Reminder

The TV was on and its volume was turned very low. I watched the bright Technicolor images move across the screen though eyes that were almost ready to shut. Letting my body melt into the plush suede cushions, I held the remote in one limp hand, ready for another attack of toothpaste and car insurance ads.
In front of me, people in bikinis and board shorts were furiously diving through a pool of mud, frantically rooting through the mess for little bags of sand in an attempt to reach the blue finish line ahead of the pack. As the screams of the contestants came through the living room speakers, I heard a faint sound from the other room, something foreign to the sound of cheering and sloshing that came to me through electric magic and science, or science that was so amazing, it was magic. Aiming the remote at the cable box, I turned the volume even lower and strained my ears for the sound, had I heard something?
Waiting…fixing my eyes on the hardwood floor…waiting…there it was, a little cry.
I left my embedded place on the couch and opened the door to the babies' room, where two dark wooden cribs sat against opposing walls, perhaps clearly defining the roles they would one day assume when they were grown men and left their wooden cribs and baby blankets.
Jonas, the six month old and the younger of the two, was crying. As I looked into the crib, I saw him on his back, his little legs wriggling in his sleeping bag-like-jumpsuit that covered both his legs. His tiny hands were balled up in fists.
Reaching into the crib and pulling his little body towards mine, his cries came up to envelop me. He was unable to clearly say what bothered him, but something was not quite right. Was it the lack of light? Was he lonely in his crib surrounded by only darkness and tall bars? I brought him to my chest, covering his body with my arms, stroking his head of thin silk hair, bringing him as close to my heart as I could.
I remembered the song practiced years ago while standing in a circle of three in a dimly lit room, it was the melody I strained to reach when it leapt up the scale. I sang it here now, in this dark room. I sang it for Jonas, ‘nothing ever has happened, nothing ever will happen…”
Over and over, the two line song came out, reaching up and then descending only to start over once again. He stopped crying quickly and I held him in front of me, propping his jumpsuit covered legs on my stomach. Jonas looked at me with alert wide eyes, eyes that were quickly turning from baby blue to a metallic brown. He wiggled slightly, his body bobbing and moving with currents of electricity and unanswered curiosity.
I stopped singing and looked into him, seeing nothing that can be explained, defined, or understood.
“You know,” I said clearly, “nothing has ever happened, nothing ever will happen.”
His eyes widened. We went into each other then, me looking into him looking into me. I understood it. Him looking into me looking into him, understanding.
There was no woman, no baby, no crib or parents at a party. There was no game show on a television in the other room and no sore muscles from a day standing in the sun.
Here the words made sense, in a chamber of feelings without words. In this place, we were the same thing, two parts of the same fabric, not separated by bodies and memories or contorted into a canvas of unequal shapes and designs where egos dance.
I had spoken and we both had heard. His sudden jolting was mine as well. Oh yes, nothing has ever happened. Nothing ever will happen. Nothing ever has. Nothing ever will.

