Brian Michael Barbeito

Damascus or Bust

It was the time of day where the light had already faded significantly. The sun let out only a hint of pronunciation, and the clouds moved in and settled heavily across the shoreline. A group of birds fought for something and quarrelled loudly near quietly lapping waves. A couple miles out the rains had already met the body of water though there was nobody there to witness the encounter.
Jacob was walking along the shoreline and it would be a couple of more miles before he got to where he was headed. Behind him was the old house, now a museum of sorts though the daily guides, local teenagers and twenty-somethings, were often tardy. Originally the house was built by locals for an aristocratic family that immigrated to the shores from across the sea. They had bought acres and acres of the land, but now, several generations later, the land was owned by the federal government. Jacob liked to walk past the place, and imagined the isolation of winters past, or else the unabridged freedom of summers, a freedom so open that thinking on it seemed to ignite a sort of quiet but marked electricity in his bloodstream.
Now coming upon a brief wooded area with cedars and pines, he saw that the water had tumbled and smoothed small and large rocks at that part of the shore. The colors were more visible under the clear water. Yellows looking like Jasper, greens resembling aventurine, and even the odd piece of crystallized material waited there, all of them receiving the days and the nights in an endless and well put together cyclical reality dream film with the wind and waves as the soundtrack. All of them comfortable now with the idea of the fast encroaching night.
Out of the rocky and tree dense area, two men were huddled over. One was placing fish in front of the other on a small dock. The receiver cut a line from the head to the tail, along the belly, and soon a given fish was broken open to the air. Then, not quickly and not slowly, but quietly and confidently like an artist, the cutting man separated the skeletal structure from the flesh and plopped the fish back together. His partner picked up each one, placed it in a pre-made grave blanket of tin foil, and wrapped it before packing each in ice.
Behind, the boat launch area, now deserted, had a fierce dog roaming it. Jacob was too fatigued and also intoxicated from the fresh northern air to experience fear, or recoil from the canine as it approached. The dog stopped its pacing and looked at the walker, but there was no psychic animosity in Jacob, nothing to latch onto, and it disregarded him altogether, preferring to double back and then head inland.
Approaching a stretch of isolated sand Jacob looked out to the water. A pervasive and age old type of angst wanted to settle in to his being, but he forbade it. Not in the name of a monotheistic God. Not in the name of a pantheistic wobbly paradigm. And not in the name or worshiped habit of the strength of self. Rather, he simply forbade it. Plain and simple. And if it was out of anything, it was out of fatigue, out of boredom, out of a quiet disgust for this old false and melancholic friend who had proved through decades to be no friend at all.
Without joy, and without the angst, he had nothing, and so asked for help and guidance from spirit. Immediately he was inclined to look at the rubber band on his left wrist. It was a rubber band that he did not remember putting there. This was the way spirit worked for him—in strange images, via odd connections, through symbolism and imbued with nuance. He realized the band being on the left meant the heart, because he always equated everything on the left as such. Then in a millisecond, he realised the spirit was telling him that the path, though unrecognized and even scoffed at in secular terms, was indeed one of heart. He had no man or group to answer to and the only real inclination was to follow the contour of this the whole, the larger, the heart-felt.
Everything deepened then. It was as if Jacob was at the bottom of a benevolent sea and had found an opening or passageway to another, unknown sea that hid beneath the regular one. His thoughts surprised him. Christ came to mind, and the Lamb of God, being approached by the devil, was being told to give up, that the task was too great. Then Jesus continuing anyway, and before death, saying that it had been done. This strengthened Jacob, and though he had no pragmatic answer, and would not be attending a church anytime soon, felt nevertheless empowered by the Christ. True strength was not overt. True strength was humility. Humility and a procession in the face of every kind and manner of tiredness.
He was close to his destination now. He walked on a bit upon a makeshift gravel road of three quarter crushing. He was facing the water, and now all he had to do was turn from it and walk inward, following the road as it changed into a smaller path and led into the dense bush of the forest. He did. The night had almost fully arrived. It would no doubt blossom into wondrous being, a rich and thick world standing in the same place the day had but with a vastly different costume. Large drops of rain began to hit the earth, and soon all the forests and shoreline including the house of the aristocrats received the single storm like a baptismal vow in the immense and somehow bright darkness.

© Brian Michael Barbeito 2012

Brian Barbeito is a resident of Ontario, Canada. His short fiction has appeared in or is forthcoming at various venues such as Quail Bell, Metazen, Mudjob, character i, The Electric Poet, Thrice Fiction, and Apocrypha and Abstractions.

