Nimue Hastings | Photography
Artist’s Note
When I think of Attention, I am reminded of something Sam Harris once said —
"How we pay attention to the present moment largely determines the character of
our experience and, therefore, the quality of our lives [...] Our minds—and
lives—are largely shaped by how we use them." The things that hold my attention
give meaning to my life, and so I create. I allow my attention to unfold in the
making of an image, a reflection of myself and how I am oriented in the world at
that moment. This process gives pause, and in Attention, so I become.
Artist’s Note
When I think of Attention, I am reminded of something Sam Harris once said —
"How we pay attention to the present moment largely determines the character of
our experience and, therefore, the quality of our lives [...] Our minds—and
lives—are largely shaped by how we use them." The things that hold my attention
give meaning to my life, and so I create. I allow my attention to unfold in the
making of an image, a reflection of myself and how I am oriented in the world at
that moment. This process gives pause, and in Attention, so I become.Victoria Juharyan | Artwork
“I want to reach that state of condensation
of sensations which constitutes a picture.”
— Henri Matisse
Oil Painting by Victoria Juharyan. Photo by Elina Akselrud, NYC 2010“Close your
eyes. Relax. Picture the moment you were being born,” the therapist posited.
“Whom would you like to hold you first?” People started wandering through my
mind; my brain felt overcrowded and indecisive. Hardly could I relax. Suddenly
it hit me. “Nobody!” I replied with a surprising fulmination. The astringent but
accommodating woman looked at me as if I were a puzzling and pixilated anomaly.
“Nobody? Mother? Father? Boyfriend, for God’s sake!” “Nobody.”
As a child I liked drawing. I was quite good at it. So good that my family,
having decided I was gifted, started pushing on me to develop my talent. I threw
away my painting stuff and refused drawing. Family is like a framed canvas, in
which you get a square to paint. You can be creative, you can fight to widen
your square or even change its shape, but already there is a frame – you cannot
change the frame.
Coming back to my empty apartment from the psychotherapy, I felt I would die if
I had not drawn something. In an hour, three unframed eccentric pictures
appeared on my window sills, fitting quite well into the whole place. They stood
there unframed for many years. But once, cuddled on my sofa, I looked at them
and remembered the lady who inspired me to paint. I smiled slightly, having just
decided to look for some frames for my paintings.
2007
Photo by Elina Akselrud, NYC 2010Mixed media: oil painting, dried flowers and
leaves“I want to reach that state of condensation
of sensations which constitutes a picture.”
— Henri Matisse
Oil Painting by Victoria Juharyan. Photo by Elina Akselrud, NYC 2010“Close your
eyes. Relax. Picture the moment you were being born,” the therapist posited.
“Whom would you like to hold you first?” People started wandering through my
mind; my brain felt overcrowded and indecisive. Hardly could I relax. Suddenly
it hit me. “Nobody!” I replied with a surprising fulmination. The astringent but
accommodating woman looked at me as if I were a puzzling and pixilated anomaly.
“Nobody? Mother? Father? Boyfriend, for God’s sake!” “Nobody.”
As a child I liked drawing. I was quite good at it. So good that my family,
having decided I was gifted, started pushing on me to develop my talent. I threw
away my painting stuff and refused drawing. Family is like a framed canvas, in
which you get a square to paint. You can be creative, you can fight to widen
your square or even change its shape, but already there is a frame – you cannot
change the frame.
Coming back to my empty apartment from the psychotherapy, I felt I would die if
I had not drawn something. In an hour, three unframed eccentric pictures
appeared on my window sills, fitting quite well into the whole place. They stood
there unframed for many years. But once, cuddled on my sofa, I looked at them
and remembered the lady who inspired me to paint. I smiled slightly, having just
decided to look for some frames for my paintings.
2007
Photo by Elina Akselrud, NYC 2010Mixed media: oil painting, dried flowers and
leavesCourtney W. Brothers | Artwork
Kyla Fleming | Photography
"comand light" a digitized watercolor painting of a hummingbird with digital
overlays."channeling connection" A Poloraid photograph edited with digital
overlays
Artist’s Note
There’s a uniquely delightful dance between the natural world and what’s beyond
our sight. The intersection of science and spirituality spark inspiration and
highlight the relationship of what exists around us and what we choose to see.
Combining these two elements forms a language around what lives without words,
pure essence.
The focal point of pure essence is oneness. In these pieces the viewer is
invited to take a first-person perspective of oneness outside of their physical
limits. By intentionally directing the attention of the viewer to be both on
their oneness and outside of themselves, they’re exploring a unique and personal
landscape. Kyla’s pieces connect with wonder to what is just beyond the reach of
reality on the edge of imaginative exploration."comand light" a digitized watercolor painting of a hummingbird with digital
overlays."channeling connection" A Poloraid photograph edited with digital
overlays
Artist’s Note
There’s a uniquely delightful dance between the natural world and what’s beyond
our sight. The intersection of science and spirituality spark inspiration and
highlight the relationship of what exists around us and what we choose to see.
Combining these two elements forms a language around what lives without words,
pure essence.
The focal point of pure essence is oneness. In these pieces the viewer is
invited to take a first-person perspective of oneness outside of their physical
limits. By intentionally directing the attention of the viewer to be both on
their oneness and outside of themselves, they’re exploring a unique and personal
landscape. Kyla’s pieces connect with wonder to what is just beyond the reach of
reality on the edge of imaginative exploration.Silvia Caprioglio Panizza | Essay
I have a confession to make: I’ve become a grumpy, easily irritated person when
I’m out in the street. If someone walks too slowly in front of me when I’m in a
hurry (usually I am), I get impatient and mentally will them to a side; to the
person standing still with their face buried in their phone, blocking the
entrance at the post office, I launch anathemas: ‘Don’t they realise other
people exist too?’. Then it hits me. At such moments these very people are, to
me too, nothing but an interference to my purposes. Our shared problem is
inattentiveness.
Of course I see these people – in a sense, I see them all too well. But just as
there’s looking without seeing, there is seeing without paying attention. I see
their bodies, the mass that occupies the street. I also see some of their
desires, for ease, for space, for entertainment. But, clearly, I do not see
people. I see parts. I see functions and impediments. My irritation turns to
sadness because I realise that, in this way, I have locked myself into my own
little world, a sorry solipsistic space where my own desires and goals, the same
drives which locked me in it, wither meaninglessly without air.
To realise that something other than oneself is real, wrote the philosopher and
novelist Iris Murdoch, is extremely difficult. She called this realisation love.
Love (understood as eros: love for reality) fuels attention. Attention is what
gives us vision beyond seeing, knowledge beyond the immediately visible.
When I am overcome by irritation at the people blocking my way, I fail to see
something which is there, and obvious: that other people have interests like me,
goals like me. Maybe they’re tired and hence walk slowly, maybe they’re anxious
and hence walk unpredictably, or maybe they are just as blind as I am to what
surrounds them. Their attention, like mine, is exhausted, under-trained, perhaps
painful, and difficult to sustain.
In the novel Blindness, Jose Saramago describes an epidemic where people start
losing their sight,, without apparent cause. Saramago wrote the book in 1995,
some time before we became so completely used to the technologies that, many now
worry, are making it even easier for us not to see. Or, rather, technologies
that enable us to see only what we choose to see at that moment, each hit and
swipe determining what will satisfy our desires and curiosity in the next minute
or hour. Or, again, to see what someone else has decided will make us better
consumers, more targeted buyers, or, yet more chillingly, more polarised voters.
Welcome, as Tim Wu has argued, to the attention economy.
Inattentiveness, manipulated attention, instrumentalized focus, are so, so easy.
To attend, forcing ourselves out of the dream world we keep creating, is both
wonder and toil. Attention, as French mystic and philosopher Simone Weil wrote,
is nothing short of a miracle. Not just because truly, fully attending is hard,
going against our natural tendencies for self-gratification and ease. But, more
interestingly, because attention can reveal the reality of things, that which we
rarely see because it requires a keen, devoted, passionate, disinterested,
unhurried gaze - and when we see it (whether it’s a leaf, the face of a friend,
the paw of a cat, a rock, a painting by Miró), we’re transformed.
This may simultaneously sound mystical and perfectly ordinary . That’s the kind
of mysticism I like. And I bet any of you has experienced that kind of keen,
devoted, passionate, disinterested, unhurried gaze – that attention – perhaps
without realising, because here’s another beautiful thing about attention: it’s
not about you. When we are immersed in whatever we are attending to, we forget
ourselves. And strangely enough for creatures whose primary goals seems to be
for self-preservation and self-gratification, there are few things as wonderful
as forgetting ourselves. That’s why attention is so difficult and yet so
worthwhile.
