In the Flow

Some days, it feels like everything is in flow–you catch the train on time, you connect genuinely with strangers through eye contact, engaged conversation and friendly gestures (like holding the door open for the other).

Buoyancy and a lightness arise when we are in flow. There is no grasping for a particular outcome. Instead, there is a contentment and ease with what is, and a deepened appreciation for being in the present moment.

It’s not about ‘shoulds’ or ‘have to’s,’ but rather about what resonates and feels right.

Trust your intuition. She will always guide you back to your truth.

Iaeou

Iaeou had an unpronounceable name, and this suited her. When she was two she bounced away from her mother and into the mouth of a lion. Then she wiggled out of its jaws and bounced right back home.

Her bounciness didn’t diminish with age. Some times were good— that day she invented the flamingo game and everyone joined. Some were hard— that night her hammock untied and she woke up falling. But she stayed bouncy, because people wouldn’t always play her games, and she could learn better knots. Each day would feel different from yesterday, and would change again tomorrow.

Dello

Dello’s mother was the wind. Her father was the water. She was born atop waves between two unknown lands. She walked her first steps along wood planks floating upon the ocean.

When she turned ten she went ashore and met normal children. She knew they were normal because they told her. This is also how she discovered she wasn’t.

One day she demanded that her parents fix her.

They said she was perfect.

She said they were wrong.

That night her parents wept, and their anguish whipped up a hurricane. She ran to warn the normal children. They didn’t listen.

Ander

Ander watched. She was good at watching. She liked to do things she was good at.

She watched two roosters fight in some bushes. One clearly wanted to be left to his own devices; the other wanted to prove himself. She wondered which she was.

She walked away, and noticed a coconut on the ground. She picked it up. She was curious about her strength, so she hurled it as far as she could. It landed with a thud, leaving an impression. She wondered if she were the coconut.

Behind her, someone yelled: “which stars will extinguish when I die?”

Dulu

Dulu lay on her back, fabric pressing against her eyelids, and listened to the drums.

She wondered why this medicine wasn’t helping. She wondered if she should do something about it. She wondered if everyone else felt like this. She realized these thoughts were worries. Then she worried that the worries wouldn’t stop.

She needed to leave. But her body was stuck. A moment of panic. Worries compounded like layers of a wave stacking before they broke upon shallow reef. Whitewash, then calm. She didn’t need to leave. She was here. She’d always been here. And she always would be.

Zoruso

Zoruso ran away. She had nothing to run from, and nothing to run towards. But something told her to run, so she ran.

She came to a strange land. It was too hot to breathe, so she held her shirt in front of her face and coughed. She met someone who seemed friendly, but he was just being kind. She met others who reminded her of better people she had left behind. She started to work, but it wasn’t clear what for.

One night, as she battled her mind to let her sleep, she realized why she had run here.

Corion

Corion didn’t realize she was walking in the real world. She thought she was moving in the other world.

In that world she was floating above a dark landscape.

In this world, she was walking away from her bedding towards the food storage. She opened a pot and ate leftover rations. Her bedmates heard the commotion but rolled over.

In the other world, Corion watched her body grow to absorb the whole land— forests and oceans and magma became her bones and guts and thoughts. A normal dream.

In the morning, Corion decided this nightwalker inside her needed a name.

Pack

A group of eight coalesced around a common goal. But no one knew the goal. Each time one member raised an opinion, others would either acquiesce, decline, or amplify. Three options existed, not four: never did anyone begrudge. When rain came some got wet, while others cowered under shelter. When hunger struck some cooked, while others relaxed. When drowsiness loomed they shared beds, giving the sleepiest the softest pillow. In conversation they were quick and kind, in games they were competitive and strong, and in both the weakest felt held. The goal remained a loose mystery. And so they lived.

DNA Match

At fifty years old, she found her birth father through ancestry.com. He lived on an Idaho farm. 

He was an engaged teenager when he conceived her. 

Before the wedding his fiancée ran away with another man, who convinced her to put the baby up for adoption.

A year later, the man left her.

She returned to her fiancé. By that time he was with someone else.

Both of them wanted to know what had become of their daughter, but Idaho adoption law prevented them from learning.

Now she’s met them and their whole separate families, and they’ve welcomed her.

Progress/Perfection

It’s tempting to just give in,

Let the violence, hate and greed win.

Because why take in one refugee

When thousands are stranded at sea?

