Form.a.tion

     When I wake, I want to sleep again. A name ticks across the front of my mind. Jenny Agutter. Jenny Agutter. Agutter. Agutter. My hip starts to ache so I turn over. I fight to keep my eyes shut. When I finally open them, I stretch like a cat, back bent, arms outstretched. Coffee. Waffle. Couch. There’s a flimsy blanket that I drape over my legs. Again, I close my eyes. 

     “How is your morning so far,” asks the driver when I am on my way to work. I notice his skin. It is dark against the zip-up soccer sweatshirt he is wearing. Bright green with gold letters sewn down the arm. Brasil. His voice, his accent is beautiful. I tell him I do nothing with my mornings. I mention the Chinese and their calisthenics, the Japanese and their natural inclination for good habit formation. 

     “I just don’t have any discipline,” I say. He smiles, laughs.

     “I tell you a story,” he says. “My wife, well, she passed three years ago...she get up every day and four kids...,” he turns his head slightly, “No stomach,” and, with a flat hand, he makes a motion over his body. 

     “Four kids and she stretching and doing her exercising...every day. And I ask, ‘why do you do this?’ She say, I grow up in the projects. I look across the street and I see those Chinese women getting up eeev-ery morning and they stretching and doing their exercises. I guessed they were doing something right’.” He laughed. 

     “She did it every day.” He laughed again. I wanted to ask how his wife died. He mentioned what he’d read that day. How the Mars rover has a 22 minute delay in communication, that it had to land, sight unseen. I relayed the announcement of the detection of gravitational waves thanks to the merging of two black holes.

     When I get to the store, I grab a cup of coffee, unlock the door, place the vintage Brown Jordan chairs out front. It takes twelve trips. I settle into one of the Wegner wishbone chairs at the Eames table. By the time Nam arrives, my heart feels like it’s struggling to beat. She walks in like she owns the place, dropping her small, black purse on the walnut rocking chair, walking towards the bouquet of flowers at the front.

     “It was my birthday,” I tell her. 

     “Ooohh. These are beautiful. Very beautiful. Very special.”

     “I know,” I say. I got lost in them when they arrived. I’d never seen flowers like that. I loved the green, bulbous things that looked like hairy balls. 

     “I don’t do anything with my morning. I have no discipline,” I tell her.

     “Oh. No good.” She shakes her head. Her hair looks freshly cut and curled. “You must get up, greet the day.” She turns her head back, raises her arms. 

     “You go for walk, greet the sun. Come home. Make one egg and avocado. Coffee home. Not out. This too expensive,” she says as she points to my cup of coffee. “Your eyes sparkle. You make yourself beautiful. You make good energy and then you follow it.” She looks up, raises her arms above her head, making a fluttering motion with her hands. She continues. “I walk in the mountains. You know this? I live on Tica. I walk. It is a good walk.”

She picks up a pen and turns the yellow pad towards her. 

     “It is like this.” She draws one arc, then another and another so it forms an S. “You get sun, shadow, sun,” she says. “It is good.”

     “You walk? You walk with me?” she asks. When she smiles, she looks so Chinese, I think. 

     “You must form good habits,” she says.

    Later, when I am talking to my mother on the phone, I ask her why the Japanese have such a natural discipline.

     “Oh...it’s inculcated since they are babies...” She pauses. “Sorry, hon.”

city bright, city light, city dark, city night

      

     Sitting on the curb on Main St. in my hometown, a boy looked up, stared off into the night and said, because our bodies contained similar elements as those found in stardust, our awareness of ourselves meant the universe was contemplating itself. 

“Isn’t that neat?” he asked. 

“I guess,” I said.

      City scene: On the 110, I spot a large structure, all i-beams, shrouded in black scrim. A large section flutters open to reveal a massive Catterpillar anchored at a treacherous angle atop a pile of waste fifty feet high. The arm of the machine rises up and sweeps down, violently scooping material from one area to another. Bits of trash waft slowly through the air. The scene is gone. But it stays with me. I will revisit this scene, I think, take a closer look. Watch the horror. 

     City scene: I am lost and I give up. At a stoplight, I look to the right and scan the facade of an autobody shop. Nothing interesting here. I see the gaping holes of the open garages, grime and dirt everywhere. But no people. It’s hot. The sign is wood and faded with blue lettering. And then they appear, like shapes in those 3D images. You crossed your eyes a little and looked at the picture as you would something at a great distance. If you were lucky, you were rewarded with some dumb scene, a couple of giraffes or some palm trees. There, peppering the facade, were cages upon cages of small, bright birds, fluttering, chirping. Affixed to the side of the building at different heights, I hadn’t noticed them at first. There were at least fifteen of them, filled with birds. Yellows, blues, greens, flitting about.

     City scene: Crime scene tape stretches across the boulevard, across six lanes. It’s the longest running length of tape I’ve ever seen. Crime Scene. Crime Scene. Crime Scene, it says over and over again and over again. Three male cops are eating, wrappers littering the hood of their vehicle. The female cop walks towards us and says we cannot get into our apartment. I am annoyed with S. for trying to follow the rules. “C’mon,” I say and start off towards a driveway, not our own. Under cover of darkness, save for the far-reaching radius of a motion-sensor light, we scamper across a few low-slung roofs, and jump down into the back of our building. We are home. We do not leave for the rest of the night. For once, it is quiet and still, the din of traffic having died down to nothing. In the morning, the tape and the cops are gone. In their place are wandering investigators in search of details and witnesses. Good-looking, local news anchors show up. There is a march. The story goes like this. A man was waving down police. His hand was wrapped in a towel. Police thought it was a gun. They shot him. In the back. In the head. During the march, people had gray towels in their hands. They were swirling them in the air. 

     City scene: the corner of Sunset and Hollywood. I see two cops standing near their car. They are looking at a man who is packing up his belongings. He thought he could spend the night at the side of an electrical box. He was wrong. He swiftly folds up his clothes, patting them a few times when he’s done. And then, quite suddenly, he’s on the balls of his feet, hands raised in the air, pelvis thrust forward, hips moving in a controlled, precise motion from side-to-side. His moves are illuminated by the cold white, light of a street lamp. And just as suddenly, the outburst is over. He leans over his belongings and continues packing. The cops get in their car and drive away. I laugh out loud.