Gather. Discover. Cultivate.
Only after the herd thunders past, then the chewing snapping locust swarm, then the boulder storm, only after all of these have carried themselves off into the collapsing distance does the gesture peek out from its hushed cave.
The ribbon unfurls from my wrist. A glass staircase bears the weight of fear. A feral pup in its winter wool climbs to the cliff edge and readies its throat.
The wing, first opening, closes.
Opens again. Continue reading “This Dance”
In the drawer, a tiny bundle of newsprint
waits for paper fingers
to untie its secrets. Inside
their China cabinet coffin,
glass eyes almost
see. I tilt
towards a convex wall
where iron and bronze
sculptures anchor those
who forget that the absence of corners
can lead to infinite revolutions. Continue reading “Unboxed Shadow (Hirshhorn)”
Unlike the other members of the band who splice the set together with self-deprecating anecdotes, the dude on piano and bodhran is a potty white-haired fellow who never speaks or cracks a joke. I have him pegged as the invisible base that holds up on 4/4 solid legs the tone and flourish that the fiddlers and singers — the real artists — splash across score.
The last song swells to its finish, the crowd cheers, the other musicians walk off. They leave him there lost in something as he messes with his drum. He looks up and glances around like he just noticed everyone else is gone. After a few confused and awkward seconds, he starts to tap a stick against the skin of the drum. It takes a few seconds for the audience to realize that something entirely new is happening.
The next 6 minutes are this with 6 years of mastery added:
The 2015 Martin O’Neill plays on stage alone, handling the drum with such precision that he’s making a melody from it. It’s skittering over scales, almost singing on top of its own rip-cracking beat. Then it shushes down, down before curving around what feels like a moan.
My heart is galloping but can’t keep up.
The beat topples all my assumptions.
A little skin stretched over a frame, balanced on one knee and worked with two expert hands, somehow produces how many thousand tones?
It’s humbling to find out yet again what a poor guide my judgment can be, how very little I know about anything at all.
It’s exhilarating to let this new flavor fill my blood, to know how much more is waiting to split wide my husk of certainty.
He points to Sting and Bob Marley,
his eyes hopscotching sideways
over walls of worn bright album covers
all the way to the ceiling, lighting
up for the first time
as salsa music and hissing milk
steam the room and warp
corners that squeeze
us into the proximity
of firsts
and nexts. Shots
in hot mugs clank against laughing teeth.
He slides forward in his seat
back again. When India Arie
escorted Stevie Wonder to the stage
he tells me, she kissed him on the cheek. Continue reading “Everything is Music”
Karate class runs late and we stumble through the door 30 minutes before bedtime. Homework still needs attention, as do dinner and shower and lunches for tomorrow. It is into this briar patch of demands that Bug announces he’s changed his mind.
“I do want to wear a costume to the Monster Bash.” Continue reading “Cornsilk and Cloak”
When you peel a peach, there’s a color right beneath the peach skin that’s hidden except for that very moment. It’s like there are all these little secrets moments in kitchen, and if you don’t pay attention to that, you’re missing so much in life.
— “In the Kitchen with Ruth Reichl,” New York Times, September 15, 2015
Safeway, as it happens, stocks every color of Jello except blue. The big package I bought earlier at Target should have been enough but half of it ended up on the wrong side of the saran wrap and the rest of it on the floor. The last thing I want to do is visit yet another store. As I stand here in the baking aisle, the kitchen’s engine idles. I can feel its thrum as it waits for my return.
I toss the unflavored Knox into my basket and hold out hope that I can find my stash of food coloring from last year.
Unpacking my groceries at home, I root around in the back of the cabinet and unearth the stained box. I’m relieved to discover the blue tube has a few drops left in it. This leaves me now with the small issue of taste — something I had rather avoided dealing with at the store. Continue reading “Sugar Spun”
The used car quest was ultimately unsuccessful. One gains insight nonetheless. It’s useful to practice haggling, for example, even if the other party refuses to engage participate. Also, it pays to notice tires.
