you will soon begin the process of unliving all the moments which bound you, and in twenty-eight days you will not know her at all. How is it that in this Doramir where all things tend towards order, a human life can still dissipate? A flock of sparrows land, regurgitate breadcrumbs, and scatter again on the wind.

“I love you,” she says, tears rolling up her cheeks to hide themselves in the secret ducts behind her eyes. “Please don’t leave me.” Coming or going, either way you’re leaving. But for a few minutes in her arms, this fact disappears. Here, with her tears on your cheek, your arms around her smell, her name safe in your mouth, you are briefly, blissfully permanent.

You go out to enjoy a day together, both your first day and your last, a respite from the forgetting which lies in either direction. You go to the zoo and unlearn the secrets of the elephants’ lifelong loyalties, lose the memory of two tigers’ ferocity in battling for the mate of their choice. But as you lose these things, you gain another day with her. And you gain another day of your own life, actually pull a step ahead in the race against death (only to find that death awaits you at the starting line, too). You go to lunch, the waiter pays you, and you begin push food up from your stomach, assemble it with your teeth, and take it from your mouth with a fork to be replaced, whole, on your plate. Then you leave her and go to the bazaar to trade back another merchant’s tobacco for your own barley and rye.

For twenty-seven more days you awake beside her, make frantic love, try to capture the time between your bodies, regressing out of satisfaction and moving back into desperate desire as your sweat crawls back into your skin. Then the sun rises in the west and you go out of doors, taking back the hours as that sun moves relentlessly towards the opposite horizon. You go back to her bed, make plans and murmur endearments and fall, as always, into unconsciousness. On the eastern horizon, another sun is extinguished.

Day by day you lose these moments: she takes back the finest boots you’ve ever owned; you unlearn the unique curve of her lips; the stories of your youth are erased from her mind. Yet you gain moments you had forgotten: small things, like sharing a glass of water; idle conversations which become important again, rescued from oblivion; her smile on the bridge which you thought you’d remember forever, only to have the image replaced by a dozen smiles just as beautiful, all of which are now gone.

Every day you know less about her, become less attached to her smell and her touch. In place of this lost love, you gain hope for the future (a future which will never come). Then, on the twenty-seventh day, beneath the smallest sliver of the toenail moon, you take back your first kiss, take back all the ardor and uncertainty of a chance meeting which promises so much, but reveals so little. You part ways, practically strangers. The next day you lose and gain one last thing: you take back your embarrassed apologies and bash your head into the loveliest face you’ve not yet seen. But you get to remember how this all started in the first place. Then the pain is gone, and you’re walking on your own way.

Entering this Doramir from the north, the Gate of Death, you do not know what you will find. You are free of the pain of lost love, but in its place you carry the pain of some faceless longing.

The Secret Lives of Things

In a Doramir six days south of the River Lethe, the things you touch come briefly alive, and the qualities that you would expect from an inanimate object—gratitude, humility, deference—are not always those you will find.

You have no idea what kind of Doramir you have entered this time, thinking only that the prospect of another night camped out among mules and men seems less preferable than wandering the midnight streets in search of lodging. The city is empty, and you consider lying down beneath the cypresses in a park by the river. Then you see a hotel, a single light burning in a window, the tongue of flame beckoning like an amorous finger. The woman at the desk says you’ve got the last available bed. The hallways seems to cant downwards, easing your steps, and the lantern the woman leaves nods its flame in silent approval.

“Sleep,” creaks the bed as you crawl in. Instantly, you are awake and out of bed. You look in the closet, behind the bathroom door. You press your hand to the mattress. It does not creak, but the sheets drift back in a way that the weight of your hand could not have caused. You have traveled in many strange places, and seen many things beyond belief, but you have never seen anything you could not explain. Sometimes those explanations don’t surface for days, weeks, years after the fact, but tomorrow, when you are more alert, you’re sure you’ll be able to chalk this up to exhaustion. “Sleep,” creaks the bed, and this time, you do.

When you wake up you are sweating, and the bed is hard as a board. The sun beats through curtains which seemed more opaque the night before. The whole room, in fact, seems much less hospitable, but this is no surprise. You’ve never been comfortable lying in bed after sunrise.

Bucket showers are the norm in the southern regions of Doramir, where water is precious during the summer months. You pour one over your head, cold, too cold for the morning, even, but instantly invigorating. You lather yourself and, reaching for the bucket, notice that the light dappling the pink plastic shimmers and waves as if reflected from the ocean. A trick of the mind? You used to take a bucket like this to the beach as a child. When you touch it you distinctly hear laughter, then the screams of a child sucked out to sea by a riptide.

You rinse off quickly, trying not to look at the bucket, and you shave, razor blissfully inert. You dress and leave the hotel quickly, happy to be back in the fresh air, to see the streets full, women carrying laundry to the river, men in the shade of a café, smoking and drinking coffee. You take a seat and order a cup of your own. The waiter brings it, and as you hold out a silver coin, you watch as it stands up on edge, rolls over your palm and begins to spin on the tip of your finger. “The money dances for you,” says the waiter, as if this were nothing unusual. “You must be very good with business.”

