The LaconiaBy Wendy Webb
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Alma exits a restaurant in the Sunset District of San Francisco. She was the only woman eating soup alone at a table. Her soup had eyeballs in it. Alma thinks it might be the longest coldest summer of her entire adult life. The season had been like sweaty hands on monkey bars. There was a hard and slow pace to her days and nights. Alma was grateful for generous sightings, festive distractions, the city abuzz with its comeback kids and gypsy royals. The night before, she saw Pam Grier get an award at The Castro. In the morning, she did qigong in Golden Gate Park. Tomorrow she has tickets to hear Joyce Carol Oates. After an extremely brief exchange with the author, she will never think of a post-it note in the same way. Her neighbors have returned from Lake Tahoe, next weekend they are off to Sonoma. Alma promised to visit before she departs for Portland at the end of the summer.
On her way to twenty-third avenue, she sees curious signs, mottos, markers from the street and enters a nearby shop. She smells sandalwood and clove as she looks around at the gift and apparel items on display. Alma sees a midnight black floral print silk robe. It is too light and short to be a traditional kimono. The silk robe feels perfect and unique, made for an ubuntu heart. Alma decides to buy the silk robe for herself. When offered a paper bag for her purchase at the counter, she shakes her head. “No thank you,” Alma says to the store owner. She places the receipt in her wallet and the folded robe in her canvas handbag.
As Alma walks, she wonders about the spectacular opulence in nature. She is a beholder of its beauty. Alma feels a through-line in the soil, a subtle vibration running underneath all things. Alma is intrigued by the systems, cycles, operandi of the natural world. She suspects something infinite in the slight passing glory of Sunday afternoon rain, a waxing moon, a warm sepia and sienna horizon, the wind in a field of lavender, a ripe peach in the palm, the slope and descent of a valley.
It is springtime in New York City. Alma sits at a bench in Washington Square Park. She is drawing in a linen sketch book. Alma illustrates two big round eyes, a delicate nose, wide expressive lips, waves of hair by cheeks. One thousand and one times, Alma has drawn the face of this angel. The first time was for a school art class when she was eleven. She divided her angel face portrait into four squares with a ruler. She began to paint each quadrant its own color series. The right eye quad was a pebble gray, powder white and seed brown. The left eye quad was blush pink and plum. Lips, jawline, nostrils were never painted, the manifest undone, bare, incomplete. “Time to move on,” said her teacher, Mrs. Thompson. Her words, “full speed ahead, train ride world, catch up.” Alma remembers the angel face halfway in motion, a halted swirl, everlast in its process, in between worlds. From shadow to light, her parkside sketches, a beat, a trace, an echo from another time.
Laconia is a warehouse and an outdoor market, a wonderland of fabrics, gifts, a spirited travelogue, an abundant collection for designers, artists, beholders. Ten other shoppers entered the doors of Laconia today. Alma does not notice any of them. She wears a giant straw tote over her shoulder made from Egyptian palm leaves. She sees LED signage for a solarium talk, Kintsugi, Golden Repair of Japan. There is a slowing down to stepping inside Laconia to survey its many treasures. There are booths, sections, levels, walkways, featured items, decorations, experts. Laconia had an energy of fiery coincidence and cooling intuition. Alma could let her mind wander freely. Her eyes to roam, sense, download possibilities. She needs a gift for next week. A ceremony to honor her friend and mentor Lakshmi, known as Luca to her inner circle. Alma glimpses a marigold and mint green peshtemal from Iran. A good gift had hints of synchronicity, with ample nods to the divine, the earth, the beautiful, the reach of the moment, something to hold, to touch, something recognized. She may leave today with only dreamy ideas, a somatic collaging cloud of research.
