Story of an Artist in a Dirty Apartment

I don't vacuum very often, so yesterday, after long ignoring the accumulating filth to the best of my ability, I succumbed. I started with the carpet in the tiny closet I call my studio. Where I paint, crumple paper, cut fabric, and generally try to be creative. It didn't take long until the vacuum choked on something. I turned it off and sat down next to it. I would coach the vacuum to regurgitate whatever it had improperly swallowed, I thought. I found the end of a string, wrapped around the vacuum brush. That's easy, I determined with relief, and began to pull on it. The string was beautiful - thick and soft, made of shades of purple with gold strands interwoven. I watched with amazement as it spooled out from the vacuum. There was so much yarn, I laid it out in a circle around me. Pulling yarn, and piling circles upon circles around me. The yarn piled up. I smiled, enjoying the cocoon I was creating. More yarn, higher walls. Finally, it reached above my head. I pulled pile of extra yarn into my haven, and then tied a knot at the top. I found a needle in the carpet, and used the extra string to sew the walls of the cocoon into something a little more solid although, to be honest, they felt pretty sturdy already. Finally, I closed the bottom of my cocoon below me. I sighed with relief. A beautiful purple and gold pouch I'm in, I thought. What a lovely place to spend some time. I sat there, and thought purple and gold thoughts. Waterfalls, spirit gems, crumpled paper. Then, almost as if I had expected it, or invited it, something picked me up. This pleased me too. Such a lovely package as me in my purple and gold pouch should be picked up. Carried. I wondered idly where I was going. Perhaps to join a collection of pouches. That would be nice. I swung in the air for a long time. I could tell I had left the stale, stinky air of my apartment behind, and noticed a sweet, honeysuckle scent. As it should be. Now, I sway in the sweet breezes, happily ensconced in my cocoon, absent of physical needs. I can paint beautiful images in the air with my mind, and write these words for you. Perhaps it didn't start yesterday. Perhaps it was years, centuries. I don't know, I'm not waiting for anything. Just living in a world of inner beauty.

Valentine's Story, Part 2

This story is continued from a previous post.

