Epiphany or Ignis Fatuus- a Story
I step off the bus in a little village square at quarter past noon. According to the bus schedule I keep securely in my front pocket, the bus is about a half an hour late, which is par for the course with these poorly financed rural bus lines. I’m not too upset, however, because my IPOD started playing Barzi”s “Beautiful” as I left the bus. I had previously seen one of the song’s videos; it’s a good one. Barzi repeats the line “Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful angel” several times. Despite the video’s fantastic imagery, he doesn’t really believe that the girl he sings about IS actually an angel. That would be ridiculous. He is just saying, in an overly emotional, poetic manner, that the girl is very pretty, and he likes her a lot. Since angels are supposed to be almost perfect, he is also indicating that he has chosen to ignore all of her flaws. It’s his choice. Anyway, I’m looking forward to photographing the life of a mountain village, and I’m enjoying my excitement.
I take a quick look around the village square. Nothing remarkable here. Several shop keepers are already shutting up their doors for their mid day break. 
They must be eager to get home for lunch and a snooze. I would have bought something to drink if they had stayed open, and some of the shops don’t look like they get much business. So their eagerness is their loss. My throat IS a little dry after the four hour bus ride. No problem. I’ve been thirsty before and can easily continue searching for the perfect picture while thirsty. As I look around I can see that everywhere the streets are starting to empty. The other passengers have probably hurried off to whatever responsibilities suited them, as has the bus. There is no one hanging around that can help me find the most beautiful parts of the village. 
It doesn’t matter. I always find something, and I have a map of the village to guide me tucked in next to the bus schedule. I only need to be thorough and I will find what I’m looking for.
I start to crisscross the streets and lanes using the map. I see nothing worthy to photograph: nothing unusual, beautiful, nothing special. I trudge through empty lanes for almost an hour.
I’m not as sure as I was when I left home that this trip will produce some new insight, an overlooked truth that I could wrap up in a photograph. Yet just knowing how lane leads to alley leads to street and back to lane is not a waste of time. Knowing this will be handy should I ever come back to this village again,… though curiously, in the few instances where I have returned to places I had previously surveyed, I found that my measurements weren’t all that useful.
The day is hot, and seems to be becoming hotter as I plod down the deserted streets. My movements become slower.
Small clouds of dust rise up around my feet as I make each step. The dust pauses for a blink of a second, and then settles back onto the toes of my shoes before I can take the next step. A dog looks at me from the shadow of a doorway, too tired and uninterested to even raise his head or attempt a cursory “woof”.
Everyone else is home eating with their family or taking a nap in a shaded bedroom. I am the only one who knows the scorching heat and the emptiness of the street. Only an old gringo is crazy enough to walk these streets at high noon, looking for some sort of showdown that would justify his search.The sun thrusts down like a dagger into the top of my head. A bird flutters its wings somewhere in the trees ahead, and then….nothing moved. It felt like time had stopped around me. For a second I thought the heat of the street had finally killed me, but I quickly figured out that I was neither alive nor dead. I was solidly fixed somewhere in between.The heat continued to press in on me from all sides. I was being buried alive in it. I tottered up a street where nothing would ever happen, yet I wasn’t afraid. Neither the heat, the empty street, nor anything else, mattered to me. I was exhausted, but I just kept walking forward as I always do. I kept looking for something, anything to photograph, but everything was already fixed in this silent and motionless village. I saw a church at the top of the street I was climbing.
Its front landing would give me a good view point to see what the village really had to offer. I continued to stumble up the street, each footstep feeling heavier than the last. I finally reached the church steps. Unlike everything else around me, they seemed to move in the heat: wavering like a mirage. I stepped on them anyway, and they stopped moving. Although I was starting to stagger, I forced myself to take one step and then another up the stairs because I didn’t want my visit to the village to be a waste of time. I wanted to capture what, if anything, was beautiful about this place and preserve it. I managed to reach the landing in front of an ornate bronze door. A black iron stand with an empty sign frame at its top stood next to the door. As I turned to view the village below, an old priest hurried out of the church. He almost ran into me, and looked startled, almost frightened to see me, but he regained his composure almost instantly.
“Se siente bien ?”
He peered at me like he was examining some one suffering from a strange disease.
“I’m fine.”, I snapped.
“Ah, Englaesh… You don’t look fine. Come into my house, and rest yourself”.
He opened the church door and parted a black velvet curtain that hung behind it. A trickle of cool air wafted out through the doorway. A few minutes inside certainly wouldn’t hurt me. I stepped through the curtain into complete darkness. The church vestibule smelt of melted candles, furniture polish, and damp prayer books. To paraphrase Andrew Marvell, this church seemed a “cool and private place where none I think do there embrace.” My eyes started to adjust to the relative darkness. “I am Padre Jose Arcadio. You are always welcome here.”
“I’m just passing through.”
” I see. Why are you doing that?”
” I’m looking for the truth. I want to understand the true essence of this village, and decide if there is any beauty hidden within it.”
The old priest chuckled. “The truth? The truth often burns the hands of those who are too anxious to grab it. Have you found this beautiful truth anywhere in your travels?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, of course, how could you? The priest stroked his chin for a second. “What would you do with the truth if you ever possessed it?”
I thought a moment. “I don’t know.”
“Your quest sounds like a fool’s mission to me,…. but at least you are an honest fool, and for that I will share with you something that will be a lot more useful. Follow me.”
As unlikely as his promise sounded, I walked with him toward the front of the church, because he seemed to be a kind old man, and I didn’t want to hurt his kind old feelings. I could now make out the empty pews as we passed them in the darkness.
The church was certainly cooler than the street, but besides the slow click of our footsteps it was just as silent and empty. When we reached the alter, the priest swept his hand upward in front of my face and said, “Look up my son.” I did and saw the sunlight streaming through a stained glass window. “Of course, of course”, I murmured. I understood everything now. The window’s image washed over me like a flooding river. I stood there bathing in its light. The sunlight no longer felt hot. Instead it seemed to absorb the church’s coolness and this coolness began to seep into me. I shivered. A light breeze began to stir somewhere within the church. I felt refreshed, and clean. I took a deep breath. I now felt alive. As the clouds outside passed before sun, the colors in the window changed in a measured way like those in a turning kaleidoscope.
Since I could see it with my own eyes, I knew for certain that truth and beauty did exist in this village after all. I turned to thank the priest, but no one was there. The church was completely empty. I saw the curtain move by the door. I swiftly moved back up the aisle and pulled back the curtain. There on a little table, face down, lay a sign. I turned it over and read: ” La Iglesia de Saint John el Bautista – Padre Antonio que preside.” “Antonio?” I blinked, and then thought nothing more about it.
I stepped out onto the church steps, refreshed and eager. A happy breeze welled up from the village below. I saw a dog peacefully sleeping in a doorway next to a bougainvillea bush bursting with pink flowers. A little yellow finch landed in the bush. “That will make a great picture,” I thought as I trotted down the steps. “I hope I don’t scare the bird.”