Or protest racial discrimination

When it infects the police of this nation?

Why recycle your bottle of lotion 

When we can’t stop the rise of the ocean? 

So yeah, throw hissy fits and cry

But keep your eyes lifted high. 

Maybe we won’t get it ‘right’

But ‘better’ is worth a fight. 

If perfection’s required today,

Without space for reaction’s delay, 

Then martyrs will sit in their sorrow 

Neglecting an improved tomorrow. 

Progress 

over 

perfection. 

granddaddy boyd

The last Boyd with any means, Granddaddy Boyd, lived in his old age with Little Aunt Fawn. And he wrote long letters to Big Aunt Fawn (it was unclear whether she was older or physically larger), mewling that cruel Little Aunt Fawn wanted the house, that she was trying to poison him. Big Aunt Fawn replied that he was senile and paranoid. Two weeks later, Granddaddy Boyd was found dead in the gloomy shade of his front porch, with a broken glass and a few partly-muddled mint leaves, the julep dried and sticky on the warped Louisiana cypress boards.

Riding to the beat

I don’t go often, however on days I’m craving an intense workout,  good sweat, full release, and inspiring message, SoulCycle has become my vice.

The music is always bumpin’, the lights are low, and the one main concept is to ride to the rhythm of the beat.

Once you clip in, and pedal them legs to the rhythm of the music, you’ve set yourself up for a thrilling, challenging, exhilarating ride.

Heat builds, heart rate increases, sweat begins flowing out of every pore. The intensity of the day begins to fall away, creating space for a rejuvenated and elevated spirit.

you should know that to my eyes every thing is the platonic ideal of its class

when you tell me about your favorite book, i will love you. cummings says we open slowly like flowers in the spring, and our questions open us “petal by petal”. tell me about your favorite thing to cook, or eat; tell me which tastes bring you home. tell me about who you were before i met you, i will resent that we are only here now. stay up with me and tell me a funny story about your first pet. tell me what keeps your fire lit, where your horizon lies, and which way your winds blow now. feed me.

The Kin of Perspective

One rainy evening I met Crisis. Demanding attention as he walked into my life where I sat writing my priority list. He took one look at the paper and promptly tore it to shreds, declaring my time to be his. 

But on that very same night, I failed to notice, his sister Healing arrived. Silently, and out of sight, she gathered up the pieces in her brother’s wake. As the weeks wore on, she reassembled his wreckage, but began to run out of glue. So when she returned my list, it was quite a bit shorter, but finally manageable too. 

Quietude

An evening at home with no plans or distractions. What an incredible gift!

It is nearing dinner time and I select some seasonal produce–delicata squash and rainbow chard–and get to work slice and roasting while quinoa cooks on the stove.

I savor the quiet and also the incredible smells as they emerge through exposure to heat, herbs and spices. The rich and wholesome smell of sage fills the kitchen and warms my soul.

My appetite grows and I am eager to taste the flavors of this beautiful food. I make myself a plate, light the candles, sit down…bon appetit!

preboarding, norman y. mineta airport, san jose, california, 8:38a

Old be-scarved (babushka’d?) Russian ladies pushing ahead of young couples with infants dangling from newfangled front-hanging contraptions called björnssonęnfantil

Gujarati interspersed with accent-free blips of “IPO,” “Sunnyvale,” and “computational linguistics”

Enviably (or rather, fetishized) racially ambiguous teens in leather Rainbow flip flops and standard-issue black North Face fleeces, though less ambiguously followed by their parents, who are stressed about the delivery of their Tesla

They appear to make high-top Allbirds now, in laughably diminutive children’s sizes, to fit the Vietnamese toddler whose grandmother is using a pink iPad as a phone to FaceTime her cousin in Ho Chi Minh City

Driftwood

Log had always known Earth. She was born in it. As seed grew to sapling she sucked each of her branches from the soil.

In death, she learned water. She fell, tumbled downstream, and floated to this shore. Tides pushed her higher onto the beach until she dried. Then she was gathered.

This evening she felt fire. Set aflame by capable hands, she glowed with the quiet wisdom bestowed by her long and meandering existence.

Now she became air. As her solidity gave way to smoke, her sparks drifted up to join their twinkly sisters splashed across the night sky.

A few men and their moments

“Starfruit?” He nodded, biting into a section and showering the car with juice.