Rockabye Baby

I heard him from the living room as I was browsing TV listings with a responsive remote, heard the small little gasps he made seeking air to fill his little lungs. By the time I opened the door to his bedroom, the gasps were turning into high pitched wails. I reached into the wooden crib and opened my hands for his little body, bringing him to my chest. I carried him from the room, leaving his brother in the arms of his own dreams in the darkness.
“What’s wrong baby?” I asked with concern, giving his downy covered head a few soft kisses.
In the dim light of the hall, just a few steps from the kitchen, he was not consoled. Wiggling in my arms between gasps for air, his face contorted into a red mess of anger. A sudden fear ran through me, “he’s choking.” I held him upright and patted his back and he cried harder. He wasn’t choking, just mad.
“What’s wrong baby?” I asked with a smile, looking at him.
His face was completely red and his little mouth opened wide with each wail, showing the pink soft gums that would one day house two rows of teeth.
Cradling him in my arms, we went back into his bedroom, I groped around his cradle for the pacifier I expected to find in the left corner. When my hands found nothing, I turned on the light to look again, I still didn’t see it, though I had the memory of his father placing it there earlier. I took a quick look at Noah sleeping in the other crib against the wall, his body in a contorted angle on one side, undisturbed by the noise.
Jonas continued to scream, and we walked back into the hall, taking a few steps to the kitchen. Moving him into another position in my arms, I scanned the kitchen, searching for another pacifier and finding one the side of his automated jumper. I inserted the pacifier into his open, crying mouth, he did not latch on.
I brought him into the living room and sat on the suede couch. I sat him on my lap.
“What’s wrong baby?” I asked smiling at him.
I kissed his head again, feeling the few wisps of his silken hair on my lips. I tried the pacifier again, he didn’t want it.
“What’s wrong baby?”
Not a bit of anger or agitation in my voice, just pure questioning.
“What’s wrong honey?”
I tried holding him in a variety of ways, but nothing seemed soothe him.
Then my eyes fell on the mechanical baby swing by the window. I tried to lower him into the seat, bumping his little head on the three stuffed animals that dangled from the upper plastic arm of the mobile. I realized that his legs couldn’t spread because of the baby suit he was in, it was like a sleeping bag over his legs that snapped at his chest like a vest. I pulled him towards me again, brushing his head against the stuffed hanging animals once more. I let out a little embarrassed laugh and his little face scrunched tighter.
I unsnapped his jumper and then his legs were free, I lowered him into the seat. There was a seatbelt, but I didn’t worry about snapping him in. I sat right in front of him, just inches away and turned on the swing.
“Rockabye baby, on the tree top…”
I held out my two index fingers and he grasped them, holding on tight with his own little fingers. I looked at him, his eyes were still all scrunched up and wet, his mouth was open, showing his red gums.
“when the wind blows, the cradle will rock…”
On the edge of my mind, I remembered the preschool I had worked in for a week, one of the little boys there liked the song, “itsy bitsy spider,” and we sang it to him over and over when he was crying.
“when the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, and down will come baby, cradle and all.”
I opened my eyes wide as I sang, smiling at him.
After repeating the song several times, insisting on the melody, his crying slowed, then eventually stopped.
He looked at me, with his eyes that were turning from blue to brown. They would open wide as I reached for the high notes with my voice. I pushed on him gently with my fingers even though the machine was rocking him, pushing just a little so he could feel me. He looked at me, seeing me, seeing deeper than what was available in the mirror. I looked into him, seeing beyond the baby, seeing a universe of beings.
“Rockabye baby, on the tree top…”
As I sang, and as his crying became a thing of the past, he would break out into a quick smile every now and then when our contact grew strong, then he would sharply turn his head to the left or the right, grasping for something with his open mouth.
I kept singing, kept looking at him, kept providing a bit of pressure with my fingers as he rocked up and down on the swing. He repeatedly returned my contact, his eyes opening wide from time to time, perhaps seeing sound and feeling color. Between phrases I would purse my lips and blow on him gently, letting my breath move across his soft face.
Experimenting, I stopped singing for a moment. When I did, his body would start to squirm once again, preparing to cry.
“rockabye baby, on the tree top…”
I started to forget the lines, or I was repeating them so much, it seemed like there were lines I had skipped, but I kept going, dropping any armor and image, just giving my rawest self.
Soon, I felt like improvising and started making up another melody. From time to time, I went out of tune, and found it difficult to get back. I kept my eyes open, a smile on my face even when I remembered another me that would care about performance.
But here, with him, my desired image was easily dropped. I felt only love for this being in a little body. We could be together without my human ways, I could give my voice to him, calm him, love him with my most intuitive self.

Intimate Space

I watch with an open mouth. I try to shut my mouth, but it doesn’t seem possible to sit from this balcony’s edge and look onto the yellow and gold light of the stage without wide open lips. It doesn’t feel right to watch with a closed mouth. I note that I’m breathing though my nose and let the jaw hangs as it wants. A part of me keeps pulling my attention to look to the left, looking for a hand, an eye, a sentence whispered. I feel the tide pulling out towards the west, but I follow my mouth and move forward, giving my heart a center seat. I push my body forwards, my body moves north and I follow.

I look from the cellist to the drummer, jump like a pinball of shiny silver attention from the drummer to the guitarist, from the piano to the violin, from the violin to the conductor with cards and a waving baseball hat in his right hand. He puts the card down, picks up another, places the hat on his head. All hands are up, 14 hands. Pointing. A smile from the beaming violinist.

The balcony melts into a garage, we watch their improv session, not a concert, but a group of people playing, laughing, it’s fun and I somehow have a voyeur’s eye into their moment of creation. A few hundred eyes share their intimate space, scrunched tighter than usual, the lights are hot, but it is theirs. A sphere of intense communication, not an eye darts away. They stay together, moving up, where we could go if we keep on working.

My ears hear noise with only an occasional nod towards melody. My eyes see something, translate gesture into music for my slower ears. I coax my mind into relaxing, let it jump from yellow headband to waving hat, a hand over the mic and guttural bursts of energy. 14 instruments, taking turns, jumping, one eye towards the center in camouflage that’s disguised by the stage, one eye moving always around the semi-circle, those ears which remain open, an entire body like a cup full of hot water that remains still without burning. Pointing, the smiles, hands raised, another quick end, then a jump into rhythm.

I watch their eyes, yearn for something like that. They are talking, I can hear their words come out like screams and vibrato. Zorn writes something down on a piece of paper, he closes the cap of his pen. In the back is a man with a glowing Mac, his left hand moves delicately in the air and I hear corresponding sounds move towards us through the speakers. To his right is a balloon. A dark haired man licks the plastic world, I feel his wet tongue and the sex of a man and pink balloon.

They start fast, building into a fever pitch that starts to turn black, then moves towards red but never falls over the edge into green. The vocals, going so rapidly, the vocals, dark screams into a microphone, the smile, so insistent and so close to the floor.

