El y yo
Time Travel for Tourists
A Bottle of Words
(PDF)
Fifty Thousand (Parables of the painter and the emperor of China)
(PDF)
More than One Condition (PDF)
Young Man in a Subway Car
Ladies and gentleman, can I have your attention for just a moment please! I am an independent filmmaker. I am here today today to ask for your help in producing my new film. That's why I 'm waving this empty Starbucks grande cup under your noses. A penny, a nickel, a dime, can help feed a starving actor. A quarter, fifty cents, a dollar, can make the difference between digital video and High Definition.
Ladies and gentlemen, when you get home tonight, take moment to think of those less fortunate than yourselves and pray. Pray that you never have to stay up all night in the freezing cold while take after take is spoiled by a barking dog or a car alarm. Pray that you never have to plan your shooting schedule around your lead actor's bartending shifts. Pray that you never burn your credit and have to move back in with your parents.
Film saved me, brothers and sisters. Before I knew anything about Sundance, I was headed for trouble. I was into street theater. I dressed up in a clown suit and jiuggled in the park, annoying young, innocent children. That's not right. Please help finance my next film, or I'll be forced to live a life of mime.
Manager of the Miniatures
I think you'll like this next song. I found the tiniest Tibetan musicians in the world and made huge stars out of them. They travel in my vest pocket and, when they're not on tour, stay in a safety deposit box in Switzerland. They're no trouble at all-—nobody has to take them anywhere. They're content to gaze at a postcard of the Alps. I think it reminds them of the Himalayas.
The problem is not them but their music. The sound is so subtle that you don't hear it at all when they first start playing. You have to sit very quietly, relax, and concentrate. Then, somewhere in the back of your brain a hum insinuates itself before you're really conscious of it. Gradually, it occupies your mind, seeping into every pore of your awareness. Next morning when you wake, the melodious vibrations linger like the aftermath of a struck gong, only the ringing doesn't lose any power, it just hangs there motionless, outside time, but not long. When you drink your first cup of coffee or splash water on your face, the music's gone.
These musicians have been called dangerous—why, I don't know. Parents of their fans have complained to the authorities. More than once, acting on a friendly warning, I've had to throw the band into my suitcase and climb out of a hotel window. Last week, the doors to a concert hall were blocked by an angry crowd. I don't remember much about this incident, it's just a blur of loud voices and ugly faces contorted with rage. I do remember running breathlessly down cobblestone streets to the sea, then running along the beach, clutching my suitcase with the musicians inside getting tossed around violently. Dazed, kneeling by the water, I dumped them on the sand and watched them scurry away from crabs.
The next day, after an exhausted sleep, my usual senses returned to me, but it was too late. I had to cancel the rest of the tour--the producers weren't happy, believe me. But I don't care. Every night I go out to the beach and sit for hours, listening for the faint singing of the miniature musicians, but I can never absolutely sure if one of them is really audible beneath the surf and the gusting wind or if I'm just hearing my desire to hear them.
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My name is Piña Gomez. I raised this moustache under the table because that's where I do all my business. I'm your man for genuine Rolex watches, collectible coins, and drug paraphernalia. I also do a brisk trade in extra virgins (the ones who don't end up in olive oil.) Some call me a bandit, some call me a pirate, some call me the last swashbuckler, whatever that means. If I ever run into the second-last swashbuckler, I'll ask him.
Now whenever I'm down Cuba way and need a little break, I call the man who runs the party and we go fishing in that big turquoise pond. Our relationship is entirely apolitical but legendary in its proportions. We puff a few Cohibas and gulp down some cervezas. When we want to relieve ourselves we dangle our hemingways over the edge of the railing in a kind of friendly little competition—you machos out there know what I'm talking about. He says, "The water's warm today." And I say, "But it's cold at the bottom." We can joke around with each other because we have an understanding. We understand that he can beat the crap out me if he wants and then have me arrested for not bleeding fast enough.
After lunch, when the servants finish clearing the rice and beans from the table, they break out the guitars, maracas, timbales, and bongos and sing a few medium-tempo mambos to stimulate our torpid spirits. If somebody comes in late for a chorus or forgets any lyrics, that's four years of hard labor. Believe me, this band is tighter than an elephant in spandex.
The party leader and I sit at the table with a bottle of rum between us and a couple of loyal revolutionary workers on our laps. Mine has long black hair. Her name is Azucara and she goes to night school to study male psychology. The course is short and simple.
I ask the party leader how things are going these days and he shrugs. "Thanks to my organizational efforts, the economy is running as smoothly as an engine with no oil. It doesn't go anywhere. We planned it that way."
I press him for some kind of personal statement.
He says, "You know, from my office in the Capital building I can see the laundry of my people hanging from the balconies. It gives me a good feeling, I don't know why."
"Do you ever miss Che?" I ask.
"Sure, I miss him terribly! I miss those days when we used to appear together in public and everybody would shout ‘Che! Che! Che!' and crowd him for his autograph. You see, he had such a hip way of wearing his beret, everybody wanted to look like him. Finally I said, ‘Amigo, this revolution isn't big enough for both of us, you know what I mean?' He took the hint and left, but later I assigned him to a very important job, official martyr of the nation."
