It was peaceful in the desert. For this strange fragment of time, the winds were still, and the sand laid silent, glowing faintly under the moonlight. The face of the desert for this short corridor of time between the rising of the moon to the rising of the sun remained, for the moment, still. Everything stood so frozen and still it was as if time was no longer relevant. Then out of this stationary fragment of deep blueness and soft white glow, a white parachute floated out of the sky. A tiny dot of a figure was floating slowly to the ground like a dream image playing in slow motion. The parachute landed softly on the sand, falling like a deflated balloon. A figure crawled out from under. He looked around curiously, turned three times trying to make sense of where he was but nothing on that faceless landscape gave him any clue.

He was lost. That was sure. But he was alive. He thought of his buddy on the plane wondered if he too was alive somewhere on this vast landscape of sand wondering about him at this very same moment. His ears strained for the sound of metal crashing or explosion but everything around him was silent. It was as if the mute button for the world had been turned on, like all those times when it had snowed when he was a kid. The glowing sand made him think of snow back home. It was so strange that everything should be so serene and so still here while somewhere else a war he was familiar with was still raging. This sudden confrontation with stillness and silence was frightening. He had gotten so used to the sound of machine guns and exploding hand grenades and the explosions which rocked one to one's teeth, leaving strange sudden vibrations for days. The shaking would take days, sometimes years to wear off.

But now this stillness, what should he make of it? What of this desolate beauty which dwarfed him and made him feel so alive and so small at the same time. What of this vast world in which he was tossed into quite unexpectedly. Was this a dream he was to wake from, finding himself half drugged half alive with a leg missing? He shook his head to regain some sense of reality but here he was still dazed in this feathery world of softness. The desert seemed almost like a woman, sensual and soft, so unlike the pictures of deserts he had grown accustomed to, that harsh cruel landscape where none could survive unaided by supernatural intervention.

He walked not knowing where he was headed or which way to go. His feet sank into the carpet sand. They seemed to yield to him at every step, falling away like foam. Now he understood why some people call the desert the land of water. It was perhaps truer to call it the embodiment of the idea of water, because the idea of it was everywhere even though the substance itself was absent. As he walked he thought, passing thoughts which drifted in and out insubstantial as shadow.

A large shadow loomed ahead, a silhouette in the moonlight. He walked closer. It was the wooden skeleton of a ship. Just the hull of it sticking out of the sand,a hollow rib cage, pointing skyward like a great finger which showed him the way out of the place. "Skyward. Head skyward" it said. Strange that he should find this ship here. Was it tossed and shipwrecked onto the desert like he was? He looked at the wood, brittle, roasted by the heat in the day and eaten by the biting sand at night. Just a testiment of some dead past now reduced to skeleton, soon reduced to dust. Did it miss the feeling of water when it got tossed here thirsting for perhaps centuries for the feeling of the sea? He felt for his waterbottle. It was still there, his metal flask reflecting the cold light of the moon. He uncapped the flask felt the uneven bobbing of liquid as he tilted the bottle this way and that. Then he poured it onto the old dried wood so much like the skin of an old man he once knew but could no longer picture his face with any clarity. Muddied, just like the rest of the world. He poured half the bottle away and kept the remaining half for himself. "Time to go, old friend." he said to that old ribcage still gaping at the velvet sky. "Everything gets forgotten in time, just like you and me." And then he went on his way.

The desert was still again. It was almost as if that young man from the parachute was merely an apparition, a dream of the desert. All except for a track of footprints in the sand heading off into the great unknown, the great forgetfulness that is the world.

Recently, in class we celebrated the day of the dead. We set up an altar in the front of the class. Each of us bringing an artifact or a picture, something belonging to someone who has passed on, or even parts of us which we have outgrown and said farewell to. It was unbelievably moving hearing about things and people long gone. Memories of them which still resonate so palpably that in that classroom of ours with the white fluorescent lamps doing their nano-second flickers I felt the presence of memories of these people I have never met, so strong it was like the silent vibration on a violin string long after the note has ceased. It cannot be heard or seen, touched or smelt. It can only be felt and therein lies its magic.

Maybe, once upon a time I have wondered about where dead people go. Is there an afterlife? Do ghost and spirits exist? Do souls depart into paradise or hell, to another lifetime on a reaincarnation wheel? Does it matter so much, if we do not live our lives fully? The best and worst of men and women who have ever lived still leaves imprints on us when they die. Their lives and their deaths are still celebrated, even if they have not been perfect, merely human. No they may not have been famous, only someone in your family who spent the last days on a lonely bunk bed looking out of the window at the dark corridor outside, smoking miserable cigarettes, perhaps contemplating his coming death, perhaps carrying the guilt of a lifetime. Perhaps feeling that it might be too late asking to be forgiven. Perhaps trying to live out his remaining days with whatever dignity he could muster. But whatever it is, he is remembered.

In the class, I read a poem I wrote. Here it is:



For My Grandfather

To that man
Who was always too quiet
Gazing on family parties
From the sides
A silence so palpable
That as I child
I had felt it whenever I got close.

To the man
Who voice
Was thin and raspy
Like his presence
So easily forgotten
Like something transparent
Perhaps a ghost

To the man
Who was never loud
Looking for his photo
I could only find a few candid shots
With him lurking in the background
Always with him looking away
So distant
Like the man I could and would
Never know
He lived always on the sideline
A mute spectator

To the man
I heard so much about
His gambling
Being a bad father
A bad husband
So different from the man I know
Just a gentle presence
So guilt ridden
I heard he kept my cousin’s medals
Beside his packets of cigarettes under his mattress
On the double bunk bed
Where he slept on top
Through the windows
I have always peeked at the darkness outside

Grandfather, I wonder if death is as dark on the other side
Is it as silent and distant as you?
Does it always evade photographs
Looking away?
Did you finally get your redemption
And forgiveness
I have so much wanted to tell you
You already had
Even as a child
Even as a child.