Attention is what connects us to the world outside of ourselves: There is a
peculiar ignorance about attention, an ignorance of the best kind. To attend is
to admit the reality outside ourselves, our own limits, and the bridge between
us. To remain in that moment of unknowing and taking it for what it is allows
for a revelation, or perception if you prefer, of what we couldn’t invent or
make up.
Attention has a special relationship not only to self and knowledge, but also to
time. Weil writes that attention is a form of waiting (the French word attendre
translates both as ‘to attend’ and ‘to wait’). Here’s another thing I don’t do
very much – waiting. In my actions and thoughts, my schedule and filling my
ignorance , I seek and grasp, and then the world whizzes by while I take in
little of what is important. I don’t know what this is all for. Is it merely a
blind submissiveness to the way one is supposed to live these days? Whatever the
reason for it, it leaves me desperately empty. And having this awareness,
knowing that I’m missing most of what the world around me offers in impatient
inattentiveness only makes it more bitter. In the past months, I have often
travelled by train for an hour from Prague to Pardubice, in the Czech Republic.
Never once have I looked at the landscape. Mostly I work. Sometimes I read.
Sometimes I let my gaze wander outside, preoccupied with some thought, and
really see nothing. I couldn’t tell you whether the houses have red brick roofs,
nor whether there are animals grazing in the fields, or whether the landscape is
dry or full of trees. You will say, I attended to something else. Something I
chose to attend to, for the sake of productivity, accomplishment, or ticking
boxes in my diary. But getting things done is not driven by the patient
attentiveness that Weil was talking about, if we take her word as I think we
have reason to. And always choosing one’s objects of attention leaves one
bereft, once again, of the vast reality that one has not chosen but is there
and, much like that Czech landscape, one doesn’t even know what it is and what
it looks like.
Unlike choosing, wanting, controlling, attention is being suspended. When we
attend, we have not yet arrived anywhere. But we have already departed a little
from ourselves. We have left our comfortable boredom and, perhaps gingerly,
taken a step forward – picture a rope stretched out from rock to rock. It’s
exhilarating and frightening. So we may wish to step back, into the habitual,
controlled space from which our attention somehow emerged. Attention can be, for
many of us, very uncomfortable: the suspension of our mind, the emptiness of our
knowledge, the impotence of our agency. For if you take seriously the fact that
we attend to what we do not yet know or understand, then it becomes clear that
the objects of our attention are irreducibly other to us, and in being other,
they are beyond our control. We may manipulate them, capture them, consume them,
but what they are – that which attention can reveal – is not, not at all, can
never be, up to us.
But if we stay – if we accept this state, the discomfort that many of us may
feel, and resist the natural urge of running back, snapping out of attention –
we truly enter the state of attention, where we forget that we are attending,
and we enter a new time, not that of waiting, but of timelessness. Then
attention becomes effortless, and what it reveals is revealed continuously, in a
flux that feels obvious, as if nothing else made sense. Attention makes us
forget we are attending, forget ourselves as the ones attending, and then, too,
forget the time in which we are attending, the before and the after. Full
attention is a room with no walls, doors, or windows.
As a connector between me and you, between me or you and the rest of the world,
attention is the capacity to dissolve the familiar dichotomies that, in this
very formulation, return. Me and you, me and the world, here and there, active
and passive, inside and outside. When, in attending, we enter the third space,
the space between, we are not really between, but somewhere else entirely. All
it took was to step outside ourselves and move towards the world, but now we do
not see the good old self growing smaller behind us, nor the vast astonishing
world coming into shape ahead of us. We are in both, and in neither. In the
space of attention, we are the self and the world at once.
If we think about it this way, we will no longer be surprised that a single
moment of attention can move people to any action. It can move us to leave our
job, marry someone, save a life, hug a friend. Nor will we be surprised that a
moment of attention can move us to tears, because for the first time we see a
flower, a place, a fly, or a cup.
If I am right that attention, as I have been describing it, does not often come
easily to us, then we may need teachers. Some of the best teachers of attention,
I believe, are non-human animals. Often, when I walk down the street, I meet the
gazes of dogs, completely present, while their human companions are absorbed
elsewhere. But the dogs are there, and when we see each other, there is no need
for understanding, for we are both in that space, at that time, recognising the
life in the other.
My main teacher, however, is a cat. Charles Bukowski concluded the poem ‘My
Cats’ with the line ‘they are my teachers’ and I bet attention is at least one
of the subjects that his cats instructed him in. My teacher is called Jean, and
whenever I walk past the room where she’s sitting, she calls me in for a cuddle.
Sometimes I think I don’t have time. At others, I stop and pet her briefly,
immersed in thoughts of what I should do next, or rehearsing another
conversation or another argument in my mind. If I accept the invitation, but
find myself being only physically present, I scold myself for wasting that time
we have together. Then I try to be there attentively, and become impatient
because I fail again and again. But when I just walk in, and by some miracle I
put my reflexivity to rest, and my attention is awakened by Jean, silencing my
constant chattering, then my hand glides over her smooth black and white fur,
her purring vibrates under my flesh and I vibrate with her, her enjoyment
becomes my own, I am not filled with delight, I become delight. And I wonder
what was so hard that I resisted it. Jean probably wonders that too, but she is
far more forgiving than I am.
All of this may sound obviously true or completely mad to you, depending how
you’ve experienced what I am writing about – yet I am sure you have experienced
it. Talking about attention is difficult because in or after its presence all
talk and writing may seem forced, superficial, or pointless. Of course, writing
can occasion attention too, especially poetry, and be itself an act of
attention. I wish I could give you that; instead, I’m giving you what I can: An
assemblage of pointers. An invitation. An attempt at describing what it’s like
and more importantly why it’s so vital that we use our attention, that we
cherish it, grow it, and stay with it.
So now, let’s just try it. Find an object of attention. Anything, really
anything. Something simple, like a leaf, may be easier and more surprising. Just
stay with it. Be aware that, really, you don’t know this leaf. You may know a
lot about it, but there’s so much you don’t know. You don’t know what this leaf
is, right now: the existence of this leaf. Maybe that green never struck your
eyes that way before. What made this leaf possible? What runs in its veins? Can
you picture the water, nutrients, trace gasses? What’s the role of the leaf in
the plant, in the house, in your life? Perhaps its shape is delicate yet
irregular or broken. Whatever the leaf is like, there’s so much to discover, and
you can take so much time. It’s just you and the leaf for now. That leaf is
there. Really, can you see it? That leaf is there. That’s where it all begins.I have a confession to make: I’ve become a grumpy, easily irritated person when
I’m out in the street. If someone walks too slowly in front of me when I’m in a
hurry (usually I am), I get impatient and mentally will them to a side; to the
person standing still with their face buried in their phone, blocking the
entrance at the post office, I launch anathemas: ‘Don’t they realise other
people exist too?’. Then it hits me. At such moments these very people are, to
me too, nothing but an interference to my purposes. Our shared problem is
inattentiveness.
Of course I see these people – in a sense, I see them all too well. But just as
there’s looking without seeing, there is seeing without paying attention. I see
their bodies, the mass that occupies the street. I also see some of their
desires, for ease, for space, for entertainment. But, clearly, I do not see
people. I see parts. I see functions and impediments. My irritation turns to
sadness because I realise that, in this way, I have locked myself into my own
little world, a sorry solipsistic space where my own desires and goals, the same
drives which locked me in it, wither meaninglessly without air.
To realise that something other than oneself is real, wrote the philosopher and
novelist Iris Murdoch, is extremely difficult. She called this realisation love.
Love (understood as eros: love for reality) fuels attention. Attention is what
gives us vision beyond seeing, knowledge beyond the immediately visible.
When I am overcome by irritation at the people blocking my way, I fail to see
something which is there, and obvious: that other people have interests like me,
goals like me. Maybe they’re tired and hence walk slowly, maybe they’re anxious
and hence walk unpredictably, or maybe they are just as blind as I am to what
surrounds them. Their attention, like mine, is exhausted, under-trained, perhaps
painful, and difficult to sustain.
In the novel Blindness, Jose Saramago describes an epidemic where people start
loMarissa Davis, Stéphanie Ferrat | Poetry
Painting constructs itself from the trickle
of time, just as puddles dry, hay gilds,
the day erodes, repeats, sinks into the earth
and the air scraping ground.
On paper, on the nerve’s outskirts, the execution
will remain. No dust on the gash’s level.
The cat, the lizard, its blood, the canvas.
Translator’s Note
This "poem" is less a poem in its own right than a brief excerpt of a much
longer--book length--work by French poet and painter Stéphanie Ferrat. As hinted
at by the subtitle, the work consists of a series of roaming observations and
meditations on both the physical goings-on within an artist's studio and the
interior creative process. Ferrat's writing tends toward the associative, at
times even leaning on the surreal — the French word "gestes" appears frequently
in the text, and the language itself often performs an act of "gesturing" at
ideas rather than stating things narratively or concretely. The work's grounding
force is the natural world that makes its way inside the studio: the
caterpillars; the flies; the wasps, which the speaker alternately cherishes and
battles. The matrix for these small dramas, though, are Ferrat's magnificent
reflections and epiphanies on the immense labor, responsibility, and ecstasy of
artistic creation.