The waiter leaves, and you furtively experiment with your coffee cup, laying a fingertip on the cracked ceramic lip, watching for witchcraft. Nothing happens. You take the cup by the handle, and it spins itself to fit your palm. Looking into the steam you see a snowstorm, a cabin you once knew, and you hear the song of a woman you once loved. The taste is one you’ve not tasted for years. Whether this café imports its coffee from the mountains beyond the northern frontier, or whether your memories have made it what it is, you can no longer say. Across the street, a man is fighting with a broom, wringing its handle and beating its head against the ground, trying to sweep a porch that refuses to come clean. In the alley a child is chasing a hoop, and a hoop is chasing a child.

You finish your coffee and head quickly towards the market. Perhaps you’re old-fashioned, but you really do prefer things which are only things, things which do not exploit the inexplicable, unreasonable attachments that people occasionally feel towards inanimate objects. When you arrive at the bazaar, you browse without touching, examining the seams of garments as they’re displayed to you, asking shopkeeps to demonstrate the toughness of their leather, the freshness of their herbs. In the presence of their owners, these things display a willful responsiveness, leaping into and out of hands, bending and flexing like dancers on display.

Except with the girl selling ceramics. You notice her after you hear a second piece shatter on the cobblestones. Sensing a novice, you wander over, looking for a deal. “My father made them,” she explains. “He died this winter, and his things don’t like me at all.”

“You’re holding on too tight,” you say, placing your hand over her white knuckles. Taking the dish from her hand, you balance it lightly on one palm. “It’s only a dish, you see?”

“No, it’s not.”

She turns out to be a shrewd negotiator, and the craftsmanship is of a high quality—she brushes against one pitcher, which leaps from the shelf, presumably distraught over its creator’s absence, but does not break. It only rolls over onto its handle, an unsuccessful suicide. Convinced the ceramics are well made, you part with your reserve stock of wool from the eastern plateau, watching as the thickest yarn winds itself lovingly around her fingers.

She invites you to dinner and you accept, grateful for company besides that of the men in your caravan. She and her mother live alone on the edge of town. Their house is of a style you recognize, its oak beams and stucco walls not unlike the simple homes of the town you grew up in. The humble furniture and the smell of old leather put you at ease, and you relax in a chair much like the one where your father used to sit, a chair which would have become yours, had you stayed at home. You feel the chair reshaping itself to your bottom, its arms rising to meet your arms. “The chair likes you,” the ceramicist’s wife says, smiling. You hurriedly explain about your father and your childhood home, lest she get the wrong idea about your intentions here.

You get up, suddenly a bit too comfortable, and you move around the room, examining ceramics, candles, a typewriter and an urn. But as you pass by, you notice little changes, things rearranging themselves, shrinking or growing, colors subtly shifting, becoming more recognizable, more pleasing to your eye. You realize that the house is trying to become your home.

The ceramic merchant’s wife notices, too, and smiles slyly towards her daughter in the kitchen. Is it only your imagination, or is her mother changing, too, coming to resemble your own mother? Perhaps you yourself are changing, and the things around you only appear different because you’re seeing through different eyes. In your life it has always been the scenery which has changed. You like to think you’ve remained the same.

You eat couscous with cooked raisins and caramelized onions, a sauce of garlic and oil. It is not a dish you’ve had before, but it nonetheless seems familiar. The plates and utensils, even, seem to suit you perfectly. Holding the spoon, you hear your parents arguing, glass breaking, your heart beating in your ears.

After dinner, you promise to return the next evening, but you will not. By that time you will be on your horse, crossing the desert amid a sea of stars and space, on your way to somewhere different.

A City of Steel and Mirrors

The advertisements begin while you’re still miles from the city. At first you study the signs, trying to gauge the interests and needs of the people who reside there, but you soon realize that these ads only depict luxury goods, places of entertainment, food and drink. They tell you nothing about the character of the people, except that they are commerce-minded, like yourself. Unlike yourself, they must be great consumers of unnecessary goods, and have an affinity for bright colors and simple slogans.

As always, you enter the city alone and begin to look for the central market. The streets are broad, straight, and parallel, walled with buildings of steel and glass, flat faces reflecting sky, street, the other buildings, in which the reflections of reflections multiply until they’ve outrun the mind, established their own inhuman reality. You keep moving, but there are no signs for landmarks or places, only to tell the cars when to stop and go, to tell the people where to find cheap hamburgers, cold beer, disposable razors.

You ask directions of a man with a tie laced tight around his neck. He wears metallic glasses like mirrors filled with city, and has some kind of machine attached to his ear, red light blinking every three seconds. He is confused by your question, and as you are explaining yourself, the machine on his ear begins to beep and flash. “Wait,” he says to you, and “Go,” he commands the person in the phone. While he listens to the voice in his ear, you scan the street. Everyone has some kind of machinery attached to their body. Wires run from ears to pockets. Hands are occupied by tiny buttons, eyes fixed upon little screens. Not content to hurry only through this city of steel and glass, they hurry also through a second world, one with more accessible features, with voices that speak more directly into the ear.

The man with whom you were talking stalks off, arguing with the voice or voices of his private world, his fingers manipulating buttons as he searches for information. It occurs to you that in this Doramir, knowledge is used for power, not for enlightenment. But despite your lack of power, the man has not forgotten you. He turns on his way and barks coordinates. 7th and H. In this city, the streets are labeled only with numbers and letters. Perhaps this is a city without a mythology, without a history. The people certainly appear to be caught up in the eternal now. Seizing the day and squeezing the life out of it.

