'Brokenness: Maphibosheth at King David's Table'
Reading through some of Wendel Berry's short Novels and his non fiction work called the Unsettling of America, has stirred up lots of childhood memories. Berry's novels just have a goodness about them. They honor hard work, the nurturing of people, for land, and animals alike. The old idea of husbandry, the care for the life of the farm in order to preserve it as a legacy for future generations, comes through as a counter paradigm to our popular anti culture culture of quick profits at the expense of the poor and of our children. He see's the true beauty of an America which lives for the next generation, loves life, and God, and has a great respect for all of creation. 
We had a psychotherapist sharing with the community this week. In part he dealt with clinical attachment styles. One of which is Anxious Ambivalent Attachment. This is the case when the child distances herself as a way of coping with the insecurity of the environment. The mother may well be loving and well intentioned but just isn't able to or doesn't know how to give the child a base of love and consistency. Often there is an alcoholic in the mix creating instability. It reminded me of this strange painting I did a while ago and gave as collateral to the local gallery for showing in their space. At the time it reminded me of Dostoevsky's salad bowl mix of persons disorders working off each other. Now I just think it rings true to the deprivation many of us live in and live as if there were no other reality.
Rodica and Rosalinda were born into the world a few days ago around a table of kids pushing pulling and rolling 'plastalina' into eyes mouths and whatever else they thought to do. These had a little extra personality as do their creators. Rodica's creator is quiet, and thoughtful but rarely lets her thoughts known unless she can't help her curiosity. Her homemaker with a plate of food and apron on shows some of the mothering she has experienced with or without electricity. Rosalinda is more of a fairy tale name, high heels, and short skirt, this girl is not just going to survive but will survive with dignity and have some fun along the way, so with her 10 year old creator.
The Deposition
“The police are giving us an apartment!" Are you coming or not?" Each of us hop into the police van and see the grinning cops joking with us. They usually swear at us and look at us like we are rats, but never are they happy to see us.
The city spins outside the van a few times and we pull up. "5th floor", we traipse up the stairs one after another. 'Who can bust in the door?" We all jump up and start pounding in the door. There are no sounds inside, just echoes of beating on the door. John falls in on his side on top of the mangled door and there she is.
In the kitchen lies an old woman. She must have been dead for a while now. The kitchen is moldy and smells like the bottom of a garbage can. The woman’s face is an old spotted bleached house shirt.
“The granddaughter was sent to the orphanage there is no one left to carry her out boys', Here is a bag, lets get her down to the van, we'll talk about the apartment later.
It is one of those houses, where there are no corners, only worn edges and solidified gum in every corner filling in until the home rounds till it looks like the underground tunnels we sleep in for now.
Dark, damp collections of clothes, shag strip on the bathroom floor, split toilet seat, scraps of wood, broken furniture, hear the echoes in the walls, neighbors gargling through the bathroom wall.
We all find places around the body and carry her over the broken door spiraling down together like the 'Lord’s Cow' bug with each of us as a leg.
We carry the black bag down the five flights of stairs and each of us knows what to do with death. Laugh in its face. (Except when we carried Mike out of the sewer last year after he got beat up and drank himself till he choked on his own vomit in the sewer, nobody looked at anybody, we all hated him anyway and you don’t want him haunting you just because you laughed). So we tell jokes the whole time, we joke that the body would ride nicely on the top of the van and we could aim and drop it down quite easily. The police are quiet for once, those two hate us and love us at the same time. We all know it.
We scuffle out the back of the van stopped at the morgue entrance at the back of the hospital. Placing her body on the hospital stretcher for a minute I remember my grandmother. Her smell, the way she always touched my ear and couldn't get me to eat enough. The way her bare feet looked in those jelly slippers in the summer. Blackened toe nails, And I thought of my mother, and hell, the last time I saw my dad, my brother fishing, and my mother. I feel that nameless black blob coming up my chest and say, 'so do we get to use the apartment or not?'
“We'll see what the mayors office works out and we'll let you know. I am not sure it will do any good, you'll still be back at the corner smearing your dirty rags on car windows pestering good people for change”
As part of a project with the kids I had them cutting out people from magazines. Later as I went through the cuttings I found this on the back of a cut out of a little boy. It is now pinned to my studio wall reminding me of how meaningful 'accidents' can be. "Reality can have metaphorical content; that does not make it less real" --Salman Rushdie, from Midnight's Children
Here is our line up of buses. Tonight we will meet under the street light that lights the parking lot and have some food together. Last week during our art time on the streets we drew the busses that park in the huge parking lot next to where we meet. There is a soccer stadium to one side, Mc Doodles, and the hospital on another, and an abandoned sports arena. Buses park to wait to take workers back to their villages in the late afternoon. Some street kids traveled the whole country before they were 15, some barely leave their corner. We'll stay here with them while the buses, cars and trams come and go. We'll keep praying for an empty parking lot and miracle stories of by gone days. 
.JPG)