The fourth day after Ranger’s new boss started was one of the few rainy days Bruni earned each year. Jessie was standing over the stove sprinkling cheese on a mac and cheese casserole when she saw Ranger’s green car pull into the driveway. She slid the casserole into the oven and glanced back at the car. She furrowed her brow as the clock behind her ticked away the seconds and no one emerged from the car. The rain ran in rivulets down the window pane, and she wondered if Ranger was hoping it would let up. She grabbed an umbrella and ran outside.
She opened the passenger-side door and leaned inside.
“Hey sweetie, I brought an umbrella out for you.”
“Thanks.”
He sat slouched in the seat, staring at his hands at his lap. She reached inside to brush her fingers against his thigh.
“You comin’ in?”
“Yeah. Not just yet though.”
“Oh,” she replied, startled. “Ok. Well, I’ll leave this here for you.”
She folded the umbrella and dropped it into the car before running back inside.
Thirty minutes later, Ranger came inside.
“You didn’t even use the umbrella, silly,” she said, brushing the water off his soft, brown hair.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“Don’t apologize,” she kissed him. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
He refused to say anymore, and spent the rest of the evening in silence.
It wasn’t until Saturday morning, as Jessie was heading out to work, that he opened up.
“Mitch, the new boss, you know? I don’t think he likes me.”
“That’s ridiculous, why would you say that?”
Ranger swiveled his foot on the ground, like he was putting out a cigarette.
“He told me my performance was sub-par and I was an ignorant red-neck.”
“He said that?” she exclaimed.
“Yeah. The red-neck thing was under his breath, but I know he said it.”
“Well, maybe he didn’t,” Jessie replied, hopefully. “Maybe you heard him wrong.”
Ranger glared at her.
“I know what I heard. So you think I’m dumb too?”
“You know that’s not what I meant. I was just hoping it’s not as bad as you thought.”
“I’m sure it is. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t work with this guy.”
“You’re going to have to,” she said gently. “We need this job. Remember how hard it was to find it? And now, with the mortgage …” Her voice trailed off. Two and a half years of mortgage payments hadn’t made much of a dent in their debt, and the thought of all those zeros they still owed the bank made her nervous.
He exhaled, and his shoulders slumped. She hugged him and kissed his neck.
“I have to go, but let’s talk about this more when I get back.”
“Alright,” he said, and kissed her.
When she returned, exhausted, Ranger was absorbed in a crime drama on TV, with a bottle of beer in his hand. She didn’t want to disturb him, so she tiptoed up to bed.
As the weeks passed, Jessie’s husband spiraled deeper into his own personal misery. She could rarely get him to tell her what was wrong, as recounting it seemed to wound his pride even further. He drank more and spoke less, and seldom agreed to go out with the few friends they had made in Bruni. When she reassured him, he snapped, and when she caressed him, he pulled away. She didn’t know how to make him feel better, how to show him her love. Her heart ached.
And so, nearly three years after last seeing her mother, Jessie decided to write, pleading for help. Jessie’s mother was no stranger to marital difficulties – Jessie’s parents had nearly divorced when she was twelve, after three years of misunderstanding that rotted their relationship and led to screaming. But, to Jessie’s amazement, they reversed their trajectory and reconciled. Jessie wanted that secret, wanted the advice. And when she let herself admit it, she wanted her mother’s consolation. A hug scented with cloves and bread, that’s what her mother’s love was.
Her tears hit the paper before the ink did. She stopped thinking about what to write and just wrote. She sealed the letter without reading it, and ran it down to the mailbox.
When she came back inside, she saw Ranger sitting on the couch, watching TV. She walked behind him and ran her fingers through his hair. The TV was showing Forrest Gump, and the music surged through the quiet room. She leaned down to whisper in his ear.
“This is a little cheesier than your usual fare,” she said, kissing him on the cheek.
“I guess I’m feeling mushy,” he replied. He reached his arms over his head to hug her. Then he released her and reached for his beer.
“Do you feel like going out? Maybe have dinner at Chili’s?” she asked, hopeful and watching his profile.
He drank the entire bottle before answering.
“No. Thanks. I’m just going to watch this. You can go though.”
“No, that’s ok,” she sighed. “I’ll be upstairs if you need me, ok?”
“Ok.”

Valentine's Story, Part 1

Her pen hung over the paper, suspended mid-air. She watched it, waiting for something to happen. Nothing. She grabbed the brown beer bottle and drank what little was left. She returned to the pen, making it dance swirls above the paper. But still, no words came.

The first line had been easy. “Dear Mom.” After that, she didn’t know how to begin. With a warm salutation? With a formal opening? Or to cut right to the chase – “I need you.”

It hadn’t been so difficult the first time.

“Dear Mom: I’m sorry to tell you this in an email. I’m sorry I left without saying good-bye. Don’t worry – I’m fine. I’m more than fine, I’m happy! Ecstatic! Ranger and I are married. We got married three nights ago, in Las Vegas. We drove there all the way from Charlotte, can you believe it? And now we’re headed out, looking for a small town that’s affordable where we can get a job and start a life. The land here is beautiful, Mom, and I can’t believe I’m seeing it with my soul mate. We drove all day yesterday, hair in the wind. Is this how you felt when you married Dad? I know you don’t approve of Ranger, but I hope you’ll give him a chance. He has a beautiful spirit. And now he’s your son-in-law. Write back, and when we find a place, you can come visit! Love, Jessie.”

She never heard a response, not to the email or to the letter she sent when they found their tiny rancher house in Bruni, Nevada. She had given her mother her address, and begged her to visit them. Her mother never wrote, and ignored her phone calls. After a year, Jessie gave up. Frustrated and angry at being rejected, she resolved to cut her mother out of her life in the same way her mother had eliminated her.

Life in Bruni was exhilarating, at first. She and Ranger had cooed over their tiny, charming house, and dreamt about landscaping and baby’s rooms. They joked that the possibilities were as wide as the horizons. Ranger got a job in the office of a small mining firm, and she waited tables in a family-run Italian restaurant down the street. The owner, a mostly-Irish woman named Shirley, welcomed Jessie with open arms. Jessie loved taking her tips and meager paycheck home, to her own house, and curling up on the couch in the arms of her own husband, resting her head on his firm shoulder. She watched Ranger come out of his shell, finding his own two feet in the absence of his father.

