"Monkey face, crazy monkey face," you called me. I told you once, I looked like you, You slapped my face."

"AADAAYA DIVYA KUSUMAANI MANOHARAANI

SRI PAADA POOJANA VIDHIM

BHAVADHANGHRI MOOLAY

KARTHUM MAHOTSUKA TAYAA

PRAVISHANTI BHAKTAAHA

SRI SATHYA SAAYEE BHAGAWAN THAVA

SUPRABHAATAM"

Dolores was about to say something, something profound perhaps, but a sudden loud noise interrupted her. "Somebody got lucky," Joy smiled. They looked around, but they couldn't see the lucky winner from theier seats. And the coins kept falling and falling endlessly into the tin container.
"Somebody must have hit the Jackpot", they heard a voice from the door. The old ladies crawled down from their tall bar-chairs and leaving their high-heels under the bar-counter, they ran barefooted on the red - green immitation persian rag to the door. The waitress delivered the cocktail. Dolores rewarded her with a nice tip. "Somebody hit the Jackpot, "the waitress announced. She nodded.
The little old lady at the bar-counter turned her head sideways, looking over her left shoulder. Lifting her chin high, with heavily applied lipstick, she declared:
"It is Sakhti that represents power, ability, capability, physical health and mental alertness, divine energy, the strength needed for acquiring unshakeable joy. She is the Goddess who energizes the universe, the mother of the universe." And on that note, she pulled out a Virginia Slim, and with a mighty stroke of a small wax match over the side of the matchbox baring the logo of the hotel, she lit up the cigarette.
And out of the fire there arose a great Cakra, and in the midst of it, was the lovely figure of the Devi. The gods praised her and she promised to vanquish their enemy Bhandasura. But Brahma said that no person who remained single was fit sovereignties according to the scriptures and exhorted her to choose a suitable mate. They assured her that her independence would not suffer by her marriage. Then the goddess consented and threw up a garland. It fell around the neck of Shiva, who assumed the lovely form of Kameshvara. And the Devi became Kameshvari.
That sent Dolores deeply into reminiscing about Luigy, and how he reached out toward her, puting his left hand on her waist, and then with one single yank untying the string bow on her petticoat. It fell on the floor, encircling her ankles. She stared at it for a while, delighting in the sight, and he started undoing the hooks in front, on her new cotton choly, the Muslim made for her the day before. And when her soft little breasts spurted forth in all their delicate white roundness, he couldn't but bow his head in complete surrender. With closed eyes and parted lips he waited. Panting in excitement, he would become a suckling at her breasts. And then, when he opened his eyes, he wouldn't know where his lover's body ended and where his own began. And he wouldn't be able to let go of the breast, because he wouldn't know how to, and even if he knew, he wouldn't want to, because he would have liked to merge with this woman forever. And she would understand him, and she would caress his head, and call him her darling, her love, her Kameshvara. And she would be his Kameshvari.

"DESHANTARAAGATA BUDHAAS THAVA DIVYA MOORTHIM

SANDARSHANAABHIRATHI SAMYUTA CHITTAVRITYAA

VEDOKTA MATRA PATTHANENA LASANTHYA JASRAM

SRI SATHYA SAAYEE BHAGAWAN THAVA

SUPRABHATAM."
She looked at her friend's tired face.
"So, you wanna have children, Joy."
"Is it love deficiency, perhaps?"
The coins were still clinking onto the tin.
The old ladies stood giggling and clapping in the doorway, their long Bordeaux sculptured nails glissening in the artificial light of the bar.
"No, I have a lot to give," her friend said.

