by Amy Minato
My Father’s Illness
Yesterday my father
went to carry hay on his back.
He trembled
as he bound the hay into bundles
and carried the bundles on his shoulders.
He took a break on the hill at Sung-Choon’s house
and as he was getting up
he bumped his head on a rock behind him
and fell
rolling into a ditch
with the bundles still fastened on his back.
A stranger came to his rescue,
supporting him
as he sat there gasping.
His breath stopping
and starting again
over and over.
I went there and wept
looking at the height of the hill.
—Kim Kyu-pil, grade three
Andong Daegok School, Korea
Hearing daily from children living in much harsher conditions makes my material sacrifices easy. If I wasn’t awash with their stories, I could pity my poverty amid the riches of America. As it is, I’m blessed with shelter, clean water, abundant food, and libraries.
Young, hopeful voices in many languages strum inside me as I edit submissions until we lose our working light, the sun.
Tenacity
A teen girl with two nose rings and a tattoo of a skull on her arm wrestles with the front tire of a bike on a stand. In this Santa’s workshop, she’s rebuilding a bike for herself.
The Center for Appropriate Transport (C.A.T.) in Eugene, where I have just taken a job as a bike courier once a week, hosts bike labs for youth where they receive school credit for learning shop skills. The kids can keep or resell the bikes they build. On weekends, they help out with bicycle valet parking at large city events and split the profits.
On the surface, the director couldn’t be more unlike Santa Claus. Tall, lean, and striking, Pete has hazel eyes that flash with intensity. Pushing a welder’s cap up from his sooty face and waving a soldering iron, he rails about the increase in traffic in Eugene, the grease on his work clothes not unlike blood on a warrior’s armor.
He’s on a crusade against cars and has convinced the city to take heed. Partly because of him, each year the city has more buses and bike paths, and less pollution. Pete builds custom-made bikes for people with disabilities and cargo needs: bike taxis, recumbent tandems, adult trikes with baskets, hand-powered bikes. His wonderful inventions breeze by, reminding us there’s a wizard in our midst.
C.A.T. runs a co-op where members use the shop to fix their bikes. Pedaler’s Express, a bicycle courier service, is also under C.A.T.’s umbrella. These couriers are not daredevils like the city bike couriers. With big cargo cabins in front, they’re lucky to keep up with other cyclists on the road.
On my shift, I ride for six hours across the city, rain or shine, delivering photos, legal documents, campus mail. On dry days I can’t believe they pay me to do this. Breezing beside the river beneath trees and birdsong, knees and blood circling, dreamy. College students stop me to find out where they can apply for such a sweet job.
But during icy winter rains it’s another story. When I get a flat nowhere near shelter, already late for an important delivery, and my frozen fingers can’t get the tire off, no one wants my job. I don’t want my job. When I finally stumble in, the clients offer me hot cocoa as I sniffle and drip on their carpet.
The three upbeat muscular women who do this five days a week, all year, are Goddesses of Social Change. I know myself to be a diffuse activist, helping here and there, careful not to bear the full weight, nor to be the final authority. Ashamed at my half-hearted dedication, I tell myself that my primary work as a writer is to witness and retell, to keep the rest on the periphery. But the real reason could be fear.
Maybe fear that Pete’s fierce commitment to a cause would swallow and devastate me with each setback. Fear that caring about and identifying with something so intensely might strip me of the freedom to change.
The teen has gotten the front tire off and now sits outside smoking a cigarette, looking surly. She dabs the sweat off her brow with a crumpled bandana. I imagine she is deciding whether or not to bolt. She could renew her life of independence and danger on the streets or keep working on her bike.
She smashes her cigarette on the pavement, picks up her tools, and goes in to grease an axle.
Wanderlust
It’s been over a year and I’m missing my jet-set companion today, slipping into desire. Tall, sleek, and gracious, Alex enters a room like a prince from an exotic land, magnetizing, but mysterious as a cat. From humble college beginnings where we turned my dorm closet into a tea room, life with Alex became a cultural feast: big cities, foreign places, pomp and pizzazz. But throughout his catapult to architectural success, Alex retained the calm dignity I first loved when we met in college.