Visiting Ranger’s house in Charlotte had been unbearable. He was 23, living at home because his parents had forbidden him from going to college and relied upon him to help pay the rent. His father vacillated between states of drunkenness and rigid propriety, and berated Ranger at every opportunity. Jessie didn’t blame him for wanting to get away, to drive as far as possible. And she couldn’t let him go alone. It would have been like letting her own heart leap from her body and drive away. Painful and impossible. So they left, driving his old convertible towards his freedom, their unknown.

She told him that their love was like drinking hot chocolate – warm, sweet, and more comforting than anything. She knew it was silly, but she couldn't find better words. He laughed and tickled her.

“Ok, pudding,” he teased.

Then, Ranger got a new boss at his office. Jessie had visited the office once – it was a tiny place, just a few rooms in a three-story cement office building on the outskirts of Bruni. Ranger managed the sales contracts, and that Sunday he’d made love to Jessie on his cramped desk. The place felt like a fishbowl to her, and she wondered how he didn’t feel claustrophobic.

Continued at Part 2.

Brushing Away the Dirt, Part 2

This continues a story started in the previous post.

It started after Grandma died. I was 14 and I missed her a lot. She had always been quite the presence in our tiny home - sitting in that corner, sewing our ratty clothes, telling stories about devils or spirits, and cracking dirty jokes. Her husband had been gone some twenty years when I was born, and I think my birth gave her a new, comfortable role to fall into. Not a widow anymore, but a grandmother. We were tied together that way. And when she died, I missed her.

Our crowded house, so loud during the day, dipped into silence at night. A week after we buried Grandma, I crept out. Tiptoed past my brother's bed and through the shared living space. I cracked the light screen door open and slipped out into the warm night.

Although the street wasn't lit, the moon was bright and I easily ran along the side of the road. The cemetery was close and only a few cars flew past me, blazing headlights and screaming merengue.

You know, I've always loved our cemetery. Lush green and red leaves hug the graves, and it seemed like a fitting entrance to Paradise. I wondered how Grandma felt, and I hurried over to her new tombstone.

It was new but already it wasn't shiny. As usual, we'd had rain storms daily, and a few had brought down waves of soil from the cliffs above the graveyard. So her tombstone, like all the others, was dirty. What a shame, I thought. I pulled my nightshirt off my head and used it to wipe the stone clean. I'll admit, it was a bit of a thrill standing there bare-chested in the warm night.

I put my shirt back on and kneeled down to whisper to the gravestone. "I miss you Grandma," was all I could muster, both because I was a kid with not much of a way with words, and because I was trying not to cry. To distract myself, I looked at her name carved, not all that well I'll say, in the stone. The letters were still dirty and so, one by one, I traced my finger inside them, scooping out the grains of island dirt.

When I cleared the 's,' the last letter in her name, again I told my grandma how much I missed her. To my surprise, she answered back.

"Good lord child I've only been gone a week."

Brushing Away the Dirt, Part 1

My name is Maria. Named after the Virgin Mary, of course. She and I don't have much in common, but I like to think we share at least one thing. Mary, virgin mother of Jesus and wife in name - but not body - to Joseph, led a secret life. Her marriage was a sham, if a tender one, and her son was a mystery. She had a different understanding of God from every single one of her neighbors. She, a humble, poor woman, was the mother of God! Yet she couldn't say a thing to anyone. I'd bet even Joseph didn't know much of it, though maybe she whispered in the ear of the infant Jesus. I can't even imagine what that much secrecy felt like. A heavy blanket covering her body? A brick wall dividing her soul? I don't know.

Like Mary, I have a small secret life of my own. It couldn't be any other way, I think. Perhaps it's just the legacy of my name, but I think that everyone should have a secret life. It protects us, keeps some part of our self safe, clean from the scrutiny and insinuations of others. In our secret life, we know what we do is for ourselves, or maybe for God. Now, I don't deceive myself. The presence of a secret life by no means predicates goodness. What are murderers but those who live secret lives? I know the tragedy that such secret manifestation of self can wreck. But that isn't an argument against secret life. People come in all types, and anyone can distort beauty.

