Pay Your Duties at Destiny

I do not feel as if I came from anywhere.  I am not going anywhere, really.  And there are not any places to go but here.  Where is “here”?

At the moment, the circumstances are taking a toll on my sleep.  For example, I was dreaming that I had gotten deported.  Yes, and the person who was the in-flight attendant had given me the news.  To make matters worse, the in-flight attendance was one of the actors from “90210 Beverly hills…” something.  He had the blue eyes and brown hair…Perry…something.  In any case, this guy is sitting in between the person that I am flying with and I; I do not know this flying companion in reality, but in the dream we are flying together and know each other very well.  So the flight attendant begins making a speech about: “do you know what the yellow ribbon means?” At this point, I realize that my papers had been taken away, along with those of the person I am flying with (let us call him “john” for the sake of making this less painful to read), and I see one set of papers with a pink sheet and another set of papers with a yellow ribbon attached to them; how peculiar I thought.  The thought of peculiarity came from the idea that the ribbon looked awfully familiar.  I remember the ribbons given to cattle at the national cattle event, “La Rural,” in Argentina; and this ribbon, attached to the passport and green card, looked just like that: a yellow ribbon for a prize winning head of cattle.  After a quick glance, Perry, the flight attendant, puts both items out of the line of sight and continues with his speech about the meaning of that yellow ribbon.  Part of it I missed because I was enthralled by the thought of gauchos and cows parading through concrete and tar streets with lines of cars and people around them.  I looked at John, who is intently looking at Perry, and this makes me pay attention a bit more.  “…You see, when you get one of these you are not allowed to be back in the states and that means that your papers have been revoked…” Perry says with a soft smile on his face; the smile that just tells him that he did a good job at explaining what he thought would be a difficult thing to explain to someone else.

“Is there anything one could do about this?” I ask.  Perry’s smile tightens and he shakes his head from side to side.  He raises both hands, with the papers on them, and I glance at the ribbon.  He fumbles a bit while handing the papers because he does not know who is who.  I noticed a nice embroidered phrase in red on the yellow ribbon.  It read: “Pay your duties at destiny.”  My eyes widened a bit and I begin to internalize all that has happened in this brief encounter.  I tell Perry that I am “Lucas” and he says  “ha” and then crosses his arms in mid air and hands me the yellow ribbon that he was handing to John.  I was the prize-winning head of cattle.