You are becoming ever more certain that the people of this city will have little use for bolts of uncut muslin, casks of sea salt, unworked leather of unimaginable softness. But a native persistence drives you to investigate the coordinates the man gave you.

On the way, you catalogue three types of people. One type is like the man you met, dressed formally despite the heat, wireless machinery attached to ear, wrist, hands. Then there are joggers, wearing clothing that fits like skin colored in neon, black, and white. Wires run from their ears to machines strapped to their arms or hooked to their clothes, and they have electronics sewn into their shirts to measure and report on the functions of their bodies, which they monitor by wristwatch. They run with the same relentless striving of the businesspeople, faces blank as the buildings, feet ticking off the miles with the tireless precision of a second hand rounding the dial of a clock.

Then there are the outcasts, those without electronics. They are drunks and madmen, tired machines whose batteries have run low. These people likewise wear mass-produced clothing, their machine-sewn seams beginning to fray, their colorful logos and slogans crusted with the filth daily produced by the skins of human beings, by the exhalations of the city. These are the preachers, the singers, the silent beggars and the poets who speak of concrete streets, invisible waves that constantly penetrate their bodies and minds. Yet even these people do not betray the hints of emotion, for they, too, are people produced by this Doramir, constructed of steel and mirrored glass, revealing nothing of their interiors, speaking mostly to the voices in their own ears.

When you reach 7th and H you see a building decorated with brand names. Entering, you find people in their informal clothing and, for the first time, you see them with their children. The youngest ones they do not carry in their arms or on their backs, but push in carriages made of metal and plastic. Those old enough to walk they lead by the hand, or restrain with a leash and harness, like a dog. Attracted by the colorful signs, the children practice reading, aided by recognizable logos so that after they disentangle the words for the first time they will never again need to sort through letters, looking for meaning. Recognition will be immediate, carried in pictograms as it was in older, less-developed societies.

Observing the children’s relationship to the goods of this marketplace, you confirm your impression that you will not be able to sell, much less to trade, your spices and unprocessed textiles. The children here are learning to judge quality by price—your wares are not expensive, and they have no tags or labels. The parents teach them the names of the most popular brands, but tell them nothing of how the raw materials are worked, pressed and sewn into usable forms, embroidered, reinforced to make something that will last. It occurs to you that this city without a past likewise lacks a sense of its future as it careens through the eternal present. But the goods you carry are exclusively of the future. With care and effort, someone will turn the muslin into lightweight dresses, scarves to protect from the sun. The leather must be colored, cut, colored, shaped and bound into shoes, purses, wallets, belts. The large grains of sea salt can only be dissolved slowly, cooked long over low heat. Only then will the flavor mellow and be released.

So you leave the city. You would not want any of the things for sale here, anyways. Of all the things you want to acquire, and to bring to other Doramirs, those which interest you most are the rare, the little known and, if possible, the unique. Things that tell stories, goods which carry centuries of history within their material, their form, their colors and flavors, which speak of a culture by the care that goes into their creation. For these clearly labeled goods made by machines, you have no feeling.

The Unimportant Miles Between Our Cities

"Gone were the unimportant miles between our cities" --Reetika Vazirani, Two Cities

White gold licks the dew in the oaks, sunrise pooling in the valley as you stand atop the last foothill looking down into this Doramir of the forest. Here the people live in fractured equilibrium with their environment. Where other Doramirs produce goods from the resources at their disposal, in this city the people venerate the teak forests, the fields of wild wheat. From where you stand, this is a virgin city. But it has another face. Packed up against the southern bluffs, mountains of garbage crawl up the cliffs. This Doramir consumes all the world’s wares. Abandoned washing machines, broken chairs and televisions only outdated. Computers, vacuum cleaners, clothing rots in the rain and sofas are picked apart by the wrens that make their nests of polyester stuffing. The only things you won’t find in this monument are broken down cars. To preserve the natural beauty of their city, the people of this Doramir do without paved roads.

In the market you find that your load of dried fruits and spices don’t command much of a price. The people here are less concerned with what they put in their bodies than what they put on them. “Your style is three seasons out of date,” a concerned merchant tells you. “Go see my cousin in the plaza of the myrtles. He has the latest fashions from Paris, just in this morning. In the afternoon he will have jackets from Rome, and suits from New York in the evening.” You thank the man and work your way down the tree-lined boulevards, heading south, where you will meet your caravan. Your fruits and spices will keep. Selling or trading here would only be a waste of money.

You admire the city as you walk, the homes sided with ceramic mosaics, edged with hand-carved cedar. Along the streets grow elms and roses, forsythia and apple trees (the rotted, venerable fruits lie in the dirt, untouched because they are free). The people you pass are uniformly attractive, this season dressed in black linen. They wear bulky sunglasses as they wander the shady ways.

Soon enough you find walls of garbage blocking your path. You hook to the east to skirt the trash and as you pass piles of blenders and books, matched shoes and tarnished silver, an idea comes to you.