But enough philosophizing. It's not like me, usually. Only on this topic. I want to tell you about my secret life, but I can tell I'm delaying the action of turning it over, relinquishing it to the anarchy of others. Still I remind myself, I am about to die, and this secret life will soon be of little use to me. Maybe it will be of use to you, if as entertainment only. And where I come from, we live off entertainment. Sometimes there's not much more to go on.

Continue to Part 2.

A Snippet

This is from a story I recently told to pass the time during a car trip. Story probably isn't the right word, for that implies more coherence than it had, but I can't think of anything better. I was particularly fond of this part, so I'm capturing it here. Apologies if it doesn't make sense, but feel reassured that in context it wouldn't have made much more sense.

The two rabbit guards brought the chipmunk to a hollow log.

"Go on," they said, indicating for him to enter. "We stay here; your path lies ahead."

Nodding, the chipmunk straightened his knapsack and entered the log. The entry was overhung with leaves, and it quickly became dark inside. He inched his way forward. After a few steps, he collided with a mass of feathers.

"Excuse me!" harumphed the feathers.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't see you," the chipmunk apologized.

"Indeed."

"I, um, am looking to pass through the log," the chipmunk offered.

"Are you? Well."

"I've been invited to see the Badger King."

"The Badger King? Yes, come along then."

The chipmunk followed the sound of feathers scraping against the log. They soon came upon some luminescent drawings upon the curved log walls. Glowing in strange yellow paint, they depicted a pheasant holding a goblet, turtles running on small strips of bark, squirrels balancing on tightropes and, most strangely, a crowd of animals, including fawns and tigers and beetles, gaping at an exalted badger.

"These are wonderful drawings," observed the chipmunk. In the light from the walls, he could see the form of his guide, a large pheasant.

"Why, ho, thank you," guffawed the pheasant in mock modesty. "I painted them myself. I am the keeper of this log shrine."

"Shrine?"

"Yes, of course."

"Where do you get the paint?"

"The fireflies. There is a basin at the top of the log, a stone bowl. The fireflies, in their frenzied devotion to my shrine, land there and, using a few pebbles strewn about, take their lives. Right there, in the basin. I use their sacrifice as paint."

"Oh," commented the chipmunk, at a loss. "That sounds, er, dedicated."

The Previous Occupant

This is fourth in a series of portraits and mini stories that starts with The Word Smith. I suggest, if you're interested, reading them in order.

Ustery laughed. The red stain on the floor tickled him, although he couldn't have explained why. He leaned back against the rough counter and watched the Councilwoman flail on the floor, astonished by her own blood. The dirty little boy ran over to help her, the vagabond. Ustery was tempted to kick the boy, but didn't want to create too much trouble. For all Chayman's faults, Ustery liked him. Or didn't mind him. If someone other than him had to care for the words, Chayman was better than most.

Ustery had shoved the Councilwoman because, in a moment of fiendish emotion, he confused her with a woman he had known in life. Strange that her name escaped him, a man of words as he was, but he didn't even notice the absence. Woman she was, haughty and powerful, those forceful words shaping her more than a name could. Ustery was torn between his fascination with the pooled blood and a desire to pour himself into the "woman" word box, to feel its curves and warmth and frigid rejection. That box was, naturally, one of the oldest in the shop, its maker long perished and even his spirit dissipated.

Ustery's first secret, his shame, was that he himself had never crafted a single word box, at least not one that made its home on any shelf. Polish them, even breathe new definitions into them, he could do. Grant a new word entry into their sorority he could not. For 94 years he guarded his words, a eunuch protecting his harem, excluding interlopers and pretenders, even as he knew they needed new blood, beautiful new words.

His second secret, his pride, was that he had killed to defend his words' purity. It was no great story, merely a dark night, shattered glass, a scuffle and a warm grunt followed by the smell of death. Some emissary of some regent sought to change a definition, likely related to a trial or an inheritance, although Ustery neither knew nor cared. He had been reading late one night and heard someone break into the shop below his living quarters. Armed with a letter opener, he slew the vandal as the fool searched the shelves. Ustery dragged the body out to the river, mingling its carrion with that of the night's many other victims.

Maybe that was why the Councilwoman's blood, testifying to previous blood spilled on those wooden floors, made him smile.