The Guess

What I almost certainly do not know is that I am blind. BLIND. My sight is an illusion, a minor hope of a machine caught up in kaleidoscopic movies that repeat endlessly. I cannot see. Not you, the dog, a tree, a new facet of thought. Every contour is clouded in a haze of fog and thick assumptions. You are what is past my nose. You are beyond the thin skin that contains my brain. Because you are not me, I cannot see you. You are a cloud of pale skin. A sound that echoes from a distant hillside. A fleeting movement that jumps through a tiny hoop.

You are equally as blind, caught up in the illusion that wraps us both in a tight jacket. Two people, perceiving themselves as right and correct. Two people, seeing only fuzz and gray clouds, hearing selected words from long sentences, getting lost in the white spaces between. The other is beyond. The tiny shape of a walking woman, the tropical tree, the fresh picked banana. They all exist in a world of color and form that I watch as though through a television screen. You are not real. The metal jug, the dirt road. Not real and foreign, past what I can ever understand.

I watch from an overstuffed couch, watching the lights move, watching it as complete fiction, for it is. Though I cannot tell I am on the other end of a screen, another light that moves vaguely in the distance.

I am blind, though so are you.

Both of us trapped in the skin that contains a sense of self. There is me, there is you, the Other. I am blind and cannot know, and the guesses begin. All the assumptions, all the conjecture that rolls like a snowball in a cartoon of pigs and rabbits.

It catches speed and I grasp at words. “woman, poor, fertile, bound…”

They are words and I attach them to you, to her, to all those that move on the horizon.

But another one comes, “young, marriage, style…”

More words. More assumptions. I will never know. You are the shape beyond my skin, you are the Other, and I can only make a guess. How can I talk to the past? How can I talk to a shape without blood? The past and future blend together, I grab with dirty fingers, searching for another word, something to hold, something that will make sense and fit easily in this small wooden box. You are the captured cloud, the note hidden below my pillow in a place I will forget to look. You are the shape that will never be known, you are the Other.

The Smaller Cookies

I saw myself again in their little bodies. They were like mini gingerbread men, with thin little crumbling arms and a round head. They were made like me, all the same ingredients. A touch of earth, a bit of blood and water, a heaping of stardust. They spoke like me, did what I do. I watched them and found it disgusting.

“How can you little cookies act like this!”

I wanted to reason with them.

“Don’t you get it? We’re doing this for you…we want you to be happy, to feel safe in a world that tumbles forward. Get out of your own little body and contribute!”

Less than a second would pass and their eyes would glaze over. I watched them, like dolls without will and power, happy to sit in a room of crumpled tissues and bits of torn paper. I was disgusted. The carpet had blue stains, the walls were pockmarked and had the sticky remnants of tape and dirty fingers. I wanted to reason with them:

“Don’t you get it? This place is nice and clean, so different from what you have known. It’s time to take care of these gifts. It’s time to cherish what you have, to keep it clean, to appreciate what is here.”

But my words drifted away, falling on ears that could not hear, on little cookies that just could not move in another way. They stared off, then fought over a piece of string. I watched, shaking my head. They could not follow the most simple tasks, it was like telling a dog to write a letter. It was like watching a beautiful jewel disappear down a toilet. I saw the cookie cutter. They were just smaller versions of the same dough.

I work on different tasks now, but I keep forgetting what I have. I complain. I cannot see the gifts and I cover our space with invisible black paint. Every few days I spit on the altar.

Though I have breasts and a few more memories, I am that small cookie, fighting over a bead and a piece of string. I cannot be reasoned with, for awakening is beyond reason. I watch them, a body removed, eyes that fully comprehend their silliness, their selfish motivations. It is all beyond reason.

They have no discipline, no ability to maintain their attention, no way to change their habits. They lose themselves in balloons and old tissue boxes. I watch little copies of myself. Just as selfish and blind. Just as completely unaware of the moment, of everything that is being offered and given.

I cannot maintain myself long enough to see the gift, to take it and care for it, without complaint and argument. If only I could reason through it. If only I could tell myself to sweep away the petty things, to move forward with enthusiasm and trust and an inward gaze. If only I could remember. If I could just look around and Do. I want to grow up, focus, and use my attention to move with the spirit of a girl. Like a pixie, finally aware of her power, shaking off the dust of sleep.