Late at night you gather the men of your caravan, and together you scrounge through the piles of cast-offs, reclaiming hand mirrors and mildewed vases, cracked belts and discarded purses. All of these things you secret in the caves cut into the bluffs, and by day you walk the town, buying leather polish and silver nitrate, steel wool and laundry detergent. You introduce yourself to fashionable people, awe them with fictitious stories from your travels in Paris and Rome. By night, you salvage and scrub in a kingdom of trash.

You open your antique store on a Friday afternoon. Fifty percent off all merchandise. People come to browse among the things of their grandparents’ generation. A man buys a bicycle that reminds him of the one he rode as a child. It’s even the same color. A woman buys an oil lamp like the one her mother sat by as she told bedtime stories. You sell these people treasures from their discarded pasts, and teach them the value of their own memories. For that one weekend, retro is in.

When you leave the city, you leave from the south. Standing on the bluffs looking down, you see that the walls of waste are actually a second city, spewed from the boulevards, the foundation of ugliness upon which their quest for eternal beauty is based. Above, gulls wheel in the clear air. Sunlight glints from chrome and broken glass. In the bowels of this second city, a community of rats, cockroaches, larvae make their home, feeding, drawing life from the refuse.

Both Sides of the Coin

There is a Doromir where you can flip a coin and it will land as both heads and tails, one coin clear and ringing on the asphalt, a coin you can pick up again, spend on a cup of coffee. The other coin will be muted, ghostly, gone its own way into the only other universe that flipped coins can inhabit.

Where people are concerned, there are billions of possible universes. A woman with a doubt in her mind turns left, her phantasm right, and the two can watch one another moving towards their separate destinies. Perhaps her ghost will bump into the ghost of a man, and they will wander off, chatting, fading into a Doromir of a different plane, leaving one woman and one man on two separate streets, corporeal, alone.

You arrive in this Doromir forewarned. You have always known that the paths you choose are only one of a limitless number of possibilities. What harm could come from seeing these other selves made manifest? Yet everyone you’ve met on the trail has warned you away. They say that only the born inhabitants of this Doromir are able to cope with the specters of what they could have been.

Heedless, you enter the town by the main thoroughfare. It is more crowded than any of the other Doromirs you’ve visited, but with so many spectral people the passage is not difficult. The first time you pass through a spectre you shiver involuntarily. It is a soul without a home (you do not notice, but at this point a ghost parts from you, heading back towards the city gate). Pushing on, you reach the plaza and sit to catch your breath.

By the fountain linger the souls of merchants who’d rather be idle, interspersed with real teenagers living their actual ease. Beside you a beautiful woman opens the newspaper, sneezes. A ghost of yourself escapes you, crosses the plaza and offers her your handkerchief. Of course, she can’t take it. She looks across at you, the real you, folds up her paper and moves on. Your ghostly self fades off, bound for some other universe.

And now you find yourself left with forking questions. How much of you wanted to speak to that woman? What would have become of the real you, and what kinds of ghosts would that self have spawned? Fortunately you are a trader, of a nature too practical to get lost in metaphysics. You move on in search of the market, leaving no wondering ghost behind.

In the market you find that having other selves can work to your advantage. In a few glances you appraise the wares of the town and you spawn a half dozen selves to enter into negotiations on your behalf. The real traders are used to this practice, however, and use it to advertise low prices they would never offer to a human. They are well aware of the difference between true intention and vague supposition.

So you begin to shop around in your own form, and as you bargain you find that your ghost selves give you away, leaping out to make deals where you hold back, leaving negotiations where you remain out of politeness or curiosity. The traders here have more control. They know exactly where their true needs lie, and they keep their ghosts in check by not pushing for more, nor accepting less.

At length you settle on an exchange: the saffron and opium you’re carrying for a greater quantity of dates, cashews, and apricots, which will fetch a handsome price in the south. You return to your caravan, pleased, and lead your mules through the city. Then, in one narrow street, a child falls from the curb and is crushed by the wheel of the cart you are driving. Shocked, you meet the expressionless face of his mother, staring at you from a few yards away. She holds an identical child by the hand. Is this the real child, or a ghost? You leap from the cart as a second self leaps from you. One of you rushes to the mother, explaining, frantically apologizing. The other you backs up the mule, draws the broken child from beneath the wheel. He is only a ghost, bloody but already fading into non-existence. With his little body in your hands you watch the ghost of your own self, still desperately trying to undo that which has not been done.

This time you do leave the Doromir of ghosts, unsure whether it’s a real city you’ve witnessed, or only the sketch of what a thousand cities could be. It must be real. That which has been done, and that which has not—neither of these can ever be undone. The city builds itself, and the regrets you carry will forever be yours.

In a Dry Land

This Doromir is smaller than its cousins, stuck between the great desert and the Cif mountains where meltwater renews the land for only a few weeks each spring. You would never have come here, except that the prices for salted pork are depressed all through the country. Here, you’ve heard it said, the people can grow nothing except spices. They can improve any food, but they cannot produce it themselves.

The people who live here survive because of their skill as traders. The art of the trade is something they learn as children, and its basis lies in goodwill and mutual recognition. “All men need a friend to provide tea and shade,” the fathers teach their sons, and the sons watch as their fathers greet travelers with mint tea and stories, pass the lazy-hot hours in the shade before they begin to exhibit their wares. The few travelers who pass this way are grateful for the hospitality, but always wary of the people’s skill in selling. Many a trader has lost his camels here. But you are an experienced negotiator. You know how to hide your needs, remain aloof, graciously accept overtures without becoming indebted. You think you know the difference between true kindness and good salesmanship.

