Change

It was oddly warm and the sun was shining.
Days like that are rare in this city so it makes everyone wander the streets to soak each other in.
I wanted some juice and to be outside so we headed off to the party store.
As we approached the store we saw a middle aged woman sitting in a wheelchair next to the door.
Her lips spread wide across her face, exposing a large gap between her teeth.
“HEY, BABIES!” a loud boisterous voice filled my ears. My friend and I both smiled.
“Can you go in the store fo’ me, please?” her voice dropping a couple octaves “They have kind of baaad attitudes. I’m lible ta’ say somthin ta’ one of those assholes, git myself thrown out. HAHAHA!”

“Sure.” my friend piped up.
The woman reached into her pocket and pulled out a scratch ticket, handing it to me she said,
“It’s worth $3. I just want a half pint of Canadian Windsor. It’s $2.49 or something.”
“I can’t. I don’t have my ID on me.” as the words slipped out of my lips I chuckled to myself. No one in this city, in this part of town was going to card me…or anyone else for that matter.
Glancing up at my friend and then back at this woman, “Hey, you should go for her.” I suggested, still laughing.
“Umm…I guess.” reluctantly my girlfriend took the ticket and walked into the store. I followed, headed straight for the cooler and grabbed my juice.
When I returned to the scene outside they were both grinning.
“What are you listening to?” my girlfriend asked the gap-toothed, woman in the chair asked.
Bursting into laughter, “HALL AND OATES, BABY! You know the one? SARA SMILE!” and with that she started to sing.
There was no composure left to be had. We were almost in tears.
“I LOVE YOU BABIES, I LOVE YOU BOTH SO MUCH!”
“YOU’RE GOING TO LAUGH! HAHAHA!” she reached into her bag. After a moment of digging her hands reached out to each of us with ripe tangerines.
It was too much, she was infectious.
Food for service.
“Enjoy the sunshine.” I said as we walked away.
My friend leaned in, still smiling, “She even gave me the change.”

Today I went to my favorite coffee shop and sat in the sun while the bees danced happily around the fresh brioche I had poorly hidden in a brown bag on the table. As I sipped my coffee I noticed a homeless man wandering by with some drum sticks. There were the few people from other neighborhoods sitting around ignoring him but the people who lived there all meandered by muttering, “Hi Larry.” as they passed. The skin around his mouth folded open to reveal a toothless smile as he greeted each of them by name. After a few of the people left and the place slowed a bit this woman and her son sat down to eat some fresh bread and hang out.
The boy was mesmerized with Larry, following the old man with his eyes, barely blinking. Noticing there were drumsticks in Larry’s bag the boy slowly crept over and whispered to this, clearly, cracked out old black man, “do you play the drums?”
“YES!” Larry announced proudly, “Would you like me to play for you?”
The little boy just nodded his head and smiled.

Larry reached into his pocket, pulled out a lighter and lit the cigarette he had dangling from his lips and said, “OK, OK, 1 SECOND. YOU JUST WAIT RIGHT THERE!”
He reached into his bag, pulled the sticks and stepped over to the newspaper boxes.
“ARE YA WATCHIN?”
The boy nodded.
Larry laid into the boxes like they were his personal kit. Using the plastic and the metal like they were designed to resonate his rhythm. It was beautiful. Another little man came running up, “Larry, Larry watch me, watch me.”
The old man finished his street corner solo, asked the first boy if he liked it and let his eyes roll over to the other boy who was doing back flips on a bike rack before the first could answer. It was chaos for about 5 minutes. In the middle of everything one of the bakers came out of the shop and handed Larry $60. He leaned in as not to embarrass the old man, “It’s from my mom.”
“Oh…tell her I said…” his eyes wandered back to the boy doing flips.
“You got it man, go feed your daughter.”
Larry seemed lost for a moment like a thought had taken him away somewhere none of us were welcome.
“OK BOYS! I’VE GOTTA RUN!” he half yelled half growled.
As he walked by me his smile unfolded again and he reached out his hand to me.
“Names Larry.”
“Hi, I’m Natja. It’s very nice to meet you.”
“Likewise, my dear. See you on another day.” and off he went.

Ari, three years old: a lion.

Already, she has the world wrapped around her little finger.  Her father is the biggest sucker of them all. There is something so fantastic about the relationship between these two.  It’s pure, unconditional love.  She crinkles her nose and, as if completely unable to control his actions, Jay does whatever she commands.  Her miniature lips wield the power of a queen and she is fully aware.

As we continued down the street we spotted an industrial robot sculpture. Without a second thought, Ari was off and running full tilt towards it.  She yelled over her shoulder for me to take her picture. A few feet away from it, she froze.  Jay and I watched as her mouth fell open and her cheeks lost their color.  This robot was twice her size, covered in rust, barley had a face and was terrifying. When we reached her, she still hadn’t moved.  The look of pleasure she carried all day had been replaced with staggering fear.

“What’s wrong, turkey?” Jay asked leaning into her.

Slowly Ari shook her head back and forth.

“You want Natja to take your picture?” he asked.

“No.  That’s alright.” she was still unable to remove her eyes from this colossus abomination.

“Oh my.  This is sort of awesome, Jay.” I observed.  “Let’s see what we can do here.” Squatting down in front of her, looking her in the eyes, I said, “Are you sure you don’t want a picture in front of the robot?  Robots are really cool and I bet this one, if it were alive, would be really friendly.  Sometimes they just look scary.”

“No, that’s okay.” She answered as her glance reached over my head, refocused on the sculpture.

“It won’t come alive, I promise with all my heart.” I said in the sweetest, Sesame Street voice I could muster.

“Uh-uh.” her head shook back and forth.