“SPOOOOOOOOOORTS” he yelled, hurling the squishy green ball across the beach to the other team, also men without shirts.

“What a time to be alive,” he sighed stepping into Costco to buy two pounds of frozen shrimp and a gallon of margarita mix.

“My fear is that I won’t be fully present this week,” he admitted through a mouthful of ribs and rice.

“Colon dash d is an emoji,” he laughed as two roughly hewn stick figures with arrows pointing to their colon and dick appeared onscreen.

Zatypota

I get intrigued when the first line of a scientific paper has the phrase, “…has long captured the imagination…”

In this case the authors are talking about the manipulative powers of parasitoids, wasps in particular, which hijack their hosts and force them into abnormal behaviors.

Alongside a small spider that lives in interesting cooperative colonies, they’ve found a wasp. The wasp’s larva, planted on a spider’s back, begins to eat. The hijacked spider exits its home and spins a dense cocoon nearby, where the wasp is safe to eat the rest of the spider and mature.

Whose imagination is captured?

Finish Lines

It’s similar to driving home, when in the last ten minutes, you realize it’s gonna be a close call. 

Who will win? The liquid in your bladder busting at the seams. Or your will power to retain it. 

You unhinge your top button. 

Thinking *any* thought to distract from the conundrum you face between reckless driving and upholstery wreckage. 

Pulling in, you make a plan. 

Pitch forward. 

Hobble to the door. 

Drop bags on the threshold. 

Sprint for the bathroom …

Just like my All of 100 discipline, excruciating to hold as I get close to the toilet called December.

Comments On an Article About Justin’s Brother, Whose Car Was Stolen With His Grandma’s Quilt Inside

“PSA: Do not leave anything of value in Seattle.”

“@mayorjenny considers this a low level crime and therefore not important. Sorry young man. I would be heartbroken as well. Too many things stolen from my car to count.”

“Your grandma is very talented. That was a great gift.”

“Five finger discount from a feral Seattle pet. It’s your fault, son. You f’d up and went to Seattle.”

“Need to offer a reward. Some people may see and buy it but not return it. Some people would buy it and drive it to your Grandma’s house in Bellingham but not many.”

Time is running…

Time. An invention and a way to structure our experience–past, present, future.

Currently, I feel like time is running out, like I’m constantly at battle with the passage of time.

I feel great anxiety–tightness in my chest and knots in my stomach–worrying about the “limited” time there is. Or that the world will keep spiraling out of control until a point where it’s too late to restore the devastation and destruction that’s been done.

How can I return to the present–the precious moment there is right here–to pay attention, see and appreciate what’s there, and respond from that grounded place?

mumma’s salad dressing

stand upright nearly 6′ with elegant silver-grey hair; mix:

10% women in your incoming yale class because you’re a 2nd wave feminist

40% of your career in business because disrespectful board-members caused you to get an MBA in 1980

a dollop of grainy french mustard

a dash of passion for comp lit to temper the acidity of having to administer the myers-briggs

get your master’s and PhD in counseling psychology at night with two children under 6, to emulsify effectively

refrigerate; this is your contribution to dinner that your husband will make while you drink a glass of California sancerre, because you fucking deserve it

Potential

“A real renaissance man,” the local paper wrote when highlighting him as the valedictorian of his graduating high school class. On the eve of his fiftieth birthday, he peered at that very paper that his parents had frame. He went to a top university, got a job at a prestigious firm that he loved. The whiskey in his glass right now was a rare 1932 Glenfidditch. He had a loving husband, four bright kids, and two dogs. He did yoga, swam in the ocean twice a week, and took painting classes.  Then why am I so goddamn bored, he thought.

mirror

How much have you had to drink?[swig]

Four and a half glasses. [swig]

Whoa. [eyeroll]

[swig] The fuck you care?

[swig] Nothing really. But I bet she’d care. [points with lips]

[glance over the shoulder] She knows already.

[swig] She still thinks you’re drinking grape juice.

No one [swig] is under that illusion. Not even her.

[glass down] Hey, Mom.

[chug] [whispers] Fuck you, Jo.

[Mom looks over] What?

Oh never mind. I thought I lost my phone charger. Found it.

[Mom furrows brow] Okay.

Thanks. [swig]

You really gotta get clean.