Brian Michael Barbeito

Strawberry Blizzards and the Holy Ghost

The bottom of a pail is broken through.
-- Zen Saying

We walked down those streets, where it had rained for hours. The entire area had for a while afterwards been wet with a beautiful type of black that sort of glistened. People used headlights in the day, but then in the late afternoon the whole thing turned into a sun shower. A couple rainbows were painted in the sky- one to the east and one to the west. We walked right along there, heading farther south. It was said that you had to lock your doors there, because there was much crime, and this was accurate, but we were okay then, that day- as if we were protected. Our group stole oranges off some trees and ate them- and then boosted a few more and put them in our pockets for good measure. They smelled like they must have on the day the world was born, before it fell heavily from grace and goodness and solitary gladness.

We had to go visit this church, and when we walked in to where it’s offices were, it was noticeable that the place was just infused with spirit (which is actually strange for a church), and there was so much spirit there that the walls were even full with it, and there was a genuine happiness- not the happiness of this world that is only based on excitement and is not the real happiness. We had to talk there for a while, an incorruptible place, shining- and I felt and saw that light was coming from everywhere, and you could really see and know that it was in and about things, and that the regular world before was all a sort of make-believe place, a secular cop-out of sorts, full of Maya, of illusion- and that this new illumination was what the seers and sages had spoken and written about. It was a universal and non-denominational thing of course- because you can’t ultimately classify those places of experience- but living in the duality as we did and do, it must be classified anyhow, and for now.

We went on from there and down to the Dairy Queen where we bought these Strawberry Blizzards. Outside I sat down the way a bit on this bench, and observed the dusk as it settled in. This strange and kind man stopped on his bike, and then leaned on it a bit so he could rest on it. We looked in the same direction, at a bridge and its underpass in the semi-distance. Soon we spoke, with him starting first.

• It’s a bridge were the traffic never really stops.
• The sound is like the ocean if you just let it be what it is.
• I have this coupon I found, for this free hamburger at a place down there. Thought I might as well go for it and go get me one.
• Yup. Say, was this place always like this?
• Always like this how?
• Messy. Rundown.
• Time was here when it wasn’t like this. In my times, it wasn’t like this. Been like this a while. About ten years. That bridge done it somehow I think. Hard to know how. But when they brought the highways through everything changed. The peoples been born and grew up this way know no different and that’s the way it just is gonna be. No sense worryin’ bout the past either way the way I sees it. But this time a day still sometimes pretty, and I can see somehow that you see that and that you know that. Good for you I say. Everybody mostly in a rush and don’t see nuthin’ no mores. I gotsa go. Give in my coupon.
• Have a good one.

Walking along the streets after that, night was coming, and I thought that the little lizards that lived all around might be getting ready to go to some quiet and secretive dwelling place, or else that they were there still by white and pink stucco walls, around orange cars and thick green grasses, or maybe resting, slightly weary from the day, around pale green garage doors, or by anything- but that they could not be seen now. And that was how we walked those streets, wearing watches and sneakers, in t-shirts and in gladness- a long way from the beginning, from creation, but still catching some of the spirit.

© Brian Michael Barbeito 2012

Brian Michael Barbeito resides in Ontario, Canada. He is the author of Postprandial, a prose-poem novel, and of Windows without Glass, a collection of flash fiction. A Pushcart nominee, his work has appeared in or is forthcoming at Glossolalia, Mudjob, Lunatics Folly, Synchronized Chaos, Subtle Fiction, Linguistic Erosion, Crack the Spine, Otis Nebula, Bare Root, and other venues.