GIVING AND FORGIVING

LOVING ALL THE LIVING

HELPING ALL THE HELPLESS

NEVER WITH A SELFISH HEART
A little Indian boy sang in a sonorous voice at the festival, and she wanted to tell Joy about it, but out of her mouth something else came forth. "I could have felt at home," she said," but my skirt was too short, and I sat down on the wrong side of the room. All the men were looking at me, hissing at me, pointing to the other side.
Joy glimpsed into the small mnirror that she took out from her white patent leather handbag.
"How should I wear my hair for my wedding?" She asked Dolores.
When the wind turned around and started to bring the soft golden sand down the hills, grandma braided my hair and took me to the school. As we passed the lake I noticed a big old building. Its walls must have been painted pink once, but now the paint was faded and cracked, some places peeled off, so that the paprika red bricks showed their inside unabashedly. The sand crackled under our shoes as we entered the porch. The windows, unwashed for thousands of years. The sun-rays, entangled in the grease of the small fingerprints formed a blinding rainbow. I wanted to cry, I wanted to scream:" Grandma, I wanna go home, I hate it here, I am scared, this old house scares me, grandma." But she rang the bell and the old wooden giant mouth opened and we entered the ulcerous stomach of the Matuzalem.
Consequently the old philosopher Pangloss appeared in front of her eyes. Panglos, in whose opinion, everything had been created for a reason, an that, for the best reason, therefore everything there was, was the best it could be.
I will open the door very carefully, she decided. I will not make any noise at all. I will take off my sari, and slip into the bed beside you. I will press myself to your side; I will lace your abdomen with my legs. I will garland your neck with my arms. I will seek you out, to take you in, to loose myself, to find you. How nice it all sounded. How nice it all was. The woman listened to Sade in her room. She didn't go out for some days now. Not after he left. Not anymore. "I gave you all the love I got, I gave you more than I can give, I gave you love, Sade sang." Too much responsibility," he said," you have a child."
And she thought of the line in the information sheet, she was given, about the Vipassana meditation. It read: "The meditation releases all the tension developed in everyday life."
The sun started to ascend slowly from behind the peaks of the grand Himalayas. The sound of the powerful Brahmamuhurta mantras still resonated in the air. She put her hand silently on the door knob, while gently penetrating the keyhole with the big clunky stainless steal key that would allow her entrance into heaven. And there he sat, on the brown metal folding chair, just beside the door. The packed travel bag on his lap, in his white cotton punjaby, there he was. His wide shoulders trembling with sobs, like a little boy, he cried,:" I am a sheep, baaaaa." Her first response was to console him, to alleviate his pain, to reassure him, that everything was fine, and he didn't have to worry, she would be fine, just fine, no problem, no problem at all, he shouldn't feel bad, that it would OK, whatever choice he made, it would be OK.
And she caressed him and kissed his tearful face, and kissed his moist eyelids, and consoled his trembling lips with hers, and lifted up her sari in front, up to her waist, and showed herself to him. She pulled him up from his chair, and released the string on his punjaby pants, and they united there, in place, just beside the door, between the little coffee table and the chair. With the key still in her hand, she gave herself to him, to hold, and to have.
Then he left, and she sat on the edge of the bed and slowly let herself fall back, and there she stayed like that, half sitting half lying, half alive half dead, for days.

"SEETHAASATHEE SAMA VISHUDDHA HRIDAMBUJAATAHA

BAHVANGANAAHA KARAGRUHEETA SUPUSHPA HARAAHA

STHUNVANTHI DIVYANUTHIBHIHI PHANIBHOOSHANAM TWAAM

SRI SATHYA SAAYEE BHAGAWAN THAVA

SUPRBHATAAM"
Dolores sipped out the last drops of her tequila and waived for the waitress. "One more sunrise, please."
Joy took a tiny gulp of her ice coffee. She didn't want to have another drink before dawn.
They remained silent for a while listening to the monotonous rumbling noise of the slot machines. Dolores looked up at the TV screen. Her gaze followed the movements of a topless dancer. She thought of her own untouched breasts. Her hand slipped up her chest. That one, must have implants, she decided for herself, watching the dancer.



Supposing that Truth is a woman- well, now, is there not some foundation for suspecting that all philosophers, insofar as they were dogmatists, have not know how to handle women?
Her breasts started growing at a tender age, and all seemed very promising until one day she realized, that was it, they were not going to grow any bigger. And she was going to be stuck with her small breasts for life. "One more tequila, please!"
Keep a big mirror. Stand naked, make faces, do funny things- and watch. You will be surprised, as you will start feeling separate from you rbody. If you were not separate, then how could you do all this? Then the body is in your hands, it's just something in your hands. You can play with it, this way or that.

