Free Rough Likeness: Essays by Lia Purpura

certainly not pressing. Who draws the errands out, pushing the cart down each aisle, slowly. Whose browsing is full of drummed-up intent, who thinks about birthdays months in advance and adds gifts-to-buy to her shopping list, to justify staying out longer. When a card alone would suffice, or even a call with apologies for lateness.
    The sadness comes not in airport leave-takings, not even when teary, divorced parents pass kids between them, or off to the grandparents, those hostage negotiators. But the arrivals: yes, then. Kids running into-the-arms-of: yes. The abundant scooping up of a child. Of having been scooped, and, by extension, all the current searches for scooping we undertake, each in our way. The absolute presence the moment of scooping convenes— I am here/this is perfect— until, into that breaks the thought: so brief is our time held aloft, before we are set down again.
    It’s not to be found on the interstate itself, 5 a.m., dark and empty except for a few long distance truckers and me, en route to the airport—but up there, in the fully fenced pedestrian bridge over the interstate: that zinged right in. Why? No one was on it, having ended a nightshift, or heading toward a lousy, minimum wage job. No one stood baleful and peering out, fingers hooked through chain-links, awaiting (habit of inmates and bored kids at recess, abbreviation of full-body longing.) The bridge just seemed tired of having to hold. And the fencing a fragile afterthought: better cage it just in case . Just in case what? Then came the scenarios, all desperate, all terrible, abraded by morning’s empurpled rise. I drove under, thinking such things. That I must not have been alone in my feeling triggered the sadness.
    Apples: the fate of certain ones. The other day, a grocery clerk was unpacking Braeburns from Washington State, gorgeous fruits with shiny yellow and red spin-art skins—and he dropped one. Then picked it up and tossed it in a box at his feet. That’s all it took. Especially the thunk . To grow, to be picked, to travel so far—to end up discarded in the store, that very last port before purchase. I don’t know why this moment of sadness couldn’t be fixed by adjusting perspective (toward the bright side: see all the apples that did make it safely!) It didn’t allow for misperception (maybe that’s the wipe-and-restock pile), nor did it support much hopeful conjecture (don’t worry lady, those go to the homeless shelter). All the efforts of sun, rain, tilling; all the stacking and storing and driving; all the picking by hand, and after a long day, all the heads on bare mattresses, wrists aching, necks sore, pesticides swallowed, crap wages in pockets—made for a particular density of sadness, just the size of a perfect Braeburn.
    Sometimes the sadness sidles up, then reroutes. The atmosphere in the coffee place was nice. I was enjoying some free time while traveling, in the company of a good friend I rarely see. We were just settling in to talk when I looked up and saw on the wall behind him three awful bent spoons, badly fastened with Phillips-head screws to a messed-up piece of wood, meant to be used as a set of hooks—for what? dishtowels?—for $19.99! The handwritten price tag dangling on its little string flipped me out. I tried to consider: “it’s someone’s attempt, it’s the best they can do, maybe this is a rehab project and the store’s a supporter providing free space for people getting back on their feet. . . .” The clumsiness was almost sad. Sad at the edges and for a split second, but there was no sense at all of craft, no eye for proportion, no care for materials. The longer I looked, the angrier I got. Twenty bucks ! It took someone two minutes to screw together this mockery of “country” which means, in real life, things sheened from use, rubbed with hands, breath and sweat, not shining with bottled, lacquery crap.
    And it’s not a deflation, either, this sadness. Here’s deflation: