Scraps

I live on the dirty side of town. Spring is so yellow you choke on it, and winter is nothing but a brittle latticework of dust. Most women sweep their porches on Saturday mornings, but by nightfall, a light jacket of dirt has already resettled. If your dress is even a little too long on Sunday morning, you have to pick it up as you pass through the porch. Otherwise, the hem is brown or gray before you can even get to church.

No one knows why either. Some say it has to do with all the trees and animals around here, they blame it on mossy shrubs and rooster droppings. Others think its because this neighborhood is so old. A respectable women, who died a couple decades ago now, started telling her friends that 90% of dust is just sloughed-off skin cells. She never said anything about the shedding of humans, but that’s the way rumors work I guess. Now most people believe this area is dirty because there are so many unsettled ghosts, lingering in the grass, riding on the backs of flies and bees, and lolling across the threads of cobwebs that materialize out of thin air inside their houses. 

Mr. Hal Baker was sitting on his porch this morning when I walked by with the Saturday paper and a cup of coffee. He returned my wave, but something felt amiss. Usually Mr. Hal will stand up when a woman passes by, because, “Well its just plain respect, son,” he told my brother once, in a tone that seemed to scold him for even needing to ask why.

If its early in the day, Mr. Hal will make sure you had a good night’s rest, and then ask your opinion on whatever was happening in New York (he subscribed to The Times and seemed to think the whole world was encapsulated in that one city). If you met Mr. Hal sometime in the evening, he’d make sure you hadn’t worked too hard that day and would have a decent dinner. To be honest, Mr. Hal has never seemed very real to me. More like a Saint Nicolas who can’t perform miracles, but still wants peace on earth. So when he didn’t inquire about my sleeping patterns or the news up north, I knew something was bothering him.

Turns out, Mrs. Baker had decided to start her Saturday cleaning two hours early, shoving dust all around the kitchen while he was trying to read his paper, spraying Clorox all over the bathroom while he was trying to comb his hair, then yelling about which rooms he could and could not walk through cause she was sweeping now and wouldn’t have him tracking stuff all through the house before she could even get to the mop.

Mr. Hal tried to stay out of her way, to give her the time and space she seemed to need for cleaning, and so he went out on the porch. A brown thrasher was singing in the tree above. He sat in the rocking chair and had just settled into a rhythmic sway when she exploded through the screen door with her straw broom. ”This time,” he told me, “I decided to just stay put,” which meant he would have to endure her fury about something that she would never understand, something that looked like an anxiety about dirt but had nothing at all to do with dirt. 

A strong wind blew back and forth through the porch, so that the loose earth Mrs. Baker was trying to sweep away was thrown right back at her, as if bouncing off an imaginary wall. She glanced over at Mr. Hal in a way that she hoped would lift him from the rocking chair and carry him back into the house. But he knew that she was only humiliated, so he stayed and said nothing. 

Her hands tightened around the stick of wood, she swatted at the porch until her back crackled in revolt. But it didn’t help— the wind thickened, as if she was whipping it up like egg whites into meringue. After a while, her arms went limp and she let out a sigh so guttural it sounded more like a grunt. Mr. Hal stood, moved toward the door, but just before entering said, “Don’t you think you’re fighting a hopeless battle?” He didn’t wait for a response, or even look her in her direction, knowing that she wouldn’t want him to. She didn’t.

Moments later, she came back into the house, doing the same thing to her wooden floors that she’d done to the porch, now with the mop instead of a broom, against an oscillating fan instead of the wind. When I walked by their house this morning, Mr. Hal had just come back out to the porch. There was nothing he could say or do for her, but its not like he came into this blindly either. “Her papa gave me fair warning,” he said inside of a long sigh. “He made sure I was there one Saturday morning to see the same cleaning routine seize Mrs. Baker’s mother like a demonic spirit.” 

I told him that I was real sorry, that I just couldn’t imagine Mrs. Baker acting that way. She’d always been so warm and charming, doing the most thoughtful things for people. “Oh, she’ll be fine, she’ll be fine,” he assured. 

I thought that I should probably get going, I didn’t want to catch Mrs. Baker in a bad moment, and plus, the coffee cup in my hand no longer felt very warm. But before I could excuse myself, Mr. Hal bent forward and looked straight at me. His eyes were all alit and a smile had spread across this face. “After mopping,” he said, “all that’s left to do is shake out the rugs.”

(2008)

Posted at 11:51pm and tagged with: two column,.

3 emigrants meet at twilight on a subway platform to walk to a Swedish cemetery. Today is Alla Helgons Dag, and they will participate in it together. 1 is Puerto Rican, 1 is a German who watched the wall fall from the east side of Berlin, and 1 is a Native American from southern Alabama. 1 lost his father 9 years ago, 1 lost her job 2 weeks ago, and 1 lost her family name 3 generations ago. There have been many other losses too, of course. And while drifting around thousands of graves alit with candles, inhaling the somber harmony of choirs, the calls to reflect upon the expired lives of family members and friends, the Puerto Rican, German, and Native American thought of their personal losses, for they did not know a single soul in any cemetery in the whole nation of Sweden.

They hadn’t intended or even expected to think of personal losses, only to participate in the cultural experience. The German begins to feel bad. Shouldn’t we try and think of the Swedes? she asks herself. This is their event after all. The Puerto Rican thinks the same thing, and it is easy for him to direct this mind onto something that he is not connected to in any way, for this is precisely what he’d been doing since his father died. But the Native American cannot detect their thoughts, nor had it ever crossed her mind, which is too crowded with amazement. That loss was so ubiquitous, that the grave looks the same here as anywhere and that no matter where you walk this earth, you walk atop the dead. For the German, there was remorse and condolences. For the Puerto Rican, blurry pain and detachment. For the Native American, harmony. 

