June 2018
I write flash fiction, non-fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from a work in progress.
Drinking coffee, watching Chinatown through the window, seeing a man hand-shredding collected litter – a trolley brochure, a Starbucks napkin, an announcement for the opening of a new French restaurant, stained with urine from the sidewalk. He holds a two-piece lid from a mason jar, separating the components, cleaning them with his filthy shirt, placing them back together, then pulling them apart once more, spinning the lid to just the right position, putting them together again. He places the lid on the sidewalk, crouches over it and begins shredding the brochure. He lays pieces in order around the rim, layering, layering. Donald Trump Jr. and Ronaldo walk by, oblivious to his actions, his determination. He, in turn, ignores their presence. The pile is insufficient, incorrect. He neatly empties the shreds onto a paper plate, re-cleans the lid and rim and returns to shredding the brochure. The red trolley on the cover has now been stripped to just its foundational image of wood steps and tourists’ sandals.
Their look, his view.
He refills the cap, layering, layering. Donald Trump Jr and Neymar cross the walk, in the direct trajectory of an oncoming fire truck. Its horn complains, its sirens blare, lifting the pigeons across my eyes. When my gaze remembers the old man, he is no longer crouching, but standing, although still grossly bent. He empties his morning’s project into the garbage can while a woman on the opposite side of the receptacle digs for cigarette butts and the half ounce at the bottom of a Stella Artois bottle. Donald Trump Jr. and Brady nearly bump elbows as they enter the new French restaurant. They clean their smart phone screens, attach ear buds and proceed to shred. They shred 401K’s, markets, futures, dreams. The old man walks down the hill, toward a swamp with no water, leaving only his shadow. Donald Trump Jr. and Knight each leave a half glass of Pinot and a tip on plastic. Their shadow falls on the entire planet, which they piss on, then boldly charge commission for providing the gilded irrigation.
If shadows had a scent, the old man’s would smell like urine, and so would theirs.
Mann sat on a slatted, wood bench, flanked on each side by a pair of large, jade bulls with brass rings in their noses. The rings were in need of polishing, stained dark by the hands of lobbyists and peddlers alike, hoping for their ten minutes with the most powerful man in Jackson County. Mann currently performed his own penance, fingering one of the rings as he waited to enter the double oak doors that guarded the mayor’s office. The doors soon parted and Molly, in full uniform, stepped out, motioning for him to enter. The conversation had already begun, with the mayor leading the fray.
Nature abhors straight lines. Humans worship straight lines. We embed them in our roads, our buildings, our lives. Recently, I chanced upon the shadows of a maple tree as it cast its crooked cartography across the pre-fab, straight-edged, exterior wall of an angulate, downtown building. Even in the compressed light of a January afternoon, reality shone brightly. The tree was broken, jagged, very much in need of order, but very much alive. The building, on the other hand, was crisply engineered – paneled, aggregate rectangle upon paneled, aggregate rectangle and, of course, entirely dead. Why do we strive to produce the dead and not the living? Why don’t we embrace the crooked, the unbalanced, the unexplainable things in our lives, the things that brush up against us on the street, whisper in our ears, knock on our doors in the early morning moonlight?