Time Spent With Saints

I'm thinking about this art project: I take photographs of all the friends I have made here in Merida and I colour in their complexions adding characteristics to their faces and clothing to suggest people of African and Asian descent. I title the piece: What I wish I could add to our friendship.

I miss diversity.

I am standing in line for a dance performance in San Francisco called Seed Language presented by Embodiment Project a Hip Hop Dance Troupe. All around me, so many I feel I am in a sea, are every kind of coloured one can imagine. Asian Blacks. White Blacks. Chinese Blacks. Norwegian looking Blacks. Jewish Blacks. Blacks the colour of honey, Black Blacks, all Happy Gorgeous Blacks, some seemingly ten feet tall.

I feel short. Short and old. I didn't grow up with such a sea of diversity. I am envious. I want to touch each and every person I see; they all seem to have a texture; I want to know what they feel like. A part of me is resentful they are not all my friends. No one looks uncertain or out of place. I stare way too long. I can't take my eyes off all this gorgeousness. I am staring too because never in my life have I had so many people to look at that look like me. I wonder what year it was that all this mixing went on? It wasn't in 1959. If I woke up tomorrow and the world was left with hordes of the mixed, I wouldn't be sad. Me? I have a constant bellyache. It's constant. Everyday without diversity feels slightly sad to me. Sad and without salt for the savoury.

I'm shuffled through the airport by a Vietnamese man who takes me curbside where I am picked up by a Chinese man and driven home. I arrive to her house and a Mezuzah awaits a rub.

He shares his stories of being degraded because he is imagined to be Mexican, he fights to not be seen as the Filipino help. We commiserate often on our encounters with those that feel free to unleash their rage on our ethnicities. When we have to fight to be seen as on par with another, it is the fight that lays waste to our right to grieve or just be. There are much too many distractions thrown in the way of the coloured. So many that we often don't get to live our own lives for we are always having to attend to the demands of others.

I have gone to the west coast to attend a memorial service and then to see a woman whose love saw me all the way through adolescence. A he and a she. He is my age and grieving the death of his lifelong partner. She is seventy and I have to look hard to see how she has changed. She ticks off the list of her changes, and I do believe her, but I can't see it. I have not seen he or she in ages but things begin again as though not a day has passed since we embraced last. I love them both deeply.

He was unsure of how a house guest would impede upon his grief. Grief needs space and the right to act out. Grief most of all never has the wherewithal to explain. He was worried that I might not remember to listen. He fretted that his sudden need to cry or yell might make me run away. He worried that he might need to tell me to go and that I may never come back. He worried that I had forgotten somehow to keep up with his needs after all these years apart. He doesn't know that when I snuck into his room to watch him sleep that I could tell that his moments of sleep would see him through. I watched him sleep, exhausted from grief. He is not losing; he is in recovery mode.

He tucks me into a fluffy bed next to my very own nightlight that looks like the one pictured here, which comes from my home and which his eye picked out too somewhere along the line. On the music system is Joni Mitchell, the very last thing we sang along together to when last we were together. Everything is as it should be.

Like damp wax, pliable and warm, I can recall these moments with eyes shut and a breath taken deeply.

She asked me if I might enjoy going to the museum. I thought I might cry. I was feeling thankful that she had reminded me of something I had wanted to do. Look at art. My eyes feel starved for the visions of others. What else is art if not that? An opinion set down. I saw a painting of Hung Lius' grandfather,  Liu Weihua, a botanist of rare plants found in a specific mountainous region, Qian Shan, which is located in northeastern China. The painting it titled, The Botanist. I wondered what he might have been thinking with such a gaze? He in traditional garb staring back at his much more modern granddaughter. The painting made me realize I'd never known any of my grandparents and what a treasure she had knowing and capturing hers for all the world to see.

