The church would have none of that… the Native kids were introduced to rampant abuse in the prisons called boarding schools, slave labored, starved, beaten and raped (the boys particularly) into Christians, and they all were taught women are dirty because they caused sin and and for that, women all should be virgins.. I simply don’t understand the church idea of women as dirty AND virgins.. perhaps temple virgins made more sense.. if virgin for virgin’s sake makes any sense at all.. boys whoring around in their youth does not seem to make men dirty... in so far as those things go.. some boys never grow up

It was in Girona I saw the beautiful young woman with her dog on a leash, sitting on a bench waiting.. for what or who, I do not know.. her dog, a boxer, drooled on her shoe and drew a slap in the face and the epithet “Whore!”

It would be amazing to me if it were the same woman, but after a few days, I was standing having a smoke while waiting for my bus adjacent to a train station The station had an upper level on supports with an elevator, both upper and lower level were open and visible, simply an elevated platform with the tracks above

The beautiful young woman had her dog and her baggage and was preparing to take the elevator down, the dog, a boxer, stepped inside while the woman was distracted with her luggage and the elevator door closed on the boxer and the dog alone went down… while the woman above beat on the closed elevator door with her fists shouting VERY loudly: “WHORE!!”

I suspect that is NOT her dog’s name

The dog stepped out of the elevator at the bottom and turned and obediently waited.. the woman came down, grabbed the Boxer’s leash and except for a certain something in her posture, moved on as though nothing had happened

The male role model surrounds me, unseen by the women who live under a cruelty as though they do not realize they are in some sense already dead

On the Rambla during holidays, or on the beachfront, or any of the places you may wish to sit in the out of doors in a public place, kids with fireworks have no care for the old man or woman, they walk along and toss their small bombs indiscriminately as their parents look on, nothing matters except the child’s pleasure, a reflection of a fathers attitude.. and if you seem irritated the child has made his explosions nearly in your face, driving you away, the woman perhaps behaves a bit embarrassed but the man acts as though he were almighty god, glaring at and daring you to say something

I was amazed to see a young man in his twenties go to great lengths to torture a sick pigeon.. the bird was obviously weak and desperate.. the young man jumped over the wall bordering the walkway on the beach and kicked sand at the bird with obvious pleasure, each time the sick bird flew a few feet and was chased down again and again to have sand kicked in its face

I thought it was the act of a depraved individual but I was wrong, it is the act of an entire culture, because on another day I was sitting in a park feeding the pigeons when the respectable looking family on a walk in my proximity saw their young male child, only the male, not the daughters, suddenly break away to kick sand in the face of the pigeons I was feeding, the dirt was kicked into my face as well, the child was so enabled of his behavior, there was no necessity whatsoever to notice his surrounding, to take stock, to consider the consequence of his actions, to care for the peace of his neighbor

His mother was embarrassed, she whined to her son in the most helpless way, he should consider the consequence of his action, and although I clearly could hear her, it was as though she were a mute to the male child, he had no consideration for her voice, as though she were some ornament in his life destined only for attention when he desired a pleasure

The father walked on as though he had a stick up his ass, saying nothing but giving that look of ‘I’ll kick your ass if you dare say anything to embarrass me’ and not a word was said by this man said to correct his male child for inflicting indignity on an old man, a stranger, reinforcing to his male child the woman’s appearance of unimportance and helplessness with her mute admonition

On another day I was sitting by the water when a group of mentally disabled were brought to the beach by their woman care givers. The young retarded man was kicking water into the face of his sister as though she were a pigeon, the women caring for the group helplessly whining at him to stop, as unimportant to him as though they were the wives of the males preceding

The beauty in spirit of the young retarded woman was injured, her joy at the beach and water destroyed, her tears and heartbreak unimportant, no one thought to comfort her or, more truthfully, no one of her women caregivers was willing to be embarrassed with an admission of their helplessness to prevent the hurt inflicted, by moving in public to comfort her, a chauvinist imposed restriction they must be, with their shame and embarrassment, only subconsciously aware of

It was not far away at all, on another day on the beachfront walkway, sitting on a bench I witnessed a male child with an inner tube beating his sister. He was probably 12 years old, she was perhaps 14

The young male did not care to notice he nearly knocked an old woman passerby over, and forcing other people on their walks to detour his violence, he swung his large rubber doughnut in wide arcs with much force, his sister laughing bravely at the blows to her body

When he managed a blow to her head and had knocked her off balance, she went down on the paving stones with legs spread wide and he not hesitate to deliver, with obvious satisfaction, the most forceful blow he could muster, directly to her vagina

