Realismo Magico

It was a Tuesday morning, so to speak, and this is how it went:

Yes, rather an ordinary day, and rather an ordinary morning. Feet on carpet, feet on laminate, feet on plaster.

Oatmeal.

Newspaper.

The silence that comes with waking early and the headache that comes with sleeping little. Dreams you recall in slivers and the one slice of moon that lights the sky as you walk to your car.

Fog on 217. An ocean of empty parking lots: you pick the far corner. A world of vandals and loose carts; one can never be too cautious.

Code in door with a click. This is no place for keys. After a maze of doors, all that slam uncomfortably behind, you enter the sales floor. Loud spaces, now quiet, echo larger than they really are. There is no security even in this holiest of shrines.

You are familiar with this place in the nooks and crannies, the dock, the forest of clothes tethered in the stockroom, all the good hiding places. Why the constant need to obscure, to stash cashmere among the cotton?

Never mind. This is not the time. For today, in all its ordinary ways, is different. A day set apart for the construction of a whole new world.

-----

An army of forklifts, handcarts has produced stacks of boxes outside the dark storefront. Not a week ago, this was the propriety of a smaller store, existing now in the has-been realm of the paper LLC. Swiftly, it becomes a gingerbread wonderland for that larger store down the block.

Amidst a fit of activity, a box is dumped at my feet with a plastic peanut induced thud. Inspection reveals ornaments. Kings with gifts. Tiny crèches. Turtledoves strung together say “Peace on Earth”. I line them up neatly on pegs on the wall.

Leaning over, I scan the bottom of the box for any remaining figurines. The kind that, like myself, would seek out the corners.

After scattering Styrofoam across the floor, I grasp, and sensing something slightly warm and ceramic, pull. In my hand is what appears to be a small angel dressed in absinth green. Wearing an impossibly serene expression, she appears worn or dirty or both. I see that she is ticketed, but in finding none like her, and being too lazy to damage her out, I hang her with the kings.

Turning away from the display, I pick up the now empty box. It is light and I carry it easily back to the stockroom to be crushed. As I sit the box down and begin to turn away, a beryl flash catches my eye. Briefly, I gaze up at the dim lights lining the ceiling in rows and the metal grating above me, thinking that my eyes deceive. Yet, I gaze again, and there, unmistakably at the top of the box, is the green angel.

I pick her up. The warmth I noticed before is still there. There are additional details as well: her feet rest on a small hill of roses. Maybe also; wings, and faces? Squinting in semi-darkness and trying to focus, I seem to detect a small tear running down the side of her face and along the edge of her long dark hair. Yes? As I unconsciously stroke the hem of her dress I do slowly become aware of the fact that the angel is becoming warmer, and is, in fact, quite hot.

My inner panic rises as I find that the angel, through unknown means, has begun to meld to my hand. The heat turns to burning and I make a series of desperate attempts to detach myself. I slam my hand against the metal side of the box crusher, attempting to shatter the angel. I remember concrete…coolness…nothing.

-----

The night before, Monday, I would recall. Or perhaps, some time later. I’ve forgotten. I fall out into a blackened sea under a sky of twisted crimson silk. Sickening writhing feeling. Sailors of a captainless vessel pilot a charterless launch. I recall the aphorism ‘red sky at night, sailors delight, red sky in morning, sailors take warning’ and yet I know not the hour or the year or even whether it is day or night.

--

Whispered: “What would it be if all that is was not?” So says the ghost of Christmas Future to the ghost of Christmas Past: “I can unmake you.”

Present naps on the sofa.

--

Another voice, speaking slowly:
“Es una tarde cenicienta y mustia,
Destartalada, como el alma mía;…
Pero recuerdo y recordando, digo:
Si, yo era niña, y tu, mi compañero.”
--

Snow-globe, sad- slicked icy silence. Tongue frozen to the mailbox flag; the volleyball pole.

Would you have me believe there is nothing so fallacious as common sense?

-----
Awakeness comes with (oh Alice!) the dark of a forgotten room. Assembling myself, I exit, stumbling along scantly illuminated corridors. Sans loss prevention, I swipe a set of box cutters. Thrust into the right side of my kangaroo pocket, the angel leaves a residue of warmth.

Driving home, I run the contours of my palm along the edge of the steering wheel, as I am accustomed. Feeling a different sensation than usual, I notice a scar extending from the base all the way up to the tip of the “M” (Sunday school teachers taught me it was God’s initial.)

Entering my apartment, I bury the angel amid the ash at the bottom of the wood rack in the corner fireplace. What prompted the need to bury I do not know. Perhaps the same need to hide things in the stockroom; yet sleep prevents further contemplative analysis. I drift off into any number of realms of my own creation.

-----

In the trash, in the stairwell, in the homeless man downtown. In the bookstore on Hawthorne. Even my bowl of oatmeal has betrayed me. Today she is everywhere. Perhaps I would take more kindly had I not been awakened at 4:38 in the morning to ash in my face.

Maybe, in my rush to return to the quiet and relative safety of my covers I was rash in building that fire. Just as the flames built tiny A-frames at the top of the log, I threw her in with abandon. I half expected, in the pea soup of early morning, to see her wince. Yet she just continued with that serene half-smile. It almost didn’t seem fair, disposing of her in this way. So I pulled her out, half-melted, and laid her on the hearth.

Now, in twenty-twenty hindsight, I realize, quizás I should have destroyed her when I had the chance. As she maintained her ever-heated presence in my pocket, I saw her face again in the green light as I was accelerating on the freeway. Driving compulsively to work, I became aware of my shaking as I contemplated the difference between running from and running to.

What sort of cosmic accident had brought her to me? I recalled her original company of kings and doves and cows and sheep, and her frustrated insistence at separating herself from them. A wave of understanding crept through me: I would not be content with lamblike following, my pastures chosen for me. Neither would I be a king; even if I were Nicodemus, I would still have arrived at the holy miracle courtesy the grace of servants and women with calloused hands veined to pained hearts.

I put the car in park and still clutching the steering wheel, observed my hands. On the outside: manicure and rings. Inside: new scar (still pink), old scar (can of chicken), blisters under index fingers. Does she recognize her own?

Further considering my Frangofied existence, impulsivity led my feet out the door before the plan had fully hatched. With the remnants of the angel firmly within my grasp, I approached the front display window and let fly. Years of backyard baseball came to fruition as shards of glass hung like icicles and then fell. (Not by my strength, but yours, sweet mother.)

Several moments passed and I became aware of my hands at my sides and the cold panic in my chest. Feeling the need to hide, I curled in a ball in the car, waiting for I don’t know what.

Make it rain; let it pour.

Snow.