Ghost Guest Geist

We prepare the space.
I, in my dirty jeans and yellow gloves, with piles of split lemons on a table. Each one gives beneath my grip, spilling its sour self to the floor. I push the mop, up and down over faded linoleum, humming a soft tune, because though I sometimes forget, music turns a chore into creation.
Fresh cut flowers sit in a short jar on the round kitchen table. The windows have been opened since dawn first broke, bringing in the smell of a cold spring and the faint whirring of dragonflies. I hear the sound of a vacuum cleaner downstairs, and I feel the dirty remnants of a used-up week disappearing into the black hole of plastic parts and noise.
This is our role. The vessel must be prepared before the Guest can come, before the guest can fall from an upside-down kingdom and land in the cushioned chair of our living room, or another body ripe for the taking. When the walls ring with the scent of myrrh and candles provide the only light, then the guest comes, the ghost. The guest.
It comes through, knocking over u’s and h’s and it takes a reminder to know that they are one and the same. That the man knocking on our door was a copy in flesh, a spark of what was to come.
“Geist!”
I hear someone call, and I turn, flipping through the dictionary until I realize once again, that words move like liquid over tongues and years. Adding u’s and h’s, transforming meaning until it takes a mind-shattering look to see their similar shape.
The same old name, with new letters, now books, new times. The same thing, a new form. Flesh to air, blood to power.
I look at my friend, at his plump smiling lips, his bobbing head. The hole was opened, the dishes washed, the bells rung, the seed planted, the intention set. The walls move with the beat of a ghostly guest, a dancer with no feet, a shaker with no hips. But the walls shake, and I feel my head turning, spinning, moving in ways that it has never moved.
I am spinning, moving through crystal water, bending and turning, following the curves in the music while my mouth runs to keep up.
The guest is here, though we only talk about it afterwards, when the lemons are squeezed again into brown mugs and we sit, using words that always come up short. The geist was among us, jumping between body and wall. Using the vessel, the one of concrete, the one of bone. Taking the water, the sound, the spirit, the space, taking it all for a ride, a lift to the place that can only be experienced.
The ghost is the clear water, the guest for which our doors are opened and the floors are scrubbed and our bodies are cleansed. We prepare for the three, the trifecta, the trinity, the one. I turn on the porch light and set out an extra cup, though there is no flesh and blood, though there is no hand, we set the cup, the plate and serve our snacks.

The Jump

A man showed up at my door. He was tall and a stranger. The kitchen light was bright, the day outside even more blue and full than I expected when looking out my wide bedroom windows. He stood leaning against the door frame, bringing whispers of deep color. There was silence as our eyes traveled together. silence as he stood before me, still and calm. The seconds became twisting curls of life until he spoke. “Do you want to go for a ride with me?”

I looked into his eyes, “YES.”

A man showed up at my door. He sat on my faded blue carpet with those long legs crossed. The walls were a carnie’s cage of baby blue. The air held the wafting scent of sweet bread and a winter’s approach. “Do you want to go on a journey with me?” he said with a smile while a slight chuckle dusted his lips. I held my answer. I walked through the night, passing Christmas lights and moving through gusts of cool wind. I walked with a twin, passed muted Victorian architecture and slumping telephone poles. It would be the last time I would see her shadow.

The night faded and then the sun was up once again. I held a small telephone to my ear, feeling the hardness of its plastic, feeling the machinery of its shape. “Did you think about my question?” he asked.

“YES”

There was silence. I looked into the world of the blue carpet. Long beams of sunlight moved through the tall plate glass windows and caught my arm with a small kiss. “Would you like to know my answer?”

“I already do. I heard it in your voice, the way you said ‘yes.’”

And then the waters opened.
The dark night opened its cloaked arms.
The gusts of wind were no longer tinged with bloody fear.
The lights held more than their fair share of meaning.

A man walked into a crowded train car just as the sun was setting.
And he could have found another seat.
He could have remained silent, upholding the unspoken rule.
But the lens opened. The voice cracked into rainbowed pieces.
The door remained cracked, just enough for a narrow-waisted girl to squeeze through.

And she could not dive. She could barely swim. But she did jump. There was no grace.

She went face first.

Over the cliff.

Head first into what was waiting.

Anxious Clash With The Other

I feel the pain. I feel it often. So often now that I don’t run, yet I do not smile. I hear her laughing and I cannot stop my heart from beating a little louder. Thump, THUMP. It hurts. I hear her walking down the wooden stairs and my chest begins to pound, each footfall is another kick in the gut. She is coming with a story. She is coming to suck a little more attention in her direction. And as I feel a vortex of energy coming, I feel a little vacuum grow. I feel the pull of a star-less space. There is a tug on my toes. My attention is going elsewhere, like waves on a shore that only recede, its going to a place where little spindles fly in circles and dive into my joints. They join together, tight as a brick in my jaw and I cannot talk. I cannot laugh or smile. I am stuck. It’s hard to move, it’s even hard to breath. And it would seem like it’s coming because she has walked in. She has come down the stairs, she has started to spin the tale of her day. That’s what I tell myself. It is because of her. Her voice, her laugh, her story, her sucking in all the energy of the space, pulling me out and robbing me of my smiles and my air. Anxiety swirls around me like a conscious whirlwind, moving to the right, to the left, wherever I step like a fast-footed athlete. She is the reason, the source, the pain. That’s what I tell myself.
And that could be the story forever. The little explanation that lasts until the carousel breaks in a puff of smoke and all the plastic animals tumble out. It is so easy to blame. Just so easy. Wrongness comes from the outside, from people who do not have it right. From people who just haven’t learned or understood or developed the right brain cells. The Other. But it is that which is the source of the problem. The belief in right or wrong. There are only habits. The habit of politics and speech and body movement. The habits of the machine, transmitted and programmed since birth by parents and school and friends and church and society. The learned habits of an entire culture run amok through this body. The habits of a western man, the habits of an Indian woman. They are different. But neither is right, neither wrong. Two sets of habits. Each person has some. Each is convinced of their rightness.
And as I hear her coming with the force of a train, my habits begin to creak. The pain begins. She brings her habits, she exhibits them. Her hands move wildly. Her voice rattles the walls. But it is the clash of habits which hurts, not her. It is the reaction of one machine to another. The Other has a different set of habits. There is no fault. There is only learned mechanicality. The differences are what cause the pain. The clash between what I want and what they are. The clash between how I want things to be and what Is at the moment. It is the clash that causes the pain. Not the Other. The Other is just me in a different form.