A knot at sea is longer than a mile traveled on land. Coiled ropes were used by sailors to measure distance. A knot in the body is tense and tight fascia. Knots under the skin, around the bone, inside muscle triggered or released by touch. Alma looks at hundreds of knots on display at Laconia. Ribbon, thread, yarn, folded upon itself, a loop, a bind tangled up in form. Macramé is a Spanish word for crafting knots from cords of cotton twine, linen, hemp, jute, yarn. Plant hangars, necklaces, curtains, hammocks, decorative wall pieces were made from natural and recycled materials. Alma looks closely at the ombre of knots beside her. Most were priced at fifty dollars. Hand-loomed woven fibers imitating moss to mist, skyline to shore. A wall hanging as large as a window, it is sage, a fading Oregon yinmin blue, streaks of cobalt, a frequency like cyan.
Alma peruses the rustic acacia wood cubby at Laconia. Alma is attentive to specialty fabrics from India. They have traveled so far to be there. Placed with such care, thoughtful and precise, the way tea pours at a chado. Alma has studied words, symbols, sounds in Sanskrit, the classical language of India, perhaps the oldest script in the world. She has read about origin in The Upanishads and about bliss in The Gita. Alma chooses a Bengali Kantha quilt for the ceremony and Luca. The Kantha stitch is an artisan craft, passed from mothers to daughters for hundreds of years in India. The quilt is a patchwork pattern made from many recycled cotton saris. An arrow and words in Hindi are shown on the tag. The quilt is rose red, elephant grey, shapes like the number eight, petals like gloriosa daisies and fire lilies.
At a banquet in ancient Greece, the subject is beauty, what is it? An ascent, a ladder, a diversion, a husk, an initiation, a vision beyond flesh, a quickening. Attendees to the drinking party deem it is not absurdity, not denial, it is the final revelation, oneness as grasp or embrace. A lasso thrown, aimed at beauty’s byte by the philosopher king Plato. Luca does not need another quilt, beauty that it may be. Alma will insist she keep it for guests, gratitude, luck. Alma has cherished quilt gifts of her own. A punch purple and jade green quilt from her mother’s trip to Chile. A red Navajo quilt with white spider woman crosses from Santa Fe. A gift from her father for a summer she spent on Nantucket. It now belongs to Wolf, her retriever. Alma contemplates the sublime and the fruitful.
Alma moves toward the denim. She sees a denim coverlet and a denim tablecloth. The tablecloth tag, a stamped Latin word “Venarari!” and a crane in flight, for sixty dollars, with instructions to cold wash only with like colors. A stormy scheme of blue spectra for fiber vessels. A polymer of twills, tears, shreds, aged goodness. Alma thinks she would not like a world without denim, a fabric so woven illustris. Today at Laconia, Alma is wearing her favorite pair of #longlife denim jeans. The rise is high, the shade is eco X blue, the wash is dark.
At Laconia, the hall of prayer flags was a popular location for pictures. The little flags suspended from ceiling, wall, wire, strands draped like tinsel. Some were nine by nine, others were eight by five, rectangles the size of a finch or sparrow. Thousands of blessings, wishes, homemade, printed, polyester and cotton. When Alma enters the hall, the Himalayas, Leh Palace, a panorama, a mural painted on all sides above and below. A window remains half open to invite the wind. A breeze that bows, air to move, intentions to circulate, good will activated, made atmospheric. Alma guides her hands through the little flags as she walks the layers of purification, protection, prosperity, compassion, wisdom. The little flags cannot touch the ground. Sometimes the flags were not there in their tunnel of homage. They were removed for cleaning or smudging. Today the flags were in rotation. Alma watches their serenity at sail, they dance, dangle, miniature mills of wind, grain, power.
***
Alma at seven waits to be picked up by a fountain outside after class at the museum school. The fountain is made of coral rock with many natural holes and edges. The stone’s surface is medallion, gold, mustard. Key West is roughly one hundred and seventy miles away from the fountain. Havana is two days away by sailboat from the fountain. Times Square is a three-hour plane ride from the fountain. It is late afternoon and the sun’s heat is winding down in the Grove. She will wait by the fountain for her mother or grandmother. She saw her batik teacher’s hand dip the brush in hot wax. Her teacher was not afraid of the boiling water, the hot wax, the bold violet becoming veiny, crackling, orchid, grape, raisin. Her teacher learned batik as a child in Barbados. When the moon is waxing, it is growing light, getting bigger, crawling, cycling toward fullness. Alma by the fountain does not know wax is a simple lipid. She sees the wax as a potion, an agent of change. The wax coats the fabric, it appears slippery, lubricant, slick. It hangs on a line to dry, it waits to form, in transit to new again.