Hung Lui's grandfather

I saw a huge network of dream catcher like things all tied together like a fence stretching way over my head and so far left and right that I couldn't embrace it. I wondered what the artist wanted to catch in there. Were the dreams so big they needed a bigger net to catch them or was the intricate work necessary to produce such a thing symbolic of what one misses when one is so caught up in details. A dream catcher gone mad? Or maybe it was a constellation in the sky.

Dream Catcher at a distance. 

It's funny how things look from afar and when you get up close the details add to your impression. I would never have guessed that bells were a part of the piece or that the bells stuck out from the piece itself. Maybe it was a detail from a circuit board. It's the kind of piece that always makes me think: That's what mania looks like; it's a map of someones insanity.

I saw German art, post war, struggling with what it means to go on living on land that is charred and black with the dust of the dead. I saw artists try to delete that history with an architecture that is much too suspiciously devoid of warmth. All of it was dark and troubled or cold and simply devoid. They need to be revisited often, these Germans, because they will work through it all in time. I saw maps of San Francisco, Rio de Janeiro and London. Everything a sight for sore eyes.

A young Japanese artist, Sohei Nishino, has traveled to various cities around the world, taken copious

dream catcher up close

dream catcher from side

amounts of photographs of the cities from every imaginable angle and then recreated a map of said city from his photographs. They are collages that need to be seen to understand just how intricate they really are. I've included Rio de Janeiro here but you must get close and look closely at his maps as each photograph is no larger than a postage stamp and yet he has created not only the texture of a city but also the attractions, the energy and the various neighbourhoods as well as the infrastructure of a given city. He has created quite a work which really should be seen if given the chance.

I think perhaps my two favourite pieces were abstract. The first was a piece by a young artists Elliott Hurdley. I like Kandinsky-like colour and movement so my eye was drawn to his piece. From a distance the piece looked like a painting or water colour but as one gets in close you can see that it is under a Plexiglas box and that what you thought was just a painting on a flat surface is actually 3 dimensional

Rio de Janeiro

Elliott Hundley

and that part of the colour you are looking at is elevated off the painting itself and affixed to straight pins. I like intricate and gorgeous; things that don't cause me to fixate on one point. I am drawn to art that can be contemplated eternally or simply cheers my spirits. Hundley does both.

There was also a very interesting film installation that I would guess went on for a good half hour. You'd enter a dark room and there were four

Close up of Rio

Hundley side view

monitors showing a slightly delayed image of the same thing. You could see and hear sound but it was all sound that came from the surrounding area, (road traffic, feet crunching on gravel, water running, and feet walking on wood), there were no voices. None of the shots allowed me to identify where I was and on a personal note I tend to never look at the informational blurb pertaining to a piece of art until after I have decided for myself what it is, or I am at a complete loss as to what I am looking at and need a little help. Many people entered the room, read the blurb and immediately left; they decided they didn't want to see, didn't need to see, or thought they understood what they might see. More people left than stayed which caused me to feel a determination to stay put and see it through. I am glad I did. I am not sure whether I should say what I saw now, or wait until I describe what I saw first for just like there, it is a subject that causes people to leave, shut down or choose to dismiss.