Looking down on the town from the mountains, you see that it is constructed like many others. The cathedral and the market share a plaza, the wealth and pride of the town displayed by a fountain bubbling despite the desert sun. You leave the caravan in the scant shade of a row of palms by the roadside, promise to return quickly. Entering the town, the urchins are on you immediately, hands tugging at your tunic, addressing you in a half dozen languages, bright eyes offering their light as hands surreptitiously pat your pockets. “Scram,” you tell them, not unkindly, but by the time you reach the market you’ve acquired a small parade of street kids. How they can tell you are a foreigner you do not know. You’ve been in the desert so long that your skin is only a half shade lighter than theirs.

In the market, you identify the products of all the surrounding Doromirs. Sandalwood and cedar from the western forests, fruits from the groves south of the desert, the finely woven sweaters from the cold mountains in the northeast. The merchants call out to you, offering you tea and shade in a dozen languages. You smile, wave them off, searching for your next acquisition. Nothing perishable, if you are to make the long voyage you intend. No livestock, if you’ll be crossing the desert. Spices are what you need. Spices are the specialty of this Doromir. So you stop to examine chickens in a coop. You refuse the owner’s tea and shade in a northern dialect, but he recognizes your language beneath the carefully constructed sentences, and he tells you in your own tongue that bargaining cannot begin without the sharing of tea and shade. You do not know if this is the truth or a ploy, but either way he will not discuss business until you’ve taken tea.

So you move on to the next kiosk, its shelves lined with powders, some you recognize, some you do not. The owner offers you tea and shade, and this time you accept. He asks where you come from, when you will see your family again. He tells you about his needy in-laws, about his sister’s poor health, a trip he once took to a distant province. You cannot tell if these stories are the opening play in negotiations, but you suspect they are because they seem so sincerely not to be. The spice seller has a friendly face, a relaxed way of taking his tea that makes you sit more easily on your own stool. You remind yourself to stay alert. You set your minimum and maximum prices, and you sip your tea and let your eyes and skin adjust to a world away from the sun’s muted fury. Your host pours you another glass of mint tea. Its hotness makes the day seem a bit cooler.

“I can tell that you have a fine eye for spices, so will show you something special,” the shopkeep tells you. He draws a garnet powder down from the shelves, tells you to stick out the tip of your tongue. You do, and he dabs a pinky finger of the powder there. It is chili, but it spreads a burning coldness through your mouth, a sensation that makes you shake your head and work your jaw in surprise, exploring this novel flavor. “But that is nothing,” says the spice seller. “Smell this,” he commands, placing a sheath of dried green stems beneath your nose. “Menthol,” you say, he tells you that it is a crossbreed between mint and peppermint known only to the people of this province. He rubs the plant on your forearm, and your sunburn evaporates. “But that is nothing.” From a block of what looks like talc he cuts a small piece, mixes it with water, and tells you to close your eyes. He dabs this cold liquid beneath your desert-sore eyes, rubs it roughly into your forehead and cheeks. “Wait,” he says, refills your tea, shows you lipstick made of ground red poppy. He burns a piece of sandalwood to soothe your senses, then has you smell raw blocks of jasmine, musk, perfumes which have no names in your language. Your face feels tight. “Close your eyes,” he says again, and he washes off the powder. “Look,” he says, handing you a mirror. You look as you looked ten years ago, before the desert had sapped the moisture from your face. You laugh at your own reflection, and he laughs with you. Your pleasure pleases him.

By the time the spice seller begins to speak about your purchases, you are no longer sweating. Your mouth tastes of mint and sugar, and you are wearing the face of a younger self. On one arm, sunburn throbs. The other still feels cool. “What will you take?” the spice seller asks. “Cold chili powder for making lamb stew? Menthol for your voyage across the desert? Face cream for finding a beautiful young wife, and perfumes for winning her heart? This was a good year for pig farmers,” the spice seller mentions. “Prices are very low for pork now. But I can tell you have a fine eye for spices, and you are my friend, so I will make you a good price.”

You try to remain wary as he refills your tea. He already has the advantage, because he knows what you need. You remind him that this is the Doromir trapped between the mountains and the desert. "Meat is hard to find here," you say, speaking the hard desert dialect. “Then we both have needs,” he tells you in the desert tongue. “This is why one makes friends.”

Janus

Translated from Spanish (below)

Leaving through the North Gate of Doromir and following the trail into the sierra, you will arrive in Janus after five or six days of walking, depending on the season. This city functions like so: there are two types of people, of metal and of wood. The people of wood live in their own neighborhoods, where their children grow without contact with the metallic children. The young people of wood, between seventy and ninety years old, are cut into forms common to their style of life; specifically, every person has two sides carved into a model to represent the interactions of the woods where each of them was born. This is an intricate model, but rarely an exclusive one: the majority of the people can fit themselves together like a jigsaw puzzle, regardless of their place of birth, of their generation, or their station. Their religion also imitates the laws and the rhythms of the woods. They believe that there is a god for every form, from buildings and appliances to people and pets as for the trunks from which they were cut and for the insects which live inside them.