***
Each fall, Alma ventures to Laconia for a candle. Alma feels fatigued today. Since her last visit to these doors, the world has been on pause, many storefronts are closed due to disease, riots, curfew, storms, the unrest. The Laconia has managed to traverse the messy chaotic terrain of the new world order. Alma is handed an espresso at the entrance. She is wearing ginger tan faux leather gloves. She will keep them on once inside. There is an event with innovator and designer Hessem. Them/they will premiere new holographic technology, The Fountains. Alma walks by the crew setting up near the manteles, the tables of feast that spin and slowly twirl. Alma places her order for a custom blend at the candle cart: lime, seaweed, sencha, soy wax. As she waits, the holograms of Hessem commence. Alma is surrounded by sound trails of river and rain. The illusory waters sprout, flow, cascade, spiral in waves and wavelengths. A soothing and tranquil experience, beams, fractals, fields of light that stream, arise from foundations of copper and stone.
The ice crystals gather at Mount Olympus far from the fire and ash under the world. Snow is frozen water vapor, a mineral, a powder, it absorbs sounds. A blanket of snow on the ground is quiet, free from turmoil, full of rest, smooth, placid. Hima is a Sanskrit word for snow. Alma’s mind wanders to a bewildering vision the night before. The Himalayas, mountains that span Bhutan, China, India, Nepal, Pakistan are sacred territory for followers of Buddhism and Hinduism. Alaya, is a Sanskrit word for abode, an Arabic word for highness. A tiny hut is a clinic near the border of Nepal. The women, mothers of the village are very ill. Is their suffering a grief or a poison? The doctors have long hair and wear cross-body sacks wherever they go. Are there medicines in the cross-body sacks? Alma sees static flickering in the sky as if the air was a screen, a radar. The women, mothers of the village wear many scarves around their necks. The mountains hover majestic, constant, capped with snow.
An amusement park in Florida is twenty-five miles east of the Everglades, a two-hour boat ride from the island of Bimini, and a twelve-hour flight from the Northern Lights in Iceland. It is a humid and buggy evening at the fair, the sky a bright tender pink. At nine years old, Alma is reading The King Must Die at her school. The amusement park is far from the land of Crete, the adventures of Theseus and the trapdoors of the labyrinth, yet crude and savage in some similar way. Alma is with her aunts and cousins standing in a long line. She looks around at the coasters that roll and flip, the swings that fly and the people that yell. There are many flashing lights, cords and cables with electric shock cartoons. Music that blares and blasts from a stage. Alma wants a painted frisbee. They are waiting at the machine that spins fast with fusion. Paints poured, dropped into the spin. Alma loves the instantaneous velocity, the change, the act of sealing, the ring extended, the circle alive. The longest frisbee throw on record happened at Fort Funston in San Francisco at thirteen hundred feet.
Alma doesn’t mind the drizzle as she locks up her bike outside a radio station in Portland, Oregon. It is long before the snow dream in the Himalayas. She waves to tech guy Gio as they prep for the day. Alma welcomes artist Thiet and they talk about the drizzle, the interview, the rumor of sunshine later. Gio counts down and they are live. On air, Alma and Thiet converse, they cover mixed media, reuse, recycled materials, the Makers movement and her new paintings. The Good Girl, a new series by Thiet utilizes nets, mesh, nylon webbing and lace. Alma probes Thiet about the series title. Thiet answers, “Yes, the good girl…” She is interrupted by a snafu, a technical mishap, her partial response repeats over and over. The Good Girl...The Good Girl…The Good Girl…Alma is startled. She rises from her seat and looks over at Gio in the booth. He waves his hands furiously and moves frantically. The Good Girl…The Good Girl…The Good Girl…There is a twenty-three second on-air delay for any broadcast. There is a stop button for emergencies. The Good Girl..The Good Girl…The Good Girl…Alma is the host. She has to make the call. She has to decide, to choose, to hit stop or to let it loop. The Good Girl...The Good Girl…The Good Girl…Can Gio solve this? The Good Girl..The Good Girl…The Good Girl…For one minute and six seconds, the loop runs on-air for five thousand listeners. After the show, Alma apologizes to Thiet. At the opening, Thiet raises a glass to good, good, good, girl, girl, girl. Everyone laughs, the crowd loves the happening, the novelty, the da-da weirdness of the offbeat repetition. Alma joins the toast. Inside she finds it hard to accept the good girl as anything other than her own defeat.
