One
Dear Aparna,
As I travel the world and rest in holy places I think of how we try to capture moments. Right now as you look at this photo you are seeing what I saw.
In a way, as you view this picture we become one.
Signed,
Your Love
The Oldest Shipwreck
“All catastrophic events begin with something beautiful.”
“I don’t feel the need to prove this, but I will. On September 11 the sky was the clearest blue. The day of the Tsunami was calm and the air was sweet. I could go on and on but what for?”
“Think about your own personal catastrophes, the ones that began with a kiss…”
Buffalo
On the cool bench I could sit and imagine myself in a landscape of buffalo. The parched orange rusted earth, flat and vast. I only saw a motionless herd huddled close to the glass, but the buffalo sniffed and grazed, their matted fur and heaviness bumping against each other like the sleepy clappers of giant bells. Finally, one peers through the glass and sees me, frozen on a bench. They were alive; I just couldn’t see it. The transparent glass only allowed a view frozen in time. This was the only way we could exist for each other. What I saw were buffalo. Silent. Paralyzed. What the buffalo saw was a still life of a person in thought. Our dioramas were like photographs of something that never happened. It made me wonder if my memories of us were just dioramas seen through the clear glass of my desires.
Drunken Drumbeats
This is a picture of the inside of my chest. That is my heart, alone in its pew. Head bent concentrating on a rhythm of prayers sent out like drunken drumbeats, in hopes you will hear.
Pistachio Powder
Her breath was fragrant with pistachios. She had been shelling them for what felt like hours. My job was to mash them into a fine powder to help her create a sweet concoction of her own invention. Pistachio, rose water, cardamom, those were the main notes of today’s sweets whose fragrant harmony would tint my blood and travel all over my body painting every cell wall with crushed velvety reds and creamy bright greens. Long after we had eaten them, sitting in the hot steam of the shower, we would glow with these smells and even hours later as we slept I could perceive it in the heat between her breasts and palms of her hands.
Because my senses could not let go of her smell I stayed half awake, half in sleep and dreamed that I stood above a blue canal. Blue because it reflected a neon sign, the neon sign was really the entire sky deciding in a short moment if it was day or night. It was a blue green yellow bright as the second after a trumpet blasts loudest note and the pause in a deep sigh when the chest begins to fall.
Again, this reiterated in my mind:
Every second a chest rises and falls,
Every evening a color announces the moment between day and night,
Somewhere, a trumpet blasts.
I awoke suddenly to the sound of my neighbor’s sobs through the bricks of my apartment wall.
Dark Water Tower
The fan had a deep and cycling drone that resonated in my chest and could be mistaken for an ominous sci-fi movie soundtrack. I hummed along with it to its exact note so that no one could distinguish between the sound and me. My sinuses tickled like static until I ran out of breath. Across the aisle sat a portly woman, thick, squat and dressed in black so she looked like the dark water tower that peered over her shoulder through the rain dripped window.
Sense of Speech
It’s hard for me to explain what I was feeling at the house party. My thoughts and senses became one. Everything seemed merged in pairs. The music became one with the light and together they hazed the room in red. The cigarette smoke entangled itself with the scent of lipstick warmed from the pull of her mouth. Someone’s dark hair became the shadow of the Bougainvillea he sat behind. A freshly laundered shirt was tinted with after-dinner coffee and burnt steak.
I was in another one of my states and I was having difficulty getting words out and in. So I mostly kept the wine glass to my lips and pretended my mouth was too full to talk, pretended to hear the words that bounced off me like hail on a windshield.
My ability to speak was definitely impaired but my sense of speech was not. I could feel words without actually hearing them. I looked around the room. A woman lost in possibility, put her long fingers to her lips. A man’s face paused in fear before bursting into laughter. The hairs all over your body are there to hear those moments. Of this I am certain.
Nothing would go unnoticed by me tonight.
There was something soft in her voice and excited in her blood. It was like this, I heard the words through the movements of her body and expressions of her eyes. They ended a sentence by glancing to the side and underlined words by shooting a direct look into my pupils. I was deaf to everything but that. Her place of work was something that lit up her face and engorged a vein near her temple. Talk of family squared her shoulders and opened her chest so I noticed the opal that hung on her neck. The topic of her last love showed me the place where her hair, like a dark ocean ended and the shore of her neck began. I wanted to become stranded there.
