My Fantasy, Right or Wrong

Eddie stood at the intersection, bathed in white sunlight. He looked at the melting snow. "Sure glad winter is over with."
I looked at him. "Don't like cold weather?"
"No, I don't mind the snow. It's something else." He swigged the last of his coffee. "Every winter it's the same thing. No matter how hard I try not to look, I see Santa Claus. There he is. I turn to look away. There he is again. I see him hundreds, maybe thousands of times. He is at the grocery store. Then he is at the bank. Look there! he is at the tavern. Lo! he is in the taxi."
I watched a cab slowly round the corner. "So what are you saying?"
Eddie fumbled with a pen in his pocket. He motioned his hand at the people walking on the opposite side of the street. "Pretend you are from another country. As an uninformed visitor, repeated observations of this phenomenon would lead you to the conclusion that Santa's existence is incontrovertible and that we must introduce the children to this widespread, magnanimous, and most influential man."
"Sounds convincing, but his beard is usually false."
"But you call him Santa, don't you?" He squinted and looked at a housing development on the hillside. A house tilted slightly, listing toward the river. "And, I might add, he is prolific. There was only one at the start, holed up in a castle somewhere in the middle ages, but the fellow replicated, spread, and soon, the Santa population exceeded the carrying capacity of Europe. Competition with rats, I suppose. It jumped into the ocean and swam to the Americas. Now, there are so many that they are invading new territories in Asia, Africa, and the far East. No natural enemies there. It spreads like cholera, gangrene, fire ants, divorce lawyers. They are overrunning the place. We went to visit friends in Taiwan and I found one on the front porch in the morning. Then my wife hit one with the car. Another got stuck in the ventilation duct. Restraining orders won't work. Clubbing is senseless. Tear gas is ineffective. We don't know how to stop them." He looked down and stepped on a trail of ants on the sidewalk.
I watched ants writhing. I asked why he picks on such a merry soul.
He looked at the ants scurrying to bury their dead. "I can hear people crying when I say this, but I think I know why it is. It's like when a child is raised in an abusive household, when the father is a drunk and beats them each night. The kid is scared, insecure, full of self doubt and blame. He looks at his stuffed animals and imagines that they can speak and hear. Soon, he is carrying on conversations with them throughout the day, and he has his little sanctuary from the insanity of the world around him. While everybody could see the animals, nobody except the child knows that they can talk."
I looked at his face. The lines crossed above his eyebrows. He clutched a paper in his hand. I protested. "But Santa really talks."
"There you go again. So does my radio. But in an adult world, where citizens are isolated from their neighbors, oppressed by their governments, and exploited by commerce, once again they become immersed in fear, insecurity, and self-doubt. As he did when he was a child, he seeks a sanctuary. And the world is full of people willing to provide it - for a fee, of course."
"Of course?"
"You have seen it yourself. No sooner does one express fear, insecurity, or doubt, he is swarmed by men offering courage, certainty, and security. Like a bleeding man in the deep sea who is hacked to bits by sharks, schools of mystics, clergy, and spiritualists mob the flailing man, chomping off chunks of his life, parsing his soul, bleeding his vitality, until he is delirious and delusional, in a stupor, in that netherworld at the edge of consciousness decorated with white staircases, bright lights, dark tunnels, old friends, and beatific smiles. The drug users see it every day." He pointed at a man passed out on a bench.
"You don't mean..."
"What is ignored is that the clerics and the frightened man are equally desperate, the former for security, and the latter for a soul to drain of life then disgorge onto the sidewalk. When you were a child, your parents bought you a toy gun. When you were older, they bought you a twelve gauge shotgun. Similarly, to capture the attention of the frightened adult, clerics offer the adult version of Santa; a magical world of bliss and sensation, indulged with fantasies, populated by imaginary beings: three-headed gods, legions of virginal women, swollen, porcine men in red fur bearing bottomless sacs full of riches, scorched freaks stoking eternal fires, and mute ancestors in the clouds who bewilder them with cryptic messages: a world of puzzles, clues, coincidences, and conundrums. A world of shadows, mist, and the sound of wind whistling in bare trees. The stuffed toys are alive again, but this time, nobody can see or hear them. This world is no more real or sane than the other."
I nodded my head. "I get it. What then?"
He looked down at the ants and shook his head. "In the end, probably a little white staircase, a little white light, then what is real, which is nothing, which is nothing what they believed."
I nodded again. I looked at his clenched fist. "Say, what's that in your hand?"
Eddie looked up, smiling broadly. "A ballot! My man's going to change the world!"

Paradise Lost

At night, the air moves slowly, like a dying breath, faint, humid, and voiceless. It creeps down the screen and rolls across the windowsill and sinks into the pillow. A gentle sigh, then stillness. There is no distinction between forest and sky at this latitude. Water blends with the air and you swim through your sleep. Then there is a cry in the distance, a faint scream desperate for a reply, so clear it is almost visible, like a point of light in the swirling mass of black leaves. I am startled from my sleep. It is a nightbird, a falcon. As if it were the last one on earth, its grief-stricken cry is a distress call, urgent, frantic, probing the wilderness for a response. Each time it pauses, only echoes return, mocking its call. Hours later, its isolation complete, it falls silent and stands still, a brittle black taxidermy wired to a dry limb, beak swinging in the wind.
This happens every night.
If I didn't know where I was I wouldn't know less than I do now.
My mouth stretches open like a Howler monkey. It is daybreak, market day for the birds. Thousands flock to openings in the woods and trade insults in thousands of foreign tongues. On the forest edge, tiny clapboard shacks with floppy tin roofs are perched on stilts like birdcages. Plastic bottles breed in the pools of black water beneath. I lean onto the windowsill and look toward the sunrise and see the marijuana smoke creeping down the valleys like a white anaconda, coiling down streets, creeping down alleys, entering backyards, and slithering over clusters of sleeping dogs, and passing by the drunks that huddle for warmth. Black mold smears the walls of every house, like the hand stains of a man struggling for his life. An automobile rumbles in the distance, like gunfire. A grown man wobbles down the road on a small bicycle, swerving to miss a skeletal dog rummaging through the ditches filled with burning rubbish. A small, diaperless child stands on the doorstep watching his mother's boyfriend drink and strut. He falls onto a bench seat by the papaya tree that was scavenged from some abandoned mini van that was set afire by young boys the other night. A tired woman sweeps tangles of small children off of the front porch. Electricity came here four years ago. It was followed by stereos, television, hepatitis, then tainted city water. Birds break from the trees. Music rises from the village. Seven punta songs compete for dominance.
There is no revolution. Disillusion is in the air.