The metallic people likewise live separate from their colleagues, and their neighborhoods operate like so: at the time of their births, the babies are cut according to the circumstances of their social positions. Depending on the neighborhood, the schools teach the children how to fill the forms of their roles: the poor children and the girls are shaped interchangeably, to be replaceable, disposable. And with every social class each above the other, the children are cut a little bigger, with teeth and gears to take the strength from the common people, augment it, and pass it to their superiors. And the highest class fills the positions which determine the structure of the whole society: they are the men of influential businesses (and only the men), who are in charge of the business which gives form to all of the neighborhoods; they form the Congress, a democracy of 51%, rich against poor, which dictates the behavior of the entire society; and they are the priests who preach about a singular god, with power over all things.

But the neighborhoods of the two races are not separated by valleys or walls; it is language that separates the citizens of Janus. Many words—names, numbers, typical foods—have similar designations, but much of the grammar is different. The people of wood prefer simple forms, and conduct their daily affairs with a minimum of complication, reserving the majority of their words for their meetings and discussions. When they elaborate on the ways to maximize the efficiency of their self-government, their grammar can change these most complicated ideas into careful, balanced, logical evaluations in a process like verbal alchemy.

The metallic language, in contrast, falls like fine filings in an aura around the subject, carefully marking the borders of their ideas like establishing a quarantine around the many ideas which are prohibited, taboo, or considered indelicate. In this way the metal people conduct their days, their businesses, make their public decisions, appease the wrath of their god. Frequently the lower classes, educated poorly, find themselves lost in a swarm of inoffensive words which bite in the dark like insects which rob your blood slowly, invisibly, with foresight and cunning.

For this reason, the two civilizations developed seperately…

This city has a repetitive past. Every generation, the people of metal attack the people of wood and enslave them to make useful tools: spades, axes, hammers. To do this, they melt down individuals from the lower classes of metal, carve the bodies of people of wood, and subjugate the two for the use of the powerful, according to the will of the god which they all adore (the will interpreted by the priests, of course). But, with every generation the people of wood unite and grow like a jungle until they can consume the entire city. And every generation, it is at this point that the metallic leaders swear to peace, and for the rest of the century the two societies function in their separate neighborhoods according to their inherited customs, until the next generation forgets, and the futile war begins again.

Janus

Saliendo por la Puerta Norte y seguiendo el camino hasta la sierra, arribarás a Janus después de cinco o siete días de caminata, depende de la estación. Esta ciudad funciona así: hay dos tipos de gente, de madera y de metal. La gente de madera vive en sus barrios propios, donde sus niños crecen sin contacto con niños metálicos. La juventud de madera, entre sesenta y noventa años, son cortados en formas comunes a su estilo de vida; específicamente, cada persona tiene dos lados cincelado en un modelo para representar las interacciones de los bosques donde cada uno de ellos nació. Esto es un modelo muy intricado, pero raramente exclusivo: la mayoría de la gente se puede entrelazar como un rompecabezas, no importa el lugar de nacimiento, ni el género, ni la condición. Su religión imita las leyes y los ritmos del bosque también. Ellos creen que hay un dios para cada forma, desde edificios y aparatos a personas y mascotas como troncos de los que fueron cortados y para los insectos que vivieron dentro de ellos.

La gente metálica igualmente vive separada de sus colegas, y sus barrios operan así: al tiempo de sus nacimientos, los bebés son cortados acorde con las circunstancias de sus posiciones sociales. Depende del barrio, las escuelas enseñan a los niños como llenar las formas de sus roles: los niños pobres y las chicas son formados intercambiadamente para ser reemplazables, desechables. Y con cada clase social una sobre otra, los niños están cortados un poco más grandes, y con ranuras y ruedas dentadas para tomar la fuerza de la gente común, aumentarla, y pasarla a sus superiores. Y la clase más alta llena las posiciones que determinan la estructura de la sociedad entera: ellos son los hombres de negocios influénciales (y sólo los hombres) quienes están a cargo de los negocios que dar forma a todos los barrios; ellos forman el Congreso, una Democracia de 51%, enriquezados contra pobres, que dicta el comportamiento de la sociedad entera; y ellos son los sacerdotes quienes predican acerca de un dios singular, con poder sobre todos.

Pero los barrios de las dos razas no son separados por vallas o murallas; son las lenguas que separan a los ciudadanos de Janus. Muchas palabras—nombres, números, comidas típicas—tienen designaciones similares, pero mucha de la gramática es diferente. La gente de madera prefieren formas simples, y conducen sus asuntos diarios manteniendo un mínimo de complicación, reservando la mayoria de sus palabras para sus reuniones y discusiones. Cuando elaboran acerca de las vías para maximizar la eficiencia de su auto-gobierno, su gramática puede cambiar a ser estas ideas más complicadas en evaluaciones cuidadosas, balanceadas, lógicas en una procesa como alquímia verbal.

