***

she will continue to be

dutiful and kindness

as she should be, must be,

because you are what she was

as she is what you will become

***

1/

 

SHE TESTS THE DOOR. LOCKED. JANNET HAS WANDERED OFF THE GUIDED tour. This is at El Museo de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid de España. This inconvenient incident occurred because initially she had wanted to investigate a partially opened door that did lead into a very large and well-stocked storeroom. Naturally, the heavy door closed behind her and she is now momentarily trapped. And so now, a short time period has transitioned into several minutes, therefore she decides to be content with exploring the fascinating contents of the storeroom. Primarily she encounters many rows of sturdy open-faced shelving, which contain a seemingly endless variety of items for the various exhibitions and displays related to the official areas of the natural science museum.

 

Jannet, full name of Janneta Luna Russman, is a resident of Portland, Oregon USA, but she is currently residing for several weeks in a comfortable apartment hotel in the Embajadores sector of Madrid. More specifically in the Hotel Atico Embajadores, which is a self-service establishment. She had received good instructions, from the desk clerk at her hotel, on transiting to the museum utilizing the Metro.

 

Inside the locked storeroom Jannet would return, every few minutes, to the extremely solid entry door and knock and shout for help, then she would resume her explorations within the storeroom. She has made frequent attempts to dial ‘112’ the primary telephone emergency number in the Eurozone but her cellphone seems to not want to work.

 

She occupies herself with a deeper tour of the large storage room. The items on the shelves are similar, she images, to a storeroom in a film studio production’s lot or the back areas of an active theater company. In fact, she does not entirely regret her present predicament. But she does begin to register internally, nonetheless, a perception of some form of another presence somewhere within the confines of the bulky storeroom. In one distant corner of the vast room she images she sees a human-shaped two-dimensional silhouette which is darkly drawn. The apparition is not fully formed, no two-dimensional feet or hands, and it is floating but she is prevented from a closer inspection. She suddenly becomes distracted from the visage by a faraway clinking sound. She detects a distant though clear entry into the storeroom by at least two individuals. They are conversing, in Spanish, about locating a particular parcel number and the sound of their footsteps resounds on the poured concrete floor.

 

Jannet swivels to look again for the floating silhouette. It has vanished, leaving her to wonder if it was indeed ever present. Jannet strides very quickly towards the front area and to a waiting and opened storage room door. She surprises the two museum staffers as she exits. She suddenly stops, nearly colliding with an official looking guard, within a few feet away from the storeroom entrance, in a smallish gallery of unusual geological displays. It is a Sunday, a free admission day, therefore the museum is swarming with patrons. She immediately produces a copy of her visa and an explanation, apparently she explains, she became lost and entered the storeroom by accident. The guard quickly waves her away, especially in light of the large amount of patrons that he has to shepherd today.

 

Jannet walks nonchalantly out of the museum and carefully to the Metro. It is a cold day in November, November of 2013. She cancels her plans, for a bit of exploring along the palatial Paseo de la Castellana, and instead she returns to the apartment hotel for a quiet afternoon. Her apartment hotel is only several miles east of the museum on Calle Embajadores. The experience in the storeroom in the natural science museum haunts her.

°

Jannet makes an entry into her daily electronic diary: It is the rising of the rising wind – This city is in the center of the country. It is a political, cultural, and economic middle. There is a river, the Manzanares. The city’s urbanity includes extended suburbs and urban villages. While it possess a healthy modernistic infrastructure, it has maintained the traditional occurrences of historic streets, buildings, and neighborhoods. When walking, scale and spatiality assert themselves – There are large numbers of museums, churches, outdoor sculptures, and monuments. Among the grand streets, two famous ones of many that are admired, are the Gran Via and the Paseo del Prado.

°

The Embajadores sector of Madrid, its El Rastro barrio or its La Lavídes neighborhood in particular, is a diverse area with a broad range of residents. A combination of classic Spanish architecture, an endless variety of bars, restaurants, cafes, book stores, and so on. There is a stimulating juxtaposition of the best and, at times, the worst of Madrid. So there can be times when it is prudent to watch out for pickpockets, sleazy characters, and shady alleyways. Mostly it is a magnificent sector, except for some occasional pockets of edginess.

 

Jannet is nearly half way through her seven weeks in Madrid. She spends nearly every day walking or drifting through the streets, mostly in the Embajadores sector, randomly taking a different direction on each sojourn. One day she did take a rather long Metro ride to north Madrid, she was following a recommendation to visit Plaza de Castillo. There is a convenient Metro stop there. It is a vast circular open area, the plaza, which is a gateway to the Puerta de Europa twin towers. That particular day Jannet experienced a few minutes of sensorial overload, which would be understandable considering her unique capabilities and considering the setting. The twin towers, of Puerta de Europa, are each 26 stories high and they lean toward each other at an intoxicating and mystifying 15° incline.

 

On another day, following the advice and careful directions from the apartment hotel manager, Adaluz, Jannet takes a metro and then a bus to the far northwest of Madrid. The destination is famous outlet mall, Las Rozas Village, which has a unique urban village design and a vast array of shopping options. That day did become a perfectly diverting day.

°

Jannet faithfully maintains an electronic journal, on her laptop computer, and she has developed another habit, an uncommon habit, during her tenure in Madrid. Once a week she types, and then prints on her wireless printer, an anonymous letter which she then addresses to El Cuerpo Nacional de Policía, Policía General, with attention to the office of general investigations. She uses Google-Translate for translation from English to standard Spanish, although not the resident Castilian Spanish, and she puts the letter in an envelope, with no return address, and she takes care to mail each week’s letter from a different postal office and to avoid cameras at these different postal sites. She take care to wear latex gloves inside her rooms, when handling the letters, and more fashionable gloves on her way to each random postal location.

 

The letters provided details on unsolved crimes, recent and not so recent crimes. Each letter begins with a brief generalized description of the crime, the location, and the date of the crime. Then the letter adds other copious details that are presently unknown to the authorities. Some of the unknown details included the type of clothing worn by the individual or individuals, their physical descriptions, and other details. Sometimes she provides, in the letters, names or partial names of the suspects and/or streets locations where they live. She also includes some form of visual representation of the crime scene.

U