Just so you know, I didn’t hear myself either. My words were merely notes to bring her closer and thus know her better. I noticed how a certain subject would make her breasts rise towards me, another would make her eyes glisten; another would make her hands finger the sugar packets on the dinner table. A breath became deeper and in this way, something new would be learned. I wondered what else I could discover when I got close enough to touch her.
14th St.Station
It sounded like storm clouds were caught in the dark tunnel. You see nothing, pitch black. Steel ground to dust now in your nose. Dirt turned to light absorbing darkness.
A small wind began to blow the smell of uptown, through the dusty tube. Like the inside of a syringe the subway pushed billions of piss atoms from 42nd Street which began to push billions of donut atoms from 34th Street. Standing on the 14th street platform I began to smell the steel donuts. “Turn your head, the piss is coming next.”
I said this to Aparna who faced the strengthening breeze with her eyes closed as though she was spraying her face with a sweet mist or acquiring some blissful knowledge from above. “I would hold my breath right about now.” I repeated. It made me laugh but I managed to breath out sharply as the wind and subway car arrived. The large caged fans above us shook. The rumble became a crashing, squealing, screeching agony of metal on metal.
The only ones who can stand it are the deaf teenagers that hang out in the open passageways after school. Dressed in baggy clothes, overstuffed book bags between their legs, they sign to each other animatedly, focusing on each other’s hands and lips. The cacophony vibrating through their bodies add sounds to their signs louder than any human voice.
Guitar Painted Lions
Federico de la Selva sanded his guitars in silence. Well, not exactly silence. There was the rasping sound of soft toothed paper against wood. With even strokes, like a metronome, he would listen closely for the rasp to lessen. But only he could hear it. Maybe he was listening with his hands. I think that’s what he told me. That he would listen with his hands. Yes, I remember now, this is how he knew the wood was ready. I don’t know what kind of wood. It was brought by a small boy who lived in a town with a name that was known only by locals. To find it on a map, you must put your finger on the red star of the city. Now move your finger in a North Easterly direction, over the mountains and stop at the first black dot of the known town. Now follow the thin black line and continue on the thinner line that branches to the south, past the monument, past the overlook, keep sliding, past the dotted green area, past the triangles and arrows. The sound your finger makes is the same sound as the finished rasp. It’s a quiet sound. You can hardly hear it unless you listen with your hands.
The boy who brought the wood came once a month with his father and grandmother. At the bus stop, they would split up, each to sell their wares in different locations of the red starred city. Once, during a particularly rainy season the boy’s harvested wood had tiny holes in it. Federico told the boy that he could not buy the wood because the sound, he explained, would spill out of every little hole... ”Instead of the big one I make in the center, see?” He pointed to his other guitars. As I said, sometimes we can hear things by feeling them and Federico heard the boy’s heart break. This meant he would have no money to bring back to bus stop. Federico bought the wood anyway and made three guitars. They were beautiful, darker somehow, than the rest with a randomness of holes that told a story of worms or insects or something. Something had changed the wood.
The day Federico was ready to string the first guitar, the boy walked in with more wood, this time, pristine and dry. “The guitars! Is the sound spilling out?”
Federico finished stringing. “I don’t know, lets see.” Federico tuned the guitar, turning a peg and flicking a string with his thumb. The sound was a hoarse, introverted cough that started but dampened and instead of flying outward, it ran back inside splitting itself out amongst the little holes. Federico looked up at the boy. This is the part where I walk in. The boy saw me looking at them and said knowingly “The sound is spilling from the little holes instead of the big one.”
“Its beautiful.” I said to the boy, and then I said to the guitar maker, “Hold it closer, try to make your body cover the holes.”
Federico embraced it. First like a baby, then like a lover, then like a long lost friend. And like this he held it tighter and closer covering as many holes as he could with his body. The boy and I helped, a hand here, an arm there. Finally, the guitar could be heard, its vibrations of sound reflecting from our bodies, resonating outward and mingling with our laughter.
Imaginings of the Moon
Among the rooftops we waited. The sky was clear and only the full moon was strong enough to make its presence in the night sky. The stars that dotted the darkness were actually red bulbs from buildings announcing their height or yellow and white windows radiating various intensities of warmth from far away.