I am back home and wilting on the couch. Beside me is a man whose company today qualifies him for sainthood. On his only free weekend day and for reasons I can barely fathom, my Mister voluntarily returned to the same Beltway purgatory he endures every Monday through Friday. He accompanied me as I waited for mechanics and tracked down Craigslist contacts and passed a fruitless hour in the DMV line and missed the bank by 15 minutes. He fueled himself on my meager supply of diet coke, store-brand hummus, and apples that grew steadily warmer in the August heat of my dying Saturn.
Now that we’ve limped back to my place and collapsed into our frayed knot of disappointment, he offers to stick around for the evening. Continue reading “83. Things I Can Rescue: The Vanishing Weekend”
We sprawl on the living room floor alongside the dog. Damp from our run, we stretch in the low light and work our hands down under the stubborn weight of our shared lassitude. They call it Weltschmerz. I call it unwelcome. I angle myself against it. Endorphins are my lever; grit, my fulcrum. It barely moves.
In the hours preceding this moment, in all the hours in all the days that fasten together like chain link, we work. In our respective offices in the company of our respective bands of fools, we grind upward and forward against a blind rock face. Tasks, demands, questions whose only answers we must hand-stitch from materials stashed in unmarked cabinets. The stone there is as unyielding as the mood seeping into us as we strain against it.
The dog licks and licks, rolling over and nipping at the back of his shirt, hoping to avoid a scolding.
Once upon a time, we lived in that cloud-furred treehouse Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls flow. Maybe it was only for an evening, or the length of a paddle stroke through churning river, or the width of a felt line across the blank page. We have lived there.
It has been so long.
We stand up together, the dog stretching upright and nosing our shins. We consider the easel, we take the measure of a bucket of markers.
We remember.
As we edge our way back to that recollection, we lean into its threshold and touch our fingers to the empty place where the door should be.
He removes the red cap. I, the blue.
Like Harold with his purple crayon, we draw the door open.
It has a sound.
The dog with her ears cocked hears it too.
It is the way you know in the forest that water is near.
It is the way you move towards it.
It sounds like sighs. It sounds like Here.
Come here.
Last night, I danced at my cousin’s wedding. Danced like a toddler does, right up front.
Like this.
I’m guessing everyone else out there enjoyed Sara Bareilles’ music video for “Brave” at some point in the past two years. I just today discovered it on About Face, a website promoting positive body image.
Just as she intends, Bareilles’ video shivers open a smile that leaks tears.
—
Remember the game you used to play in the doorway? You stand facing out and press the backs of your hands hard against the doorjamb. You push there, muscles working, and count. Twenty, thirty, one hundred. Then you step out, and after a breath, marvel as they rise.
As if invisible threads.
As if a secret deal to suspend the laws of physics.
For most of the hours in most of the days, I push hard against something. The clock, a hunger, my doubts, someone’s needs.
The deadline breathing fierce at the base of my skull.
The flashing cursor, the buzzing phone.
The undertow.
It seems a whole life becomes this pressed angle, wedged here in a narrow doorway. I barely recall the name for air.
Until song calls me out, and shows me again the secret to tricking gravity.
The dog’s anxiety has escalated to self-harm. She’s not burning herself with cigarettes, although once her toes can work the lighter, all bets are off. For now, her injuries are of the indirect variety. Her daylong bouts of howling shred her throat, leaving her hoarse and coughing through the evening. Between yelps, she thrusts her head repeatedly against her crate, bending the bars and tearing strips of flesh off her snout and cheeks. We come home to bleeding gashes and hysteria.
The vet is tapering her off one prescription and starting her on another. We have the number of an animal behaviorist who specializes in unique temperaments. New approaches could take several weeks to sort out, and new behavior far longer to establish.
At the beginning of the highest pressure work month I’ve faced in five years, I’m now the proud owner of a dog that can’t be left alone. Continue reading “15. Things I Can Hazard: Deep Fat Frying”
Shannon E. Williams 