Free I Love a Broad Margin to My Life by Maxine Hong Kingston Page B

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
    mirror, and looks at their images in reverse,
    turns around quick—catches something—
    paints it down. As if I am
    hard to see. The artist is doing mighty
    feats of concentration to hold me real.
    Across the courtyard is a south-facing
    window, dark inside, nobody lives there.
    One day, the window is utterly gone.
    Nary a jamb or corner or glint remains.
    The explanation has got to be that tree;
    it leafed out, and put the window out
    of sight. Must’ve mislooked, imagined
    a window through the wavering spaces between
    glittery leaves. Then, another day,
    the leaves disappear, the tree disappears.
    A green tree? A red tree? Gone.
    And there’s the window again. Next to the window
    is a gray wall. There are no shadows
    on it because no tree, no branches.
    Only light, light that changes, changes
    with the moving day. So beautiful, the non-
    repeating universe, I could watch it forever.
    So beautiful, the nothingness of the ground.
    Suddenly, the artist picks up the painting,
    turns it around, thrusts it toward its subject—
    “Finis!”—and has him see his portrayal. Omigod!
    So much strain. So many wrinkles.
    Read the wrinkles. I’m straining might and main
    to carry out ideals. I have ideals.
    I didn’t lose them along with my young self.
    But I try too hard, the strain shows.
    Not graceful under fire. I ended
    the war in Viet Nam. I am determined,
    we shall stop warring in Iraq,
    and Afghanistan. Well, not
    the fun-loving monkey but the world-carrying
    citizen, okay. Wittman leaves
    the art village, leaves the picture for history.

SPIRIT VILLAGE
    He betakes himself to yet one more village.
    I need him to go to an all-male place,
    a monastery, to make sure that Shao Lin
    or Han Shan or Water Margin sanctuary
    exists. That the Chinese religion lives.
    He locates and climbs Su Doc Mountain.
    (Su Doc, Think Virtue, Hong
    Ting Ting’s father’s name.) Through
    the fog and mist of dragons breathing, following
    a trail, possibly made by deer, he comes
    to a ramshackle
mew
, a temple. No one
    answers his knock. He opens the door, and enters
    a dark room. Silent men and a few
    little boys are eating supper. Someone
    hands over a rice bowl and chopsticks,
    and gestures eat eat. The food
    is leftovers of leftovers. Even
    the child monks practice eating meditation,
    mindfully selecting some unrecognizable
    brown vegetable, chewing it many times,
    tasting it, identifying it, thinking about
    and appreciating who grew it and cooked it, grateful
    to them, and to the sun and the rain and the soil,
    and all that generates and continues all.
    After eating (food still left over),
    the monks sit enjoying stomachs full,
    holding the segue from this present moment
    to this present moment. The kid monks
    play kung fu boxing, push and
    chase one another unreprimanded
    around the