Ambitious and talented, Alex introduced me to Hong Kong movers and shakers, an eclectic group of expatriates. Although charmed, I sensed a restless loneliness within them, a homesickness that could have been a projection of myself in their situation.
“Ghost people,” the Chinese call white folk. Maybe in addition to our color, it is because when they see us in their country we are disembodied, removed from the flesh of our homeland.
Alex (or Pui, his given Asian name), a one-woman kind of guy, patiently explained to me, his flighty friend, the merits of devotion. His career promised a rich life of travel and adventure, his company, a refuge.
Scared and confused, I shrank from the challenges and isolation of a life spent in hotels and restaurants. This gal needs nature and community.
Although devoted to each other, we couldn’t reconcile our urban/pastoral split. After twelve years of visits and long distance phone calls, we set ourselves free.
Still, when mist turns Rainbow Valley into a Chinese ink drawing, and jasmine tea brews in a flowered pot, I remember living with Pui’s family in Hong Kong—going for late-night jok (rice porridge), slapping mah jong tiles, passing the orchestra of tai chi enthusiasts in the park at dawn. I had to nap frequently from the stimulation of that pulsing city.
So here I remain looking out on a meadow instead of an international kaleidoscope. If I had married Alex, where would I be right now? In a Japanese bath house? An Italian plaza?
If I hadn’t already been that route, and known the dizziness and alienation along with the thrill and intrigue, I could feel trapped and narrowed at Siesta Lane—the same old muddy rug, the same old loquacious rain.
Instead I miss the man and not the lifestyle, knowing that most of my habitat needs are beautifully met right here where I’m planted.
February Tired and in awe of the terrific work, I peep in at the room filled with straw. My eyes ache, tear up with the thought of it. I back away and enter only moments a day, turn the spindle, and get carried in the motion and twirl of threads pulled into sentences and long silences, hoping to spin a few tangles of my life into gold.
Resonance
Something’s up with Luke and Yoko.
She looks pale and he hasn’t shaved in a week. When we greet them, their replies are terse, eyes averted.
Because of the shared bathroom and kitchen, one has solitude but little privacy in our curious community. It’s not our business, but we care about Luke and Yoko, so we mull over these phenomena.
“They’re having a fight.”
“She’s seeing someone else.”
“He’s moving away.”
“She’s pregnant.”
“He’s wanted by the FBI.”
“What?”
“You never know. ...”
We never do know what happened, but Yoko stops coming home with him. They were hit by one of those unexpected waves that send relationships into the Bermuda Triangle of Love, maybe. For several days, Luke, red-eyed and weary, sneaks dinner to his cabin, alone.
We all feel strangely lonesome and miss Yoko’s earnest cheer and exotic clothing.
When you live with folks, their moods rub off on you like dew. This can be exhausting, exhilarating, confusing. Some days you’re not sure whose mood you have, why you feel jazzed suddenly, or spaced out. But if you look around, you know someone’s new job has created a stir, another’s upcoming final has us all on edge. Each of us vibrates with the group’s emotional tunes.
We know it’s getting tight when we begin having each other’s dreams. One night, I am painting a series of mole tunnels. In the morning I give Raul back his dream and ask around for my own. Sara offers one about surfing that Luke claims, Natalie snatches up Rita’s horse fantasy. No one takes Paul’s nightmare about large dogs.
Sometimes over breakfast we barter our dreams, embellishing for effect and accepting pledges of waving bagels from the highest bidder.
Dance
This winter I have discovered the irrefutable genesis of all human dance. We must have invented it to keep from freezing our butts off.
On nights when the damp northwest cold seeps like a rumor through my bones, when I’m trying to cook a quick, late dinner in the main house but haven’t had the patience to make a fire for the warmth; or when there’s no kindling and my attempts without it have resulted in sad piles of smoldering newspapers, I move. To keep warm. And to keep from getting cranky.
