i’ll never forget the radish. who gave it to me? i think it was katy. yes katy brought a whole bag of vegetables that we sliced up thin and put on oven nachos. except for one watermelon radish that was shaped like a monster with gnarly teeth. i wanted to look at it for a while so i left it on the windowsill by the kitchen counter. it was still very warm out back then. it was unkind of me, unthoughtful i guess i’d say, to leave the radish out just because i wanted to see it. day after day i watched it go bad. and then one night, many weeks later, when the outside of this thing was completely moldy and rotten, ava took it and asked, what do we think of this friend? i apologized and said something like, it’s all my fault. and ava said, oh it’s ok, it’s still good. and i was thinking uh oh. but ava sliced into it, as if it was a geode. i’ve never seen such a soft, wobbly radish. but i think that because it was way, i can’t stress this enough, way past its prime, the colors inside were that much more vivid. like bright condensation on glass in a steamy greenhouse. too soft? what do we think? i said yes. ava said, what if we slice it into match sticks? i thought, how on earth would that make it less wobbly? but that thought was superseded by my trust in ava. this near stranger. who believed in life like nothing i had ever seen before, like unstoppably. we cut the radishes into match sticks. ava made a dressing out of the most mysterious, unlabeled condiments in the fridge. it was the best salad i’ve ever had.
maybe it is clear to you now that ava is becoming a surgeon. and that this is a love letter to ava. i wonder, to you, have you ever fallen in love? or gotten into love in any way at all? in love, for me, the colors of everything are vibrant. intoxicating & sensual. i didn’t know that a person could embody the vibrancy of love. i thought it was random & contextual. but ava literally does this. ava wears orange, which can be a bright color. out the corner of my eye, in the kitchen. now i see not only the dank kitchen wall, there is also orange. on the gloomiest, darkest winter days, there is orange. and this person in orange is triumphantly sounding out the power of loving things, i try to explain the effect this has had on me. my self-talk has changed and become gentler.
i met ava because ava moved upstairs. when we met, it was morning. i was sitting on the couch in my pajamas. ava came downstairs, into morning, and the room was suddenly brighter. i didn’t know that a person could be this way.
i’m sitting next to ava right now. we are in the library looking out the window. what i’m writing is a secret. ava just interrupted my writing to hold my hand. and then spoke about seeing all these people outside walking and holding hands, maybe because it’s spring or something. we returned to our work and there are tears in my eyes now. in the moment, i don’t know how to explain to ava about this love i have inside, so i will write it out. ava is moving away.
what is my life if not a long love letter to my friend. a bowl of carrots peeled into a salad. a bowl of persimmons ripening in the light.
all of ava’s language is in service of “the collective.” it’s like i and thou becomes we, with the greatest reverence for each being’s uniqueness. just a togetherness. john berger wrote:
"to see the dead as the individuals they once were tends to obscure their nature. try to consider the living as we might assume the dead to do: collectively."
out the corner of my eye, there is someone wearing orange. through every action and decision this person has created an alternative to what i knew before. i wake up in the mornings to the familiar sound of footsteps walking down stairs. when i open my bedroom door, there will be a person squatting before the open fridge, this person will say to me, good morning. the words will be like an imperative, an action item. sometimes, the words will sound like hope. as a neighbor to this person, i am privileged, as if the morning were cloudless. i feel the direct warmth of these words, but i know that the words are sent everywhere, in every direction. good morning. sunlight.
one morning, just last week, i didn’t want to get out of bed. in my bathrobe, ava came and lay beside me. let’s see, what did we do. we got up. we got in my little car, drove across the bridge. rolled the windows down. my car’s radio is broken, ava played ABBA through the phone speakers. it sounded so good, i could barely hear it. what were we talking about? more like laughter than words. we got to where we were going and we parked. we walked into the forest. we saw one ramp. then, suddenly, we saw many. this is what ava said:
they are everywhere, it’s like the biggest party.
i was looking at the ramps, but i could hear that ava was smiling. i was happy. i knelt down and didn’t know what to do. ava taught me. just take one leaf. leave most every leaf. there is an abundance. ava said, if you ever see someone with a bulb, that’s not comrade energy. because we want the ramps to continue their perennial nature. a sort of immortal collective. i look over every now and then and out the corner of my eye i see orange against a field of green.
we walk to the community garden, nothing is growing yet except some random brassica that has clearly returned from last year. ava picks a few leaves for our salad. we eat a couple on the spot. there are flowering trees around us. i went to sit under the branches of a willowy tree. ava walked into my line of sight and held out the brassica leaves and if displaying a bouquet. pausing, like a gift for me, to have a mental photograph to remember. there are tears in my eyes again.
the story goes that painting began as an acknowledgement of grief. not exactly a remedy, but preparation for someone leaving. maybe you already know this story, i think about it a lot. kora of sicyon traced the outline of her lover’s shadow before he went off to war. then i guess her dad filled in the silhouette with clay, and this is the mythical beginning of the history of art, as explained by pliny the elder.
zainab bahrani, describing a featureless clay relief of a high empress of ur, wrote
the aim of an image was not to represent a person but to bring that person into existence.
ava is holding my hand again. we are sitting in the library. it is spring. i’m writing this selfishly. i’m writing this to return to it whenever i need it. there’s a child wearing marigold doing summersaults out the window on the grass. so many people walking the paths outside are holding hands, it’s quite remarkable.
stunning