We held each other not saying a word, close enough to hear each other's breathing and nothing else so that the city below could have been an ocean ebbing and flowing with our breaths which were slow and smelled sweet. The sky above was a carpet of blue-black silk threads. The moon shone proud and serene as though it had invented this scene. I remember wondering if it was the moon that thought us up.
Stone Quilt
The stone quilt led us to a green door. Matt had told us it was here that we would find the carpets of San Limor. There would be something special about them, he promised.
“Look at the ground, there must be a million different kinds of cement!” Aparna moved ahead like a bloodhound pointing to a blue-gray square, a silver-gray rectangle. All the various shades a gray could take, made up our path like a stone quilt.
In front of the green door, there sat a black man in a white sweatshirt with a tan dog. The dog lunged at us, teeth behind a black leather muzzle.
“We’re here to see Otto.” I said in a hopeful tone.
The man said Otto never said nothing about nobody comin’ to see him. He was polite but stern and I wondered how the hell we were going to get inside.
“What’s your dog’s name?” Aparna asked stepping backwards in exaggerated steps like a mime might do. She smiled that smile of hers and I pulled out my camera. The man smiled too.
“The Business!” He answered and his chin lifted a bit.
“I would love to take a picture of you and The Business.” I said solemnly, raising my camera with two hands like an offering.
The man let me take pictures. He started talking to the air, to the concrete, to us.
“I named him after my ex-wife. She was the business, man! Sweet face, but a mouth like a pit-bull…Mean.‘N stupid too Left me for some fat white man who ran a circus. Fuckin’ bitch ran away, with the circus, can you believe it? Hope she havin’ three-headed babies for the sideshow right about now. That’s what I hope.”
“May she give birth to a 10 pound eggplant!” I added. We all laughed and finally he said he would take us to see Otto inside.
I’ll tell you about Otto and what happened later, but right now I need to leave you with the knowledge that the carpets of San Limor are astounding. Their patterns symmetrical and complex close up, simple and chaotic from afar, viewing them was like breathing in the mathematics of beauty. I wanted to rest on one, to pray on one, to make love on one. Aparna felt the same. It was an urgent feeling and we plotted our secret return that very night.
River of Love
Like Spanish punctuation, Aparna kissed me before and after every sentence. We were going to pick up her saint from the saint repair shop. I didn’t know anything like that existed, but it does.
It was the first cold day. She liked to hold my hand in her coat pocket. No matter how hot it got in there, she insisted on holding it, occasionally squeezing my hand when someone particularly ugly or funny looking walked by. My grandmother had done this too when she was alive. What a coincidence that they both liked to squeeze my hand in silent Morse code. They also had the same name. Guadalupe. My grandmother was Guadalupe from birth; Aparna was christened Guadalupe at age12. They were both named after the apparition of the Virgin Mary that occurred in Mexico in 1531 to an Aztec cow herder. The apparition spoke to this cow herder in his native Nahuatl and it is a common belief that she called herself coatlaxopeuh (pronounced quatlasupe which sounds, of course, like Guadalupe). Coatlaxopeuh means serpent-crusher, thus Guadalupe is often depicted crushing snakes under her feet.
What I find most interesting though, is that the first sanctuary to a dark skinned saint called Guadalupe, affectionately dubbed “La Morenita” (the Moorish or dark-skinned) is found on the banks of a river in Spain. This river, used by the Moors during their reign over half of the earth was named by them “Wad-i –al -Hub” (The River of Love), if you say it fast and with a good Arabic accent it sounds like Guadi –al –ube ---Guadalupe.
Treasures of the World Lost and Found
Treasures of the World Lost and Found
In case you are wondering, this is a map of shipwrecks and excavations across the globe. My eyes are resting now on the Sadana Island wreck.
The ship carried fragrant resins, incense, Chinese porcelain, raw coffee beans, cardamom, coriander, nutmeg and black pepper. An unusual amount of coconuts were also found in large storage jars.
