Dishes: Gus Stevens

Photo by Gus Stevens

"I have a scraper."

"A scraper?"

"Yeah, like a little plastic thing you use to scrape off the food."

He nodded his agreement and extended his hand to receive the flat palm-sized piece of plastic. With the tool in his left hand, he balanced the small pile of cooking utensils and pans they'd used to prepare their dinner and walked away from the camp.

His feet were bare and the sand fleas bounced brainlessly against his ankles as he walked down the shore. Adjacent to the water, he squatted next to a large rock behind which the tide had carved a slightly deeper pool as it retreated for the night. He didn't have any soap.

He passed the scrapper over the pasta burnt to the bottom of the pan with a useless vigor. His toes grew numb. His arms couldn't remove the oil and waste no matter how hard he scrubbed with the petroleum by-product.

After several minutes however he scooped a handful of sand from between his feet and plastered it onto the edge of the pan. With a minutes scrubbing, the pasta was lifted from the surface of the pan along with years of careless stains. He couldn't have imagined before that the accumulated mess of broken shells and grains of glass would be so effective at restoring the pan to its storeroom brilliance. But it rested in his hand all shining and new-born, exfoliated and clean.

He sat for a moment longer than necessary, toes now covered by the sand, and he felt scoured and sterile and ready. Such, perhaps, is the result of sand and salt.

Work (washing dishes-- also, can you tell who I've been reading? heh)

I had been willing to wash dishes.  In the end that's what set me, like jello sets awhile in a mold in the fridge,-- set the shape of me in this cold world over the long time of it all.  And what was the shape?  Perhaps, like jell-o, an ordinary mound of angel-food-cake-shape; orange; chunks of could-it-be-peach hovering suspended in the ripples; whip cream to fancy it up.  The shape of me, just a dated household dessert. Cheap.  Good for the nails.  Easy for kids and the old folks.

Despite my common ways I never did have to wash dishes.  Not for pay.  I wash up for friends.  After I myself cook.,  Boyfriends' kitchens, Id' clean them when I got to waiting for him.  Didn't bother if the filth was too far gone.  But while the dish washers are most certainly in my realm with their sad eyes and sodden hands and scarred arms, lurching toward me and swinging away like broken ballerinas set to dance on the trapeze wire, somewhere behind me I came to perceive a something a light a thing bespoke a little word such that they'd put me on the floor if there wasn't anyone prettier.  Is it breeding.  Manners.  Money.  A nameless lace of overlapping bones, a bone tree.  Brittle as dried grass.  Those bone tree branches sown of something and the weather making them something else, too.
My bone tree has some ivory, I guess.  But my weather had so buffeted and smoothed and down right blown me til there weren't no china left, just the scrub juniper of my ordinary orange-jello self whipped on a sea cliff and clinging every branch to the thin soil of life.  Kinda pretty if you like that sort of thing.

Here at the flats Chala washes the dishes.  Washerwoman of Albion.  But paid.  She come up to California from Mexico-- seen times so hard you think the liberals gave birth to her to tell the story for their cause.  The coyote meant to bring her son to the states twice paid, twice lost.  The drugs.  The beaten diabetic husband,  The new boyfriend.  She's got raccoon eyes on account she has been up since two a.m. by time she comes here.  Works in the refrigerated abalone plant.  The make-up seeps into the crinkles around her eyes and rings them in a charcoal halo.  She freshens her lipstick between scrubbings.  Red.  Matte.  A ghoul.  A ghoul's face.  Maybe she'd be harmless but for that.  A busy body maybe, but a kind heart.  Ever since my first day with Chala on my shoulder weeping and telling me in helpless skipping-stone syllables the long story of her long lost life her youngest lost twice back to mexico and now a third time to drugs and miscreants I have yes I am truly partial to the makeup.  Don't mean busy-body.  I can't be sure of anything yet.  Ever?  Blame the dam that broke apart when she heard my low sweet Spanish.  Blame the mutual feeling of helplessness in the world.  Like she came a cross a friend in a deep fog.  And in deep fog gave a shout to find another, an other, rejoicing as all do, in even the paltry saline light of an orange streetlamp on a fogged street, and in that orange glow the roar of words coming out of her like vapor but heavier, and so numerous they gathered to a roar like fat drops in a cataract.  Gotas, they say.  Tears.  Lagrimas if they sneak up on you.

Now it has been seven years to the day since I have seen my home.  Possessed it is of a flinty look.  Grey skies and half-closed lids I see them still, moving in pairs in faces overcast, into buildings and along sidewalks like travelers on an escalator.  Then there is a pause and a meeting and you look and can't find where the eyes are looking but looking they are to something that is not-you ordinary-you.  Looking to something just beyond the reach of you.  No it was a home of sorts but no real hearth no inglenook no warming fire.

Here now the sun shining on this wood makes another small sun in the varnish.  My mother in faces.  The fathers and brothers.  The one's I'd rescue like a long lost seal pup I'd rescue my father I'd rescue me.  Blind of sleep and tethered naught I foreglimpsed him in the truck he will drive when he comes.  The next trip he will take may he not blow yet from the tree of his good youth may it not.  His is nostalgia so furious its little piranha teeth always coming for him ever he turns; turns.  He will best it yet for I see he tries and as he tries he makes a tiller's progress.  After all it is commonness we share though it chafes him worse than I.  Ours is a desert thing and what heaven we dream of is what heaven a laborer can dream of.