"So you wanna have children, Joy? Somebody to love, somebody to love you back?" She laughed at her friend a sadly. It was still a long time till sunrise.

"I love you."

"You do?"

"Yes."

"Prove it."

"How?"

"Go down to the lake and try the ice whether it will hold you."

"SUPRABHATAMIDAM PUNYAM YE PATTHANTHI

DINEY DINEY

TEVISHANTHI PARANDHAAM JNAANA VIJAANA

SHOBHITAAHA"
"Grandma, Victor, allowed me to walk him home."
"Girls don't walk boys home, Dolly."
"They don't?"
"No, where have you been for such a long time?"
"We went to the lake."
"You did?"
"Yes, and Victor told me to try the ice, to see whether it was strong enough to hold me."
"And you did that?"
"Yes, he said he would love me, if I did."
"Oh, God, Dolores,good thing you didn't drown.
What is this in your hood?"
"Where?"
"Here."
"What is it grandma?"
"It's a spit, Dolores, A frozen spit."

When the Logos of God became flesh, He truly showed the image...Himself becoming that which His image, namely man, already was.

The old lady held up her glass to the light, peeked through it with one eye, squinting the other, while pronouncing praise on the goddess, saying: "She is of an enchanting form with special paraphernalia, manifestations and achievements by way of destruction of the evil and enhancement of the forces of good." She had a little trouble, though pronouncing her s ess since last week, when she received her new dentures.
After that declaration she gulped down her drink in two long gulps, and wiped her mouth with the back of her left hand, while still holding the empty glass in her right.

When she was still young, Dolores saw a strange old man at the Hungarian market. He carried a hammer with him. Was it Panglos, she wondered. It must have been, since everything seemed to be good as it was, in his opinion. He dag a hole with his hammer under the window of one of the little shops. He crawled into it, and hurled earth on top of himself. Just as he finished his work a stray dog appeared from nowhere and stood on the mold. Lifting his hind leg the dog released a mighty stream of piss on the top of the philosopher's grave mold. It was a sunny day, a late August day, when the heat seems to want to clear all the life out of the earth.

Dolores turned her face to her friend.
"What do you want to have Joy, a boy or a girl?"
Her cheeks started to burn, she felt a little bit dizzy.
"The sun burned my cheeks, because I was down in the garden, working all day long when he came by. And I looked up at him. A little breeze brought the smell of raspberries from the nearby forest. There he stood, perspiring. His black curls sticking to his handsome forehead. His piercing black eyes staring at me from underneath his thick dark eyebrows. And I started to sing a song I learned during the harvest, because I knew I was gonna be married to him that year. He became your grandfather, Dolly. You didn't know him. The war took him away, took him far, never brought him back. I light a candle for him every All Saints Day, in front of the church." The old woman sat in front of her little white wattle house. She sat on the doorsill in her dark purple summer dress, with her brown tender neck bent over her work. "Grandma, who are you making the lace for?" "For you butterfly, for your dowry." She said smiling warmly.

Dolores looked at her friend. "Joy, do you have a dowry?"She asked her. "No, Dolly, I don't. I saved up a little money though, and Alan bought a house last year, so we are gonna move out to Lake Ellsinore, after. "

"Where is she? We are waiting for her. We will be late, we won't see the bride. Hurry, Dolores, hurry. Where are you? We'll be late for church. She must be here somewhere, she is already dressed up. Maybe she went to the outhouse. Dolores, are you there?" "Yes grandma, I am here. Ducky fell in, I have to rescue him." "Dolores, what are you doing? Look at yourself, your dress, your beautiful white dress. Come out of there, now. Wait, wait, just stand here, don't come inside. I'll be right back. Just wait here. And put down that duck, it stinks." That day I ruined my pretty white silk dress, mother had sent me. And for what? Ducky died, expired in my hands."