Think now upon such a ship, her wooden deck warm with sun or wet with rain, sounds of bare feet or sandals or boots I don’t know I wasn’t actually there. I only have bits and pieces of the truth. And isn’t this how it always is? Maybe it was at night and the stars shifted. Or maybe the coral reef grew at a phenomenal rate since the last time the captain sailed these waters. Maybe, after a particularly fine meal laden with said spices, a storm blew in and the crew was just too full to do anything about it. Or maybe there was no storm at all, maybe everyone had fallen asleep at the same time, lulled by the incense in the air, the rocking of the ship, the rhythmic creaking of wood on wood and sonorous lapping that echoed in the last hollow nooks of an otherwise overstuffed hull. Maybe none of these things happened.
I do know, for sure, that she ran aground on a coral reef in the Red Sea somewhere between Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Are you curious what happened? I was, but now that I know, I just can’t believe it.
There are many things we may never know fully because we only have bits and pieces of all out lies and half-truths. That’s what I found. That the surface is one thing but don’t make the same mistake I made. There is always something or someone that lies beneath. The truth is. I ran aground before I set eyes on the island. And I felt it before it actually happened. It’s hard for me to admit but something was off. I suddenly felt my weight. The water lost its depth until gravity drowned my weightlessness. So beautiful from above the reefy bitch scratched my underbelly like a thousand razors and ripped out my heart of coconuts and coriander. The water that rushed in was my blood pouring out. My bow pointing towards land, my body parallel to the reef, I slid into the sand and leaned on my left side for eternity.
Waiting On Lines
I looked up at this very sun and thought about winter. Do you know where I was? I don’t remember where I was. I only remember the line for milksweets, and looking at this sun, and remembering a line from a poem I wrote some time ago.
I don’t know if anyone saw my lips move as I said to myself:
“A circle of setting sun slowly bleeding saffron”.
I repeated it and stared until a blue cirlce appeared every time I blinked. My eyes hurt. This sun was the poem come to life. It reminded me of that love. I whispered the line again to myself. So, our love was like a setting sun. Now I got it. I wished I had seen it then.
Just then, and this is God’s truth in my memory which is often cloudy, or maybe not cloudy but more like the mist that hangs about rooftops on Sherlock Holmes’ nights.
Someone walking behind me shouted :
“They’re liars, those who say I lost the moon!”
I decided I would be a thief, made it my line and remembered another...this sunset was full of remembered poetry. Thats what happens when your heart is broken.
“Noone saw the moon that bled in my mouth”
Just then, and this is God’s truth in my memory which is often cloudy, or maybe not cloudy but more like the mist that hangs about rooftops on Sherlock Holmes’ nights.
someone walking behind me sang :
kabhii kabhii mere dil me khayaal aata hai
Sometimes the thought crosses my mind
ki jaise tujhko banaaya gaya hai mere li'e
that you've been made just for me.
tuu ab se pehale sitaaro me bas rahii thii kahii
Before this, you were dwelling somewhere in the stars;
tujhe zamiin pe bulaaya gaya hai mere li'e...
you were summoned to earth just for me...
kabhii kabhii mere dil me khayaal aata hai...
Sometimes the thought crosses my mind
I decided I would be a thief, made it my line and remembered another...this sunset was full of remembered poetry. Thats what happens when you live in a poem.
Sometimes the thought crosses my mind:
our love was like a setting sun
a circle of setting sun
slowly bleeding saffron
Sometimes the thought crosses my mind:
our love was like a full moon
they’re liars those who say I lost the moon
noone saw the moon that bled in my mouth.
Incalculable Distance
“The mind is like Times Square at noon.”
I thought about that as I captured the picture. I caught it just in time. Just before the wedding photographer leaned too hard against the white and red bear that adorned the hood of the stretch limo. Just before the groom, realizing his bride was fixed upon a far away place, turned his head to face the camera instead.
“The heart is like a cave in the Himalayas.”
That was my next thought. Then I tried some calculations. Even though math had never proved anything for me, I tried it: If the mind is Times Square and the heart is somewhere, in a cave, in the Himalayas....approximate latutudes and longitudes..... ... God, I could really be concrete sometimes....
Finally, I announced to myself: “The distance between the mind and the heart is around 6284.721820 nautical miles. This accounts for the poor communication between the two.”
Times Square’s lights briefly increased in luminence and the number echoed in the cave into silence.
My Guru, who was training me to concetrate on the cave, had dubbed me Lakshmi. I preferred to spell it with an X. Laxmi. I felt this spelling described me better because I had always felt like a pirate’s map. There I was behind the X bursting over with lotus and coins, for a long time, waiting to be found.
