“And he beat down the city and sowed it with salt.”
                        Judges, ch. 9, v. 45 
“Mine eyes have been enlightened because I tasted a little of this honey.”
                        Samuel I, ch. 14, v. 29      
                  
    Hebrew and Arabic are blood relatives –
    perhaps even cousins.  Salt in Hebrew     
is melakh, in Arabic, milkh.  Honey     
in Hebrew is dvash, in Arabic, dibsh .     
Whether salt or honey will prevail has nothing     
to do with linguistics.  The dark heart      
shall decide: either the salty desolation        
     wreaked by Abimelech, or Jonathan’s honeycomb.    

Few are the men who can look around themselves and see the composition of their lives—the walls that separate one cell from another, that keep balance and allow the movement we need.  Far to the north, on the grassy hills, Escobar roams with his sheep and whistles the songs his father taught him.  On the plains to the south, Jose-Luis lives on his horse—where the two have become one amongst the stubborn cattle.  Paco has lived with his hogs in this stationary pen for as long as he has been a man, surrounded by acorns and hazelnut trees.  Each day the same, both the movements and rituals.  Other men of his vocation curse loudly, their Lord and themselves, the smells and the snorting creatures.  Color is everywhere, but only men such as Paco can see what it adds up to.  He stands with his right elbow tucked down by his hip, his hand above pulling the few hairs on his chin, thinking of how the pink skin of the pig fits so wonderfully into the world, like the dresses of the pretty women in his town below.  He waits for his stomach to begin to growl and then the first salty bite of ham.