OH, LORD, TAKE MY LIFE, TAKE IT ALL,

TAKE IT ALL IN YOUR HANDS.
Then you died finally, but I didn't feel any relief, just guilt, tremendous guilt, because sometimes, I wanted you to die. And I shouldn't have. You were my father; I was supposed to love you. But you never loved me, so why should I have.
And then you actually did die. And I just couldn't stand my hands any more. They reminded me of yours. I was afraid that I might mutilate myself.
The woman looked at her watch. It was half past three. The two old ladies still chatted at the bar-counter, leaning on their elbows. The one on the right was Berry, and the other one was called Martha. Berry seemed to be a little bit younger, or maybe just healthier, or had a younger husband, or lover, who kept her hormones going. Martha was the wise one. Berry had a pink silk blouse on with a Victoria's Sercet padded lacy pushup bra underneath. She was the one with the fake pearls. Martha wore a gray cotton dress with red floral design running around her body, beginning at the right shoulder, continuing over the breasts, snaking under the left arm and descending the back, embracing the wide hips, just to ascend in the middle and crawl over the right shoulder.
"Had not people suffered due to the original sin of Adam, Christ would not have come down to earth as a redeemer."
Said Berry, pulling down her opaque slip that kept crawling up her thighs due to the static caused by the friction of her pantyhose and her green polka-dot polyester skirt.
"Are you saying that evil is a signal for better things to come? Are you saying that suffering is a boon in disguise?"
Martha marveled at her friend's declaration.
Dolores wanted to be attentive to the discussion at the bar-counter but her thoughts wondered in and out of time and space. Everything seemed to be happening now, like time wasn't linear at all. Past, present, future, all mixed up, her life, her friend's life, her grandmother's life and the lives of others, all seemed to intersect .Was it the notion of Oneness with all and everything? Or was it perhaps the tequila that caused all that confusion?
To drink, to drink a lot, became a habit with her lately.

One night uncle Felix came home drunk. He didn't want to eat anything, just went to bed right away. Grandma cried. We didn't lay down that night, not in the bedroom. Grandma stretched some newspaper on the top of the stove. The stove was enameled, white with blue ridges around the two little doors on the right. One kept in the crackling fire, the other, underneath, held in the ashes. The larger door on the left that smelled of plum-cake that grandma often baked, was left wide open, to emanate heat into the small kitchen. We seated ourselves on the cast iron top. In the silence of the cold winter night I cuddled to my grandma's side. I pressed my cheek to her dark Bordeaux, white dotted dress that she always wore. In September, she pulled out her dark blue knitted sweater from the closet that smelled of moth balls or naphthalene, as grandma called it, and put it on. Then December came and she pulled out a big black woolen scarf that she wrapped around herself, never to take it off till the first dandelions started to loose their fluffy heads into the spring breeze. We sat there silently. The rhythmical crackling of grandmas crochet hook rocked me into a state of half sleep. Transfixed, I gazed at the yellow sticky fly catcher hanging from the ceiling. Dead flies, half dead flies, living flies, all black, little houseflies, buzzing in myriads, stuck helplessly to the trap." Is there life after death?" I wondered. Then I got really sleepy, and grandma brought out a big goose down pillow from her bed and placed it on the top of the dark green wooden kitchen table. It became my bed for the night. She covered me with her thick comforter that smelled like wild geese. I started to dream. I dreamed of a meadow. It was full of flowers. I walked around in bewilderment. The air felt orange. The green leaves of the trees breathed into my face. Birds, not afraid of a stranger, sat on twigs just waiting for my touch. I felt serene. Silence lay all around. Suddenly I was awakened by a loud noise. People ran back and forth in the house. Some ran into the bedroom, some out of it, everybody, talking at the same time, men cursing, women crying. I sat up on the top of the table, looked around for explanation, but there was nobody to give me one. I jumped down on the yellow wooden floor. It was cold. I am going to have yellow soles, like the dead, I thought with horror. I ran into the bedroom. They were killing my uncle. I yelled and cried," Felix, Felix," but nobody paid any attention to me. I stood there stunned, half frozen in the cold winter room, and suddenly, something warm flew down my thighs.

