week four
June polaroids, photo: Danny Gurung
A tug on the wire and the bus rambles to a stop. You weave through the aisle and find yourself almost home, you find yourself almost. Up the hill you walk, each foot throbbing in its sneaker. It’s getting late, in the day and, these days, in life. That’s how it feels. Work crushed you, responsibility misplaced your truth, every customer left the store with their purchases and a little bit of you. And maybe there’s not much left.
You pass the supermarkets, the houses that all look the same, the creek you used to wade in. You could draw this map with your eyes closed. That hurts. Because weren’t you going to get out of here? Go somewhere, do something, be somebody? But you’re still here, still no one. The cars roll by. The sky hangs gray.
There’s a turn now up ahead, a choice to make: cut through the field or cut through a neighbourhood. Your legs won’t stop moving, you have to tell them where to go. Both ways take twenty minutes, for the first time today time doesn’t matter, it’s about what you want. When did that become such a hard question?
So you choose, the field. The signal to set course whines down to the bones of your feet and they pivot left. We’re doing this. The creature in you smiles. The air changes now carrying the scent of dirt and wheat and yesteryear. Maybe that’s only leftover carbon from the fires. To the left there’s the new development they’re building. Like cells of sickness, houses and asphalt eat their way into the hillside. New families will move in soon, not thinking of the prairie dogs that were sucked up into tubes and dumped somewhere else.
Farther you go to where the sidewalk ends. It’s time you enter the tall grass, rejoin the game of things. There on the wind is the fizz of summer. There in the brush is a soft, secret path made by other animals and wanderers, you happen to be both so now it’s your turn to walk the split.
As your foot meets dirt there’s a miracle. All before you light, golden light paints itself across the world. With your back turned, the sun’s made his magic. The stalks are lit with wonder. The fields burn with beauty and you find yourself not on the prairie but in the palm of some greater mother, a part again of a life that started before you got here and will keep running along after you leave. In fewer words, it’s all enough.
You don’t turn around to look at the sky, why would you now that you’ve found your way back. It’s only a few dozen more steps until home. You toss your bag over your shoulder because it’s not so heavy anymore not to you, the wild, warm, unbreakable you. Before you open the door to the house with no air conditioning, you linger on the crumbling porch. There on the door you see your profile painted in shadow, the face you’ve seen smile and cry and crack. There will be broken promises and blistered thumbs and other shames big and small but you’ll get on with it.
You don’t know very much but you don’t need to know very much to make it to tomorrow. So breathe deep, right now, make sure there’s still some of today left in your lungs.
- Danny Gurung
Too many choices, Louise Tate, 2021, oil on linen, 71.5 x 61 cm.
Photo: Matt Stanton. Courtesy of the artist and Jan Murphy Gallery.
Memories bleed in and out of one another like thick, oozing honey.
My mother’s voice sounds distant, as if she already left some moments ago. Her voice is carried by a passing breeze.
Footsteps squelch and crunch. Dry leaf, wet mud.
Thud thud.
We move along.
Back in the small cottage that is home, raindrops spatter on unsecured roof tiles. The air is damp in my nose, tingles fine hairs as I inhale. One, two. Crumbs of almond fingers lay in a blue ceramic saucer. Bustling around, my mother puts the coffee pot on the gas-lit stove. Her movements are made with a keen awareness of where each body part is at any given moment.
Click click.
Her shoes clip the tiled floor. She is elegant in her domesticity, clean hair pinned up. Faintly soggy woollen garments. I am not yet old enough to fathom the clumsy movements of my own two feet. I gurgle in an attempt for attention.
Pitter, patter, goes the rain.
The sky slowly darkens.
It’s late now, soft street lamplight and the bedtime noises of the night. I am small, wrapped up in coloured blankets, settled in amongst soft furnishings of cushions and a stuffed koala bear. The night stars call me, are always calling.
Join us.
The only sound of the house is a constant dripping. Coffee sluggishly dribbles down the stovetop, the oven door, to fall, drip drop, onto the kitchen floor.
Drip drop, it goes.
I lift myself up out of comfy confines. Body rising through air, in slow motion like bread dough rising. Blankets fall away, unprepared (or unwilling) to leave the familiarity of the home. I continue floating upwards.
Small body floats over cradle, pinewood chair, through window, through air. Outwards and upwards, like the crescendo of a symphony orchestra, I rise to meet my far-off audience.
Now I am small, a black speck amongst the skyscape of the shimmering night. I join the stars and don’t look back, for fear of falling.
- Louise Tate
Field Studies, Gyun Hur, 2010, watercolor and pencil on paper. Courtesy of the artist.
Did I not tell you that as soon as you cross the border, he is going to suck you into his belly and spit you out, and that you will be in need of another sanctification that will take hundreds of years?
Did I not tell you that thick greenery holds and turns his inequities into an unredeemable subject matter?
Do you not remember?
You have written thousands of words wishing for your love from homeland to return, yet, 그님은 돌아오시진 않고, your spirit keeps getting tamed by his smoke and cross that linger above you.
Morning fog, steam sauna, blurry tears engulf your vision, so
You leave as soon as you can.
You get an invitation to come further South to make love, but you refuse as your body throbs from the night before. And you flee upward.
You arrive to this little place people call god’s land.
A bird flies over and asks you if you want to take a walk in her garden.
She takes you around and tells you stories from faraway long ago, and you forget yourself.
She hands you a bowl of water filled with 茉莉花 petals.
You close your eyes and sprinkle your forehead with two, three drops of jasmine scented water.
That blessed water saves you from damnation according to this ancient myth I wrote on behalf of you.
Praise this bird named 鳳 that has come with swift wind like holy spirit.
So go on, you will be alright.
Splash yourself with blessed water, and go on about another day.
You will be alright.
- Gyun Hur
View from a garden in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Photo: Gyun Hur