Empty
These are the empty days. Their hours are filled with blank stares past cubicle walls and through tinted windows. The end is not over and the beginning is far from started. Just beyond the walkway over Figueroa, at a fast pace, surely there would be an answer, surely there would be a sign.
In one corporate lobby workers used saws to chop the Christmas tree. At another the men stood on the third to last rung of a ladder and removed ornaments into wrapping paper. Shards lay at the foot of the ladder, betraying their vale madre approach to dismantling the tree.
Where's everyone gone?
For the Mexicas (muh-SHEE-cuz) - the Aztecs - these were the nemontemi, the empty days, the days left over in their symmetrical calendar of 18 months of 20 days. They knew the sun needed five more days to return to the same position in the sky so these placeholder days were necessary.
To them anything done on these days was in vain. These were days of meditation and penance. Their lives were ruled by ritual. And on these dias vacios all that was suspended. You'd be known as a nenoquich if born a man on these days, nencihuatl if born a woman. Regardless your life would be filled with bad luck. Inutil!
On the way back, knowing the San Gabriels begin at the foot of Broadway, I was reminded that in Sierra Madre their backyard Rose Parade float was finished and likely looked like a crooked, home-made cake. From this block along 7th and Broadway, under the fluorescent Valadez light, I could hear the doors closing. The Robert Graham doors on Grand and Temple. I want to be on the right side when they shut.