Painting constructs itself from the trickle
of time, just as puddles dry, hay gilds,
the day erodes, repeats, sinks into the earth
and the air scraping ground.
On paper, on the nerve’s outskirts, the execution
will remain. No dust on the gash’s level.
The cat, the lizard, its blood, the canvas.
Translator’s Note
This "poem" is less a poem in its own right than a brief excerpt of a much
longer--book length--work by French poet and painter Stéphanie Ferrat. As hinted
at by the subtitle, the work consists of a series of roaming observations and
meditations on both the physical goings-on within an artist's studio and the
interior creative process. Ferrat's writing tends toward the associative, at
times even leaning on the surreal — the French word "gestes" appears frequently
in the text, and the language itself often performs an act of "gesturing" at
ideas rather than stating things narratively or concretely. The work's grounding
force is the natural world that makes its way inside the studio: the
caterpillars; the flies; the wasps, which the speaker alternately cherishes and
battles. The matrix for these small dramas, though, are Ferrat's magnificent
reflections and epiphanies on the immense labor, responsibility, and ecstasy of
artistic creation.Mallika Chennupaty | Short Story
Juhi
September ‘21
Boston, MA
Red and blue and green strobe lights swooped across the stadium. Old Rihanna
played from the speakers amongst the squeals, interrupted conversations, and
laughter. From Juhi’s seat, the stage looked compact, the size of four podiums
squished together. Swaths of people, all dressed in bright pants, iridescent
glasses, and feather boas, swarmed its base, clamoring for the concert to begin.
Juhi gazed at two girls at the edge of the crowd. They were dressed simply,
brown pants and matching white shirts. The girl to the left, hair bright pink,
started bobbing her head up and down to the music. The other girl, hair braided,
watched for a moment before swinging her arms back and forth in rhythm. The
pink-haired girl started jumping, clapping her hands in sync. The other girl
kicked her heels out, her braids swinging out and back in. They both started
spinning in circles, first alone, then together holding hands and then holding
each other. All too soon, they stopped, dizzy and laughing. Juhi laughed too.
The crowd screamed as the lights dimmed, but the girls only looked at each
other. Juhi stared at them even when it was too dark to see. She imagined
Hansa’s hair, long and curly, spinning in circles, though she had never seen her
dance.
They only met last April in a pottery class after randomly sitting next to each
other. Every following Wednesday of that month, Juhi’s stomach would be twisted
in knots, more of excitement than anything else, before class, and filled with
bubbles, of joy or nerves she didn’t bother to differentiate, after class. A
month later, when Hansa moved to San Francisco, they were barely friends. Juhi
couldn’t believe that they had kept texting and calling. She could still picture
Hansa’s hair from that first class, long and curly and bouncy as she leaned over
the wheel.
Hansa
October ‘21
San Francisco, CA
At 5pm on a random Thursday, the bus was quiet and dark save the blue lights in
the overhead bin space. Outside the window, Hansa saw vague outlines of downtown
San Francisco. The building lights reflected on the darkening water, shimmering
as it rippled. She settled deeper into her chair, closing her eyes. A man began
murmuring into his phone near her. Hansa couldn’t hear specific words, but his
gentle tone said the listener was someone close to him. She smiled, reminded of
a conversation from sometime in May.
“People are so clueless when someone has a crush on them. I don’t get it,” she
whispered into her phone, late one night. Juhi remained quiet.
“Are you clueless?” Hansa prodded again.
“No.”
“Are you sure?” A pause. She listened close, but all she could hear were Juhi’s
soft breaths. If only she could see her face, a twitch in her brows, or a smirk,
something more to go off of.
“Well, I believe nothing and question everything.”
Hansa’s heart started beating louder. Blood rushed to her cheeks as she pushed
her phone into her ear.
“Nothing?”
Another pause. This one lasted a beat longer than before. Hansa glared at her
phone screen. She imagined Juhi’s face, mouth slightly downturned, eyes
questioning.
“Yes. Nothing.”
Juhi’s voice was resolute, so Hansa didn’t back down.
“Believe more.”
Juhi took a breath, sharp through the speaker.
The bus rolled to a stop as Hansa rolled out of her daydream. She smiled,
almost squirming, at their careful optimism, the gentle treading around
conversations about couples, the emphasis placed on words like “friend” or
“heart” or “break”, the attention to a change in texting patterns or response
time. It all felt so unnecessary now, considering how glaringly obvious they
both had been.
Juhi
November ‘21
Boston, MA
Peaches? Oranges? Apricots? What were those earrings she wore? Juhi leaned
closer to her phone to get a better look. Usually, Facetimes with Hansa entailed
a series of questions, from topic to topic, in circles and without a moment’s
break. But Hansa was quiet today. Her hair was freshly washed. Juhi knew because
the curls weighed against her shoulders, instead twining tightly towards the
nape of her neck. The dark brown of her hair quite nicely complimented the
maroon walls of her dining room. She sat at the dining table, eyes half-closed,
instead of lying in bed or on the couch. She looked tired, staring at something
in front of her, something that Juhi couldn’t see.
Hansa brushed some hair behind her ear, giving Juhi a better view of the
indistinguishable fruits. She now saw little green leaves dangling from the
stems. They must be either peaches or oranges. Juhi sat back in her seat.
Hansa’s bottom lip was moving in and out slightly as it did when she was
focused. She considered making conversation, but Hansa had the kind of face
where she didn’t want to talk. Light from the dining table highlighted the
glitter covering her cheeks. Her makeup was heavier than usual. She wore three
necklaces instead of her regular two. Maybe she had gone to work or out with
friends. Six months ago, they had just been acquaintances. Now, Juhi recognized
how Hansa’s eyebrows crinkled when she was lying. She knew the kinds of
responses, usually extremely vague, that could prod Hansa to extreme
frustration. She could ask her questions that made her rethink even the
strongest of her convictions. And Hansa knew Juhi, her temperaments, favorite
conversation topics, clothes, food, and everything in between, all through a
phone screen.
Hansa turned her head to the right, giving Juhi a better view of her earrings.
They were too orange to be peaches. Oranges it is, she decided. Juhi stared a
bit longer. She wore hoops, made of gold and with tiny little diamonds dotted
across them, in a different piercing, higher up on her ear. The hoops glittered
quite satisfyingly in the lamp light. Then, right next to her ear, at the base
of her cheek, something new caught her eye: a mole. It was small like an ink
blot from a thin pen. Dark, but not dark enough to be immediately noticeable.
Juhi imagined tracing the mole with her fingertips.
Hansa
December ‘21
San Francisco, CA
Hansa sat in the arrivals section of an airport. To her left was a small child,
wearing blue jeans and a long-sleeve white top. His hands grasped popsicle
sticks that held up a bright yellow and orange construction paper sign. Behind
him stood his father, typing on his phone. His younger brother zoomed around on
a bright orange suitcase, using his feet to propel him forward. His eyes focused
on weaving a path around the surrounding people and suitcases. The older brother
remained still, holding up the sign and staring only at the arrivals section.
Suddenly, he started jumping.
“She’s here! She’s here! She’s here!” he yelled, over and over and over again.
The other two boys snapped up, eyes alert. The dad moved to stand to the right
of the younger brother. The younger brother skated over on his suitcase to the
left of the older brother. Their attention merged as a woman, with long hair and
full lips, joined them. Hansa smiled as they jumped into a group hug. The
construction paper sign, etched with “Welcome Home” in crayon, was left on the
ground in front of them, the orange suitcase tossed to the side, and the phone
tucked away.
“Hello,”
Hansa whirled around to see Juhi standing right next to her, shuffling her feet.
Her hair was shorter, blown out and swept back from her face. She wore a new
necklace, large and beaded. Her eyes widened, nervously dancing back and forth,
meeting her own gaze before quickly looking away. Hansa’s stomach bubbled as if
it was brimming with fizzy soda. She pictured this moment many times over the
last week, of them jumping into a hug or them awkwardly laughing or them
tentatively reaching for each other’s hands. Now that it was here, she was
stuck, lost in thought and frozen in action.
Hansa considered a hug, but from the side or from the front? Would her hands go
around her neck or her waist? What about no hug? By the time she considered
everything, Juhi’s arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her close.
Juhi
January ‘22
San Francisco, CA
The Sunday morning sun soaked into Juhi’s scalp like warm water. Hansa sat next
to her, doodling on a spare napkin. From their spot near the top of the hill,
she could see everyone mulling about the park. A red-haired mother rocked a baby
wrapped up in a bright blue blanket. A skinny kid danced, knees wobbling back
and forth, for his parents. A couple napped in the sun, legs entangled, hand in
hand, hair mingling hair.
