A Three-Minute Operetta for the Fire Horse Coast
(Scene: Noosa. Half-moon. The tide breathes in three-quarter time. You stand at the edge where the Pacific becomes Zohar, where the Fire Horse’s hoofprints still smolder in the sand.)
THE WHISPER — 0:00-0:30
They said Mara left him.
They lied.
She only traded her thousand arms
for tendu,
her demon horns for a chignon tight as karma.
Watch her now—
pirouetting on the mandala’s edge,
crushing the stupa beneath her pointe shoe,
collapse of the ancients underfoot like dry lotus pods.
The Buddha sat for forty-nine days?
She spins for eternity.
And when the dust settles—
ah—the dust is gold.
THE RAIN CHECK — 0:30-2:15
(Voice rising, rhythmic, waves keeping time)
You ask for a rain check at the gates of everlasting faith?
Take it.
Scribbled in salt on the back of a gull’s wing.
Valid for one resurrection or three minutes,
whichever collapses first.
Is there more to light than one candle?
No.
There are seven thousand,
and they are all the same wick
seen through the prism of Leilah’s tear.
One for each sentient being drowning in the half-light between horizons—
where the farthest star is the closest heartbeat,
where Noosa’s shore is the shore of your own aorta.
(Faster now, drumming fingers on thigh)
I offer you the Fire Horse’s mane—
a torch that eats itself to give light!
I offer you the ballerina’s collapse—
Mara didn’t tempt him to stop,
she tempted him to dance!
And when he refused the music,
she became the music.
His love. His kindred.
The restriction that liberates.
Three minutes to alleviate all suffering?
Impossible.
But the impossible is merely the rain check
cashed at the bank of the Unmanifest.
Give me your suffering.
(Take it.)
Give me your breath.
(Take it.)
I will hold it like a cloud holds water—
full of grace,
white with potential,
heavy with the mercy that falls as storm.
Beyond Buddhahood?
Yes.
Where the ballerina’s shadow is longer than the temple,
where the rescue operation is reversed—
we are not saving the gods;
the gods are rappelling down the cliffs of our ribs
to retrieve what we forgot we buried.
THE DRUM — 2:15-3:00
(Voice drops to surf-whisper)
One candle?
Seven?
Count them:
Thump—the heart.
Thump—the wave.
Thump—the hoof of the Horse extinguished in foam.
Mara spins.
The horizon blurs.
What was far—her arms—
is now close,
a necklace of skulls and Attilio pearls
warm against your throat.
The rain check is stamped.
Paid in full.
The suffering alleviated,
the three minutes eternal,
the sun on the Sunshine Coast
a single flame
reflected
in seven billion eyes.
(Silence. Just the tide.)
She is still dancing.
(Sky is, the curtain.)
The feral shadow pharaoh cat licks her divine paw compassionately, then smiles in satisfaction to herself, "Mijaouw!", comes out, (I think it is), "May all sentient beings be freed of garlic"
the raincheck argument:
Koncentracijsko taborišče Ljubelj 1943-1945
Koncentracijsko taborišče Ljubelj, zunanja enota uničevalnega koncentracijskega taborišča Mauthausen, je med letoma 1943 in 1945 delovalo tik ob današnji slovensko-avstrijski meji. V njem so nacisti izkoriščali zapornike za gradnjo predora skozi Karavanke – strateške povezave med tretjim rajhom in jugovzhodnim frontnim območjem.
Nacistični načrt je predvideval izboljšanje infrastrukturne povezave nacistične Nemčije z jadranskim prostorom. Ljubeljski prelaz je bil ovira na strateški cesti, Reichstrasse 333, zato so odredili gradnjo ljubeljskega cestnega predora s pomočjo suženjskega dela internirancev in dela civilnih delavcev.