My Mental Milkcrate » these small moments

Two nights away

Jessica N. Coles — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 15:09:02 +0000

I find myself succumbing and not succumbing to the gravity of reviewing the past ten years. I have no top 10s, no list of favourite moments. I have rediscovered the value of steeping in the past, but the record of my personal tastes is less than necessary. I see forward momentum in the clicking of the calendar.

Meditation, following meandering paths, seems appropriate now. Escaping the weight of city life and people. Finding a place for myself among silences and snowflakes. I wrap myself in solitude. Slip past midnight into this new year.

Releasing

Jessica N. Coles — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 04:06:32 +0000

In the many days of silence, perfect words flit like restless thoughts through axons and dendrites. Like elusive spices in a creamy sauce and silk fluttering against the ankle in an inexplicable draft. Shades of black on black on blue in a moonlit night. Magpie feathers gliding on a winter breeze.

We fight against the gravity of small bodies. And leave the corners blank.

Play

Jessica N. Coles — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 00:14:16 +0000

Winter arrived all in one shot yesterday. A load of snow and plunging temperatures. Out come the goose-down parka and the serious winter boots — the ones that tromp through snow drifts while you laugh at fools with just ankle boots.

I am delighted.

Delighted doesn’t quite capture it.

I am gleeful. Elated. Kid-on-Christmas-morning out of my mind.

I’ve driven on the roads that have yet to be cleared. I’ve had to be pushed onto the road by a stranger. I’ve had to forward-reverse-forward-upshift-reverse-forward on several occasions times. Getting anywhere takes that tiny bit longer that seems to make other people cranky. None of that touches this vibration of excitement. This is how all Decembers should be.

A logic of colours

Jessica N. Coles — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 04:32:59 +0000

We stood where green turned to blue, watching the spectrum spin in all directions, caught in the spray of a garden hose. We heard the kaleidoscope tinkle mosaic out of the windows of old houses. Old homes. We were yellow and orange and purple and all the glint of silver and gold. And we knew where to put the shadowy black to bring out the fire in red.

A nearly true story that may not have happened to me. Or anyone else.

Jessica N. Coles — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:17:47 +0000

We fell in love in the span of a bus ride. Twenty minutes from my stop to the transit center where we parted. We weren’t reading the same book or magazine; we didn’t happen to realize we had the same playlist on our iPods. He simply asked me if I liked public transportation. He had a short grey coat. Green sneakers. I don’t remember his dark eyes or that flicker of a smile around his words. I don’t remember that he squeezed my hand through my mittens in parting. And maybe he does this every day: falls in love with another woman, absorbs her heartbeat into his chaotic solo drumbreak. I don’t know. It never matters in these affairs. I’ll see him tomorrow or the next day or three weeks from Sunday. I’ll find the release on my vocal cords and give him an answer.

Coming home

Jessica N. Coles — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 02:38:32 +0000

The distance between home and home is 7,300 kilometres (give or take), and miles morph into minutes en route to hours per heartbeat. Chronology blurs and winds like the road at the top of a canyon during a rainstorm. Seconds cascade in silt-saturated rivulets over sandstone outcrops. Halfway has no meaning. Our breath takes its place in shape of lithology. We have raced across landscapes to arrive in this evening with grasshoppers scraping monumental sonatas.

A Blank Piece of Paper

Jessica N. Coles — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:29:05 +0000

Perhaps we are among the last. To listen to the click of an analog clock and stare at the possibility within a blank page. Pen hovering and heavy with unformed phrases. We are searching for the story. The heart, the beat, the string of what runs along our bones. Amassing graphemes and morphemes in the crook above the thumb. They’ll tumble down the pen and fall into the curves and scrawls of repeating ink. We will shape the secrets into discernible code where we will disappear amid the snap of synapses behind our eyes.