Her laughs and expression were now truly pained and I did (because of the mother studiously ignoring) what no passerby dared, I confronted the young man with his behavior. When I approached, he actually seemed to expect praise at his demonstrations of male superiority

When I told him he really was NOT a nice person, his face drew back in the most unimaginable and incredible expression of stunned stupidity as he said “Huh?” The sudden rise and sharply genuine quality of his sister’s laughter was a great reward I’ve seen what fear can do to these women… and it is not pretty. I saw a woman die of a murder and if she had broken free of fear’s grip over her survival instinct, perhaps myself or someone else could have helped her and she would be alive. But she is dead and there was nothing to be done for her because she refused to help herself and trust the goodwill of any one or two of the many people in her vicinity, myself included

I was waiting on a train in Barcelona, I’d bought a paper and was reading while seated on a bench at the station. A young couple approached, well dressed fashionable people, she was clearly agitated, extremely… he seemed expressionless… she chose to sit next to me, he followed and sat by her on her other side and she did not like it, it was obvious. Her expression looked like a Van Gogh or El Greco ‘terror in the asylum’ painting if such a thing can be etched on the human face without a scream. I noticed and minded my own business because she was not overtly or vocally indicating distress. I only wondered at that moment, why people get themselves into and stay together in relationships that obviously are stressed to point of fear and loathing, it seemed I’d seen this many times observing people. I went back to my reading. She stood up and moved away probably 10 feet, he followed and they were standing there together for a what seemed like a few minutes, I had glanced up when she had moved away from me and was then reading again

Like a small girls voice “eeeeeeeee” I looked up as she lurched away from him, she made eye contact with me as blood erupted from her nose and mouth and she took two or three small steps, collapsed and died, he’d stabbed her and his knife must have found her heart, it was that fast… I did not see the knife (it was in her back) but I didn’t think she lurched away from him and dropped dead like that from Ebola Virus, as there was no sound of a shot

He then kneeled over her with his back partially blocking my view and from that moment acted as though he had only love for her with prayers… while I’m trying to ask a woman for the Spanish ‘emergency’ phone number (she was too freaked out to be helpful, someone else made the call), and two men who were also close to the event and had a different angle or view, reacted (after some moments hesitation) with trying to help a [clearly] dead woman with her now praying killer kneeling right there. Having no fluency in the local language, I stayed away deciding I would be more hindrance than help, at any rate, having been to war, it was pretty clear to me she was already dead and they would sort that fact soon enough

An attempt at CPR was not a pleasing result (a graphic imagination will paint that picture) and quickly abandoned, a policeman arrived, determined she was indeed dead and the ‘man in prayer’ was directly and emphatically pointed out (extended arms with forefingers pointed straight to the bowed head inches away) to the policeman when the policeman asked (I presume, I did not understand the Catalan) the other two men who’d also been close to the event and tried to assist the woman, who had killed her

Was her killer’s ego so important to possessing this trophy (her physical beauty) that he had felt compelled to kill her, because she obviously wanted away from him… and then he supposedly loves her when she is dead, with prayer? NO EMOTION, only this sanctimonious kneeling posture… this is something I just don’t get, I doubt I ever will

Paramedics had now arrived and were waiting together with the policeman, it seemed as though, for the killer’s prayers to be finished, although in actuality they would have been waiting for a gurney to remove her body or, perhaps in some sense it was both, as my train arrived and it seemed there was nothing else to do but get on. I boarded the train with a couple of dozen horrified people and the scene was left behind as though we had left on a cinema spaceship. The story is surreal, as in the maxim ‘The truth is stranger than fiction’

Other than to say I am likely the last person this dying woman ever clearly saw, as she took her last steps while making eye contact with me and collapsed and died six feet away, my having been at that moment closer to her than anyone other than her killer What if she had said something, asked for help, said something like ‘get this man away from me’… put her shin swiftly to his crotch and run shouting ‘he is after me to kill me’, done ANYTHING to save herself from what in retrospect was clearly demonstrated in her expression of terror, she knew she was going to die, she knew this guy was there to kill her. WHY DID SHE DO NOTHING?

Really, fear was her killer before the guy ever struck, she should have made some effort to survive, this woman who’d clearly trusted the wrong man and consequently could not trust a stranger or, one could say she could not trust herself to ask a stranger for help, literally, to save her own life

So, my question for these women would be why live in fear? Why die of fear? Because of fear you have no life already. I am not the only one to notice. As a young man from Chile had volunteered to me: “In Spain, the men kill their women”