Where am I going with all of this, you ask? 

I’m going to the first floor apartment of an Irishman. Because after setting their flickering candles at the feet of three unlit graves, they followed the steps of an Australian friend whom they’d bumped into on the subway platform. For the Australian, this event was merely the prelude to a party. She called an Irish friend who lives just 2 blocks from the cemetery’s back gate. He invited them over for a whiskey, and they walked down a long curvy finger of the cemetery, through the back gate, turned right, went 2 blocks and knocked on a red door. But a man from the outskirts of Dublin did not answer the door. It was his Finnish roommate. 

The German, Native American, Puerto Rican, Australian, Irishman and Finn form a circle in the living room with their whiskies. Conversation is slow at first, chit-chatty, until the whisky glasses are refilled with gin and a bowl of chips are brought out, if you want to call them chips. The Irishman did, though they aren’t made from potatoes nor are they of normal size. They’re as big as my hand, thinks the German who puts hers back into the bowl, it must be an Irish decoration. Oh its green kale, exclaims the Finn. I’ve baked kale like this before. These aren’t baked actually, they’re dehydrated, the Irishman says then announces that 2 Swedes are coming over for dinner. Would anyone like to stay for the meal? There’s plenty of food, but its not cooked. Everyone says yes, they’re in no hurry.

The Swedes arrive, the table is set, everyone sits around it except for the Irishman who goes to the kitchen to prepare the food, course by course, and no matter what it is, whether its sushi, seaweed, sliced bread, mole, pizzas, chocolate cake or ice cream, all of it comes out raw. These foods are alive, he says more than once. Oh great, the Australian thinks to herself, living foods on the day of the dead, someone please pass the wine. The German is concerned too, but more about the Irishman’s raw food diet. The Japenese taught her that one must eat warm, long-simmered foods in cold weather in order to keep a proper body temperature. Why start this diet now, with a 5 month Swedish winter ahead? she wonders. 

Throughout the night, there is talk of the Japanese, the British and the Hungarians, because the German, Australian and Native American have lived in Tokyo, London and Budapest - respectively. The Swedes are particularly keen on talking about the Danes. The Finn knows that they compete with one another, she’s noticed the same tension between the Swedes and Norwegians too, but she has never understood their sibling rivalry, and that’s exactly what it is. The Native American thinks its natural, the Puerto Rican finds it quite amusing, while the German and Australian have no experience in the matter. They ask several questions about Denmark, trying to understand what its like. Is Copenhagen similar to Portland, they ask? Hm, thats an interesting comparison, the others say, then talk it out. The German and Australian gather all of the varying interpretations and piece together their own images of Copenhagen. 

It seems as if the Irishman is listening intently, and he is trying, but he is also thinking of the Blomstedt’s. Earlier the Native American had asked him about James Joyce, then before he could answer, and he was certainly glad that he didn’t have to answer, she suddenly exhaled the word, Blomstedt. That was the name, she recalled. She nearly tripped over the gravestone, because the plot was so small and dark and no one had put a candle there. She wanted to hold her candle till the end of the walk because it was keeping her hands warm, but the little grave seemed so sad. She put her candle down, and that little plot came to life, she told him with bright eyes. Erik and Anna Blomstedt was etched into the stone and nothing else. No dates or prayers or anything. Just Erik and Anna in small letters, Blomstedt in big letters.

The Irishman thought about this while his guests talked of the world, because just that morning he had written a letter to his girlfriend back in Dublin. He wanted her to know that the flowers she sent on his birthday turned green before they died. Instead of turning yellow or brown and dropping its petals one by one, they became green and crisp. For days he wondered if they would bloom and begin to live all over again. 

Unfortunately they died just two days later, but he didn’t say anything about that in his letter. He thought about it, but no, I’ve never been one to state the obvious, he decided in the end. 

Posted at 11:20pm and tagged with: two column,.

Moving Day #3 for the month. Just when we finally settle into one place, our life gets shuffled around for some reason or another. Our new flat is smaller but conveniently located just one floor below our current flat, so the move won’t be bad. Plus, we don’t have much to mvoe. All of our things are still weighing in around 47 lbs. So yes, we’ve amassed one additional pound since arriving in Copenhagen, but we really needed a french press and two coffee mugs.

As I washed last night’s dinner dishes, Fredo went downstairs to begin wiping out cabinets and vacuuming the floors. I joined him when I was done, going from one kitchen straight into another, washing a different set of dishes in an unfamiliar sink. He had Andrew Bird’s Armchair Apocrypha album playing in the speakers. Somewhere between Cataracts and Scythian Empires, I began to remember the night, three years ago now, when I first heard this album.

I was living on 8th Street then. I’d been studying all night and walked up to the 3rd floor attic that was my bedroom at a very early hour of the morning. I should’ve stayed downstairs long enough to brush my teeth, but I didn’t. I needed to unwind from my studies somehow. Music has always been a vital part of me, but never more necessary I don’t think than when I was in grad school. And while crouched beneath the florescent light of a library desk earlier that night, I’d downloaded some new music that I was eager to hear. 

I hit play, and Fiery Crash began. I laid down on the coarse carpet, just beneath the tiny window that held the moon. I was wearing denim jeans and a long-sleeve black shirt. My thoughts were all over the place. I was grief-stricken in those days. 

And now I am here, I thought last night. Cleaning dishes in a tiny kitchen on the small island of Denmark, while my love is scrubbing cabinets in the next room.

I may be able to recall that night three years ago, but I cannot fully return to it. Life has changed, in a way that I could’ve never imagined back then. And so have I as well. 

Posted at 11:29am and tagged with: two column,.