Kitchen Challenge

The scene was unveiled with the pull of a black velvet curtain. We watched from the comfort of a soft bed, surrounded by four walls which held in dry warmth and the sporadic clicks of two touching bodies. A couple feet from a well stocked kitchen, on the carpet which delineated the dining room from the tiled cleanliness of the cooking space, was a stylish craps table. A master chef in his spotless white jacket stood before it, two oversized dice in his hands. Two clear groups stood before him, a group of five women wearing white chef’s jackets with red collars and a group of four men wearing blue trimmed jackets.
The dice themselves had twelve faces. Each face displayed not a number, but a letter of the roman alphabet. The master chef explained the objective: each group would be given five rolls, one for each member of the team (the blue team would get one extra roll). Depending on the letter on the dice, each aspiring chef would pick a food ingredient beginning with the same letter. The true goal was to think as a unit and to come up with an entrée together…each team member building off the words/ingredients of their teammates. They would cook the dish to completion and the head chef would judge and proclaim a winner.
The women’s team went first. A young woman stepped to the table and threw the die… an “r.”
“Okay,” said the head chef, “what food do you want to pick that begins with an ‘r’?”
“Rabbit,” she said with total confidence.
Now it was up to her teammates to build off this main ingredient. A woman with dark skin and dreadlocks picked up the die, she cast it… “g”…. “green beans.” Two more young women rolled…there would be garlic and potatoes as well, as one chef said, “all the ingredients for a classic entrée.”
And then it was the men’s turn. A tall man approached the table. He had the face of a young marine or soldier, but in this play, he chose to be a chef. He held the die in his large hands, holding them for a split second while he prayed… “h”… “halibut.” His teammate rolled, there was an “f” on the table. He stood there, with lights and cameras and the eyes of his teammates silently trying to send him a psychic answer. His face was sweaty and pale, he was shaking his head as though there was nothing he could think of… “figs.” There was laughter from the women’s team and looks of stark concern from the men. Who had ever paired figs and halibut before? He walked back to the group with his head down as the next man stood before the table.
“Alright,” said the master chef, “remember you’re trying to compliment the ingredients of each other, you need to think as a team.”
The man at the table nodded, he cast his die. An “a” sat perfectly still on the black lined table. He started shaking his head too, as though there was nothing to be done, defeat written all over his face… “angel hair pasta.” Roaring laughter from the women filled the room, as though they already had an easy victory…who had ever paired pasta with figs? Then came another “a”…. “apples.” It was the last turn for the blue team…. “t,” as though in a sign of assured defeat, as though putting the last nail into the coffin was the job of the dark haired man with a cast on his arm… “tomatoes.” One of the women nearly fell over laughing.
“Okay,” said the head chef, “you have 45 minutes to cook.”
Both teams ran into the kitchen. The second hand moved with a speed only available under pressure. The men took a bit of time talking about their approach, drawing on a large piece of paper while they worked out their plan. The women went straight to cutting the tips off the green beans and marinating the rabbit breast and creating a garlic puree, each woman doing her own thing.
“You better move you asses, the women are already cooking!”
It was the voice of authority. The men jumped…one began creating the sauce of tomatoes and a hint of figs, another working on the fish, another on the pasta.
“Okay guys,” said the dark haired man stirring the sauce, “come taste this and tell me if it needs anything.”
The small group of men gathered around, each dipping a spoon into the bubbling sauce.
“Oh my god…that’s actually good!”
“I know…I can’t believe it!”
A hint of joyous energy began to jump between them.
“At least we still have a shot at this!”
The camera panned out for a couple of seconds and then moved to the women’s side of the kitchen. A young freckled woman was pureeing the garlic for a sauce. The women gathered to taste.
“You know,” said the woman with dreadlocks, “I think it’s a little too garlicky, maybe we should add some sugar to it to cut down the bite.”
“Naw, that’s how it’s supposed to be, it’s supposed to be strong.”
The freckled girl poured the pale sauce in an artistic swirl around the plate.