[looks in mirror] Only when you do. [smile]

It’s late night in a city, any city

Late night in any city, and I have found myself in the twinkling presence of invisible populations that have come before me, amnesia’d intersections, facades, monuments, memorials. In one, there is no monument to those who willingly believed the Third Reich would raise German estimation after the Great War; another, no memorial to the Chinese laborers whose bodies underpin and underwrote their life-giving railroad, funnel of early San Francisco wealth. But the absence of memorials is not the absence of memory: oral histories are easier to ignore than hulking stone, but the un-monumental–quilt, diary–is harder to tear off a pedestal.

The Firekeepers

The elders tell of a time when everything burned. All the forests burned and all the animals left.

Our village used to be several days away from here, following the path of the river. We were chased out by this great wall of fire. Our people had never seen fire before.

When the fire finally ended, a brave few went into the burned land and captured hot embers. This is where our people first got our fire. Since then, we have fed it for generations. And so it lives on in the village center – fire for us all to share.

Untitled

His little hand disappeared inside his dad’s, resting on the corner of the table. 

“You can do it buddy.”

A reassuring thumb slid back and forth across his bony fist. He didn’t complain, but wished he didn’t have to go through with it. 

“I just need to go at my own pace,” he asserted. 

“Ok,” his mom cooed reassuringly.  

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, pitched forward and with the determination to overcome the imminent gag reflex, he pushed the fork full of spinach into his mouth. Because no green monsters could keep him from his sugar cookies. 

Returning

Amazing how much can change in such a short time-frame. Though, perhaps it is more attributed to perspective and what we choose to pay attention to…  

After being gone from home over the last nine days, I arrived back this morning to a space that felt both familiar and also like a distant memory.

The air was finally clean, crisp and clear again after those many days of toxic smoky air.

Fallen leaves carpeted the sidewalks with deepened golden yellow, burnt orange, and crimson red tones.

Little tufts of bright green grass had begun sprouting, signally new life and rebirth.

how is this for a myth

at the beginning, when the pieces were carved, they were carved in to white and black, because everything had to be balanced just so. for every day there would be a night. for each crash of a wave, a slip back into the sea. and the pieces danced across the board, around each other, in complete harmony. and it was said that some days the white would be winning, and that other times black would be winning. it was said that the most important thing was that neither should ever win over the other; that the game should keep playing.

Burroughs the Bohemian

Burroughs the bumpkin trying to be a bohemian, penning essays during semesters in cramped teacher housing, always temporary, during summers hayraking at his family’s farm, his essays laced like doilies with things he’d never seen and taking as their themes modern notions through highbrow analogies, inevitably strained, and ever alienating his young wife who wanted less physical love and more life steadiness, less writing, and if he’d just listened to Emerson instead of copying him he’d have ignored the nobility splashed in the magazines to which he submitted and found it instead in himself and home, in hayraking his bumpkinness.

Modern warfare

Target. Click. Zip. Flames.

Another threat eliminated. Another shot of congratulatory whiskey. Another dose of valium. Another night out. Another bet on red. Another win. Another hand around another waist. Another drink. Another drink. Another. Drink.

Home. Not alone. But alone.

Anger again. Left alone with only the rising blood pressure to warm the bed.

The clock again.

Morning again.

Uniform again. What do the stars mean.

Look in the mirror. Punch the mirror. Take it down.

Wrap knuckles. Ice and salt.

Coffee. And whiskey. And valium.

Target. Click. Zip. Flames.

Someone’s father. Someone’s mother. Someone’s child. Alone. Alone. Alone.

Grass

“How’d you get so big?” asked Grass.

“I pushed,” answered Eucalyptus.

“I want to be as big as you,” said Grass.

“Why?” asked Eucalyptus.

“You’re regal.”

“You want to look impressive?” Eucalyptus asked, unimpressed.

“You provide shade.”

“But you provide softness.”

“You’re tall!”

“You’re plentiful.”

“You hold up the sky!”

“You keep in the earth.”

Birds nested in Eucalyptus. Grass caught the chicks when they fell.

One day a fire roared through their valley. Both burned to the ground.

In spring, two different green shoots sprouted through the blackened soil.

Eucalyptus said to Grass, “Now you’re as big as me!”

A Transgression Upon Angelica

Oh no, not volcanoes, you said.

I was rushing to share my pipe dream to circumambulate each fire mountain in the Cascades—and beyond, to declare my citizenship in the Ring of Fire—and failed to hear the drop in your voice.