“Can you imagine how cool it would be to have a picture of you and the robot?  You can stand this far away.  Your daddy and I will both be right here to protect you from anything that could possibly happen.”

She weighed her options.  She placed her finger quizzically on her chin and thought.  She loved being in front of the camera more than she was afraid of the sculpture.  “Okay.” she said with a wrinkle in her forehead, “But hurry.”  She turned her back to the creation and smiled at me.

Aiming my camera at her, I snapped 3 quick shots and pulled the camera away.

“Come here!” I smiled and gave her a hug, “You’re such an amazingly brave girl!

Her father was quick to chime in, “Come here and give me a hug!  That was awesome!  I don’t even know if I could have shown so much bravado!”  The giggle that came from the depths of her belly was unrelenting and completely infectious.

It was starting to get late in the afternoon, so we decided we would give Ari two options: we could call it a day and go back to the house for dinner, or she could eat the banana in the truck then we could go to Belle Isle where we could race around the fountain, or maybe along the waterfront if it wasn’t too cold.  Without hesitation she smiled and said, “Race!”  So, we were off.

As soon as we parked the car, she had already liberated herself from her car seat and was trying to open the door.  Once out of the vehicle, she made a B-line for the empty pool and scaled the wall as quickly as possible.  She was in.  Spinning around she looked at us impatiently. It seems we had arrived just in time for her assessment of the situation, she looked up at me, “Can we climb up to the lions?”

“Sure, let me go up first and your daddy will hand you up to me.”  Grabbing the ledge I started to climb. Turning around and making sure I was steady, I reached down, grabbed her wrists and pulled her up to me.

Once on her own feet she climbed over and sat on one of the lions.  “You can get down now.” She directed me.

“Hilarious!  Alright, kid.” I hopped down and grabbed my camera.  Aiming up and focusing in, I yelled up to her, “HEY, ARI? ARE YOU GONNA TAKE OVER THE WORLD?!”

That’s when it happened: this tiny piece of the city’s – our city’s future; this curious, beautiful, miniature creature spread her arms as though to take flight. With a brilliant look at her father Ari let loose the most guttural, primal child roar Detroit has ever heard.



Primal Scream

Upon returning back here, I could feel the weirdness, like the Great and Powerful “Nothing” was taking over. The city took to kicking me…hard almost immediately, laying out bullshit hoops for me to leap majestically through. There was a general disgruntlement about the life that was unfolding in front of my eyes. It didn’t take long after I planted my feet firmly on the ground here that it occurred to me what had just transpired in my life. I was alone. I had chucked every last bit of myself up into the air and was waiting to see where all the little fragments would land and how they could reconstruct themselves.
Hearing that I was weakened and broken from my travels and I had some how lost my sovereignty, was becoming tiresome. Coming back wasn’t enough, I needed to understand that I had abandoned my people and this place (like so many others before me) and my loyalty was in question. I was sure leaving a good job and stability in search of inspiration and opportunity in Detroit would be enough but sadly, no. So I waved my white flag and gave in to the beating at hand.
After struggling for a couple months at a friends house it became clear that I wasn’t able to do this on my own and I wasn’t having any success from the latitude and longitude I was standing, currently. In an effort to straighten out the jumbled mess that had become the contents of my brain, I retreated to the city. There I found a very busy friend with a frequently empty, 8th floor apartment in a deserted neighborhood. A quiet place to rest for a while since most people were too afraid or didn’t want to make the drive to retrieve me from there. Needless to say, I loved it.
One night after too much time alone and a few too many sips from a bottle of whiskey I was struck by genius. It had been my pride all along that had been getting in the way and I needed a metaphor to stomp it down with. Always with a flare for the dramatic, I grabbed a full bottle of red wine and marched directly to the roof. My intent was to polish off the entirety of the wine as fast as my body would allow, then throw the bottle to it’s death, a shattered destiny in some dark alley somewhere on a lost street in the depths of Downtown Detroit where it would be indistinguishable from any part of the ground to any passers by. The pride I held too dearly was going to be thrown to the wind. It’s a weak metaphor, I know but it is what it is.
A fantastic scene for the quiet theatrics of a shy woman.
Leaning my head back I started to pour the wine past my lips and down my throat, mostly succeeding. I figured the drops on my chin along with the small, steady stream that had formed at the corner of my mouth and was going down my neck made for good imagery. Between swallows, giving myself moments to breath I would practice the toss. Testing the weight, making sure I was close enough to the edge of the building to ensure it would take flight and descend into the darkness.
As I came to the end of the bottle I prepared my stance. The drunken shoes that were holding me up were already starting to wobble a little and the gravity seemed slightly more intense in this particular spot than it had been in other places but I figured it would be fine. With one flick of my wrist I released the bottle into the wild. As it spun so did my feet. My ankles twisting up underneath me. In a final betrayal of my body, I landed square on my butt. My vision coming back to me just in time to see the bottle land on the old, moldy, futon mattress and roll off onto the roof under it, completely unscathed.

Perfect.
The joke was on me.
As if the city responded, “Welcome Home! Here’s some hard gravel for your drink ass! Now get up, dust yourself off, take a freakin shower and act like you had purpose to showing your face around here again!”
That’s when I started yelling at the sky, all my inhibitions dissolving somewhere between inebriation and sheer frustration (if only it had rained, that would have been so Leonardo DiCaprio in every movie he’s ever done), “I’LL MAKE YOU A DEAL! I’LL TELL YOUR STORIES AND WORK ON RESOLUTION AS OPPOSED TO DESTRUCTION BUT YOU HAVE TO FEED ME, GOD DAMN IT!…AND GIVE ME A PLACE TO PUT MY VOICE!”
So here it is, my little part of the world, my little soap box to stand on and repeat the tales that the concrete whispers in my ears.
May you love them, may you hate them…may you read them.