MANGALAM GURUDEVAYA MANGALAM JNANA

DAAYINEY

MANGALAM PARTHI VAASAAYA MANGALAM

SATHYA SAAYEENEY."
She didn't like the taste of her tequila, but she needed one more, the last one, she said to herself.
"Oh, Joy, why do you want to have children?"
"Well, you have a child, Dolly."
"Yes, but that's different, I didn't do it to myself deliberately. I accepted it, when it was here, that's all."
"But you love your child, Dolly, don't you?"
"Yes, but I also loved Victor, mother, father, grandma, uncle Felix, and I loved a man."
"I want to be a mother Dolores, don't you understand?"

My mother's hands were little and soft. She used to wash my father's puffed up feet in a washbasin. He took her to bed afterwards. His penis was big and red. His testicles, inflated balloons. He beat her up in the morning. She ran from the bedroom. He, behind her. He caught her in he foyer, boxed her to the wall.

Dolores looked into the mirror above the bar-counter. The two old ladies seemed to be in a deep conversation. One embracing the other, their faces really close, they talked almost into each other's mouth. Floating in a cloud of smoke the one with the fake pearl necklace around her wrinkled neck, hurled words into the air.
"To those brought up in a Semitic religion, a concept of Divine Mother is wholly unacceptable. God can only be a Father according to Christianity and a Great Creator according to Islam. But in the Vedas, we find Sakhti. The Sanskrit word" Sakhti" is of feminine gender and its personification results in a female deity. Devi is a goddess of transcendent beauty, leading a host of divinities against the forces of evil."
But Dolores didn't hear a word of it, because she sat too far from the bar.
She would have been greatly surprised, should she have heard the conversation between the two old ladies.
But she wasn't, because she didn't.
Then the Devi set out to fulfill her mission with an army of Sakhtis. The battle raged for four days, and the Goddess killed Bhanda the great asura and all his kinsmen.
The gods praised the Devi. She was asked to take pity on Rati, the wife of Manmatha, the god of love, who had been burned to death by Shiva.
She consented and revived the god of love as well.
Added the old lady who didn't wear fake pearls, on the contrary, not only did she wear real mother of pearls, but she wore them with a dignity of a pearl-diver herself.

YOU ARE MY MOTHER

YOU ARE MY FATHER

YOU ARE MY NEAREST KIN

YOU ARE MY DEAREST FRIEND

YOU ARE MY WISDOM

YOU ARE MY TREASURE

YOU ARE MY EVERYTHING

YOU ARE MY LORD

MY LOVING LORD
Dolores looked up at the TV screen. She saw a man in a dark suit and a tie, holding a mice to his lips. She heard him speak. He said:" So long as we are looking at this world from our levels of ego-centric ideas of the physical, mental and intellectual personalities alone, we shall fail to see the world co-operating with us."
Her cheeks flashing, Dolores turned away from the screen and started to sing:

"COME SAI LORD INCARNATE GIVE US YOUR DARSHAN

YOU ARE THE LORD OF CREATION

YOU ARE THAT RAMA YOU ARE THAT KRISHNA

YOU ARE OUR THE LORD AND PROVIDER

YOU ARE CREATOR YOU ARE PROTECTOR

YOU ARE DESTROYER OF DARKNESS
"Come, come, there is a little toy stove in the pit. You'll see, just climb down here. Hold my hand; watch out for the slippery mud. Let's go further, deeper down, and behind the bushes. There is a lot of garbage here, good garbage, lots of toys, you'll see, just follow me."
And she went, followed the boy obediently. He is a nice boy, she thought. I will ask grandma to give him some cookies.
The boy stopped in front of her. He was taller by a full head. His light brown hair, cut short in the back, with long bangs hanging over his left eye. He wiped his sunburned nose into the sleeve of his blue flannel shirt.