What I saw were groups of people streaming along obviously going or coming from somewhere. Their attire was everyday, and children were present. The dominant sound was of footsteps. When the monitor changed it was to signal where we, the viewer, was going next. What we were shown was ordinary and completely nondescript. The people which we did see did not seem to linger anywhere and instead seemed to go through the place like they were disappointed somehow. Like they wanted to see something more. And as me, the third viewer, (camera-artist, people in film, and me the third viewer), I too wondered what there was to see. And finally with an almost exasperated look a man looks around and the camera pans back and you know where you are: In some sort of former concentration camp. What is fascinating about this installation is how utterly disappointed everyone looks as they are looking around. At times they look disinterested. They do not look like one would think a person would look in such a place with such a horrid history. The piece was part of an installation titled Film as Place and the place was Dachau. The blurb says the visual walk we are taken on, (artist Beryl Korot), is the same walk that prisoners would have walked, entering the prison, sleeping in barracks and ending in a gas chamber. There has been long discussion about whether or not these former concentration camps should be left to rot and fall by the wayside rather than kept in pristine shape so that tourists can visit. After viewing this film I'd have to say they should be left to rot. There is nothing terrible left to see (they've been scrubbed and restored) and therefore it's not a tool for teaching anything least of which is to never forget because there is nothing to see which makes it all forgettable. The facial expressions of those in the barracks actually seemed to look disappointed. Like they thought they'd actually get to see a living ghost or a person rail thin with hollowed out eyes. I think there is something odd about wanting to go to these types of places. When I discussed it with her, she surmised that people perhaps did so to feel closer to someone they may have lost. This I understand. It is a giant graveyard which is the last place some people know their family to have been. But me going there? No. It seems incredibly disrespectful for me, who only knows about Dachau from a book or TV to go and stare and gawk at a place when the living links are still in recovery. I feel the same way about Ground Zero. I have had two people ask me to go there, wanted me to take them there and I thought to myself: For what? That's a graveyard of grief. I show my respect by not going and keeping my prayers silent. That's hallowed ground not a place for the casual tourist.

I recently saw a documentary about Van Gogh's ear. Vincent's studio was destroyed in the war and where ii once was there now sits a small park and a different building. Historians, people who dig through old paper and books, will always be able to find a Dachau or Auschwitz. And when they dig it up years later they will remind us of the old, the past, with new words and with a new insight and that refreshed reminder is much more impactful that a daily drudge through something taking up a huge space but which no one sees any longer.

The other work which I liked immensely was by a Swedish artist, Jockum Nordström, titled Now The Sleeping Country. I liked it because it was clean, simple and reminded me of what Swedish,

Now the Sleeping Country

Norwegian, Lapland landscapes often look like in film. Clean and linear with wonderful wood touches seen in furniture and nature. Its balance intrigues me as well; the colour, the objects, everything was balanced in a folk-art kind of way.

When I landed in San Francisco it felt odd to take a right turn rather than a left, heading south to Palo Alto to my father's home. I imagine by now not even his ghost is there. In another odd way it felt more adult to be heading somewhere else other than to him. It's what children do once their parents are gone; they go elsewhere. Everything looks the same except I don't see the It's It billboard but she later tells me that this confection is still being made which gives me relief in an odd way.

Later she and I cross over the bridge in her hybrid car heading for Oakland. The dashboard constantly telling us: all pistons go. It is the second time I am in such a car during this trip. I feel like the west coast will be the first to grow missing limbs. They take this futuristic environmental stuff seriously. I'm embarrassed to say I haven't caught up yet. We are headed to a conference titled: Psychotherapy and Social Justice: A Dialogue on Othering and Belonging which is presented by john a. powell. This soft spoken man said oodles of interesting things.

Racism is a social construct. The more I think about that phrase, 'social construct,' the more I understand how small and un-evolved we truly are. Race is a social construct too so if we are practicing racism we are really practicing a delusion we insist upon. For we as a society, not to take ourselves to task on this, really says a lot about who we are versus who we want to believe ourselves to be. I am struck deeply that psychotherapy is gathering data, and asking therapists to dig deeper into self and other bringing into private, (therapuetic), dialogue issues of race and all its impact upon the body both physical and psychically. I am reminded, years ago, of the therapist who told me I was a liar and asked me to go, when I revealed a truth that she found too upsetting or imagined never existed.

Both she and he seemed to be going at a pace much different from the pace I keep in Mexico. I can't say it was a quicker pace but it seemed a tad more fraught with stress; it was busier than my life. He and I went out to eat at various little dives and I wonder if he knew how my heart swelled with each bite. He has this ability to find the cheapest most tasty places to eat and when we were wee and hadn't a nickel between us he always had us eating like royalty at two for one joints. He is one of those people that doesn't need to ask what I might want: Off we will go for a drive in the country and it's perfect. Here we go to a second hand store and there I find everything I need. Here we stop to eat and it's just when I've noticed I am hungry. He and I have always been in tune this way and I feel swollen, big love for him that this part of our friendship remains intact.