Hansa’s doodling, swirls and stars, almost filled the napkin by now. She wore a
green sweater, hair pulled back into little French braids. A variety of rings, a
green stone, a flower, a thick spiral, circled up her fingers. She had spent
most weekends at home this past month, instead of going out for drinks or
picnics or meeting friends. Juhi asked if anything was wrong yesterday, but
Hansa was adamant that nothing was. So adamant that she decided they would spend
the day at Mission Dolores. Juhi was skeptical, but she didn’t want to push
Hansa. At least they had gotten out of the apartment.
Suddenly, Hansa elbowed Juhi, motioning her head towards the right. Nearby, a
pair of twins rolled down a hill together, squealing. Hansa’s eyes, delicately
lined with black, gleamed before looking towards Juhi’s lips. She leaned
forward, and Juhi could smell the morning’s coffee on her breath. Juhi leaned
in. As her eyes drifted shut, Hansa’s body tensed. She leapt up, smirking,
before shoving Juhi off-balance and tumbling down the slope. Juhi scrambled to
follow.
Together, the two of them raced down the hill, rolling after one another. Juhi
after Hansa, curling tighter into a ball to speed past her, then Hansa following
Juhi, laughing uncontrollably. All Juhi could register was the soft grass, the
world spinning, and Hansa’s laughter, moving farther and farther away from her.
Hansa
February ‘22
San Francisco, CA
Light, from late dusk or early dawn, Hansa didn't know, streamed through the
gaps in the window blinds. Juhi slept soundly, face soft, chest slowly rising
and falling. Hansa stared at the ceiling for hours.
She turned to the right, adjusting the pillow underneath her head. Her neck was
propped at a weird angle. She turned to the left, gently moving around Juhi’s
body. She laid on her back, eyes wide open before tiptoeing to her bookshelf.
Resting her chin on her knees, she stared at Ganesha, then Sai Baba, then Rama,
all lined up neatly against the bottom shelf.
At least the deities had remained the same.
Everything else, her friends, work, even the bedroom, felt slightly off with
Juhi here. They had been living together for two months now. The move had gone
well. Juhi had fallen into step with Hansa’s friends, going out for coffee and
brunch with them even on her own. She hung out with her co-workers and went to
volunteer events, even joining a dance class. But something about their joint
life felt forced to Hansa, like she was trying to fit two pieces, one square and
one round, together.
Suddenly, she felt a hand on her shoulder.
“Are you okay?”
Juhi’s voice was hoarse from sleep.
“I’m good.” Juhi’s eyes widended, and Hansa knew she had been too abrupt. Juhi
stepped back only to crouch down, now eye-level with Hansa.
“Are..you sure?” Her voice was filled with hesitance. Hansa bit her lip.
“No.”
“Okay.”
Juhi sat next to Hansa, leaving a few inches of space. Hansa’s eyes began to
droop, a heaviness overcoming her. She laid her head on Juhi’s shoulder,
slipping into sleep.
Juhi
March ‘22
San Francisco, CA
Juhi pulled Hansa’s hands into her own. The bus drove over a few bumps, bouncing
their entangled hands. She stared at Hansa’s fingers, outlining her slender
nails, covered in dark green polish, and the lines across her palm. Hansa
watched her, but nerves kept Juhi from meeting her gaze. She guided her own
hands across Hansa’s rings. Her fingertips traced over the rose-colored stone,
the green one next to it, before landing on the band of lilies. Juhi pulled this
ring off. She pushed one of her own rings, a silver circle, onto Hansa’s finger.
Hansa wiggled her fingers, but the arragement looked awkward.
Juhi looked up at Hansa. Her eyes, green but warm, were underlined with dark
circles. She seemed tired, her usual playful punching and chatter had died down.
Juhi didn’t know to ask if something was wrong or if she was okay or if she
needed space. Instead, she shuffled a few more rings around, stacking the green
stone on top of the silver band and moving the rose-gold stone to her ring
finger. Juhi couldn't figure out what wasn't working. She set out to shuffle
them again, but Hansa pulled her hand away, turning to look out the window.
Hansa
April ‘22
San Francisco, CA
Hansa stared at the pantry. The container of flour was in the wrong place, cap
covered in fingerprints. The box of Lucky Charms was left half-open and
half-crumpled, shoved into a corner. Cans of beans, black and pinto and
garbanzo, were haphazardly stacked. Juhi stared out the window, sprawled on the
couch. Hansa closed the pantry door louder than necessary.
“What are you thinking?” Juhi smiled innocently, dimples showing.
“Nothing.” Hansa turned towards the stove. Crumbs of burnt garlic, dried
coriander, and now-hardened pasta lined the burners.
“Are you sure?” Worry tinged Juhi’s voice.
“Yes.”
“Are you lying?”
Juhi now stood a few feet away, only the countertop separating them. Plates and
pans, covered in dried sauce from dinner, were piled in the sink.
“Yes.” She opened the dishwasher only to find it full of clean dishes. Her jaw
tightened.
“Please tell me.” Juhi’s voice was higher now, filled with worry or anxiety or
uncertainty, Hansa couldn’t tell.
“Did you unload the dishwasher?”
“No.”
“I reminded you.” Hansa told her multiple times, both about the dishwasher and
the pantry. Juhi, as per usual, was too busy with her own thoughts to notice
much else.
“I know, I’m sorry. Why won’t you tell me?” Juhi came over to her side of the
countertop. She grabbed Hansa’s hands into her own, squeezing them tightly.
“You forget.”
“I won’t. Please tell me.”
Juhi’s eyes were open and welcoming, almost too eager. Hansa considered telling
Juhi how she couldn’t remember the last time she had a full night’s sleep. How
she didn’t want to remind Juhi everyday. Couldn’t she notice more? Need to be
told less? How would they last like this? But she just shook her head, eyes
turned down. Juhi lifted Hansa’s head up, searched her eyes for something Hansa
wouldn’t show. Squeezing Hansa’s hands once again, Juhi walked into the bedroom.
Hansa, fists tight and jaw still taut, began unloading the dishwasher.
Juhi
May ‘22
San Francisco, CA
Juhi found herself back in the kitchen. A steel bowl, full of gunky brownie
mixture, sat in front of her. Maybe she added too much flour. The whisk kept
getting stuck mid-stir. In another bowl, she cracked open an egg. The yolk was
dark, dark enough that the yellow could be mistaken for orange. The whites
curled around the edges of the bowl. She pierced the yolk with her whisk,
flicking her wrist. Her stomach rolled in unison with each circle. All she could
think about was Hansa’s eyes from last night, somehow defeated and angry at the
same time. The yolk turned, back and forth and over and around. The white turned
into an opaque froth, slowly combining with the yellow. Juhi couldn’t ever be
sure of Hansa’s thoughts. She was tired of guessing. The pit in her stomach grew
as shame and yearning filled her. She wished Hansa would just talk to her, even
if it was vague. What bothered her? What was she thinking? Whenever she asked,
Hansa changed the subject or got up to make coffee or left for work. Juhi kept
whisking, as frustration pooled in her gut. The faster she whisked, the more it
grew, winding her up in tighter and tighter spirals.
Hansa
June ‘22
San Francisco, CA
Hansa sat across from Juhi. Her face turned towards a scrunched up straw wrapper
that she was playing with.
“Do you think this is going to last?”
Hansa stayed silent. Juhi’s hands moved to the necklace, a silver chain with an
opal crescent, sitting at the base of her neck. Hansa gazed at her eyes, brown
and misguidedly innocent. In fact, Juhi was extremely skeptical, the opposite of
gullible. It took multiple conversations, often filled with carefully crafted
questions and long pauses that required large amounts of patience from Hansa, to
convince Juhi of anything. But her eyes were brown. They were wide and sincere.
The ends of her eyelashes, at the outer corner of her eyes, lifted up like
natural eyeliner. When she cried, her eyes glossed over and her mouth turned
down, puffing out. She would quietly turn away, hiding the tears streaming down
her face. She wiped them away, usually laughing because they were replaced soon
after. When she laughed, Juhi’s eyes became small, squished up by her full
cheeks. Two dimples, at the corners of her mouth, would appear. Her smile,
outlined by curves from her nose to the edges of her lips, revealed a neat row
of white teeth, disrupted only by the slightly turned front two.
But today, Juhi’s eyes melted with uncertainty. They contradicted her usual
calm, giving way to the pulsing vulnerability that she worked hard to hide.
Hansa still hadn’t answered the question. She looked, not at anything in
particular, just at Juhi. She knew that Juhi wanted her to say something that
she wouldn’t be able to say. So, she sighed before saying the only thing she
really could say.