Alma leaves the candle cart, smelling of jasmine and matcha from samples. Patterns that never end, words like tofali and seko with maroon, black, aqua zig zags and triangles. Sisal, raffia and sweet grass from Rwanda, Ghana, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Alma loves the tower of baskets at Laconia. Alma picks out one to hold. The tag reads the Great Rift Valley with a heart around it. Baskets are a symbol of unity in Rwanda. They are given as gifts at births and graduations. Rwanda, the land of one thousand hills. Hills among lakes, hills among rivers, hills among smoldering volcanoes. In 1994, there was a genocide in Rwanda, more than eight hundred thousand people were killed. An exodus, more than two million fled the country. In 2005, a couple from New York arrived to the devastated and ravaged nation to open a restaurant. Alma imagines a cup of masala chai in Kigali at their restaurant named Heaven.
At the checkout counter, a rock the size of a door knob is to be unboxed, inspected for inventory. Alma recognizes the blue green waxy luster, bits of granite and pyrite. The gemstone is turquoise from the Sleeping Beauty mine in Arizona. It closed a few years ago. Alma knew a man who traveled there.
Evening not yet night, Alma disappears into that enormous city with her giant tote, hills and valleys in her heart, Sleeping Beauty on her mind. She will forget her visit to Laconia today, the people, places, possibilities. A mighty remembrance can return like rain. The titan of time sparks from a candle’s light. A flash of the absolute rushes in like a cool breeze from the coast. Between water, fire, sky, a thread of wonder begins to weave.
On her way to twenty-third avenue, she sees curious signs, mottos, markers from the street and enters a nearby shop. She smells sandalwood and clove as she looks around at the gift and apparel items on display. Alma sees a midnight black floral print silk robe. It is too light and short to be a traditional kimono. The silk robe feels perfect and unique, made for an ubuntu heart. Alma decides to buy the silk robe for herself. When offered a paper bag for her purchase at the counter, she shakes her head. “No thank you,” Alma says to the store owner. She places the receipt in her wallet and the folded robe in her canvas handbag.
As Alma walks, she wonders about the spectacular opulence in nature. She is a beholder of its beauty. Alma feels a through-line in the soil, a subtle vibration running underneath all things. Alma is intrigued by the systems, cycles, operandi of the natural world. She suspects something infinite in the slight passing glory of Sunday afternoon rain, a waxing moon, a warm sepia and sienna horizon, the wind in a field of lavender, a ripe peach in the palm, the slope and descent of a valley.
It is springtime in New York City. Alma sits at a bench in Washington Square Park. She is drawing in a linen sketch book. Alma illustrates two big round eyes, a delicate nose, wide expressive lips, waves of hair by cheeks. One thousand and one times, Alma has drawn the face of this angel. The first time was for a school art class when she was eleven. She divided her angel face portrait into four squares with a ruler. She began to paint each quadrant its own color series. The right eye quad was a pebble gray, powder white and seed brown. The left eye quad was blush pink and plum. Lips, jawline, nostrils were never painted, the manifest undone, bare, incomplete. “Time to move on,” said her teacher, Mrs. Thompson. Her words, “full speed ahead, train ride world, catch up.” Alma remembers the angel face halfway in motion, a halted swirl, everlast in its process, in between worlds. From shadow to light, her parkside sketches, a beat, a trace, an echo from another time.