Brian Michael Barbeito

How The Globalists Ruined My Summer Vacation

Those were WW2 houses- built just after the war, and they were all very similar. They felt like bungalows- because there were only a few steps up to the top floors- and the yards were small but well. What this meant was that they made sense. What that meant was that in those days, there were not as many extravagant pools and showy decks anyway. There were not four foot stainless steel BBQs and outdoor furniture. There was hardly any decadence and decay at all. Instead there was a moral fibre- and that is not said sarcastically- on the worst day there was moral fibre- more of it than on the best day decades later. See, in that time- the country was equipped with a strong working class. To be a radical was not even that threatening to many- but more of a Halloween show or youthful immature gesture full of romanticism and naiveté. And to be rich- well- that was for someone else- someone far away- and someone you heard of through another person, but didn’t know and would never know. There weren’t really cigarette boats on the docks or too many kidney shaped pools with a stone mason outdoor Jacuzzi. You just gotta have it! - Have you seen the latest? Well, those houses...they were well kept, and though sometimes the women knew things or took some work- for the most part they did not. The men- the fathers and husbands- worked in lumberyards, in factories, as motor rewinders, or as shipping and receiving men, as yard hands and drivers, as welders, and on roads, docks, and railways. Some were engineers, accountants, or even entrepreneurs. The seasons came when they were supposed to- autumnal hues in the late months that brought the dawn of winter on. Cold icy snow months- with icicles and boots- and the spring- where showers were directed into gullies and streams-. And of course the summer- its bright proud flowers watching the inhabitants of the place- these flowers growing in sync with the arching summer sun as it grew in the sky.
But something changed in the decades to come- and it was not only in that town. Sometimes the result of something you see has many factors- and things conspire to make a place downtrodden and sadder. And sadness can flip flop into constant melancholy- which can border on danger or hopelessness in time if not checked. And it was not the inhabitants only that experienced this- it was the brick and trees, and the trellises and eaves, it was the streams even in the distance- and somehow possibly the sun itself! It was impossible to really believe- to truly believe in the place- in the country- in the economy. The globalists had fucked everything up- willfully- through their plans. One couldn’t be an economic nationalist if one wanted- through any intention- unless you were a Freeman, or a Ruby Ridge type! Manufacturing was outsourced oversees- so was one third of the service industry- and how they did that through telecommunications was easy- and a sin- but they did it. Well, they could manufacture anything, and sometimes they even manufactured wars- just to keep their thing going- and to keep you looking the other way- like a global sleight of hand- magician playing tricks- and not a very good magician- but the only game in town. And the town. Well- many towns had polluted water from Hydraulic Fracturing- but that was another thing. The main thing was that that town was half unemployed. The next quarter was only marginally employed, and the fourth quarter was employed in minimum wage jobs- what the pencil necks and university geeks had thought to call- recipients of competitive wages. The audacity! “Competitive wages.” The guys who thought up terms like that were no doubt the sons and daughters of the globalists.

It went on like that. And on any given day in that place- you would not want to make too much eye contact- because it was getting rougher and rougher. The laissez faire economy and its trickle effect hadn’t trickled down. Someone had put a stop to the money-water. The only thing trickling was some beer that a shirtless man with sleeve tattoos spilt on his chest- as he raised his arm. Then he wiped his lips with the front of his forearms, and lit a smoke. Life was good, he thought, as it was a sunny day, - and he thought about the new tires he was getting. It had only cost four more dollars to order white letters. That was cool. That was awesome. As for the Globalists, he never heard of em’ really, and didn’t care much about basketball anyway.

© Brian Michael Barbeito 2011

Brian Michael Barbeito writes short fiction. His work has appeared at Glossolalia, Exclusive Conclave of Delights Magazine, Lunatics Folly, and Mudjob. He resides in Ontario, Canada.

Brian Michael Barbeito

Jacob Easton Ellis
(Of Cowboys, Indians, and Columbians)

Jacob went into the interior of the metropolis. He was definitely in an abyss, and had, ‘fallen down a drain’ as it were. But what could he do? Sleep and respite would not have him, and since there was no repose for a soul such as his, he had to tumble on, and though he was floundering, the thought came to him that he could try to learn something.

He spent a lot of time with the urban cowboy, now exiled from the fields. The cowboy had one eye and they walked along always in the bright metropolitan day. Jacob noticed that the dregs of society stretched before them, and this coupled with the hot sun gave him uneasy feeling. Jacob had thrown an empty milk carton at the cowboy. ‘Don’t throw things at me,’ said the cowboy, ‘ cause I only got one eye, and I ain’t gone lose it. I been through too much to lose the last eye. The other eye is glass. I been through a lot. I had my own operation of product in the mountains until the police raided it. And even in the end I never gave into them. I beat it too. I beat it with a good lawyer. But I is in the city now, and lookin’ for a new start. I know that the construction workers is many of them bad. They go to church on Sundays, and they sleep around with lots of women durin’ the week. Me, I left all that- left everythin’ and now I am just a cowboy anarch. How do you say it? An anarchy. I am an anarchy to myself.’ And the cowboy always spoke with his finger pointing, like he was admonishing everyone and everything. Jacob grew tired and soon parted with the strange and often contradictory man. He continued on.

The Indian and Jacob were like kings from different courts. There was a group that the Indian was the leader of and a group that Jacob was leader of, though a reluctant leader. But they met on the bus once, and had reason to talk. They found that they did not quarrel, but instead became fast friends. Jacob talked to the Indian about Carlos Castaneda and the Indian, before disappearing for six weeks at a stretch, explained things such as the time the Indian said, ‘ I carry this bag, and it has matches, and a few other items in it. When you die, and you go to the next world, you will need four things. Always I carry them with me, because death can come at any time. Others are not so far on their healing journey, but I am and I want to be prepared for all things in all ways.’ One day the Indian threw his cigarette off of the balcony. Jacob laughed and asked him why, if he held tobacco in such high regard, did he just do that so flippantly and dismissively. The Indian laughed and made the sign of the cross over the balcony railing as if to bless the discarded filter. Soon when the Indian left to the fields to find his way out of the mire and much that is the cityscape, Jacob found the Columbian.