“I don’t know.”Juhi
September ‘21
Boston, MA
Red and blue and green strobe lights swooped across the stadium. Old Rihanna
played from the speakers amongst the squeals, interrupted conversations, and
laughter. From Juhi’s seat, the stage looked compact, the size of four podiums
squished together. Swaths of people, all dressed in bright pants, iridescent
glasses, and feather boas, swarmed its base, clamoring for the concert to begin.
Juhi gazed at two girls at the edge of the crowd. They were dressed simply,
brown pants and matching white shirts. The girl to the left, hair bright pink,
started bobbing her head up and down to the music. The other girl, hair braided,
watched for a moment before swinging her arms back and forth in rhythm. The
pink-haired girl started jumping, clapping her hands in sync. The other girl
kicked her heels out, her braids swinging out and back in. They both started
spinning in circles, first alone, then together holding hands and then holding
each other. All too soon, they stopped, dizzy and laughing. Juhi laughed too.
The crowd screamed as the lights dimmed, but the girls only looked at each
other. Juhi stared at them even when it was too dark to see. She imagined
Hansa’s hair, long and curly, spinning in circles, though she had never seen her
dance.
They only met last April in a pottery class after randomly sitting next to each
other. Every following Wednesday of that month, Juhi’s stomach would be twisted
in knots, more of excitement than anything else, before class, and filled with
bubbles, of joy or nerves she didn’t bother to differentiate, after class. A
month later, when Hansa moved to San Francisco, they were barely friends. Juhi
couldn’t believe that they had kept texting and calling. She could still picture
Hansa’s hair from that first class, long and curly and bouncy as she leaned over
the wheel.
Hansa
October ‘21
San Francisco, CA
At 5pm on a random Thursday, the bus was quiet and dark save the blue lights in
the overhead bin space.Cayla Bleoaja | Necessary
i. There are 11,400 known kinds of grass. That is more than a human would ever
be able to encounter in a lifetime. I find this fact wondrous. Such small a
thing as grass, so “insignificant” a species, and I will never be able to
exhaust it.
ii. The only place I could go to during lockdown was my garden, so I went there
every day. I became friends with the willows and the nettles, with the flowering
valerian and meadowsweet, water mint and gipsywort. I think of it now as my
rewilding. Then, it was a desperate attempt for contact.
iii. For a year, the flora in that garden saw me more than any person. Day after
day, they bore witness to me, in every state; they were with me when no other
human being could be. I wrote a stray line of poetry in my journal: ‘I do not
know the earth by all her names but she knows me by all of mine.’ On one of
those days, I plucked a single blade of grass and a voice inside of me said, let
it love you. I could not do it. I did not know how. I tried to talk to it, to
listen to it, to carry it with me. It became a practice, picking a piece of
grass and trying to teach myself to be loved by it.
iv. “Complete attention,” says Simone Weil, “is like unconsciousness.” It is not
an action or stance, but a kind of reception: beholding, witnessing, allowing
something to penetrate you, to enter your world. Attention is a kind of vision
that is more than just seeing; it is a willingness to permit oneself to be seen.
Implicated is a presence that demands your vulnerability and wholeness, because
it is also a way of facing the reality of who you are, a kind of returning to
the realest part of you. It is a way of knowing ourselves, by knowing others and
letting ourselves be known by them.
v. I am a being not a doing. In the smallness of a garden, I encountered the
enormity of these words.
vi. In her essay, “Against Dryness”, Iris Murdoch calls for a new vocabulary of
attention. What I think of is Robin Wall Kimmerer’s grammar of animacy, which
recognizes the sacredness of all life forms. This perspective is encoded in the
structure of the indigenous Potawatomi language. The Potawatomi’s intimate
relationship with the earth permeates into their vocabulary and conjugations,
which render the natural world as alive and interbeing as an organism. Words
like water, tree, and grass are verbs rather than nouns, removing the barrier
that comes between us and other sentient things when we call them ‘it.’ There
are only nine fluent speakers of Potawatomi left. Their displacement and forced
removal permeates their vocabulary and conjugations. We are losing our language
for life, and with it, our sense of the reality of the world. It is in our
vocabulary that we must make room for the imaginative recognition of otherness,
or as Murdoch put it, the ”difficult realization that something other than
oneself is real.”
vii. The Weberian account of disenchantment captures a universalized tendency of
modernity to redefine reality through rationalistic terms. Weber referred to the
secularization of society, but nature too has been stripped of its mystery and
magic. Scientific explanation can dispel the wild of its wonder, reducing it to
the empirical and the quantifiable. The mechanistic model of the universe, for
instance, represents the living world around us as devoid of meaning, purpose,
and agency. Water is no longer a force of spirit; it is a lacuna that can be
filled with garbage and oil. Trees are no longer creatures; they are materials
that can be razed and burned. Cows are no longer living entities; they are
burgers. We have separated ourselves from the nonhuman world and been left alone
in it. The loss of our capacity to see the world has deprived us also of our
ability to relate with it. The new natural forces are our extensions of power
and self-interest: it is easy to exploit what is passive, inert matter, what has
only functional value—it is ours for the taking. This "de-magic-ation" of our
natural environment, which dissolved our instinctual relations with earth, has
left us alienated in the world.
viii. Grasses make up nearly 30% of the plant life on earth. They are the
world's single most important food source. By taking root in soil, they anchor
the loose surface of the earth and keep it from eroding away. The health of the
earth's ecosystem depends on grass for food security, nutrients, irrigation,
habitats, carbon storage, pollination, cooling, and biodiversity. Our future
depends on our grass. If we are what we eat, we are walking grass.
ix. Hannah Arendt’s discussion of loneliness, alienation, and superfluousness in
The Origins of Totalitarianism identifies the ideal condition for the emergence
of totalitarian regimes: “homelessness on an unprecedented scale, rootlessness
to an unprecedented depth.” In a world where we live as “isolated individuals in
an atomized society,” she argues, we are still looking for home and will seek it
out at any cost, even to destructive ends. This recognition of detachment’s
harms harmonizes with Weil’s enumeration of vital human needs, which rests on
rootedness, “perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human
soul.” Arendt defines rootedness as having a “place in the world, recognized and
guaranteed by others,” and Weil echoes in describing it as a “real, active and
natural participation in the life of a community which preserves in living shape
certain particular treasures of the past and certain particular expectations of
the future.” We can think of re-enchantment as a restoration of rootedness, a
re-anchoring in time, place, and spirit. It is a reversal of the narrative that
severed nature as something external to humanity and a returning of it to a
place of relationship, inextricably linked to us. It is a retelling of our
stories with attention to the magic, mystery, and meaning in the world. The
enchanted life is not fantasy or escapism. It is deeply human, and it requires
those things which are innate in us: wonder, wildness, imagination, curiosity,
playfulness, creativity, meaning-making, intuition. Re-enchantment is not
something we do. It is something we allow ourselves to be again, perhaps by
wandering into the gardens inside each of us in search of the ineffable.
x. How do we live in an enchanted world? I wonder if the problem is not a
rational one but a relational one, if reenchantment with the world is in fact a
product of our orientation to her. Love what is in front of you and let it love
you. This is what the grass taught me. Reenchantment requires attention to
reality. We ourselves must be reenchanted, and re-enchantment beings with
relearning to see. I must sit with the grass and not on it. I must look at this
plant being until I see in it the force of life that has decided to take so
fragile and fleeting a form. I must allow reality to penetrate my interior
world, my own inmost depths. For Weil, attention is a “negative effort,” one
that requires being rather than doing, standing still opposed to leaning in.
Attention to the real depends on receptiveness, turning our being toward
accompanying, attending to. The world is asking us to move beyond our self to be
part of the landscape of life as it really is. Weil, Murdoch, and Arendt’s
projects point a way forward: to venerate our pasts, to steward our futures, and
to participate in our communities of being, human and nonhuman. “If we
surrendered to earth’s intelligence,” Rilke wrote, “we could rise up rooted,
like trees.”
When I forget, I go back to the grass: my only job, while I am here and whatever
I am doing, is to love what is in front of me and let myself be loved by it.
Until you see the face of God in a blade of grass, you will not be able to see
it in anything else.i. There are 11,400 known kinds of grass. That is more than a human would ever
be able to encounter in a lifetime. I find this fact wondrous. Such small a
thing as grass, so “insignificant” a species, and I will never be able to
exhaust it.
ii. The only place I could go to during lockdown was my garden, so I went there
every day. I became friends with the willows and the nettles, with the flowering
valerian and meadowsweet, water mint and gipsywort. I think of it now as my
rewilding. Then, it was a desperate attempt for contact.
iii. For a year, the flora in that garden saw me more than any person. Day after
day, they bore witness to me, in every state; they were with me when no other
human being could be. I wrote a stray line of poetry in my journal: ‘I do not
know the earth by all her names but she knows me by all of mine.’ On one of
those days, I plucked a single blade of grass and a voice inside of me said, let
it love you. I could not do it. I did not know how. I tried to talk to it, to
listen to it, to carry it with me. It became a practice, picking a piece of
grass and trying to teach myself to be loved by it.
iv. “Complete attention,” says Simone Weil, “is like unconsciousness.” It is not
an action or stance, but a kind of reception: beholding, witnessing, allowing
something to penetrate you, to enter your world. Attention is a kind of vision
that is more than just seeing; it is a willingness to permit oneself to be seen.
