The Stranger (Antonio Banderas) / old idol

Made available via Crick Assembly, the melding of 2 found op-ed pieces believed to be contents of a free publication from the “Rickenbacher.” Theory that moots juxtaposed op-ed pieces suggests an argument/debate between two mutes. Favorable sides not yet established. Commonly referred to as “The Stranger.”


A cold breeze blows over the tilted neck of a young stranger. Barley beats against his knee, a repeated seven/eight rhythm that resonates through the stranger’s body. He is a stranger because he is a changed man. It began a week or so ago, and now it has come to pass that he realizes it. He sleeps less, but more efficiently. He eats less, yet has more vigor. He bides his time better for he knows it cannot manage itself. Time is an infinite thing and a finite thing. The stranger knows he has to manage it somehow without loosing any to infinity. Barley laps his chest. He has fallen sleep in the cold. He will wake up and be determined to go on without hesitation.

Icicles are hanging from the trellis. The old cucumber vines are still there, skeletal remains of a summers worth of produce. We used to race up and down the vines on our way to catch centipedes. When we tired of that, we’d take the rotten vegetables on the table and chuck them at the chain-link fence on the other side of the yard. It would make a mess, yellow tomatoes and orange cucumbers, white eggplants and hollow squash. Here is where I threw seven cherry tomatoes in a row through the little square in the fence. I know the squirrels got to them. I never did get around to eating any of the tomatoes until now. You see, I used to hate them, but now I can deal with them lightly cooked. I do like the cherries, and sun-dried are pretty good, too. They mix great with avocado.

Before goals can be met, routine must be faced. A week may seem like a year, or a month may seem like an hour out of some intolerably long day. Hours pass by; ours seems to be a slow moving clock. The quartz had been decaying into brittle sand. Once the barley has left his shins, the stranger runs through the stone outcrops to the road. The hitchhike is quick and uneventful. Coming back to the city is like a pleasant dream faded to memory. You wish you can go back, but it was something intangible and without any substance. It only felt like bliss for a brief moment. This ephemeral elation is what will be pursued thereafter. Mundanity returns. Three months pass before any indication of a return to this elation is hinted at. Late one night the stranger dreams he is at a wedding, fully dressed in tuxedo. He is alone in a pew, but there is a dog and cat chasing a chipmunk on the rafters. His perspective goes to right above the cat’s head. They eventually catch the chipmunk and devour it in its entirety. The stranger awakes to the smell of boiled cabbage.

Of course, when I think of avocado, I think only of freshly made guacamole. It is possibly the finest food to eat. Fresh cilantro is the key, along with the lime. However, as I’ve discussed with you prior to our departure, hummus is among the finest. Its versatility is unmatched, not even by that green sauce. A chick pea is possibly the finest legume. Without a doubt in my mind, rice and chick peas do rule above all else, their close ally being Gouda. I know you may disagree about rice, but believe you me; no sort of wheat grain can match its combination of substance and versatility. I have heard that nutmeg is the king among all spices. While it may be a pleasant spice, nothing matches salt. When you consider what salt truly is, it seems immaculate. Any comparison becomes futile discussion which I will eschew.

Change can be strenuous, especially for those who loose any sort of power or influence. Is it any wonder we see so much resistance in today’s world? It started three generations ago with our immigrant grandparents meeting our residential ancestors on tenement lined streets. Our “world village” began like a dainty illustration. As I watch this flag poll teeter and sway, I think of those streets where our lineage first became American. The colonists could never have foreseen the diversity of the population that would emerge within the city; the majority of them would probably be dismayed. Here I sit thinking with open ears, open eyes and closed arms.

We now see the stranger in a little café on any street in any city. His cup is turned upside down, letting the tea drip down to the floor in a way that it surrounds his chair. He has promised to clean it up when he is done. When asked by the manager what he is exactly “doing,” the answer is always “realizing.” With a twenty dollar bill on the table, the manager cannot help but empathize. The cold air notwithstanding, the stranger has become oblivious to the elements. An ethereal reticence is established. Music continues to flow through his mind as he sees into many possible futures all stemming from one definite past. Embracing the cold livens everyone to the world around them. A taxi dawdles past on the street, much to the annoyance of everyone. Large French poodles, unshaven, fight pit bulls perpendicular to the café. Young people pass without hesitation to and fro, a potentially chic traffic jam in the works. Gulls have adopted the cross streets as conduits for flying to and from the tidal straits and estuaries. When the rains finally do come, the streets will be ephemeral channels to these estuaries. A deluge would distill much of the area.

The tea has now frozen in a small circle around the base of his chair. The stranger feels he cannot extract anymore from the scene. He has not met with anyone who understands, nor has anyone stopped by to converse. He decides to go south. He takes out his knife and scrapes up the frozen tea, placing the shards next to a tree and walks towards the sun. The twenty dollar bill he has left with the manager has been blown from the table and onto the roof of an idling car. The bill will later be found by a homeless man who will use it to buy four doses of impure heroin which will kill him. In a hundred years he will be reincarnated as a lemon tree standing in the backyard of Homer Laughlin. His daughter, Susan, will eventually become the head of a non-profit organization which will raise enough money to eventually ease most of the poverty on the island of Taiwan. When asked about her inspirations, Susan would usually say the simple, yet enigmatic, statement, “Our lemon tree always encouraged me.” People would interpret this to be a quixotic statement from an affluent do-gooder trying to amend the imperialism of her mogul-lineage. It would influence an idealistic movement, eventually leading to a demilitarized trend all over the world. Nothing like it had happened since the fall of the Roman Empire.

Of course, the most necessary ingredient in cooking has to be water, spices and salt aside. It is not arguable as much as a solemn acknowledgment: flow of discussions. The biggest recipe would be the creation of life, though I hesitate to refer to it in such a way for fear of giving those in favor of Intelligent Design some cannon fodder. You by now know I am more interested in the actually process than any progenitor. This is how most pleasure is attained. Take those rotten vegetables…we had no reason to throw them at the perforations in the fence, yet what fun we had in doing so! There is just a wonderful feeling of actually doing it. However, people are crazy and fanatical. It’s no wonder zealots cannot understand secularists.

-old idol. worshipers of the
syn-palindrome numeral.