La lengua metálica, en contraste, cae como virutas finas en una emanación alrededor del sujeto, marcando cuidadosamente los bordes de sus ideas como estableciendo una cuarentena alrededor de las muchas ideas que son prohibidas, tabú, o considerado indelicado. En esta vía conducen las personas metálicas sus días, sus negocios, hacen sus decisiones publicas, apaciguan la cólera de su dios. Frecuentemente las clases bajas, educadas pobremente, se encuentran ellos mismos perdidos en enjambres de palabras inofensivas que pican en el oscuro como insectos que roban su sangre lentamente, invisiblemente, con previsión y astucia.

Por eso, las dos civilizaciones se desarrollaron separadamente…

Esta ciudad tiene un pasado repetitivo. Cada generación, la gente de metal ataca a la gente de madera y las hacen sus esclavos para hacer herramientas útiles: arados, hachas, martillos. Para hacer eso, ellos les funden individuos de las clases bajas de metal, cincelar los cuerpos de personas de madera, y sujetar los dos para el uso de los poderosos, acorde con la fuerza de voluntad del dios que todos adoran (la fuerza de voluntad interpretado por los sacerdotes, por supuesto). Pero, con cada generación la gente de madera se une y crece como una jungla, hasta que puedan consumir toda la ciudad. Y cada generación está en este punto que los metálicos más grandes declaran la paz bajo juramento, y para el resto del siglo las dos sociedades funcionan en sus barrios separados acorde con sus costumbres heredadas, hasta que la próxima generación se olvide y la guerra fútil comience otra vez.

Two Poems

Tourist of the heart

What can the eye of your camera capture?
When flamenco dancers stomp out their fierce love,
Their sad rapture

Do you see more than what you have not been?

Look into the eyes of the woman behind the veil
In the land of men you once called enemy,
Climbing upon the trail.
Do you see your mother’s eyes, or do your own begin to fail?

Hear in their songs the songs your own heart sings,

Hear their drum-beaten poetry,
and in their love, see your love, and know that in every city in every language you find the same human animal, divided by unity, wiser and more fallible than yourself.



Falling into Fès

As darkness falls, the light climbs
Up and up the minarets.
Worlds in the city open and close,
A lover lurking behind her veil,
A passing smile that becomes an affair.

Cold wind brings lightning, and the Berber chants within the walls
Are like a million beating hearts.
One for each raindrop that falls on thatched roofs
To drip through
As lights crawl out to city’s edge.

In the alley, the children still play
Protected from the rain and from the lights
(your host will bring the food inside).
One girl, the smallest of her friends, is fighting like a lion,
Mixing dance and laughter into her flying fists,
Playing, not practicing for darker nights to come.

Now they’re going in for dinner, but soon they will be back to chant the rhythms of their own streets.

The Lies We Tell Our Children

Chucky came onto the porch hauling cousin Al’s kid by one arm and the back of his neck. “Jesus Christ, Chucky!” Beth said, put down her beer and swatted him one. “You’re going to rip his head straight off like that.” Chucky gave her a look of high skepticism before charging back to the basement. His mother handed the baby over to Sarah, who looked around for a place to sit him. He went into her lap, then her beer in his lap.

“I tell you,” Beth continued, “She musta spent the better part of a grand on that purse. It’s a damn shame, is what it is.”

“She never did have much sense,” Chris added. Beth and Chris had married six and a half years ago. Their oldest, Charles, was six years old the previous Wednesday, so they’d invited over all their other friends with kids, most of whom had ended up being out of town for Memorial Day. So besides family, only Sarah and Mark had showed. They’d all gone to high school together, but had never found themselves in the same circles until Lamaze classes six years earlier.

Sarah and Mark had only one child, Cynthia, who was three weeks older than Chucky. Their younger was with Cynthia in the basement, along with Al and Mandy’s three kids, and Chucky, evidently doing something which required a baby. Mark’s cousin and father were in the living room watching the Phillies, Beth’s dad was on the grill, and in the kitchen were two mothers, a grandmother, an aunt and a daughter-in-law, all filling deviled eggs. Plus Dylan, head still attached, made twenty.

Sarah and Mark, Beth and Chris were sitting on the porch drinking Coronas, looking out over a little lawn boxed off by a chain link fence.

“No one ever told her that by the time you’re thirty you have to settle down,” Sarah was explaining. “You know what her parents were like. Hippies. Nobody ever taught her life’s not all fun and games and fancy purses.”

“Isn’t she a lawyer?” Mark asked.

“So?”

“So I’m sure she’s figured out that life’s not all fun and games,” he said, then muttered, “Probably has a grand to burn, too.”

“Whatever,” Beth said. “The point is, she’s going to wake up one day and be fifty and realize that nobody wants to marry a wrinkly old fat chick. Then where’s she gonna be?”

“Nice, hon,” Chris commented. Then, “Anyone want?” he offered, getting up to go to the kitchen.

“Honey, I thought you were driving tonight.”

“I’ve only hadda couple. Besides, we’re going to eat soon, anyways.”

“Alright, get me one, too, then.”

Chris went in and out came Cynthia, wearing a T-shirt advertising dog food. Cousin Al worked for Procter and Gamble. “Mommy?” she asked, standing on tiptoe with great determination. “What’s ‘fuck’?” Mark started to laugh, and Sarah spit a small amount of beer back into the bottle. Cynthia, from tiptoe, examined the grown-ups.

“Where’d you learn that word?” Sarah asked.

“Chucky.”