Aparna, calling out to me by my catholic name (she preferred it), tossed a bottle of water and picnic blanket into the back of the car and blew me a kiss.
“That's exactly how I want our wedding...” she said sarcastically. “...white gloves and all!”
I smiled. “You know what they say baby, no glove no love.”
“Yes, and you can’t have manslaughter, without laughter”.
That one took me a minute. But as I laughed, I realized my cave was warm.
The heart is like a cave in the Himalayas and every once in a while someone comes and lights a bonfire in the middle of it. Today, there was no distance to measure.
I didn’t try to calculate the speed with which someone could pull everything away and disappear, as it involves the height and age of about 30 gypsies,the girth of tree stumps and the weight of wet canvas. Plus, I didn’t need to calculate anymore.
But still, I could remember what it felt like to be laying two inches from someone approximately 6284.721820 nautical miles somewhere else. The picture proves it.
Diwali
I remember how I waited for her under the long empty passageway that led to the church. For awhile it was just me and the balloon man. All at once, the parishioners arrived and the dirt floor was up around our heads in light puffs of sepia, turning the rays of afternoon sun into visible beams that children tried to grasp with their hands. She had wanted to celebrate her saint’s day. I hated catholic mass. So we compromised. This is why today, she helps me wash the windows, make sweets and light candles in preparation for Diwali. Days later she will vacuum what is left of the Rangoli I am so fond of creating outside our door.
I remember when she finally appeared from the end of the sunlit promenade in a light green silk sari trimmed in golden thread that caused the rays of light to gather around her head in a crown of stars. Her name was Aparna but she had been baptised at the age of 12, as Guadalupe.
She looked amazing and I felt pitifully under-dressed.
“Why are you wearing a sari?” I asked her in hindi.
“So you can take it off later.” she replied in spanish.
We loved our native tongues in each others mouths.
Two Months Ago
Accordion music was coming from the center of the Spidermachine. As the legs slowly heaved upward, the music oozed and stretched out like taffy. At the apex of the stretch, with all the children now high up above their parents, perhaps even, the farthest they have ever been, or felt they have been from their mothers and sunday fathers...high above and far away... it was at this critical and existentially lonely point in their tiny lives, that the music would suddenly freeze and the legs would make a quick and violent jerk up-down-up-down. Tongues bitten, breath lost, the music would restart louder than before, popping, sputtering and gurgling on the way down in a false and mocking empathy with the children’s tragic wails. This went on over and over again. I must’ve stood there and watched it happen a dozen times, or at least until i finished my ice-cream cone. The tatooed carny got progressively gruffer and short-tempered with his little customers. I guessed he felt hurt and unappreciated. When he was that age, he would’ve given anything to get away from his folks. Anything. He would’ve enjoyed those few moments, high above and far away and wished it would last forever.
Aparna waved in the distance by the fat and shirtless cotton candy guy. His belly slowly turning the same pink as the candy in the August sun.
Missing Saraswati
The party was in Kensington, another up and coming neighborhood in Brooklyn. It was close to the ocean and although the streets refrained from oceanic names, the underwater theme was found in the most unusual places.
The party was loud and much was spilled on its marble floors.
Everything inside the apartment, like the hammerhead shark in the foyer, was old but perfectly preserved.
Aparna’s grandmother had recently died and left her the place, so Aparna was the only new and beauiful thing in there. I know, I know, she is a person and not a thing... but she awakens all my artistic sensibilities, such that when I see her lying on the couch all I see is form and color. A piece of sculpture lying heavily on overstuffed leather. That is, until she opens her eyes and smiles at me. Then all she does is defy gravity.
Aparna is long limbed, long haired, everything about her is long and flowing like a dark river.
“Are you the missing Sarasvati?”
That was the first thing i said to her. I thought comparing her to the once mythical river that flowed from the Himalayas into the Ganges and one day mysteriously disappeared, was a good idea.
It wasnt.
“No, i’m Aparna. Sarasvati went out to buy cigarettes.”
The music, as I said, was loud.
Many days later I would explain my come-on into the very softest part of Aparna’s ear. She insists I whisper the events of my day, any wishes, and all prayers into this area. The vibrations of my voice make her legs coil around me like a snake, and in her grip I reveal myself to the oracle behind her ear.
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