just
one person believes in them, they exist.”
“Someone’s done way too much thinking for such a
young girl. Aren’t you supposed to be thinking of cute boys
and pretty dresses?” The Virgen Maria asks.
“I suppose.”
“And what if that one person dies?” The Virgen Maria
asks.
“Then the concepts revert back to being memes, and
start looking for the next person they can be hosted in.”
“Now that Rosaria is gone”, the Virgen Maria says, “the
memes will be looking for a new host.”
“You are one of those memes, aren’t you?” I ask the
Virgen Maria. “What is it you want me to do?”
“I want you to send a memo to Diablo.”
"What is it you want to say in the memo?" I ask.
"The last laugh ‐ it is mine!" The Virgen Maria says.
Now I ask myself, "Would Diablo himself say such a
thing?"
La Loba
Sonora means “sound” in Spanish. People think
of
deserts as dead and quiet. And they can seem so, especially
at midday. But a desert really is very alive and “sonorous”.
And none moreso than the Sonora, therefore its name.
Most
of the sound is the vocalization of life. Animals do
not use words like humans do. Animals do not use the sheer
volume of rich and varied sound combinations that humans do
to express the complexity of human lives.
Words
aren’t the concrete things we think they are
anyway. The meanings of words change. We construct our
belief systems on the building blocks of words. But words
have a tendency to turn into mist and disappear. Our world is
built on words, but then the words get yanked out from under
us, and we find ourselves falling into the abyss.
I
feel the very surface of the earth open to swallow me.
I float weightless as the crust of the earth closes above me,
and cuts off the light. The fall makes me nauseous and dizzy.
When I hit bottom, I open my eyes, and find myself back in the
desert again.
A
wolf stands before me. The rest of the pack stands
where Rosaria had been, but there is no longer a trace of
Rosaria. The wolf that stands near me will not let the pack of
wolves come any closer. The wolf near me does not snarl. It
doesn't seem to me to communicate in any way that it does
not want me touched, but none of the other wolves approach.
It doesn’t need words. It doesn’t even need to make a sound.
Imagine a human being not having to say anything to get any
response out of fellow humans. This is true power.
The
Sonoran Wolf is really a Mexican Wolf that has
managed to survive in the harsh extremes of the Sonora. The
Mexican Wolf is the smallest Gray Wolf subspecies in North
America. Supposedly. The wolf before me is enormous. Its
right ear is slightly lacerated, and it has a scar on its face. It
resembles a very well fed coyote more than a wolf, but it is
wolflike in that it has a broader head, a thicker neck,