For variety I move in rhythm, in different ways, to warm every cold crevice of my body. I put on Motown or Lyle Lovett and tap to the slicing of potatoes, sway to the onion sauté, and go wild during the veggie simmer.
Pretty soon I’ve taken over the living room, flailing and gyrating, toasty and laughing and the few folks who come in for a cup of tea discreetly change their minds.
I eat my slightly burned dinner with a flushed face and heart and think, with profound awe, of our tribal ancestors in cold climates living in thin shelters and sleeping darn close to the frigid ground. Did they envy their furred companions? Did they move in rhythm around a campfire to keep from freezing? The genesis of dance, then, may have been a triumph of the human spirit over the humbling restrictions of the flesh.
Silence
There is a quiet stillness in the country that invites reflection, intuition, and spiritual growth. What happens to an individual, and a society, denied calm and contemplation, tree-climbing and rock-skipping?
Now I notice the spider in the hall pocketed in its corner, legs tensed, sensing any pull on its web, the way color refracts off its tear-shaped body, the delicate threads of its home. Since pondering the precariousness of life suspended in a translucent net—so invisible yet so present—I have grown to care about the spider in particular, and in general, and she in myself who weaves and waits and senses which beings entering this web of memory and imagination are nourishing, and which are not.
The silence of Rainbow Valley can be both soothing and terrifying. Without the clatter of cars, lawnmowers, and televisions, I am left with my heartbeat. Serenity peeks a timid head into my life, but is pushed aside by specters. Alone with my mind, it’s hard to quell the voices that play back precise descriptions of my flaws and failings. It becomes strangely appealing to turn up the radio, buy a TV, or carry on inane conversations.
Against all training, I turn a rusty ear within, to listen below the din.
Soothing and hypnotic this silence, a soft bed. I begin to crave it, sink deep in and pull the covers up as layers of trivialities melt away.
I go hours, days, without speaking, digging into my burrow of silence. The beings out here seem without guile, malice or pretension. Grasses grow up toward the sky, breezes blow and quit. A robin fusses with her nest as I shake out a rug. A squirrel schemes a way into the bird feeder. Raccoons scurry defensively across the yard. Recognition of the parallels between human and non-human animals nurtures a fondness, a sense of family, blood relatives.
Rabbits and squirrels take notice of me. They recognize this laconism that allows one to concentrate, remain hidden, and conserve energy. For me it preserves my dignity. There’s less chance for misunderstanding, or for trying to say something large in words that are too small.
But silence’s greatest gift is the honing of other senses, even the hidden ones. Every red hue in Luke’s hair shines at me this morning, each crackle of the fire a different tone. The rough weave of the placemat tickles my fingers, coffee scent permeates and lulls.
The power of prayer may be its requisite silence.
At day’s end I sit quietly in the corner while my housemates worry, whispering about me as if I were not only mute, but deaf.
“She’s been like that all day.”
“I wonder if she feels okay? There’s a nasty flu going around.”
“I think it’s a sign of depression.”
“Maybe she needs a date.”
Siestans don’t quite accept my explanation that this is an experiment, “a writer thing,” figuring it’s a cover-up for a bad mood. Meanwhile silence unwraps gifts inside me; and the chickadees out the window carry my heart through the branches in graceful, delicate sweeps.
Quiet is best experienced when accompanied by “sloth.” (English has few words for inactivity and they all have negative connotations. As a culture, we loathe doing nothing—it’s not productive. For relaxation we exercise, shop, watch television.) I remember watching the old men in Greece, sitting in the outdoor cafés at dusk, down by the Gulf of Corinth, empty ouzo glasses, a few olives, and the remains of a squid snack on their table, dark eyes on the darkening water. They knew it depended on them being there, doing nothing in the dusk, for the Delphi ferry to arrive, for the stars to come out. If it wasn’t for their silent nightly vigil, their tiny town might slide unnoticed into the sea.
