I Love a Broad Margin to My Life (8 page)

Ming Ming. Bright Bright.

Double bright. He arrives at Ming Ming

in a rainstorm. Wind is driving the bamboo

and ginger and cane flat. No moment

between lightning and thunder. A logo

flashes. Ming Ming. A word we know,

sun and moon together,
bright
. 2

suns. 2 moons. Bright Bright.

Following the way the sign points, the wet

traveller runs to a village mired in mud,

into a courtyard that’s a sty of mud. Ming Ming

seems to be a ghost town, yet

another ghost town whose denizens left

for a global city somewhere. He bursts in

to find an art studio, and artists painting

indoors during rain. They shout and laugh

like Welcome! Look at what the mew dragged in!

Like Get the man dry clothes and hot tea!

The nude model throws on her robe, and dashes

away to do their bidding. The men set

down brushes and palettes. Take 5.

They pull up stools and crates around the stove.

Wittman takes off his clothes, soaked

to the skin, and dons the robe the model brings

along with tea and wood and coal. “Thank you.

Thank you,” the guest says in English,

his natural language, the best for giving

heartfelt thanks. “You well come,”

says a goateed artist. No, not

goatee. Let’s give him a soul patch.

“Well, well,” says a fellow with a ponytail.

“Koo. Koo. Koo.” Cool. Cool.

“How are you?” “I am fine.

Thank you.” “You well come.”

“I come from Heilongjian. And you?”

Black Dragon River. The artists, communal

around the fire, brothers, smoking Peace

brand cigarettes and being served tea

and pastries, delight in trying out the Brave

language, the lingua franca taught in schools.

The cats are hip and up-to-date.

They wear their colors on worn, torn denim.

Some long hair. Some skinhead.

Black beards. Purple beard. 5

o’clock shadow, designer stubble. The old man

bewhiskered like that handsome Commie, Ho Chi Minh,

is home among his own kind. The artists

get to the extent of their English. Pots and buckets

plink and plunk; the roof drums. The paintings

are hung and stacked on the dry sides of the room.

Mr. Soul Patch brings to his lips

a xun, around which his hands fit perfectly,

and blows a music, old from long, long

ago. Our first male ancestor,

Bao Xin Gong, made the xun

of earth, made it earth-shaped, and gave

forth this sound that is the sound of time, from

far off to now to far after, the sound

of the animate winds, the yin wind and the yang

wind, the sound of the first man and this man

breathing song. Hear it, and it belongs

to you, and you belong to all of it.

The music ends on a long long

outbreath. The musician coughs and coughs,

spits a lunger onto the dirt floor,

rubs it in with his foot. Lights up

a cigarette. Urges the guest, Go on, go,

try it, blow. Wittman holds the earth xun

in spread hands, fingertips over some

holes, brings it up to his mouth. Pásame

la botella. The sound he gives out

is low, definite, smooth, clear, loud.

“Koo.” “Koo.” “Tell me about xun.”

The artists—they are masters of many arts

in this commune of makers—speak with numbers.

7,000. Xun was unearthed? invented?

7,000 years ago? In the year

7,000? 40. The xun in your hand

is 40-something—generations? years?

Cough cough. Pat-patting the lungs,

the heart, me, myself. 40. The musician

who takes up the xun will die in his 40s.

All artists die young. We sacrifice.

The painters, the model too, have coughs. The smoke,

inhale, cough, exhale, cough, cough.

The elder artist can’t help lecturing

the younguns about their health. “No wonder

you Chinese chronically cough and spit.

You, with every breath, you’re drawing microbes,

germs, disease from that old, used instrument,

into your respiratory system. Those xun

players died young because they caught an illness

from this infected instrument, which they passed on to you.

You guys shouldn’t be living in your studio.”

Points at the beds, the stove, the tables loaded

with cans, bottles, tubes of chemicals, food.

“You’re handling poisons all day,

and breathing fumes all night. I know.

My wife’s an artist. We’ve been poor,

but she keeps her workplace, her art lab,

away from where we eat and sleep. She wears

a face mask, a respirator. Just like

Chinese do in traffic. And, come on,

don’t smoke. Don’t smoke. If you

knew your history, you wouldn’t smoke.

Only 3 grandmothers ago,

BAT, British American Tobacco,

forced our people to buy opium, and tobacco-

opium mix. We had two wars

Chinese versus Anglos,

Opium War I and Opium War II.

We lost both times. We fought back

poison against poison, and guns, sold

bread with arsenic at the bakeries for Westerners.

When I learned my history, I stopped smoking

cigarettes, pot, any kind of shit.”

The young artists don’t understand

a thing he says, else they’d laugh over

the bakerman, bakerwoman guerrillas.

They do know, they give their lives for xun,

for art. They take his waving and pointing to mean

admiration for them and their work. They open

albums full of photos of paintings with prices.

Their brushwork takes your breath away.

The lines and angles of Picasso. The impasto

of Van Gogh. The colors of Rothko.

The icing of Thiebaud. They can do anything.

But where is the new, the never-before-seen

that we’re counting on the post-Liberation

post–Cultural Revolution generation

to give us? Art schools in the U.S.

are folding their painting classes, teaching computer

and industrial design. The young artists show

the old artist (buyer? patron?) their portfolios.