Implicated is a presence that demands your vulnerability and wholeness, because
it is also a way of facing the reality of who you are, a kind of returning to
the realest part of you. It is a way of knowing ourselves, by knowing others and
letting ourselves be known by them.
v. I am a being not a doing. In the smallness of a garden, I encountered the
enormity of these words.
vi. In her essay, “Against Dryness”, Iris Murdoch calls for a new vocabulary of
attention. What I think of is Robin Wall Kimmerer’s grammar of animacy, which
Emily Meffert | Short Story
From my kitchen window I scan the bird of paradise, a pair of yellow striped
folding chairs, the Walburns’ A/C unit, the Walburns’ empty kiddy pool below
their A/C unit, and distant pines that loom like guardians, dreading nothing.
Nothing here is wet.
Ten days til Autumn. Three til Veda Lou. Today I’m making her a Barbie house and
Zelma Vesce is making a story that involves the world from fifty thousand feet.
The world is grainy and mechanical. A coiled, psychedelic bruise churns the
ocean and one mild enveloped eye spies America and nothing’s wet
yet. The wallpaper is floral; the carpet is green. The glue gun is warm in my
hand. In three days Veda Lou, in twenty her fourth, in twenty days cone hats and
Duncan Hines. If I hadn’t done ninety-two on the nine-oh-six last month there
would have been a DreamHouse. Memory sure panics like a lead foot though! You
don’t want to be with your mind too long between the coast and Half Hell. So no
DreamHouse. Hence the cardboard, carpet samples, scraps of wallpaper snagged
from Rooms-to-Go, vistas of magnolias and lives Oaks and Spanish moss snipped
from Southern Living that I’ll hang on walls beneath pink chiffon, like windows.
I keep worrying I’m not ready but Sister Wanda believes I am. Believes it
thoroughly. I done the twelve steps and I got Duncan Hines. I got a bank
account, gumption, Junie B. Jones. I got this place all by myself no man no
nothing and a room just for Veda for sleepovers, crushes, angst, college apps. I
keep reminding myself. I think I’m ready. I go back and forth — god, it’s
terrifying! Sister Wanda says come back to the feeling of whatever’s in my hand.
The glue gun. The grip is warm. My hand is sweaty on the plastic. Today I’m
making a Barbie house. Greer says Veda loves Barbie. She’s got three plus a Ken
doll plus an airplane with an ice machine and fifty tiny beads of ice that hide
in the carpet like
Greer.
Drop-offs. Pick-ups. Pick-ups. Drop-offs. Suddenly all these chances for me to
prove he was right to high-tail? It’s daunting! Because how much can you say
about the weather? Zelma Vesce says weather’s a pattern of destructive
coincidences. If this one hits I’ll say This rain? Crazy! and he’ll say Can you
believe it? Cats and dogs! or something like that, then both kind of shake our
heads, then wave, all amicable, before he disappears into the possibilities of
his Honda and then back to Wrightsville and out of my life. It’s important for
Veda to see how men and women can be amicable. If it spirals south I’ll say How
was she, did she behave, etc. No What-if’s, no Remember When’s, no
Shoulda-Coulda-Woulda’s. No asking which cheap thing he’s sleeping with this
week. That’s no interest of mine. They call them cyclones in India, which I used
to confuse with the one-eyed monster from those stories. Which, like, how shitty
would that be? I cover my left eye with my left hand. In my right hand the glue
gun is as far as the kitchen window is as close as the pines. The pines are
leaning. Lolling. Lulling? Sister Wanda’s got myopia, says light focuses before
it touches her eyeballs. So she can see close stuff clear but everything else is
a blur. That seems not so bad honestly, like the world’s in portrait mode and
you only have to look at one thing at a time and not the whole trainwreck
hurtling around it?
Am I right?
The carpet is dark green. Kind of serious like something you’d find in an
office, but with white polka dots, which I think says have fun, take risks! The
wallpaper’s floral. Huge blushing peonies and little puckered berry things.
Vines. The Walburns’ kiddy pool is scuttling across the gravel toward the
Gainsbroughs’ Tacoma. All the things he’ll say to our friends if I do something
dumb. His. His friends. All the things he’s said. But we all got seasons, right?
I got Duncan Hines. I got Trix and two percent. But what if she asks me about
stuff? There’s so much in this life that you can’t get until you get it. You
know? Zelma Vesce reminds me of an actor but I can’t put my finger on it. If
Florence is real why the hell is all this make-up involved? Yesterday his thumbs
danced across a kalimba like they used to. It was similar to the dream where I’m
brushing my teeth before work and it feels so real because it’s possible, like
theoretically. Cheekbones teasing my cheekbones, eyelashes feathering sun,
fingernails branding the grooves of my spine Stop it. When I woke up the
windchimes were going like mad next door. Pixelated turmoil glitching on the
brink of land, infinitely approaching. Always the awe and terror of the thing
and never the thing. (Almost always, almost never.) Attention, obsession, what’s
the difference? All these modes of homecoming. Zelma Vesce says reconciling
pressure’s a balancing act; before you know it you’re naming something you can’t
control.
Veda Lou. My Veda.
One day we’ll have a house just like this: the carpet and the wallpaper exactly
what we choose, windows and moss and a garage and a laundry chute. The scary
thing — I mean the really scary thing — is that you have to do it day in and day
out forever. Even on the bad days. And there are so many ways to fail a person.
Today I am making a little house. This involves glueing currants to the inside
of an Amazon box. The glue is hot and stringy. Each time I touch it I have to
hold my throbbing finger beneath the tap for ages while the lukewarm water
becomes slightly cool. Right now I’m pressing my hand against the wall and
moving it around, smoothing air bubbles. Beside me on the kitchen table are two
pieces of chiffon that I’ll hang above the picture from the magazine. One for
each side to be tied with a Wonder Bread twisty. The pines lean and sway. Makes
you dizzy to look at.
I’m thinking of rain.
When I was Veda’s age Riley took us to Topsail. We ate ice cream sandwiches and
walked on the pier at night. Seeing the surf thrash between the cracks in the
boards from that height terrified me. Riley said be vigilant or I’d slip right
through. This is my first memory. I don’t know if he said vigilant, but I know
how it felt. He made my heart manic in my ribs; it was never an accident. A few
years later the only traces of that pier were a couple of barnacle-scabbed
pilings on a leveled dune. They named that one Fran. It is not raining. It is
just the clatter of chairs and the tantrum of chimes and that kiddy pool
drifting like a Hardee’s bag. But it feels like it’s raining because my heart’s
doing that thing that it does when everything’s wet.
The chiffon is soft. The gun is warm. Soft, warm. Soft
I’ve thought of writing him. Greer. Like old-fashioned gesture of affection via
USPS. Like, not as the mother of our child but from the tender needy spot that
blisters without warning. I think of it often. But I don’t know. The issue is
that my whole being hovers in the ink and coils and mysterious mechanics of my
pen, and if I make one bad move it’ll all come out. Sometimes I become so
overwhelmed imagining the letter that I don’t get a single word on the page.
Like how sometimes he’d get so scared imagining love that he couldn’t plunge
even an ankle. Water reminded him of violence; the past sprawled malignantly
from his toes to his hips each time he got close. But you can’t ruin a page you
don’t touch. In fact you can’t do anything with it. The long defense of absence
will eat you alive.
I keep reminding myself this isn’t new. I’ve seen it before. The sky boils; the
wind tortures flags and clotheslines; the Atlantic dismantles gas stations and
rocking chairs. It will change everything, or certain things will be spared in
certain ways. Catastrophe is always coming for you somewhere. You have to build
a little room to keep that shit at bay. Four sturdy walls, a reliable
foundation, a roof that won’t sag in the middle. No one tells you when you’re a
kid and then when a storm comes you go right out with it. How could you not?
With no walls, nothing? Chaos without is chaos within. Trying to figure where
your self ends and calamity begins would be absurd. You are the disaster.
Today I am building this house for Veda Lou so she is not the disaster and so
her heart won’t bust of conniption when everything’s wet. It’s not really about
timing — there will be days when the weather’s calm; there will be startling
days when I’ll fight the instinct to scrutinize what came before or to count all
the ways a fire can start. It’s a decision made over and over again, a
commitment to return to this room. To feel the air in the wallpaper, to finger
beads in the carpet, to hold Veda on her fourth without spoiling from shame
because I didn’t hold her on her third or fearing a future in which I’ll lose
her. Just holding her, just cone hats and Duncan Hines, making a home of this
house like the enveloped eye where clarity lives: not lucky but dogged, elastic.From my kitchen window I scan the bird of paradise, a pair of yellow striped
folding chairs, the Walburns’ A/C unit, the Walburns’ empty kiddy pool below
their A/C unit, and distant pines that loom like guardians, dreading nothing.