How handsome, she thought, and smiled at him.
"What are you sniggering at?" He turned to her full face.
The tone of his voice alarmed her.
"Where is the toy stove?"She asked slinking away.
"What are you talking about?" He laughed, his laughter, gurgling in his throat like ten doves.
What a nice laugh, she thought. He likes me, he likes to play with me, she thought. I make him laugh. Maybe I should do something funny, she thought, so he will be even more amused, and he will want to play with me all the time. She made a grimace that she knew looked very funny, because it made grandma laugh all the time. Grandma really liked it when she made funny faces. "You are my little comedian," she used to say. Yes, I must show him how funny I can be, she decided."
OK, we are here," he said." Lay back, and take off you panties,"he commanded.
She still tried to smile. It always disarmed grandma. But not the boy.
"Spread your legs," he demanded." I want to take a good look at that stinking Gypsy cunt of yours."
She didn't feel like smiling anymore. Perhaps if she followed his commands well, he would still like her, she thought.
He looked pretty closely at her crotch. He followed the mounds and pits with his dirty pointing finger. He stuck his finger into her. He pulled it out and looked at it curiously.
"What is it?" She asked.
He didn't answer. He looked around for something.
"What are you looking for?" She inquiered."
The little stove," he laughed.
"I help you find it." She volunteered."
" No, you stay here." He demanded.
He broke off some twigs from the willow.
She looked at him in fear." What is it for?" She asked the boy.
" For you," he smiled sarcastically." For me?" She tried to smile back submissively not wanting to provoke him.
Maybe he wants me to take the willow home, so that grandma can make a basket for him, she tried to fool her feelings of fright that rose in her like tide. But he started to tie the little branches together, and when he was done, he pulled out a box of matches from his pocket.
" Lay back!" he commanded her in a low voice. But she couldn't obey anymore. It doesn't matter if she will not find the little stove either. And she just sat there with her skirt over her head and her tears started rolling down her cheeks as he approached her.

THE WHOLE IS ALL THAT.

THE WHOLE IS ALL THIS.

THE WHOLE WAS BORN OF THE WHOLE.

TAKING THE WHOLE FROM THE WHOLE, WHAT REMAINS IS THE WHOLE.
Lay on your back, and concentrate on the blue expansive sky above. Your mind will expand immediately. You will be elevated. Concentrate on any one of the numerous abstract virtues such as mercy, compassion, etc. Dwell upon these virtues as long as you can. Well, If neither of the above helps, jump on your feet, give out an enormous roar, loll out your tongue, be strong and courageous, determined and ferocious, be Kali, kick the demon on his neck, drink his blood, stump him to death, dance on his chest. And sing; sing a Gypsy song about Kali, the black one, that you are called. Sing really loud: "Kali slom, Kali slom, Kali man vichinen. "

The gods will protect us, as long as we perform our karmas and do not transgress Dharma. Else they will certainly punish us.

Where did she read that?

"We need a goddess that we can pray to in our times of hardship. We need a woman of great beauty and grace, a being of supernatural powers."
The old lady said to her friend who kept bending over her tall vine glass trying to fish out her fake eyelash that peeled off and fell unexpectedly into her drink.
"You must use better quality glue my dear," the old lady named Martha laughed, covering her mouth with her freckled sun-tanned hands. She must be from Florida, Dolores thought, observing her gestures.
"Yes," the other one agreed," we definitely do need a goddess. We need a Devi who is beautiful and seductive in appearance, but her beauty does not serve to attract a man. It serves to entice her victims into fatal battle."