Chinese kids selling their art

on the streets of Sydney, Florence, San Francisco.

On these walls, their latest work: dark

pictures. Heavy black crosses. Black

cross in foregrounds crossing out whatever else.

Black cross in backgrounds or upper

corners, a coming menace. The New China

still hung up on Christianity.

Let it go already. But look,

we’re painting exactly what we see

before our very eyes. There, above

your head—the stovepipes, one up through

the roof, and 2 arms out the walls.

Like the number 10.
We are painting

hearth and home. The world will see Crucifix.

Chinese viewers will read personal

messages, and political messages. And the government

read forbidden messages, and the artists get

into trouble. And what is that above the door,

the kiva, hogan door? Eagle, you are here.

Bear, you are here. Bear, protector

of journeys west. Dragonfly, you

here too. And Snake. And Coyote, you,

here. And Zia, sun and sipapu.

Kokopelli on flute. Whirling Logs,

like Buddha’s hairs, like swastikas.

All bordered by beansprouts, river

waves, whirlwind. And the threshold

lintelpiece itself border, land

bridge, rainbow. “Nicolai Fechin,”

say the artists. “Nicolai Ivanovich Fechin.”

They name the woodcarver who made this icon,

and placed it at this threshold, that we be

aware coming in and going out that

we, people and animals, migrated across the top

of the world. They came our way; we

went their way. All connected with all,

all related. The rain stops. The painter

with the purple beard motions Come come,

and leads the way through the mud to his home

and studio. “Nicolai Ivanovich Fechin.…”

They stand before a wet oil. The paint

wet but also a river rushing, mud, and men,

men drowning? mouths wide open

crying Help? No, they are cheering and

laughing—Eureka! The pan is full of gold!

They—Chinese American Forty-Niners—

fall into the gold-giving water,

and roll in it. In joy. In fear. O,

Comrade of Californians! You we left

behind know and care what became of us

who went to Gold Mountain and never returned.

O, Artist. Draw
me. See
me.

Show me beautiful, old. “Draw
you
,”

says Purple Beard. Dui. Dui. Dui.

So, for long sessions of time, the wanderer

holds still as the artist draws and paints him.

The artist looks and looks, squinting his eyes,

to see everything, what’s there, the visible,

and what’s not visible, only he can see.

Suddenly, at a break, at a meal, Purple Beard’s

face comes up close to Wittman’s

face. He’s studying my profile.

Tonight by electric light, the left profile;

this morning the right profile, the 3

quarters profile, the angles the eyelids

open and shut, the ear, the other ear,

the hairline, the texture and many colors

of hair and skin, the lines, the creases. Eyes

asquinch, he’s studying me, breathing, smelling me.

He hasn’t begun the actual painting, won’t

begin until he’s made studies and decisions.

Here, let’s work in the courtyard,

the light from the north. No, let’s go

indoors, this house, the light

from the south. The artist faces the sitter,

looks and draws, draws and looks, and one

day decides: Fullface. Good.

The face I myself looked at every

morning first thing back in the life

where bathrooms had mirrors. Full on. I, the writer,

look in the mirror more than the normal person.

To know my mien.
Mien
same-same

Chinese, English. To track and trace

momently changes. That’s me, still good-

looking. But can’t hold any one

expression for long. Hold it, and you freeze up.

Think upon looks, and that vanity shows.

Try method acting. For lovingkindness

in the eyes, look upon the other lovingly,

kindly. Purple Beard works without

talk, can’t understand him anyway,

makes you quiet down yourself, likewise

be without talk. Be Nobody. He’s

making an idol of me, admiring, adoring me so.

Lately, Taña doesn’t draw her husband,

doesn’t use her art on him. Doesn’t give him

her artist’s interest, regard him, record him, behold

him, find beauty in him. She disdains “narration.”

She paints lines and spaces like calligraphy

that’s not words. She can’t stand Frida Kahlo—

“Too much narrative. Too much pain.”

All the way to China to get appreciation.

Taña would love it here, among this commune

of artists. No, no, she wouldn’t. She

wouldn’t live like these girls. Bicycling

away rain or shine to run an errand

for her artist. Coming back with cigarettes, food

supplies, art supplies, coal, wood,

money. They aren’t so very communal;

each woman serves just her one

boyfriend. We’re back to the days of

James Joyce and Henry Miller, women

living to serve genius. Taña would organize

a cultural revolution. Girls,
you

can be the artists of your dreams. She’d

see to it that this village dine together.

Everyone cooks for all. Give dinner

parties, be civilized. You ALL come.

Walt Whitman: “I will not have a single

person slighted or left away.” But Taña

and these artists same-same: Once they regard

a thing, it becomes treasure. Surprise:

I’m not bored sitting day after day.

I’m old, worked for a lifetime, time

to rest. Chinese know about working

hard, and give rest as a gift. “Sit.

Sit,” they invite the guest. “Sit, la.”

You take the crate or stool or the one chair

(Chinese invented chairs), saying,

“No, no,
you
sit, la,

don’t stand on ceremony, thank you,

thank you.” Purple Beard crouches, peers,

takes a kung fu step forward,

a tai chi step back, moves himself and

his metal easel right beside his subject,

paints, paints, backs away, easel

and all, paints some more. Turns his back

on the model and the picture, holds up a hand