Nothing here is wet.
Ten days til Autumn. Three til Veda Lou. Today I’m making her a Barbie house and
Zelma Vesce is making a story that involves the world from fifty thousand feet.
The world is grainy and mechanical. A coiled, psychedelic bruise churns the
ocean and one mild enveloped eye spies America and nothing’s wet
yet. The wallpaper is floral; the carpet is green. The glue gun is warm in my
hand. In three days Veda Lou, in twenty her fourth, in twenty days cone hats and
Duncan Hines. If I hadn’t done ninety-two on the nine-oh-six last month there
would have been a DreamHouse. Memory sure panics like a lead foot though! You
don’t want to be with your mind too long between the coast and Half Hell. So no
DreamHouse. Hence the cardboard, carpet samples, scraps of wallpaper snagged
from Rooms-to-Go, vistas of magnolias and lives Oaks and Spanish moss snipped
from Southern Living that I’ll hang on walls beneath pink chiffon, like windows.
I keep worrying I’m not ready but Sister Wanda believes I am. Believes it
thoroughly. I done the twelve steps and I got Duncan Hines. I got a bank
account, gumption, Junie B. Jones. I got this place all by myself no man no
nothing and a room just for Veda for sleepovers, crushes, angst, college apps. I
keep reminding myself. I think I’m ready. I go back and forth — god, it’s
terrifying! Sister Wanda says come back to the feeling of whatever’s in my hand.
The glue gun. The grip is warm. My hand is sweaty on the plastic. Today I’m
making a Barbie house. Greer says Veda loves Barbie. She’s got three plus a Ken
doll plus an airplane with an ice machine and fifty tiny beads of ice that hide
in the carpet like
Greer.
Drop-offs. Pick-ups. Pick-ups. Drop-offs. Suddenly all these chances for me to
proveAmangeldy Rakhmetov, Meirzhan Kurmanov | Short Story
When journalists came up to Nikolai Rinovsky for an interview, his hands would
tremble. He looked at them, stroked his front teeth with his tongue and said
nothing.
Nobody had a clue why one of the most famous acrobats of the southern capital
had never given a single interview. Rumors said that Nikolai Rinovsky could not
understand the southern language or was actually born mute. Some people thought
he was simply stupid. But despite all that, journalists kept approaching him
with their questions.
One day though, between his performances, he answered a couple of questions for
the guy whose microphone was covered with an orange cap.
“How do you manage to do such difficult tricks and not sweat?” the journalist
asked.
”I cried a lot when I was a child,” Nikolai answered, his hands trembling like
tree leaves in the wind.
“Is it true that you are not afraid of death, like a crocodile, and always
perform without a safety rope?” the journalist continued, staring at Nikolai’s
hands.
“No, I am not afraid of death. Because death is a dream where we don’t have a
sense of smell, but see ghostly hills.”
“What hills?” the journalist wondered.
“The ghostly ones,” answered Nikolai and left for the stage.
After the first trick, his hands slipped from the rope, he fell on the ground,
broke his neck and died instantly.
Author’s Note
There are two reasons why I wrote this story. First is the memory. When I was a
child I had a friend who died in a car accident. The road was slippery and the
driver lost control. Second is the images. Brodsky's hills are the life,
Rinovsky's hills are the life where death is always somewhere around.
Translator’s Note
I liked this story because it reminded me of the short absurd stories of Daniil
Kharms, an early Russian avant-guardist, absurdist poet and writer. The story is
concise as an old traveling circus poster and simple as an ordinary
now-you-see-it-no-you-don't magic trick while suggesting to think about such
serious things like life and death.When journalists came up to Nikolai Rinovsky for an interview, his hands would
tremble. He looked at them, stroked his front teeth with his tongue and said
nothing.
Nobody had a clue why one of the most famous acrobats of the southern capital
had never given a single interview. Rumors said that Nikolai Rinovsky could not
understand the southern language or was actually born mute. Some people thought
he was simply stupid. But despite all that, journalists kept approaching him
with their questions.
One day though, between his performances, he answered a couple of questions for
the guy whose microphone was covered with an orange cap.
“How do you manage to do such difficult tricks and not sweat?” the journalist
asked.
”I cried a lot when I was a child,” Nikolai answered, his hands trembling like
tree leaves in the wind.
“Is it true that you are not afraid of death, like a crocodile, and always
perform without a safety rope?” the journalist continued, staring at Nikolai’s
hands.
“No, I am not afraid of death. Because death is a dream where we don’t have a
sense of smell, but see ghostly hills.”
“What hills?” the journalist wondered.
“The ghostly ones,” answered Nikolai and left for the stage.
After the first trick, his hands slipped from the rope, he fell on the ground,
broke his neck and died instantly.
Author’s Note
There are two reasons why I wrote this story. First is the memory. When I was a
child I had a friend who died in a car accident. The road was slippery and the
driver lost control. Second is the images. Brodsky's hills are the life,
Rinovsky's hills are the life where death is always somewhere around.
Translator’s Note
I liked this story because it reminded me of the short absurd stories of Daniil
Kharms, an early Russian avant-guardist, absurdist poet and writer. The story is
concise as an old traveling circus poster and simple as an ordinary
now-you-see-it-no-you-don't magic trick while suggesting to think about such
serious things liVeronica Castro | Short Story
Bread lessens sorrows. -Mexican Proverb
When she last made chiles rellenos, Victor had been alive.
He had started coming over to their house when her son Manuel was in junior
high, afterschool and on weekends at first, then birthdays and holidays when his
mother got stuck working late shifts at the diner. He helped Manuel with
homework because he loved math and was good at it, and because Manuel was his
only friend. In high school Victor earned a little money tutoring, and she had
tried to pay him, knowing that those wingtip shoes he wanted were not cheap. He
always refused, saying that she, Mrs. Gonzales, had already done so much for
him. She had made chiles rellenos en nogadas, the kind with walnut sauce, and
one week later, a Sunday morning in late October 1963, he was found dead among
the cattails in the marshy ditch of a nearby lake.
She put cinnamon pieces in the molcajete, pounded them with the pestle, the
porous rock warm and smooth in her hands. She added a few cloves and
peppercorns, pounded again, scraped stone against stone. Manuel came in gave her
a quick hug and kiss on the cheek. Looking around at all the pots, pans, and
bowls covering every kitchen surface, he asked, “What’s all this?”
The bright yellow lemon-shaped clock read three-fifteen. She had not expected
him so soon. There was still so much to do before she could stuff and fry the
poblanos. She looked at her son, his dark hair stiff with pomade, shirt and
slacks still clean and crisp after a full day of school (he insisted on extra
starch in the laundry). “Chiles rellenos,” she answered.
“I know, but why--is someone coming over?”
It was true that, while rellenos were Manuel’s favorite, she saved them for
guests or special occasions because they took time. She had been planning this
meal for days. Her employer, Mrs. Cohagen, agreed to let her leave work early
because she would be taking her own children to a symphony matinee and could do
without a nanny for the afternoon. She, Mrs. Gonzales, had roasted pork the
night before and had made rice this morning, getting up half an hour earlier,
moving about the kitchen in a quick but quiet way, careful not to slam the
cabinet doors or knock pots against each other.
She did not tell Manuel that his math teacher had called last week, concerned
about missing homework and low test scores, failing grades and summer school.
She told Mr. McKenzie that summer school was out of the question. They would be
up north, Michigan or Wisconsin, following the cherries, blackberries and
apricots. Then peaches. On the way back down: cucumbers, tomatoes, and squash.
How could Manuel, only fifteen years old, stay in San Antonio by himself?
She had planned to sit down with her son and talk to him about why he must try
harder, do better at math because he might fail the class, and they could not
afford to miss the busiest picking season of the year for summer school. Good
food, she hoped, would make it easier. “It’s just us,” she said, smiling as if
to say there needn’t be a reason to cook his favorite food.
Manuel shrugged, went to change out to change out of his school clothes.
She moved to the white porcelain stove and stirred the onions until they became
translucent ghosts of themselves. If it were spring, she would go to the vacant
lot next door to collect purslane or quintoniles for a fresh salad. But in
February the lot could only offer dry, brown grass, a dead insect wing
fluttering on a spiderweb, and the matted leaves of mesquite trees. The only
green would be the clumps of chili de espino, which Mrs. Cohagen called
mistletoe, and which Manuel’s elementary teacher said was poisonous. Even though
the last three generations of Gonzales had eaten the reddish-white fruits
without dying, she supposed the teacher knew best, and no longer brought it in
the house, instead using the plastic sprigs bought at Woolworth’s after
Christmas. Now that he was in high school, Manuel only talked about his teachers
if she asked.