I know this as I too have helled my way pursued by hours years desire welted  by the bare flame of itself.  What if not more wretched than the nakedness itself.  The hurt of a burn and the filth of it to want to be other than you.  To seem someone.The heat of that cools slowly but it does indeed cool broke from the engine whence it lit.  What twitches yet in me of these does wear and make coarse in those exposed places but with my common sturdy eye I mark the shadow of this foolishness as a sailor marks the shore, its lie a fine filigree of coast sharp as razor fields of lava beneath the waves and no more harbors but the last one.

A laborer's heaven is my heaven so I say god of labor help me work I am willing to wash dishes.

QUITTING AT ALBION: Marilee Clement

Ye pillars

Ye delectable heights

Ye pleasure of suspense, ye push of time

Ye best mimic, whereby I am sparrow, gull;

Is thy offered thrill- of falling-and of flight-

within my heavenly
right?

Can Be Measured, Not Understood: Marilee Clement

Noah--

There was this rainy night the drops were huge and cold and the car was all fogged up it was the car before you will remember the white Subaru your dad had cracked the windshield with a ladder and shake from the Junipers was always on the seats you were crying it was hot in the car it was winter I think it was December Chase parking lot Capitol Hill I was waiting for your dad I got out to talk to you hunched in the hatchback I held your hands tiny hands you gripped my fingers I wanted you to say hand it's so beautiful such a beautiful word but you didn't say it you couldn't say it yet you just stopped crying you were so beautiful and so funny your dad came I climbed out to my side then a lady said whats his name I said his name is Noah she said that's Nuaccchhhhh in Arabic kind of spitting on me and I smiled and I felt like a smashed plate at a wedding so happy and proud of that one harsh syllable and of you who didn't say hand yet because you were just born and of the orange street light and the rain and the chortling engine choking fog steaming night and our breath sweet in the juniper beat up car and the way we held each others hands because we were measuring the distance between us and measuring the wait measuring the way it feels to be in time but not sure how long we might stay---

Bridges: Ben Keeney

Bridges are an unsafe thing. Every time that I walk or drive over them I am afraid. Afraid that it will collapse. It may be helpful to point out that I am scared of heights. Yep I have been and, apparently, always will be scared of being above things where if I fell from them, there would be pain and or death. I want to talk more about how I think that I am more afraid of the anticipation, more scared of the falling and not the collision. But I'm to talk about bridges and not the ins and outs of being afraid of heights. Now then, though it would be good to know that I think bridges a dangerous thing because I don't like being on them because I am scared of heights, but I am also uneasy when sitting under a bridge. I always imagine bridges collapsing in a fantastic Michael Bay type spectacle of destruction and and unnecessary explosions. I am always ready and have a plan of what to do in case the bridge falls, in the same way that everybody claims to have detailed plans of how to survive when the zombies finally come. I can admit, unlike my zombie apocalypse surviving friends, that my plan would most definitely not work. Regardless of my irrational fears of bridges, there is a single principle I want to think about. ** All bridges are not meant to be homes**

To transition to being abstract for a bit, I think that just as physical bridges that hold people and cars are dangerous and bound to collapse, I believe that this life is a bridge. I realize that's not profound or unique. Many people think that. For the Christian this life is a bridge. It is not safe to dwell on. It is not practical to dream about its destruction (or right several books about it). Every time I cross a bridge I feel a little bit of relief in the stability of the ground, the stability of home. I think that this life is dangerous so that the Christian can feel the gratitude and relief of coming home, that I wouldn't have if I had never left home.

520 floating bridge: Amy Doran

Never thought much of
bridges being remarkable.

Roads over water,
suspension of bodies

flying fast or slow
as gravity permits.

One day the bridge crossed
every day, familiar road--

became a wall
I could not pass through.

Nothing to do but wait
and watch it lower itself

so I could manage to
keep going over it.

I sensed finally myself
suspended in air

somehow able to take
a very great leap of faith
that this has indeed been
engineered to hold me.

Love can build a bridge: Jen Hirschman

I knew he was right. I needed to forgive her. I wanted to forgive her, but I didn't know how. How does one forgive their offender when they've never really said they're sorry?

"She doesn't deserve it, after what she did. I'll think about forgiving her, once I hear a sincere apology. True repentance." I don't remember how many times I told my husband this.

"It doesn't matter what she's done, she's still your mom. Nothing will change that. You don't want to go through the rest of life hating her. Not only will it hurt her, but it will destroy you."

"But she's not even sorry. She's never apologized." She doesn't deserve it, I thought.

"And what if she never does?" he asked. The question lingered for minutes, days, months. "You can be the one to take that first step, scary as it may be. Reach out in love. If you do, God will give you the strength to take the next steps."

I knew he was right. I needed to forgive her.

Love can build a bridge, between your heart and mine
Love can build a bridge, don't you think it's time, don't you think it's time

Wynnona and Naomi Judd recorded this song. I always thought the lyrics were a little bit cheesy, but the chorus kept playing in my mind. Don't you think it's time, don't you think it's time. How long would I wait? I was going on three years of this anger toward the woman who at one time would have given up anything for me.

It wasn't one giant step, but many small ones. A phone call. Introducing my new baby boy to her. A card thanking her for the many ways she loved me while growing up. Each one, another plank added to cross the chasm that had formed between us. Eventually, the bridge was built, not only from my side, but hers as well, and somewhere along that bridge, we met.