She is generous. She takes me to a Japanese restaurant that I still find myself a laugh shy of hysterical when I think of it. I still can't figure out if she really liked the experience herself or whether she chose the place because of its proximity and ease. Once we were seated she described the place as being 'for foodies'. Now if I tell you I am a foodie I simply mean I love and appreciate good food and may have eaten or be open to eating a more exotic fare. I've Googled the word foodie and it doesn't seem to differ in meaning from my definition but doing so also brings up heaps of articles about why that word should be put to pasture. On the wall of the restaurant where instructions on how to eat your food, specifically what side of the sushi should be placed on your tongue first (fish side) and that you'd be well advised to put the whole thing in your mouth at once rather than bite in to it. On the menu were specific threats pertaining to certain menu items warning you that if you asked for any additional condiments, specifically soy sauce, you would be told to bugger off. The food was ushered to our table by two members of the Rockettes who then, to my disbelief, give instructions to us on how to eat what we've just ordered - something better than hand to mouth?  I took a look over at the sushi chef, the man responsible for this madness, and there he was, looking ill humoured as he oversaw us, we masticating morons who would never get this chewing business into the Zen zone he so fervently dreamt for all of us. I have never wanted to ask for ketchup more than then.

She mentored me when I was wee. I think she may be the first person I ever loved. She who stepped in and took over for the birth mother who could not cope. I loved her then and I think there are many components to me that are fashioned after her. She was my heroine. It is she that I gazed upon and trusted. She was the one that was 'steady as she goes', and I followed her into my own shoes which were imprinted with her soul. She tells me that her fantasy was that she would be living in Mexico by now. Little does she know that a part of her is living in Mexico now. I stare at the things in her kitchen and I am incredulous that we have picked out the same shade of cobalt blue for our dishes.

She sits in her living room chair and it is the same chair I picked out for myself years ago. Every one of her lamps I'd have chosen too. All of her windows are open and bring forth fresh air. The kind of air one can't find in Merida. I am determined to have it caress my skin luxuriating in it enough that I can take the memory of it back to Mexico and whip it out when I am most moist from the sweat. I cook for her and I feel happy. We talk about love and crap therapists. She asks me questions about my life that she has forgotten. I wonder how she might have forgotten anything that I remember so vividly, her having such a profound input into much of my formative years. I wonder if she knows how precious she feels to me.  Does she know that I would do whatever that thing is that she might need? Does he know it?

His windows are all shut, the curtains drawn embracing his grief; soon he will be sturdy enough for a breeze. I spend an afternoon with another he, my first love, driving all over kingdom come looking for this and that. We are in a VW bug and I feel like I am in traffic in a metal matchbox. This first love never seems to age yet he putters around his home like an old man. What do I look like to my old friends? I constantly ask that first love to give me some of his art and he never does. I know he has given his art away before but I get the feelings he'd rather give it to anyone, but me.

He and I were wee together and now when I see him in his grief I still feel we are the same. One no older than the other. We still feel compatible. She and I are trading places. I am her peer but I can also see her frailty and that causes me to want to embrace her and shelter her from harm. It feels wonderful to be able to do so. She filled me with sturdy and I can be leaned upon. Her clarity… That clarity I meet head on now. When I was wee maybe I flinched, but now I meet it with an open heart. The truth no longer seems to hurt me nor is it met with fear. There is nobility in emotional clarity and sturdiness. When she and I meet I feel like two very real women, who look nothing like each other, are staring at the other, and the self, at the same time. There is a space in my chest were she always remained.

I wish, I wish, I deeply wish I have a chance to spend time with her again. He and I FaceTime frequently and it is amazing how with each call I can tell one more shade has been drawn. He looks sunny.

This was the time I spent with him and her; those two saints.