He rambles on like this for a while. While he speaks I introduce my fingers beneath the elastic of Azucara's innermost garment. She begins to take her clothes off, a sensible idea in the heat. That makes the clave player drop a stick, confuses the timbales, throws the guitar player off key and makes the trumpets blow flat, and all of a sudden it's a ten-car pile-up on Rumba Road.
The enraged leader leaps to his feet, dumping his own party secretary on the floor. "This is an outrage! Cubans have no discipline!" he screams, as he pulls a revolver from his pocket, but he only manages to perforate the string bass and blast a couple of glasses behind the bar. The band members leap into the water and make a desperate swim for Florida.
As the great leader tucks his revolver back into his webbed military belt, I take advantage of the moment by whipping out the plans of a project to turn Cuba into an amusement park called Mundo del Disney. A franchise with local color. Instead of a black Mickey Mouse we'll have a mulatto named Miguelito Ratón. A big silly dog named Loco will hand out cigars to the kids. But I barely get started before my bearded friend falls asleep in his chair, because he's been up since dawn ruling his small island nation with an iron fist. While he's asleep, Azucara and I discuss the mysteries of American-style business, such as liquidity, rollovers, and mergers, while she gazes into my eyes with longing, or is it avarice? Who cares? Even though the leader is asleep, his party is still going strong.
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Time Tourist
I had a few days off, so on the spur of the moment, I decided to go to
another time, instead of just another place. I headed for Now and Then
Station, the busy hub of temporal transportation. When I got there, I
folded up my car, inserted it in slot 9354, row AA87, area 404, and looked
around. Persons of every description and exposition were running in and
out of the parking lot: men in powdered wigs and velvet, a Prohibition-era
flapper with cloche hat and cigarette holder, and some people of indeterminate
gender in gleaming prismatic body suits.
The station is a vaulted edifice, a veritable cathedral to inter-epochal
transportation. Its ceiling is perpetually obscured by clouds. A din of
voices fills the central hall. Boards reporting Arrivals and Departures
float above heads of the crowd, who are forced to move en masse, following
and reading as they go. There are frequent collisions and even falls because
nobody's looking where they're going--they're all looking up at the Boards.
Here's an example:
| TRANSPORT | LEAVING | ARRIVING | GATE |
| VW Bug | 10:15 | 1972 | A.D. |
| Chariot | 10:32 | 1500 | B.C. |
| Train | 10:41 | 1887 | A.D. |
| Train | 10:50 | 1948 | A.D. |
| Coach-and-four | 11:02 | 1720 | A.D. |
| Zneet | 11:19 | 3055 | A.D. |
I was interested in the chariot trip, but someone told me that you have
to stand all the way and when you get there, there's no place to stay.
It's impossible to get a room in Mesopotamia during big Biblical events.
I was also intrigued by the Zneet. What was this far-future vehicle? I
decided to get on it and see where it might take me. I had an hour to
kill before its departure, so I bought a magazine and sat in the lounge
and watched people age at different rates, including backward.
Finally, the Zneet's imminent departure was announced and I hurried to
catch it. When I handed in my ticket and went through the gate, I was
subjected to a kind of flash, or perhaps it was just a sidelong glance,
and heard a few words uttered. One of them might have been "Zneet," but
I can't say for sure. I realized all at once that travelling is a foolish
and frivolous activity. I wandered out of the station and sat down on
the grass to contemplate the sky.
Two hours later, I snapped out of my trance. I went back into the station
to complain to the transportation company, Pan-World Zneetways. They refused
to refund my money, insisting to me that I had gotten a perfectly good
coach-class Zneet ride. Technically, it wasn't exactly a ride. The point
of the Zneet was that it obliterates one's desire to travel anywhere.
I was told that by the year 3000, there were no more religions or languages
on earth and technology was geared toward removing desire rather than
satisfying it. You would hardly recognize the place.
I grabbed the next time-transport out, a Checker Cab to the late fifties.
There were cheering crowds everywhere. It was not clear what or who they
were cheering for. Refugees and fugitives elbowed each other savagely
in their eagerness to get out of town. Penguins stood on every corner
with advertisements painted on their plump little black-and-white bodies.
We were stopped by a patrol of leather-clad women who carried submachine
guns and sported badges clipped to their exposed garter belts. When my
driver showed them his wrist tag, they let us through with only a few
nasty sexist remarks.
I complained to the driver about the general lack of authenticity. Even
the architectural details seemed vague, unsure of themselves. "Never heard
of parallel universes, huh?" he asked, scratching his wine-stained beard.
He explained that there is not just one infinity, but an infinity of infinities.
No destination can be guaranteed as the destination. At best, you
get a plausible parallel universe. At worst . . . well, you can only shake
your head. I was ready to leave already.
The driver's shift was just about over. I told him to drop me off at 1985.
I paid him, got out, and walked uptime the rest of the way to the present.
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