Laconia is a warehouse and an outdoor market, a wonderland of fabrics, gifts, a spirited travelogue, an abundant collection for designers, artists, beholders. Ten other shoppers entered the doors of Laconia today. Alma does not notice any of them. She wears a giant straw tote over her shoulder made from Egyptian palm leaves. She sees LED signage for a solarium talk, Kintsugi, Golden Repair of Japan. There is a slowing down to stepping inside Laconia to survey its many treasures. There are booths, sections, levels, walkways, featured items, decorations, experts. Laconia had an energy of fiery coincidence and cooling intuition. Alma could let her mind wander freely. Her eyes to roam, sense, download possibilities. She needs a gift for next week. A ceremony to honor her friend and mentor Lakshmi, known as Luca to her inner circle. Alma glimpses a marigold and mint green peshtemal from Iran. A good gift had hints of synchronicity, with ample nods to the divine, the earth, the beautiful, the reach of the moment, something to hold, to touch, something recognized. She may leave today with only dreamy ideas, a somatic collaging cloud of research.
A knot at sea is longer than a mile traveled on land. Coiled ropes were used by sailors to measure distance. A knot in the body is tense and tight fascia. Knots under the skin, around the bone, inside muscle triggered or released by touch. Alma looks at hundreds of knots on display at Laconia. Ribbon, thread, yarn, folded upon itself, a loop, a bind tangled up in form. Macramé is a Spanish word for crafting knots from cords of cotton twine, linen, hemp, jute, yarn. Plant hangars, necklaces, curtains, hammocks, decorative wall pieces were made from natural and recycled materials. Alma looks closely at the ombre of knots beside her. Most were priced at fifty dollars. Hand-loomed woven fibers imitating moss to mist, skyline to shore. A wall hanging as large as a window, it is sage, a fading Oregon yinmin blue, streaks of cobalt, a frequency like cyan.
Alma peruses the rustic acacia wood cubby at Laconia. Alma is attentive to specialty fabrics from India. They have traveled so far to be there. Placed with such care, thoughtful and precise, the way tea pours at a chado. Alma has studied words, symbols, sounds in Sanskrit, the classical language of India, perhaps the oldest script in the world. She has read about origin in The Upanishads and about bliss in The Gita. Alma chooses a Bengali Kantha quilt for the ceremony and Luca. The Kantha stitch is an artisan craft, passed from mothers to daughters for hundreds of years in India. The quilt is a patchwork pattern made from many recycled cotton saris. An arrow and words in Hindi are shown on the tag. The quilt is rose red, elephant grey, shapes like the number eight, petals like gloriosa daisies and fire lilies.
At a banquet in ancient Greece, the subject is beauty, what is it? An ascent, a ladder, a diversion, a husk, an initiation, a vision beyond flesh, a quickening. Attendees to the drinking party deem it is not absurdity, not denial, it is the final revelation, oneness as grasp or embrace. A lasso thrown, aimed at beauty’s byte by the philosopher king Plato. Luca does not need another quilt, beauty that it may be. Alma will insist she keep it for guests, gratitude, luck. Alma has cherished quilt gifts of her own. A punch purple and jade green quilt from her mother’s trip to Chile. A red Navajo quilt with white spider woman crosses from Santa Fe. A gift from her father for a summer she spent on Nantucket. It now belongs to Wolf, her retriever. Alma contemplates the sublime and the fruitful.
Alma moves toward the denim. She sees a denim coverlet and a denim tablecloth. The tablecloth tag, a stamped Latin word “Venarari!” and a crane in flight, for sixty dollars, with instructions to cold wash only with like colors. A stormy scheme of blue spectra for fiber vessels. A polymer of twills, tears, shreds, aged goodness. Alma thinks she would not like a world without denim, a fabric so woven illustris. Today at Laconia, Alma is wearing her favorite pair of #longlife denim jeans. The rise is high, the shade is eco X blue, the wash is dark.