Stranger humour

Jessica Coles — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:56:39 +0000

I will steal this second to whisper non-secrets as I stand behind you in the grocery line. That life is waiting to pounce on the other side of the automatic doors. It’s curled up in your shopping cart, pretending to be asleep. You won’t believe me. Because you know already and dismiss the adventure of the next second. The cliche of inhalation and exhalation. The banal blinking of eyes and the hackneyed quavering of a tongue at rest. Your disbelief surfs on the chuckle at the bottom of my heart. And you don’t believe me.

Is it enough?

Jessica Coles — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 13:58:35 +0000

Aunt Alice warned me that Jake wanted to pay me for singing at Vika’s funeral.

“You know he doesn’t have to pay me,” I protested. “I’m glad to do this no matter what.”

“You let him pay you!” Aunt Alice chided. “He’ll be insulted if you don’t take it.”

Which, of course, I knew. I wouldn’t dream of insulting Jake like that. Even when gratitude can’t be quantified, there must be a gesture. It must be solid. And it must be accepted.

I didn’t get a chance to talk to Jake at the funeral. It wasn’t the time. I was not inside the grief. I was there to do a job, provide a simple service, add something to the beauty that can be found in good-bye. So I stayed in my place. Unobtrusively obtrusive. Background soundtrack.

Jake approached me on Sunday as I was sliding the hymn numbers into place on the board. I turned with a smile, the smile I can’t help in the warm-welcoming of Sacred Heart Parish. He thrust an envelope towards me, pulled me in for a hug, and kissed my cheek. His eyes looked a little red as he thanked me and I offered the most graceful response I could muster. Knowing what was in the envelope and not wanting to be tacky, I tucked it in my purse without opening it.

After Mass, I went down for coffee instead of packing up my guitar and sneaking away to run my weekend errands. I sat with Aunt Alice and Daisy and the woman whose name I never learned but who I hug during the Sign of Peace. And Jake. Aunt Alice chattered as she does — delightfully unceasingly. When she left to get a refill, Jake leaned into the gap.

“I want to thank you again.” His thick Polish accent made me drop my ear towards him. “You did such a good job.” A pause. “Is it enough?”

The mind quadruples and quintuples layers of thought when confronted with an unexpected, unthoughtof question. Somewhere I wanted to say, I don’t know, it didn’t occur to me to check. Part of me wondered what would happen if I said no, it’s not enough. I wondered what kind of people say no. My brain raced to decide if I should act as if it was too much for the little-big thing I did, to attempt a guess at an amount that could be anywhere from three dollars to three hundred.

The strange-awkward social graces a person acquires came to my rescue.

“Oh, absolutely. Thank you.” And I hid within a styrofoam cup of muddy Church basement coffee and Aunt Alice’s resumed bubbling stream of gossip.

The Singing Angel of Sacred Heart

Jessica Coles — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 03:01:41 +0000

They call me their Singing Angel. We have the most undefineable of relationships. The one clear relationship among them is Auntie Alice, my grandmother’s sister. But the rest are just the parish women and men. And I get up once a month to lead the singing. I put my heart into it. At first, it was because I love to let my voice soar across a high note and know that it is clear and strong and reaching. And because I like to do things right. But now it’s for them too. Because I am their Singing Angel.

But you see, Jake’s wife died on Sunday. Yesterday, I suppose, for whatever yesterday means in grief. And the funeral is this Friday. And it would mean a lot to Jake if I would sing at the funeral. It’s inconceivable to refuse. In all the realities in all the multiverse, this Friday has one option. I didn’t know his wife. I don’t know what his favourite songs are and he might not be able to articulate a preference right now. So it’s up to me to find my strong voice in the midst of grieving. To sing these songs of comfort for whatever they can offer in this. The songs break me down at the best of times, and I don’t know how to walk into a room full of grief and pull out my guitar.

I have to believe that God is sending me to make a difference. That I will be an instrument of comfort. This isn’t about me; it isn’t about my struggle. This isn’t self-pity. This is the prayer of a singing angel who must keep her voice.