Manuel returned wearing a white t-shirt and jeans, which she would not let him
wear to school, even if some of the other kids, still wanting to look like James
Dean, wore them. He plopped a heavy textbook on the table and took a seat.
She slid the cutting board underneath the bowl of peppers, cleared away the jars
of whole cloves and cinnamon sticks to give him more space to work. “No
basketball today?” she asked, scooping up onion peels with her hands.
“No,” he said. “Gotta catch up on some homework.” He took out a fresh sheet of
paper, copied the first problem neatly on his page. Wrote a few numbers, erased,
re-read the examples, tried again.
She scraped the spices into a pan, mixed in the pork, and added almonds,
raisins, and acitrón. Manuel turned to the back of his book to check his answer.
Erased again. She opened a can of stewed tomatoes, and tilted the contents into
the molcajete, the peeled red spheres staring at her like monstrous eyeballs.
Manuel tapped his pencil rhythmically on the table. Rubbed his eyes. Sighed.
“What are you working on?” she asked.
“Theorems,” he replied, voice heavy with the dread of the work that lay before
him. She squashed the tomatoes against the stone, worried that they would squirt
juice across the table, splatter his homework in red. She rocked the tejolote in
small, quick circular movements. “Theorems,” she repeated in a low voice,
testing out the sound of this new word and feeling ignorant. Although she could
arrange shapes into elaborate symmetrical patterns on a quilt and calculate sums
in her head, this type of math was beyond her understanding.
“Victor was good at proofs,” he said without meeting her eye, focusing instead
on the large green Tupperware bowl on the table. “The best.” Manuel closed his
eyes and pinched the space between his brows, as if he had a headache.
She sliced open the long poblano pepper, extracting the seed pods with a paring
knife, It felt like she was cutting into her son’s heart, into her own heart,
because of the painful stabbing of sorrow in her chest, which she knew Manuel
must be feeling as well.
“I wish,” Manuel began.
She held a poblano gently in the palm of hand like a delicate bird, a dove
perhaps, and spooned the relleno into it.
“I wish he had just told me,” Manuel continued. “I would’ve taken care of it.”
She knew Manuel had “taken care of things” for Victor before. Victor had told
Manuel about this neighbor who had been calling him faggot, who threw rocks and
empty cans at him. Manuel had warned that S.O.B. to leave Victor alone. Then one
afternoon, the boy said that word—joto—right in front of Manuel, and said it
like Victor was the worst kind of person, less than trash. Victor said neighbor
was nothing but a big mouth and maybe they should let it go. But Manuel let the
osicone have it. He took that hate, crumbled it up in his fist like a piece of
paper, and gave it right back to that kid, along with a bloody nose.
She didn’t like him fighting but had said nothing when Manuel came home that day
asking if blood would stain his shirt and telling her what had happened. She
felt proud that her son had stood up for his friend, who, it was true, was one
of los otros, those other type of men. So what if he did not like girls? People
were how the Lord made them, and we were all sinners besides.
“If I ever find out who they were…” Manuel said, pounding his fist on the table
so hard the empty bowls rattled. She wiped her hands on her apron, and reached
across the small round table, taking his hands into her own.
“Now you listen to me,” she said, looking him straight in the eye. “I don’t want
you going up to Woodlawn anymore. You know how they are.” Woodlawn Lake, the
scene of the crime, was within walking distance of their home on the westside of
town, but it was on the other side of a large boulevard that delineated the
white neighborhood of Jefferson Heights. Mexicanos could go shopping at the
Winn’s Five and Dime or Fabric World during the day, but at night, people called
the cops.
Victor pulled his hands away, as if burned. “That’s not why they….”
“No,” she said, sighing. They had not beaten Victor because his skin was brown
(though maybe that was part of it), but for being who he was. Beat him for
liking other boys. Beat him and dumped him in the lake to drown.
The news of Victor’s death was overshadowed by Cuban missile crisis in the
papers. At school, on the bus, at home, the possibility of nuclear war was all
anyone could talk about. She knew now that she should have paid more attention,
should have talked to him about it, should talk to him about it. She went back
to the egg batter, tried to think of what she could say. For a moment there was
nothing but swishing sound of gears gliding past each other as she turned the
crank of the beater.
“Why did he have to go without me? I would have…,” Manuel said, eyes filling
with tears. “I could have…”
On that night last fall, Manuel had played in a basketball game that ran into
overtime. Would those men (or boys?) have jumped Victor if Manuel had been
there? If they had seen the gleam of his knife in the streetlight? (He thought
she didn’t know about the switchblade hidden in the back of his sock drawer next
to his savings). She sat down again but did not reach for his hands. “Mi’jo,”
she began. “I want you to listen to me very carefully. You didn’t go with Victor
that night because you weren’t meant to. Your game-- do you think that was an
accident?” She reached out and put her hand on his shoulder. “I believe, from
the very bottom of my heart, that Our Lord in Heaven has spared you.”
“Me, but not Victor?” He looked at her, dark eyes ablaze, face twisted in a knot
of anger, sorrow and guilt. She did not have an answer to his question. Why God
called some and not others was a mystery she had pondered often, too much,
before she saw the futility in trying to understand His ways. Her father, two of
her babies, her husband—all taken from this life too soon. She had been
seventeen when her father died, not much older than Manuel, but it seemed that
her son was much too young to bear the weight of his friend’s death alone.
“This is hopeless,” Manuel said, throwing down his pencil. He closed his
textbook with a sharp clap, pushed away from the table, the legs of his chair
squeaking against the linoleum floor. “I’m going for a walk.”
“Manuel,” she said to his receding figure. “Wait. We should ask Father John.”
She heard the sharp crack of the screen door slamming in response. Manuel’s
homework page fluttered to ground. It was spotted with the grey smudges of
erasing. She smoothed it and placed it under his math book. He would have to try
again later. Or tomorrow or the day after. It was a problem they would have
figure out together.
She picked up a poblano by the stem, dipped it in the egg batter, dropped it
into the sizzling oil. After a minute, she grabbed the stem and turned it over
in a quick, gentle motion. It burned a little, her fingertips had been toughened
by years of turning tortillas on a hot comal, by the borax in the laundry, by
the inevitable pin pricks that came with sewing.
She dipped one more in the batter, set it to fry, watched the batter expand and
turn golden brown. She wished that she could encase her son in something like
the protective pod of this chile, with its tough outer skin and inner membranes
imbued with fire. But she could only wrap him in her arms and offer him love,
even if that shield proved to be as fragile and delicate as a batter made of egg
whites and flour.
Author’s Note
In this story, a mother gives her son long-overdue attention by making him his
favorite dinner of chiles rellenos, a traditional Mexican dish that is
time-consuming and demanding of the cook’s attention up to the very end of the
preparation. On a broader scale, “Chiles Rellenos” is about how our attention
can be shifted away from the personal to larger geo-political events, and the
potential consequences of that shift.Bread lessens sorrows. -Mexican Proverb
When she last made chiles rellenos, Victor had been alive.
He had started coming over to their house when her son Manuel was in junior
high, afterschool and on weekends at first, then birthdays and holidays when his
mother got stuck working late shifts at the diner. He helped Manuel with
homework because he loved math and was good at it, and because Manuel was his
only friend. In high school Victor earned a little money tutoring, and she had
tried to pay him, knowing that those wingtip shoes he wanted were not cheap. He
always refused, saying that she, Mrs. Gonzales, had already done so much for
him. She had made chiles rellenos en nogadas, the kind with walnut sauce, and
one week later, a Sunday morning in late October 1963, he was found dead among
the cattails in the marshy ditch of a nearby lake.
She put cinnamon pieces in the molcajete, pounded them with the pestle, the
porous rock warm and smooth in her hands. She added a few cloves and
peppercorns, pounded again, scraped stone against stone. Manuel came in gave her
a quick hug and kiss on the cheek. Looking around at all the pots, pans, and
bowls covering every kitchen surface, he asked, “What’s all this?”
The bright yellow lemon-shaped clock read three-fifteen. She had not expected
him so soon. There was still so much to do before she could stuff and fry the
poblanos. She looked at her son, his dark hair stiff with pomade, shirt and
slacks still clean and crisp after a full day of school (he insisted on extra
starch in the laundry). “Chiles rellenos,” she answered.
“I know, but why--is someone coming over?”
It was true that, while rellenos were Manuel’s favorite, she saved them for
guests or special occasions because they took time. She had been planning this
meal for days. Her employer, Mrs. Cohagen, agreed to let her leave work early
because she would be taking her own children to a symphony matinee and could do
without a nanny for the afternoon. She, Mrs. Gonz