“Five, four, three, two, one…okay stop! Bring me the dishes.”
Two plates stood before the master chef. He took a bite of the rabbit and garlic, then another bite of the fish with figs…
“Wow, those are both good dishes.” He stood nodding his head in approval. “The fig and tomato sauce is actually very good…okay…the winner is…the blue team.”
The men hugged each other.
“You know,” said the master chef, “the rabbit is delicious, the only problem with that dish is the overwhelming garlic sauce, it’s just way too strong and overpowering everything else.”
The men smiled brightly, they were still dizzy with the realization that surprising wonder can be found in unexpected places. Without being completely forced to use those particular ingredients, no one would have ever paired figs and fish or pasta, but because they had to, because they were forced to, they used every bit of creative inspiration and cooking knowledge they had to try and create something unique and palatable. The women had an easy chance to win, they had classic ingredients, known ingredients that had been paired with each other for many, many years. The women had ingredients that sounded reasonable and known and acceptable…it was the men that were in no-man’s land, in completely unfamiliar territory. For the women, there had been no risk, but more than that, the very objective of the task had been to work as one, to build off each other and to compliment not only the ingredients but the skill set of the other team members, and in this, they failed. The deciding factor had been the garlic sauce, the very piece of the puzzle that did not have the spirit of collaboration within it.
It takes more than perfect building blocks to create something beautiful. With a sense of creative collaboration, you can take fish and figs and apples and pasta and tomatoes and create magic. You can take the most bizarre combinations and work them and re-work them and brainstorm and practice and stir and struggle and struggle some more and maybe…maybe something completely unexpected and truly glorious will emerge, something beyond the known, something far greater than you could have ever foreseen.

The Boy Who Couldn't Read

He came though the door angry. Right away she could see the annoyance, not hidden at all behind his brown eyes. He didn’t make eye contact with her and he sat down with 18 years worth of sleep in his bones. While she had waited for him in the small, windowless room, she looked at the inspirational quotes and life suggestions taped to the wall. Probably hung there by another person who was a shadow of their own truth, a shadow of what they had allowed to die decades before. The quotes were truths and good advice, like “never give up,” but they had the mark of store-bought supplies, simple institutional decoration that came without the faintest hint at how to achieve such a noble goal.
The room in which they now sat was just slightly bigger than a closet, able to accommodate a small rectangular table and three plastic chairs, the hard chairs found in institutions. Each day she sat in there, the room always seemed too small and dirty, always smelling like old banana peels and wrappers stained with ketchup and a place whose standards were close to the floor. This was an institution, a school hidden in the far corner of an industrial park, where teenagers came, after failing out of every other public school. Its rooms were filled with people one fight away from juvenile hall. They were kids who screamed “Fuck you, man!” down the hall as they walked to the bathroom, kids who acted like they were being wronged by every teacher and administrator there. They came with attitudes and chips that had knocked over their shoulders and the assumption that they already knew everything, that this was just a place that they had to endure. The spark of curiosity had vanished, long ago, it had laid down and submitted to more simple plans. The guys wore large white shirts and baggy pants with the price tags still hanging from the seams, the girls sat on benches next to the basketball net and watched the boys play. They could hardly walk in their high heels and tight pants and looked like they were just waiting to be fucked, as though their only benefit to humanity was the hole between their legs which was waiting to be filled.
The small room had a student-painted mural of the golden gate bridge on one wall. It had smears of dirt and speckles of an undistinguishable substance covering its lower half. High above, close to the ceiling, were pictures of the cursive alphabet and more inspirational advice. She wondered if anyone ever looked up and read them. Did they resonate with anyone for a moment before being quickly forgotten?
The boy next to her certainly did not resonate with the message. He was just over eighteen and still struggling to read words like “was” and “should” and “through.” He had a medical condition which caused both his eyes to twitch, they moved like little ping pong balls stuck in his head, and because of this, he had a hard time reading. And even though he couldn’t read and even though he needed all the help he could get with his vision, he refused to bring his glasses. Each day he would arrive at his tutoring session and say he forgot them, just as he forgot his entire backpack and little notebook. He held the books an inch from his face and he would still mix up letters. She wondered what motivated him to come at all. Why did he get on the train and ride for twenty minutes each early morning?
He struggled with almost every word of the first sentence of the short story. Four words into the first paragraph, he had already uttered “I don’t know” and thrown up his hands in an expression of annoyance more than a handful of times. The words he couldn’t read were ones they had begun practicing months ago when she got him a small notebook of flashcards so he could study the sight words at home. Since the day she brought it, he never remembered to bring it again.
After trying unsuccessfully to sound out the fourth word, he excused himself without looking at her. He left for a couple minutes and she drew a small curving doodle with her pencil as she waited, it looked like the inner frond of a fern. When he came back, he brought a small Styrofoam cup of water with him and placed it on the table. He started reading the first sentence again, already forgetting the first couple of words he had sounded out. He made another gesture with his hand, as if to say, “I don’t know and I don’t care.” She leaned back in her hard plastic seat and looked at him, he stared at the page.
“Do you want to learn to read?” Her voice contained tinges of skepticism.
He looked up. “Well yeah, I do.”
“But I can tell you’re not practicing at all, you still aren’t remembering words we went over months ago, the ones we put in the notebook.”
When she had first given him the notebook, he had been very appreciative, he had carefully written down words in his neatest handwriting, he acted like it was precious and thanked her again and again. But it was obvious he hadn’t looked at it since, maybe it was lost with his glasses and backpack and anything else that could actually help him.
“Because, you know, I can come here every week and we can read for an hour and a half, but it’s not enough, you’re really not going to learn unless you practice and memorize the words on your own, it’s really up to you. Right now you’re acting like you don’t even want to be here. I’ve only been coming because you said you wanted to learn to read.”
“Yeah, I do, but it’s hard, I read sometimes with my social worker, but we do different things all the time. And hey, I thought you were supposed to come on Monday!”
“Well, I couldn’t make it Monday, but that’s why I’m here now…and what do you mean, like sometimes you practice reading and sometimes math with your social worker?”
“Yeah, lots of different things, mostly math.”
She didn’t understand what he was saying exactly.
“Well, all I’m saying is that it has to come from you, if you don’t want to learn, it’s not going to happen, no amount of help or tutoring will help unless you practice, it has to come from you. You need to want to learn and make the effort.”
He looked at her. “You know, you’re right. You’re absolutely right. I’m sorry, I don’t want to waste your time.”
He looked at the short story with a small burst of renewed interest. It took them an hour and a half to read two paragraphs. He had had bouts of enthusiasm before, she was not confident any pep talk was going to make a difference. She would know next week if he had problems sounding out the word “found.” His effort, or lack thereof, would be obvious then.
She knew that there was a part of him that really wanted to learn to read. Maybe it was the part of him that made the effort to get up with the sound of the alarm and put on some clean clothes and get to the train station. But the rest of him, the other 99 percent, got to school and sat down and was angry at the teachers, rude to the other students and made a day of possible learning into a failed effort. He let his days slip by and, when it was time for a tutoring session, he came up with reasons to be angry and annoyed and resistant to practice. No matter how much she wanted him to read, the true desire and effort would have to come from him. It was his journey.
A guide can do nothing without a sincere and constant effort from the voyager. Without such an effort, all help is precious seed poured into a gaping hole in the ground. Nothing will ever grow. Nothing will ever flourish.