“Well, that is a word grown-ups use when they’re angry. But don’t you say it. If children say it, the boogie man hears you and comes to take you away when you’re sleeping.”

“Is the boogie man going to take Chucky away?”

“Chris! Get me one, too?”

“We’re all out!” he called from the kitchen, voice muffled by an egg.

“Cynthia, hon, why don’t you go to the garage fridge and get us a six-pack?” Mark jumped in.

“What’s a six-pack?”

“Six beers in a pack, dumbass.”

“Mark!”

“What?”

“Don’t call the kid a dumbass. She’s already learned enough bad language today.”

“What’d’ya mean?” asked Chris from the doorway, egg in hand.

“Chuck’s down in the basement saying the F-word.”

“Saying the fuck-word, eh?”

“Chris!”

“Ha! Fine,” he said, showing his palms and his teeth. “Cynthia, you go get us a six-pack and I’ll give you a dollar.”

“Okay!” the girl said, running to the stairs, walking down them, then leaping from the second-to-last to jog off around the corner.

“Kids just pick up everything,” Beth mock-lamented.

“You’ve got to watch every f*in word you say,” Sarah self-censored.

“That’s why I say you might as well tell them what’s what straight from the get-go,” Mark volunteered. “They’re gonna learn it all, anyways, so why not?”

“Uh, because they’re kids, Mark. Are you going to teach our daughter about fucking?”

“Ha!” said Chris.

“Well, somebody’s going to have to give her the gist of it when she asks where babies come from.”

“From drunk boyfriends who won’t wear condoms,” Beth said at her husband.

“I was wearing one. Remember?”

“Enough!”

“Dinner’s ready!” Beth’s father announced, and Cynthia returned, lugging a sixer off one hip.

“Where’s my dollar?”

Chris patted his pockets. “Sorry, hon, fresh out of dollars. How about an I.O.U.?”

“What’s an eye-oh you?”

“Go round up the kids for dinner and I’ll give you one.”

Cynthia stuck her head through the door and screamed in, “Kids! Dinner!” then lined herself up first, empty bun waiting on a white paper plate. She was well aware that an I.O.U. was not a dollar, and neither of those ranked with a burger.

The kids came up in a pack, Chucky in the lead wearing three-quarters of a beer case over his head. They raided the pile of meat and fries, ignored the corn and coleslaw, and went into the yard and sat in the corner farthest from where the picnic blanket was laid out.

Over the course of the next hour, the kids played pirates (from a cardboard box Chucky and his men laid siege to Cynthia’s troops arrayed on the jungle gym) while the adults talked about TV shows, the Phillies, the suckiness of politicians, childhood, Uncle Mort’s adult non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and childhood again (Beth’s mother, Sue, was trying to make the point that both babies and the dying are helpless, caught in the great cycle of life, etc., etc.). All this until Beth stood up and yelled, “Jesus Christ, Chucky, don’t eat that!” Chucky was chewing on a bud from their marijuana bush.

“Why not?” Chucky asked. “It smells good. What is it?”

“Just shut up and eat your hamburger,” Beth told him.

“I ate two!”

“My god, Christopher,” his mother whispered (while at the other end of the yard the kids whispered themselves). “Are you still smoking marijuana at your age?”

“So? You smoked it right up until I was out of college.”

“That is not true. I never once smoked pot. At least not after you were born.”

“Okay, ma.”

“Nothing wrong with a little marijuana,” Beth’s dad volunteered.

“Dad!”

“What? In Vietnam, everyone smoked it. Some of the best men I know smoked it.”

“Dad, you were never in Vietnam. You were at Fort Bragg for six months, and then the war ended.”

“Humph.”

“Chucky, you keep the other kids away from that bush, will you?” called Beth.

“I will if you tell me what it is,” he called back.

“Shut up and do what your mother tells you! Who needs another beer? Chucky, go get the adults four more beers, willya?”

Sarah and Mark, Beth and Chris moved back to the porch after the rest of the family left. They talked about Chris’ new job, and how his much bigger paycheck disappeared just as fast as the old one. About how three kids, or at least two, were better than one, because they kept each other entertained. Compared pediatricians and school districts. Then they decided to get high.

“Right off the bush,” said Mark. “Just the way God intended it.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Beth. “You’re not going to tell your kids that. Are you going to raise them religious?”

“We’re raising them Lutheran,” Sarah said. “They’re going to have a good, healthy, religious upbringing. We’re not really believers ourselves, except, you know, in the normal way. But I think it’s good for children to recognize a higher power in their lives. You know, it teaches them, you know, a lot of good things. God, I’m high.”

“None of that hocus-pocus for ours,” said Chris.

“Oh really?” asked Beth. “What about the baptism?”

“That’s for your mother. She damn near had an embolism when I told her I didn’t want to raise my son Catholic.”

“Well, I think it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to take him to church every once in a while,” Chris tried. Beth waved the comment off as she sucked on a joint. “Better than the boogie man,” he tried again. They’d both glazed over completely by now, staring with the eyes of people already on the highway.

“What the hell are they doing out there, anyways?” Sarah broke in.

Out in the gloaming, a blonde-haired girl was showing a boy how to hold an infant, shooing the mosquitoes away from his face. They were leaning together like two people speaking in low tones, wearing in their hair and their clothes and in their skin the last rays of another day’s light.