Why I Don't Make Art
September b
Pushing the revolving doors I want to die. I want to go home. To be here I have to die to who I am. I long for home, for the real place, like the feeling I had watching the movie Brigadoon when I was five. I was in the City for the first time so my Father could go to seminary. Now I know better.I know longing doesn't really have the power to conjure. The falafel guy likes me and gives me too much sauce. Yesterday he gave me a persimmon. “What are you writing?” I tell him it's a letter to my grandaughter. I don't know where that thought comes from. I don't tell him she's not yet born but I imagine her living in the free world, the promised world. Is that the home I long for? I can't really long for my actual violent ministers' home where the husband was perfect out in the world evangelizing and the mother was crazy at home gouging her projectile fingernails into my shoulders. I don't long for the home I had. I longed for home even then. So I long for my future granddaughter's home. She will live in the free human world. I find out his name is Basam and I tell him my name. I have my spot on the wall. Close to a tree, shady, but not directly under any of the pigeon perch branches and the pigeon shit.
I brought in my tiny square video camera I bought in Hong Kong last summer when I went there with Machi to visit Cass (who's teaching dance there and figured out how to be a real artist). I propped the little camera on top of my filing cabinet and pointed it at myself and turned it on for five minute intervals during the day. I'm making a video called, “Why I don't make art.”
For a moment I forgot about J not calling me. Jacobo. He lives in manland. I'm ashamed to long for him. I made it past the revolving doors without bursting into tears and didn't notice the tall woman beside me waiting for the elevator and didn't hear her say good morning until she tapped me on the shoulder and said, “I said good morning twice.” She wasn't smiling. She's tall with cafe con leche skin and short dreadlocks. She wears six inch heels. I have to tilt my head up to look at her face. She always looks a little angry so I wasn't sure if she had that tight jaw look because I didn't notice her by the elevator. I couldn't tell her it's not personal, I'm obsessing about my demon lover. Later we coincided at the xerox and I could see Amina wondering why I was making copies of photographs of Haitians by their fishing boats. I couldn't think of anything to talk to her about either so we stood there, me making sets of the photographs for the teachers in the Freirean decoding workshop I'm doing tomorrow and she holding her place in line.
Pretty soon we won't be able to do afternoon workshops anymore. The change to 9 to 3 classes will go into effect as soon as the new contracts are finalized. The change should have started in July with the new fiscal year but it was a lucky thing it was delayed. Thank God Teresa, my b's assistant, came into the xerox room and got Amina to give her diet advice. Amina said her weight secret is to never eat a bite after 7pm.
My b (it's easier to think of her as my b than as my friend Solly, short for Soledad).Having her be my boss will probably kill our friendship. She came into our office this morning to ask Lucha and I to go on a team building outing on Friday. I think neither of us wanted to say yes, but it's during working hours. Solly wants to go to the Immigrant Museum. “So many of the students are immigrants. And we're either immigrants or the children of immigrants.” She wants to take her friend's boat over there and have a picnic.
I overheard Lucha talking to her husband on the phone today. Their daughter's missing again and the cops came to the door. She said to her husband, “What if she gets raped or murdered. I didn't know the cops worked that hard to find missing teenagers. They must be looking for something else.'' i was about to tell her about Machi punching through a wall in school yesterday but just then Solly walked in to talk about the boat outing and the moment passed.