Passing Generations

The high school was designed in the customary sprawling fashion as befits Southern California. Instead of a central building with multiple floors, the layout was single storied and extended lengthwise for half a mile, from the science rooms at the top, down to the pool, tennis courts and football field. The design vaguely resembled a large cross, at the tip of each point of the cross were “quads.” A quad was a conjuration of classrooms in the shape of a square donut. Along the sides of each quad were rows of maroon lockers and in the center, where the donut hole would be, was open space, usually dying grass.
The school had central point, it was called “central quad.” It was a park-like space, with various wooden benches and short cement walls used as seats. There were a couple of picnic benches, areas of lawn with mature trees and islands of shrubby bushes that produced clusters of red, orange and yellow flowers. Through the large space, like a sparse spider web, were cement paths that led to each quad.
During lunch, and in the seven minutes allowed between classes, students would congregate in the central quad and in other spots on the campus. Like self-segregating animals claiming territory, clicks of teenagers remained loyal to a designated space and returned to the same spot every lunch, day after day, and year after year.
The popular kids, otherwise known as the “soces” (derived from the word “social”), congregated a couple of steps away from the administration building. They sat on the short cinderblock horseshoe/bench that was uncovered by the eaves that stopped just short of them. There were white and purple irises on either side of the horseshoe and pots with flowers that hung from the eves behind them. The soces tended to be rich, white and blond. They played soccer and football and many of the girls were cheerleaders. They were the all-American standard, their pictures could be cut from magazines.
The smart kids, many of whom wore glasses (also known as the nerds) sat on the lawn in front of the school, a couple steps away from Indian Hill Blvd. The Latino kids sat by the vending machines, on the large cement stairs that separated the upper quads from the lower quads. The punks, and there were only a handful of them, sat on the maroon bench close to the library.
Then there was “the block,” a maroon-painted cement block in the center of the lawn, in the exact spot where if imagined, the lines of the large school-cross would meet. This is where the “alternative kids” sat, the ones who bought vinyl records, listened to college radio and dressed themselves in thrift store clothes, and judging by image, tended to be more artistically inclined. When I arrived in the high school as a freshmen, “the block” was occupied by mostly seniors and juniors, although there were a couple of sophomores and one freshman, Sid, who had been accepted into their ranks.
As freshmen, we were very similar to the alternative kids on “the block,” only we were a little more radical and had no male counterparts. We were a dozen mostly short-haired girls that dressed in old clothes, hung out at the record store and had hard feminist leanings and authority issues. We were called lesbians and man-haters, although almost everyone had a boyfriend from time-to-time. Although some of the girls were friends with the older kids on “the block” and many of us dated, we kept to ourselves and sat at the horseshoe between the trees, a cement configuration of benches that looked like two parentheses facing each other. We sat there during lunch and I often watched the people at “the block”, I watched how they interacted, what they wore…I watched Jean and Mimi, the couple who kissed. I watched Leandra and her big jiggling breasts beneath her ironic thrift store T-shirt, Winslow and his old man clothes and slouchy posture.
By the time we were juniors, the bulk of them had graduated and we, next in line to the alternative throne, migrated to the red cement block, claiming it as our own. This was the block of countless alternative generations. Just as new Latinos entered high school and stood on the stairs, just as freshman football players began to stand at the soc horseshoe, we took our inherited spot in the central quad. We sat there for two years, each new year bringing new, younger additions. They would be the generation to replace us, the kids who would, by merely standing at “the block”, show the incoming freshmen where the alternatives would stand.
A couple years after our graduation, the school removed the block from the central quad. But alternative kids still stand there today. Even though the actual physical block is gone, “the block” is still there.
Year after year, the same kinds of people stand in the same places. It’s a legacy that is passed through shared visual cues, shared heritage, social status, music and dress. It’s passed on by the way we identify ourselves and others. Are we in this group, or that?
Like parents teaching their children the ritual of Christmas or Hanukah, we’re not exactly sure why we put lights up, not really sure about the origin of the potato pancake, but we eat it anyway. The grandparents before us did it, we do it, and the kids will end up teaching it to the next generation. It’s not quite the biological impulse to reproduce and eat, but it’s the human impulse to gather with those like you, to stand next to your clone and reinforce the same shared ideas. It is the impulse for a legacy, a lineage. The danger is the dilution of the original purpose and meaning. Why do we do what we do? Why do I desire marriage? Why do I eat cheese and not cats? Why do I stand by the maroon block?

