Perched on sun-bleached wood-beams, I can hear my father singing in the kitchen, the clamor of pans and ice cubes chattering into tumblers, as he prepares dinner. I tilt into the setting sun, as the scene sprawled in front of me is graphed onto my irises, and archived into memory, like an architect's blueprints: vegetable blossoms springing up like curlicues, the elegant silhouettes of trees elongated across the awning of impossibly green grass that shelters the soil beneath my sooty, sockless feet.
The day before, I visited the botanical gardens, slinking from the palm room into the pale, washed-out light of the desert room. The limbs of a stripey succulent unfold dramatically upon the concrete, octopus-like; prickly cacti poke at the glass ceiling. The fruit-punch red of a fire extinguisher draws out the sparse color from a flowering plant. I wonder if anyone else has noticed that…
Later, I drift to sleep, lulled by the laughter of a stranger that punctuating the hollowness of night, floating through houses and lounge chairs and trimmed lawns to my window. I picture their cheeks hedged with tears, that furl and unfurl from their eyes to the pinnacle of their chin.
Our eyes, bluer in sunlight, as we lie in the grass looking up at the kaleidoscope of fragmented sky and intricate arteries of branches dripping with the jade green jewels of leaves. Sandals flung off, the baby propped against my bare knee, I wonder what she sees when she gazes up at me like I’m a goddess or some wondrous work of art, smiling.
I think about the loneliness of a meteor in the endless night of galaxies, exiled from populous cities, where all we see is a hazy empyrean, plucked of its stars.
P.S. Can anyone help my friend Taya with a humans rights case, such as an invitation to study at a school in another country, so she can continue her education? Read more here.
If I ever have kids, I hope they go headfirst over the handlebars of their bike, once in a while. I hope they come home with dirt and grass stains, a canvas the earth colored on, tangled hair, sweat and sun kissed cheeks. I hope they break at least one bone, have skinned knees and elbows. I hope they swing as high as they can and then leap, to see where they land. I hope they learn how to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, how to get back on that horse, how to grab life by the horns.
I hope their canvas sneakers never stay the color they once were, and that they shake the sand, and the dirt, and the earth from them, in the evening. I hope they embrace their naked skin, in summertime, and sleep with feet as black as tar. I hope they shimmy up tree trunks, and dance with abandon. I hope they know what it’s like to crawl into bed, bone-weary but deliriously happy from a day of adventures.
I hope they endure enough suffering to make them empathetic, compassionate, generous, grateful, and struggle enough to feel the jubilee of triumph, the ecstasy of overcoming hardships. I hope they never sit in front of television sets over dinner and watch the world from afar, but immerse themselves in it fully. I hope they never say,“I can’t do anything,” but ask, “What can I do?” I hope they are unafraid to stand up for themselves or for others, but know how to do it peacefully, unafraid to speak up, but know how to do it respectfully.
I hope they are inquisitive, curious, thirsty for knowledge. I hope it is quenched in freedom, instead of being snuffed out in institutions. I hope they question the system, the inner-workings of the world, and have the strength, the courage, to swim against the current.
I hope they nurture their bodies, breath-deeper, stretch longer, that they tend to the earth, in the gentle way they would humanity. I hope they have to swallow a lump in their throat when they see the beauty of a sunset, that the night sky makes their jaw drop, that the sea is euphoria. I hope the mountains are paradise for them, the forest a sanctuary, the warmth of the desert, a womb-like oasis.
If I ever have kids, I hope they know what it is to love, and to be loved.
Photo by Sally Mann
I pick up the pen I've neglected for a week and a half, in an evening on a fifth floor terrace freckled with leafy tropical plants and panoramic views of Bangkokian architecture, man made puzzle pieces fitting into the picture of a crushed velvet empyrean in midnight colors that exist, would still exist, even if famine swallowed every citizen and spit out our bleached bones, or if an earthquake put the city in a dizzy spell, triggered buildings that once necked into the heavens, to faint into the waiting limbs of rubber-burnt pavement, or if a mammoth flood of Biblical prophesy washed-out the streets and hung the corpses up to dry. The galaxies, the slowly burning stars, will still breathe, even after we have ceased.
The night sky, you see, is gentle to look at, tender to my irises in its silk slip of sulky blues. A little star still remains above the apexes of man's loftiest dreams, fluorescent lights punching through office windows with a hazy glow. I gaze at the ones lit and wonder who inhabits their spaces, if they're sipping coffee that sears their tongues from a styrofoam cup, but that they drink to keep awake when thinking of their children, tucked into their beds without a goodnight kiss, again, when thinking of home.