At Laconia, the hall of prayer flags was a popular location for pictures. The little flags suspended from ceiling, wall, wire, strands draped like tinsel. Some were nine by nine, others were eight by five, rectangles the size of a finch or sparrow. Thousands of blessings, wishes, homemade, printed, polyester and cotton. When Alma enters the hall, the Himalayas, Leh Palace, a panorama, a mural painted on all sides above and below. A window remains half open to invite the wind. A breeze that bows, air to move, intentions to circulate, good will activated, made atmospheric. Alma guides her hands through the little flags as she walks the layers of purification, protection, prosperity, compassion, wisdom. The little flags cannot touch the ground. Sometimes the flags were not there in their tunnel of homage. They were removed for cleaning or smudging. Today the flags were in rotation. Alma watches their serenity at sail, they dance, dangle, miniature mills of wind, grain, power.
***
Alma at seven waits to be picked up by a fountain outside after class at the museum school. The fountain is made of coral rock with many natural holes and edges. The stone’s surface is medallion, gold, mustard. Key West is roughly one hundred and seventy miles away from the fountain. Havana is two days away by sailboat from the fountain. Times Square is a three-hour plane ride from the fountain. It is late afternoon and the sun’s heat is winding down in the Grove. She will wait by the fountain for her mother or grandmother. She saw her batik teacher’s hand dip the brush in hot wax. Her teacher was not afraid of the boiling water, the hot wax, the bold violet becoming veiny, crackling, orchid, grape, raisin. Her teacher learned batik as a child in Barbados. When the moon is waxing, it is growing light, getting bigger, crawling, cycling toward fullness. Alma by the fountain does not know wax is a simple lipid. She sees the wax as a potion, an agent of change. The wax coats the fabric, it appears slippery, lubricant, slick. It hangs on a line to dry, it waits to form, in transit to new again.
***
Each fall, Alma ventures to Laconia for a candle. Alma feels fatigued today. Since her last visit to these doors, the world has been on pause, many storefronts are closed due to disease, riots, curfew, storms, the unrest. The Laconia has managed to traverse the messy chaotic terrain of the new world order. Alma is handed an espresso at the entrance. She is wearing ginger tan faux leather gloves. She will keep them on once inside. There is an event with innovator and designer Hessem. Them/they will premiere new holographic technology, The Fountains. Alma walks by the crew setting up near the manteles, the tables of feast that spin and slowly twirl. Alma places her order for a custom blend at the candle cart: lime, seaweed, sencha, soy wax. As she waits, the holograms of Hessem commence. Alma is surrounded by sound trails of river and rain. The illusory waters sprout, flow, cascade, spiral in waves and wavelengths. A soothing and tranquil experience, beams, fractals, fields of light that stream, arise from foundations of copper and stone.
The ice crystals gather at Mount Olympus far from the fire and ash under the world. Snow is frozen water vapor, a mineral, a powder, it absorbs sounds. A blanket of snow on the ground is quiet, free from turmoil, full of rest, smooth, placid. Hima is a Sanskrit word for snow. Alma’s mind wanders to a bewildering vision the night before. The Himalayas, mountains that span Bhutan, China, India, Nepal, Pakistan are sacred territory for followers of Buddhism and Hinduism. Alaya, is a Sanskrit word for abode, an Arabic word for highness. A tiny hut is a clinic near the border of Nepal. The women, mothers of the village are very ill. Is their suffering a grief or a poison? The doctors have long hair and wear cross-body sacks wherever they go. Are there medicines in the cross-body sacks? Alma sees static flickering in the sky as if the air was a screen, a radar. The women, mothers of the village wear many scarves around their necks. The mountains hover majestic, constant, capped with snow.
