he fell in love with a fly…

I met this man in his 40’s who fell in love with a fly. He listened to Los Panchos nearly every night. It reminded him of his mother, who died shortly after his birth. He spent his days and nights at his home, a prisoner to his wheelchair. His best friend was the 1950 hi-fi record player his mother received for her birthday. This was Miguel. It had been raining for twenty one days, and he knew his new friend was near death. Actually, his new love. She would die soon. He was heartbroken. She was a fly. The evening news reported that the month long rain would stop shortly. The time was symbolic for his new friend. When the rain stopped, she would decease. Miguel knew this. I listened to his story, as he played Piel Canela by Eydie Gorme and The Trio Los Panchos.

I wondered if he was insane. He wasn’t. He had seen beauty evolve in its most purest way. I saw it too, and witnessed this beauty.

The mean little white boys down the road

Oyster Creek, Texas. No oysters, but plenty of mean little white boys. That’s the Oyster Creek I remember. If it offends some, so be it. Our experiences speak for themselves. Gilbert, me, and John. Louis was too small to remember.

A town of little under a thousand people, Oyster Creek is an hour south of Houston. Someone once called me crazy for saying that this town was an hour south of Houston. “You’re crazy, that can’t be. You’ll be in the ocean.” Well, we were a couple of miles off the coast. The point is, we were near Houston, and we were near the coast. But this town has nothing to do with Oysters. A creek does run through the north part of town, but only a couple of homes overlook the creek. The other creek, which I never knew the name to, splits the town into south and north. The highway, FM 523 splits it east and west.

Oyster Creek is the stepchild of Brazoria county. It’s surrounded by Freeport, Clute, Surfside, and Angleton. We Oyster Creeksters were backwards. I felt this as a child.

What would Buddha say?

9/28/09 – 7:21 a.m.

Today I awoke at 5:00 a.m. I had decided to return to performing zazen, a Japanese style of sitting meditation. It was part of my weekly practice in the mid-nineties when living in Little Rock, Arkansas. I had talked about visiting the Austin Zen Center for nearly a decade, and finally, this past Saturday, I joined the beginner’s session that started at 9:15 a.m. I noticed that they had early classes during the week that started at 6:00 a.m., so I figured I’d give it a try. I could use the discipline.

Being so early in the morning, my stubborn body moved like a snail, and I didn’t leave the house until 5:23 a.m. Since I don’t have a car, and Capital Metro wouldn’t get me to the zen center on time, I would have to run. And I did run, for 25 minutes, with a couple of brief walks in between to calm the breath.

El Coyote de Freeport

EL Coyote de Freeport by Daniel Reyes

Part of Part 1

Note: This is a quickly written, unedited, rough draft of the first part of a miniseries of El Coyote de Freeport….more to come later.

Freeport had become what most thought it never would: an authoritarian, stockade-like community where folks as young as 10 were forced to work long days and nights in the surrounding chemical refineries. Like with Mao’s China and Stalin’s Russia, people were becoming machines whose sole purpose was to produce labor. Anyone with an agenda other than those who dictated were to be reported immediately. Imprisonment or death was the punishment, depending on the severity of the crime, which was dependent on the mood of the judge at the time.

Bar Talk

Bar Talk by Daniel Reyes

Note: This is a rough, rough, rough draft of a short story. It has not been edited, and I’m not sure if it will be.

The blood dripping to the floor from his blue silk shirt hypnotized me. It left a small puddle on the dirty cement floor, but he paid no attention to it. He didn’t notice, or didn’t care that I stared, but I couldn’t help it. I wondered about his story. How did he end up in this piece of shit joint called a bar? I had no choice coming here. The beers were cheap and every now and then a young attractive woman out for an adventure would drop in a for a drink. I never got lucky, except for that one Thanksgiving day, but that story’s for another time. Today there was no one, just the two of us and Leo, the fat drunk bartender.

More random thoughts of an Airman First Class

Was I ever in the Air Force? Did I really work on air surveillance radar systems? Did we actually go four-wheeling in the base’s Ford 4×4 trucks in the woods behind the airfield after it rained? It seemed so long ago. Yet, the memories are there.

walk from the park on a tuesday

it’s a nice day. it’s going to be a cruel hot hot summer, so it’s precious to have these cool days. i dressed to run, but decided to walk instead. more time to appreciate the surroundings. the choice wasn’t complicated. i walked outside after stretching, and thought, “wow, think i’ll walk.” that simple. i saw her again. it’s a routine to XXX***XXXX. only a few know about this. even the dog doesn’t know. but she’s there, nontheless. she arrived shortly before i did, and complained that i XX**XX**. but i had too. i tried explaining, but it was impossible. then XXX*****XX** before i could talk more.

i shouldn’t write about any of this. i shouldn’t have done this