Later you said it was like watching a train bear down on you in slow motion as I proceeded to tell you joyously I was not alone: I’d learned of a poet who had preceded me to Japan, who wrote a beautiful blog that vanished like his footprints on a fateful volcano’s cliffs.

I knew Craig, you whimpered.

Stage 4

And as the band began the final song of the service, she grabbed him by the hand and led him up to the stage. Their faces beaming with the slight embarrassment of doing something so out of character, but with the innocent joy of a freedom found only in the devastating reality of a tomorrow not guaranteed. They swayed to the beat of a familiar song, holding closer and tighter as each verse passed. And their adoring congregation wept and cheered and sat in awe of the choice they made: to live and love with every fiber of their beings. 

Charming on application day, A Con on move-in day

Britt slammed the gate. Maybe she got ripped off with this place. Charming on application day, a con on move-in day.
The diner across the street looked just fine for a late breakfast. She looked at her watch. 11:51 A.M. 24 hours since she took off that wedding dress. And the ring.
Diners are all the same. She ordered two eggs sunny side up and a piece of sausage.
“What kinda sausage you want, guy?” Despite the gray skies and rolling fog, this waiter was golden brown just like the poster children of sunny California.
“Um, pork?”
“You got it.

Explaining what a lemon looks like to a blind man

It’s round, which means that you can cup it in your hand and the shape will sit in your palm nicely. But it’s roundness tapers at two ends, and you’ll find stubby points as if the ends are puckered — the very position your lips might make when you sip from a straw. The surface has lots pores, you can feel them with your finger like you might brush over an older person’s nose after a facial (or before). But the surface has a sheen to it, or rather a slipperiness from oil that you can extract with a fingernail.

Reflections on a Train, Virginia Nov.18

A train brings you across the country at a speed your senses can relate to. While the trees rush alongside and re-light the flighty imagination of youth, beyond lie the Blue Ridge Mountains, who rose jagged out of the earth some 400 million years ago, and whose gently wrinkling slope lines reveal the mountain’s age. Unlike the hypobaric transportation of airplanes through time and space, traveling by train reminds us that things are continuous. That between Virginia and Brooklyn there are many magnificent miles; that between us, the trees, and the mountains, there is a covenant of simply being.

Alongside the cows

What began as a cool foggy morning turned into a clear sunny day. Hiking was forefront on my mind and by mid-morning I was out adventuring in Briones Regional Park.

The past week’s rain brought a softness to the trails, and the smell of grasses, dirt, and trees abounded in the air with every step.

Freely roaming cows frequently came into view, sometimes blocking passage on trail. As I neared the trailhead, I once again ran into a small herd of cows and paused for a moment–watching them get into formation as they navigated their way along the golden hills.

sunday market

faj, whatever happened to the oyster guy? the guy who looked like he walked directly into the ocean, gently prying the oysters loose with barnacled-knuckly hands, the one with one blue eye, maybe he was blind, whose stand smelled saline-sharp behind the netting, who would hand us a flimsy styrofoam plate with a dozen winking kumamotos through the little window, along with the sesame-oil-slick plastic squeeze bottle of proprietary soy-vinegar-shallot vinaigrette (fuck mignonette am i right?), for our weekly eight-thirty-am-indulgence, eaten on plastic chairs amidst flying vietnamese words and toddlers in patagonia? i dunno– i guess he’s not here today.

Card for George

I could not find a loon to
send to mourn with you—
it’s November; maybe this
year none have straggled—
so I send this chickadee
on its icy crabapple twig.
I know you have no trees
or chickadees but maybe
it will substitute for the
wailing of the loons. Can
solace find a father twice?
How much can you bear?
I pray a bird is there when
you seek the sea cliffs
like you showed me. Here,
chickadees are ever outside,
hopping, gleaning, tseet-ing
upside down. No matter what
I’ve done they’re around, living,
no matter what’s been done.

An outfit without jewelry is like a cupcake without frosting

The house was especially radiant, but what he noticed most was the doorknobs.

Upon entering, you shake hands with giant, seemingly ancient, cast-iron knobs set into thick oak doors.

Crystal knobs glisten from the dining room doors. Porcelain knobs adorn the bathroom drawers and cabinets. Patterned brass, each with its own unique etching, ornament each bedroom door. Tiny latches, levers, and handles made from bronze and silver hang from stands, dressers, and chests throughout the house.