She was of medium height, and wore high platform shoes, her hair short, and the eyes looked out from under a light brown wisp of hair that was turning a golden hue from the summer sun. They walked and at a street festival she got on a stage and danced. The Columbian had lost much, but tried to stay upbeat. The Cowboy and the Indian had suffered immensely in their own ways, but it was hard for Jacob to see that suffering enormous and dark had come to the Columbian because she was a woman. The cowboy and the Indian also knew her, and Jacob and them had spoken about it often. All she really had wanted was to be happy, to be settled, but she had drawn a very lousy hand. Death and sickness were around her, and would continue to be around her all he days of her life. Yet there she danced, in the bright sun, with rhythm untold of in the Northern Hemisphere. ‘You are our leader Jacob,’ said the Columbian ‘and I would follow you anywhere.’ But the Columbian was only wishing that she could follow. Soon enough, the summer was winding and hints of things autumnal came slowly but surely in those nights.

One night, when they all found themselves so far to the edge of the metropolis that Jacob did not recognize any of the streets, he knew it was time to journey outward again. He kissed the Columbian softly on her pouty lips. To the Indian he yelled a sort of war cry- and the Indian and he laughed at this, - the Indian bestowing his Christian blessing with the sign of the cross in the air again. Jacob shook hands with the cowboy- and asked him to please try and look out for the Columbian, to take care of her and keep an eye on her. Then Jacob left.

Far and far he travelled, beyond the city limits. The vibration of the environs rose, as surely and definitely as the sky was blue or the ground was below one’s feet and not on top. When he reached his destination he took a long shower and got ready to sleep. He would sleep on and off for three days, but it was not a physical sickness he was trying to let the cosmos cure. The past was still on him, like an unhealthy psychic cord- and he could not cut it- but only had to hope it would wear and break through time. So he began the wait for the new season- the autumn, where the colder air might kill the past. The past, well meaning, but like a bacteria living however it knew could. Or like a drowning person grabbing onto another and drowning that person as well. The autumn would come. It always did. He would wake and it’s bright and rich textured hues would be waiting for him just outside- and lead him to a new life.

In the meantime he slept.

And dreamed of wild open spaces in fields covered in shadows and the moon’s light.

© Brian Michael Barbeito 2011

Brian Michael Barbeito writes short fiction. His work has appeared at Glossolalia, Exclusive Conclave of Delights Magazine, Lunatics Folly, and Mudjob. He resides in Ontario, Canada.

Writer: Brian Michael Barbeito

Fabrics

Black formations in the sky were far away but felt close, and Jacob looked also briefly at the telephone wires, the bridge that was passing, and the tall grey abodes. All and more were only sinister portents of an acute descent, and though the vehicle went slowly, the world felt as if it moved at breakneck speed. Save for the hiding sun, there was nothing to create kindness. He looked at the leg of his pants, and the fabric seemed to move. Part of it dislodged from the other part and jingled around. He knew on one level that it was a hallucination. Yet the artificial nightmare was not any more terrifying than the real one. They could be together, could cohabitate, and in fact were. There were, in the city, shells, and the shells had eyes and hands, legs and arms, brains and feet. Big steel trucks raced past. This was a foreign land, and always had been a foreign land. Any illusion of home had dissolved. Sparkling went the sun, surely on the other side of the city. On this side it was only the waking dream in full fledged malevolent laughter. Jacob remembered the time when he was in the cold area, and felt the breaking of the world- and though did not laugh outwardly- grinned inwardly, because he thought he was in hell. This too was now hell, but just another level. The different areas of such a place were spread all over. That fabric from the pants. Moving round like that. The other time- on a walkway- frozen- in a blue sweater. Others. The fabric on the pants. The fabric of the telephone wires, the brown buildings in the sea. The fabric of the complacent world. The prior world- the false Eden, had descended down some hidden drain. The drain was impossible to see- but it was so patient, so proficient. After it took all the water- it sucked at the air- it brought many things- many solid and subtle things down and away. What was where the shells with eyes and ears were- the grey glowing buildings- hallucinations at dawn- and silent inner laughter that hell had come alive? Surely not floundering at any of its developmental stages...surely having no birth pangs. Arriving on its own time, like a perfectly formed leopard gecko in the desert, waking up and beginning a hunt, the sand under foot, a knowing and ancient material, as old as creation itself.

© Brian Michael Barbeito 2011

Brian Michael Barbeito writes short fiction. His work has appeared at Glossolalia, Exclusive Conclave of Delights Magazine, Lunatics Folly, and Mudjob. He resides in Ontario, Canada.