An amusement park in Florida is twenty-five miles east of the Everglades, a two-hour boat ride from the island of Bimini, and a twelve-hour flight from the Northern Lights in Iceland. It is a humid and buggy evening at the fair, the sky a bright tender pink. At nine years old, Alma is reading The King Must Die at her school. The amusement park is far from the land of Crete, the adventures of Theseus and the trapdoors of the labyrinth, yet crude and savage in some similar way. Alma is with her aunts and cousins standing in a long line. She looks around at the coasters that roll and flip, the swings that fly and the people that yell. There are many flashing lights, cords and cables with electric shock cartoons. Music that blares and blasts from a stage. Alma wants a painted frisbee. They are waiting at the machine that spins fast with fusion. Paints poured, dropped into the spin. Alma loves the instantaneous velocity, the change, the act of sealing, the ring extended, the circle alive. The longest frisbee throw on record happened at Fort Funston in San Francisco at thirteen hundred feet.
Alma doesn’t mind the drizzle as she locks up her bike outside a radio station in Portland, Oregon. It is long before the snow dream in the Himalayas. She waves to tech guy Gio as they prep for the day. Alma welcomes artist Thiet and they talk about the drizzle, the interview, the rumor of sunshine later. Gio counts down and they are live. On air, Alma and Thiet converse, they cover mixed media, reuse, recycled materials, the Makers movement and her new paintings. The Good Girl, a new series by Thiet utilizes nets, mesh, nylon webbing and lace. Alma probes Thiet about the series title. Thiet answers, “Yes, the good girl…” She is interrupted by a snafu, a technical mishap, her partial response repeats over and over. The Good Girl...The Good Girl…The Good Girl…Alma is startled. She rises from her seat and looks over at Gio in the booth. He waves his hands furiously and moves frantically. The Good Girl…The Good Girl…The Good Girl…There is a twenty-three second on-air delay for any broadcast. There is a stop button for emergencies. The Good Girl..The Good Girl…The Good Girl…Alma is the host. She has to make the call. She has to decide, to choose, to hit stop or to let it loop. The Good Girl...The Good Girl…The Good Girl…Can Gio solve this? The Good Girl..The Good Girl…The Good Girl…For one minute and six seconds, the loop runs on-air for five thousand listeners. After the show, Alma apologizes to Thiet. At the opening, Thiet raises a glass to good, good, good, girl, girl, girl. Everyone laughs, the crowd loves the happening, the novelty, the da-da weirdness of the offbeat repetition. Alma joins the toast. Inside she finds it hard to accept the good girl as anything other than her own defeat.
Alma leaves the candle cart, smelling of jasmine and matcha from samples. Patterns that never end, words like tofali and seko with maroon, black, aqua zig zags and triangles. Sisal, raffia and sweet grass from Rwanda, Ghana, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Alma loves the tower of baskets at Laconia. Alma picks out one to hold. The tag reads the Great Rift Valley with a heart around it. Baskets are a symbol of unity in Rwanda. They are given as gifts at births and graduations. Rwanda, the land of one thousand hills. Hills among lakes, hills among rivers, hills among smoldering volcanoes. In 1994, there was a genocide in Rwanda, more than eight hundred thousand people were killed. An exodus, more than two million fled the country. In 2005, a couple from New York arrived to the devastated and ravaged nation to open a restaurant. Alma imagines a cup of masala chai in Kigali at their restaurant named Heaven.
At the checkout counter, a rock the size of a door knob is to be unboxed, inspected for inventory. Alma recognizes the blue green waxy luster, bits of granite and pyrite. The gemstone is turquoise from the Sleeping Beauty mine in Arizona. It closed a few years ago. Alma knew a man who traveled there.
Evening not yet night, Alma disappears into that enormous city with her giant tote, hills and valleys in her heart, Sleeping Beauty on her mind. She will forget her visit to Laconia today, the people, places, possibilities. A mighty remembrance can return like rain. The titan of time sparks from a candle’s light. A flash of the absolute rushes in like a cool breeze from the coast. Between water, fire, sky, a thread of wonder begins to weave.
Wendy Webb is a writer, web designer, educator. She received an MFA in Art Criticism and Writing from The School of Visual Arts and an MA in Media Studies from The New School. She is a supporter of PEN America, Lighthouse Writers Workshop, The Center for Fiction. Wendy writes about culture & the environment at Medium.com and lives in Miami, Florida. Website: wendylwebb.com