When the winter was over and the snow melted down the mountains, father ran off with a blond. We had lots of water that summer, the well was swollen to its brimm, but we still had to walk miles to fill our buckets, because nobody could drink out of our well. The water was spoiled. Not by a frog that was sitting on it, but by my mother who threw herself into it. That fatal night she looked into the water and had mistaken the shining face of the moon for the one of my father.
They said she was crazy. I knew she just wanted to break the spell.
The day before, she went to the fortune teller and was advised what to do, if she wanted my father back.
She had to get up at midnight; it had to be Friday the thirteenth and exactly the day when the waters from the mountains reached the valley. That night she had to stripp all her clothes of and go out to the well in nude. But nobody could see her otherwise she wouldn't succeed. She had to run until she reached the well, there she had to circle around the well three times, think of the man she loved, and pronounce his name out loud. If she did everything properly to this point, she could look into the water, and see the face of the man she loved. If he smiles, the spell is broken and he returns to her.

OH BHAGAWAN, OH BHAGAWAB, HEAR OH LORD MY PRAYER, SATHYA SAI BHAGAWAN

OH, GLORIOUS LORD WHO DWELLS IN PUTTAPARTHI

AND IN THE HEART AND MIND OF EACH DEVOTEE

TAKE ME ACROSS THIS SEA OF ILLUSION

SAI BHAGAWAN, OH SAI BHAGAWAN
Dolores looked around in the bar. Joy was falling asleep in her armchair. She looked at her with delight. She admired her beauty, so vulnerable.
"Oh, Joy, he is going to hurt you, he is going to hurt you for sure."
She noticed the waitresses, pulling their tired bodies from one table to the next.
She crumbled some ice between her teeth.
The bar-counter was empty, the two old ladies left, leaving only the smell of their perfumes behind.

"It was a bad year for my family", Dolores thought to herself. "Not many of us survived. Grandma sold some more lace, and once, shortly after mother, she left too. They found her laying on the ground, near the crocery store, her hair turned all white. In her backpack, she carried a loaf of homemade bread and a big chunk of freshly churned butter. We put it in the grave with her, as well as her laces, her crochet hooks, her kitchen utensils and her Singer sewing machine. It was a humid day, and I had to put on the black cashmere dress for the second time that summer. The thick material irritated my skin. I was standing at the edge of the freshly dug grave. It looked cool and inviting. Sweat ran down my forehead, burning my eyes.
Four men in black uniformes lowered the coffin into the hole.
" The white ruche will get dirty," I whispered to Felix, pointing at the black box that contained my grandma. From underneath the coffin lid, elegant white lace ruche with black rim ruffled out.
We started circling around the grave, picking up soil, throwing it on the coffin. I was getting nauseous. I was afraid, I might throw up. I felt dizzy and numb, but I kept walking in the circle, bending down, picking up soil, throwing it in. Then I couldn't bend down anymore, my back was hurting too much, so I started pulling out my hair and throwing that into the grave instead. Then the grave diggers grabbed their shovels. Heavy soil rumbled on the top of my grandma's eternal trap and I imagined her lovely face inside. And I cried out as loud as I could, so that even God could hear me. And suddenly the sky started to thunder.

"God is angry, "Felix said.
I looked up, the sky was blue. There was silence for a while then it struck again, this time with an even greater thunderbolt. The lightning struck the plum tree, cut it in half. The tree started to burn, in flames it fell on the top of the grave mound. The floral tribute caught on fire. We stood there paralyzed and the fire spread to the wooden cross with the little picture of my grandmother.
Next day Felix brought home an old, one eyed horse." A man needs a horse," he said. He put me in the saddle and took me for a walk. We went to the forest. It was enchanted, and I got lost, wandered for thousands of years. On my way I met all kinds of forest creatures. And they put a spell on me. They said. "You won't be happy, until you meet a man and dance with him on a wedding reception of a loved one."

"Are you going to have a wedding reception, Joy? Joy? Wake up! Are you going to have a wedding party?"
"No, Dolly, I don't think so, why?"
"Oh, nothing," Dolores said. She was getting drunk, really sad too.
"Hey, let's go back to the casino Dolly," her friend rose.
"I don't have any more cash, Joy. I lost all I had."
"Oh, don't worry Dolly, here, take my half, let's play."
They went out of the bar. Dolores stood in the door. She missed the beautiful neon of the night. Without the glitter, the city lost its glamour. She looked at the sky. Heavy with change, in amusement she watched the sun rise.