Just as the right jewelry completes an outfit, the doorknobs in this house lend an absolutely undeniable air of confidence, elegance, completeness, and thoughtfulness.

 

Sweet Lucille

He had every intention of roasting Lucille for the Clinton-Springs PTA summer bbq. Before he even ventured to the pig farm, he was already collecting recipes and preemptively bragging “oh have I got a treat for you come summertime.. no I can’t say.. just wait and see.” Gerald took great pride in his parties.

Then Lucille achieved something even teachers at Clinton-Springs School for Autistic Youth struggled with. Lucille soothed Lilly. Became her joy. Made her laugh.

So now Gerald was driving Lucille to the vet for shots and brainstorming new showstoppers for the Summer BBQ. “Perhaps a roasted lamb?”

Food Truck Voyeur

From where he stood, he could see only a portion of her slender face. Today she looked content, radiant, focused. Occasionally her hand would come up and brush her loose hair aside. She would put her glasses on. Or take them off. And sometimes she would chat to someone out of his view and smile gaily. At 11:45am she would generally leave the office building, for lunch. That was always the best part of his day. He would hide his greasy apron and wink her a shy smile as she strode by, longing one day soon she’d crave Korean burritos.

Mum

Tucking a tendril of hair behind her ear, she squints into the mirror. “I like this hat. But you look about as good in it as I do in your sunglasses,” she says to me with a giggle. “I went all-in on us pretty much straight away, darlin!” she says to Dad, recollecting her decision to marry this complicated, brooding yet joyful man after having only dated for a few months. Dad comments on some bodily function to which she replies, “oh brother.” Mum hasn’t checked her phone all day. We’ve been drinking wine since two. We’re best friends.

End of the Day

I feel tired and blank. The commute home from the city zapped the last bit of energy right out of me.

A cozy bed awaits me and I cannot wait to crawl in and shut my eyes–drifting off to sleep and entering the dream world.

What dreams may transpire is never known, however awakening from my slumber is the only way I can begin to remember.

Tomorrow, when I rise, I will hopefully recount what stories occurred–what lives were lived in the subconscious. A time of reflection and introspection that often reveals more than one might think upon first glance.

Parental Mortality

In an old theater lobby, they held each other’s gaze, lower lids bright with the strain of tears not ready to spill. 

Women resilient and grounded — with hearts mere fragments, rattling against their ribs. 

Despite their best efforts, they weren’t prepared for the day their parents left. Or the day the condolences stopped. The day they heard that saved voicemail. Or the day three weeks later when they thought they’d be ok. The day six months in when they still can’t get up. 

All they want is to be swaddled again.

Yet they’re the head of the family now. 

Reflection

It’s possible to be sad and appreciate beauty at the same time. Sometimes the measure of sadness present makes the beauty seep in all the more, like a slow, sweet syrup. It’s unintuitive. You might be out in the rain, lamenting, and stain memory of that soft rain on your soul forever.

I watched my grandfather pass away with 8 of his children around his bedside, whispering their goodbyes, washing his body with rose water. It’s locked in my bones with gratitude — heartache and warmth.

Sadness is not always something to fear.

Sorrowful eyes reflect a lake of beauty.

rage (this is a cento; another day behind)

μηνιν αειδε θεα, sing rage, muse(s),

rage in the feminine accusative; passing from the swimmer to the wave

verging upon the world of dream and metamorphosis

sleep being death:

For those condemned to death

And for those condemned to life

There is no better tonic than the moon (se puede tomar a cucharadas

o como una cápsula cada dos horas),

Le cose belle che porta ‘l ciel. We looked up

And once more we saw the stars

Animulae blandulae vagulae, little souls, gentle and drifting,

Let us try, if we can, to enter into death with open eyes…

a 1924 california colonial house

I was not communing with the colonial past as I scraped my knees climbing my straining olive tree. Adobe, round windows, curved doorways, wrought-iron lamps, echoing Spanish- and then Mexican-California, when el Camino connected the dotted missions of Jesuits (backwater of the bubbling Colonial apparatus): seemingly neutral spaces to a white girl, born into university-educated privilege, but spaces pioneered by the breaking hands of ohlone indians, whose itching garments were not their own, nor their days, whose nights were hemmed by glaring moments of submission, names lost, but whose hands left marks on the lives of a thousand thousand strangers.