Family

I stood before their open front door, my face illuminated by the porch light. I was staring at the couple with a smile on my face. I was present in the cool night, my attention upon them, nodding at their words, looking into their eyes. They talked of birth order, the predisposition to be either gentle or aggressive was determined by sibling placing. The eldest…the peacemaker. Too much of a generalization to have any meaning. I agreed with them, nodding my head. But then, I broke from them and journeyed inside, wasn’t I the eldest in a family? Yes, my brain confirmed the fact. “The peacemaker” they said, I continued nodding, responding as needed to their words. I am the eldest. But I have caused the most strain, the most worry. I am the lone wolf in a family of strangers. I grew up alone, alienated from each of them. I was the caretaker of the home after school. I was the nurse when bills had to be paid, I was the companion on a street without children. My earliest friends were not made of flesh, invisible to all but me, and then even they left me alone, both of them, Domba and Mitsy…they vanished, even the memory was stolen, taken to the eternal place where little children dream about fairies and tooth collectors that come with twenty dollar bills.
Their theories crumbled in my hands. Its generalizations that smear the colors of the world with a flat paint brush, coloring it all gray. The wet stones are as different as the swirling lines of jasper. Take the cover off your eyes, we are all the same mechanical operations that function out of fear and desire, but within this nest of wires and blinking lights, we can scrounge and find the rainbows sent off by electric fish, alive and glowing with the pulsations of a rhythmic heart.
I hold both extreme points of the spectrum in my hand. I watch them turn like stones. The blend of truth beats against a sky that speaks in the seven languages of light. I stand below the sky, with my mouth open and my tongue pointed up to the fast moving clouds. Grant me the wish, send a single drop of sweet dew, my tongue is waiting, the scepter that awaits its crowning. The clouds open, and inside, waiting, is darkness…waiting like an exposed queen, her legs wide and open, but the portal leads to more nothingness.
Does this painting fit into the small world were the eldest children are kind? Does the open mouth, the wet tongue, does this fit in a world of small controlled families that dine on each other’s failings? It is a feast that is always cold, but they gather just the same.
With set tables of linens and crystal, they gather to eat the tepid turkey and drink from their glass of sadness. My eyes are hollow as I watch the scene, an unwilling participant, but my body is there nonetheless. The con continues, you call me daughter, I call you my chain. The birth portal is closed and sealed. The wet tunnel long ago condemned. The silver cords that bound us were severed decades ago when the hugs stopped and the hair on my legs became an issue and my jiggling breasts caused you to stare in revulsion. The silver cords are not buried somewhere below the surface of earth, they have disappeared from memory, the bond is gone, vaporized like my old invisible friends, thoughts tempted into existence only by the photos that I carry with sadness and wonder.
Who were those people? I recognize the faces, but the moment is buried, far away, in a place where families hold their love like weapons and children sing out of tune while they wait for their secret midnight myths to come true.