Likewise, would Siesta Lane, as reflected and rendered here, disappear without my rapt attention during this contemplative pause in the whirling center of my life?
Fecundity
New lambs slip onto wet February fields slicker than the mushrooms that sneak up in the fall. Suddenly, they dot the landscape with their furred blur. Wet and tottering, heads hovering over knobby legs, the lambs haunt their mothers, slipping mouths to udders at every lucky chance.
I knit and sing, bake and clean. My hands linger too long over the cat’s nape. My womb stirs and clamors, wanting a child. This desire is deep and familiar, as strong as that for a lover, but more urgent.
What is this maternal urge—a trick of biology? Or the soul’s need? The earth suffers from a surfeit of people yet I want to produce more. Isn’t such desire an unfortunate relic of human evolution, not unlike an appendix or a wisdom tooth? Too many of us certainly can’t be good for our species or for any other.
Tears rattle me anyway and I rock in the oak, wanting, wanting, children. Babies visit my dreams knocking to enter this world. They seek my body even as my optimal childbearing years disappear one by one like bunnies in a burrow.
I’m stumped by this one. I made living near nature and choosing meaningful work happen. But finding a mate and fellow parent takes time and luck, neither of which appear in abundance these days.
I review my list of suitors over the last few years—the one who never kissed me; the one who wanted to kiss me all over, too soon; the pathological liar; the zealot. Nice guys to hike with now and then, but live together? Raise a family?
The robin collects moss for her nest. The fox lines her burrow. I flip dejectedly through the personal ads.
Hot to trot stallion lusting after magical mare.
Gay man desires serious commitment.
All brawn and no brain seeks same.
Maybe I’m too picky. Spoiled by long association with a good man. Alex, after all, is a hard act to follow.
With no compatible partner in sight and without the gumption to bear children alone, I ache and consider giving up this dream, while the hills offer plump bellies to the sun with each turn of the fertile earth.
Fear
I walk, often, at night down Siesta Lane. Sometimes with a knotted willow stick, armored with yea
rs of precautions, shedding anxiety, seeking connection with the nocturnal. A form of fear therapy. Only it is not the dark land that scares me, but passing cars, flicking their brights at the roadside phantom, and the sporadic rash of dog bark.
The vagaries of our natural environment used to be the focus of people’s fears—drought, cold, wild animals—now we fear ourselves. Every morning we open the newspaper to horrific stories of domestic abuse and random violence. A teenage boy brands his sister with a hot iron, a couple “collects” young women and kills them. Often such news comes from far away, as if the journalists scoured the globe for the most shocking stories they could find, rather than writing about some local folks’ daily struggles. Thus we breed suspicion rather than compassion. We build more jobs, hire more police, covet our stuff. Our society’s penchant for the dramatic may have us missing out on the quirky good humor of a fellow passenger on a bus or the shifting hues in a lingering sunset.
Tonight small creatures scurry in the brush. Bats—these first “witches”—the only mammals that truly fly, wisp among the winded trees. Using sonar to navigate, they bounce high-pitched sounds off nearby objects that “echo” back, giving the bats exact positions of their prey. In China, bats represent health, happiness, longevity, and peace of mind.
Eyes relax and expand at dusk. Pores open. Mouths and faces soften. Scents sharpen. Pine sap. Sweat. Musk. Sound carries in the still dark. Feet shuffle the path. Smell and touch and hearing are the channels of the sensual night.
I stop by the horses. Comforted by these shadowy mounds bending their heads to the earth, their generous animal smell and rhythmic munch. The three chestnut mares look up and wait, their manes beige halos, ears up, nostrils wide and soft, sensing me.
Horses have a guarded aura, vacillating between pride and terror. They have been domesticated but not slaughtered, caressed but not pampered. Through centuries of close association with humans, it seems, they have maintained dignity, proved their power, earned respect, kept their strength.
