Prophets and Parachutes

resident, ingrid fankhauser

It is the end of the weekend and I am in a coffeeshop gorging myself on the latest middle eastern crisis and free coffee refills. Syrians are gathering lebenese refugees into their hopsital beds and there are more sillhouettes on the horizon. They come by way of the sand marked suspicous street that leads into damascus. grandfathers sit in store windows sipping cardmom coffee and smoking pipes. Talking about oil and the prophet paul.

paul was set on hauling fumbling christ follwers away in metals and keys. instead he gets knocked clean off his horse. told to run rampant and tell fables of sea floating saviors. Has to confront his friends and his donkey on this cathartic moment. Embarassing, stumbling moment. when everything he has has changed and cannot be undone.

That road is full of magic and unsuspected skylines they whisper through beards and bombshells. Open armed syrians or god. never know who youre gonna get or where you will end up. faces and veils. river lines and compasses. heaven.

in moments of honesty, I know i am walking the same lines. With the lebeneese women paul and all our beliefs of exactly what lies at the end of the road. On other roads I have simply said I learned my lesson or forgotten the lesson all together, either way I do not remember well what it is that happened.it wears off as fate. Coincidence. And I revert to my old routines. lists. worries.

I cannot play the violin anymore. I worry about money. my weight. my sister. How slow I read. I still look for red jeeps on highways. but I believe there is hope in the end and the end is never what we suspect. we will all get knocked clean off our horse and not be quite the same afterwards. The lebenese are flooding syrain borders. Paul is leaving legends that god is a jouster.

I Have Measured Out my Life with Coffee Spoons

photo by elisa mascarello

mountains make traveling marked yellow lines towards asheville easy. they are my home along with the people in them and i am reminded of this all the time. i have taken a step back from my experience in phialdelphia, as you can only seem to do with experiences after you are out from them a certain ways. like rivers from planes or impressionist paintings or something like that.

philadelphia is now connected to those memories of children, bedtime stories, a growing garden we planted in the spring, and all those things that will never be fixed in their lives. it also brings to mind new friends found when least suspected and held along the way. lovers. you. the vegan sensitve coffee shop and $50 a cut hair salon. the carefully chosen rock gardens and the posh, expensive corners of south street. and a house to share with people i met.

i have been given many things from the place itself. an oddly shaped room, i imagined many nights and especially in snowstorms, was a treehouse. a big porch. strangers. a blog created out of boredom that filled out the pages of my ordinary days. a space just for typing.

i have left many things behind that might only have closure because of my leaving. the secret stories in a house on manheim street now newly filled with others' treasures and groceries. the pages of feedback and prayed for change to my director and his assorted board members. the missing from children who always guessed i would be in their lives forever but will move on to other workers just as easily.

ts elliot says, "we shall not stop from exploation, and the end of all our exploring, Will be to arrive where we started, And know the place for the first time." nights i fall asleep in the mountains, and against the blue of my now home i imagine this to be true. and that finally or for the moment, i am where i started.

Thank God You See Me the Way You Do

The week before I left Philadelphia the rain came down in sheets and drowned the city parks. Channeled rivers turned to quickly moving currents of wood and trash. people came out from their houses and rode bicycles downtown to watch all the water spill over the dam’s sides. i forget, here in the city, nature is not so tame as these bridges and cement make it out to be. i had forgotten its delightfully fierce power I say to myself and take a picture.

The day after that, I left philadelphia. my work moved me to the north carolina mountains. They are old friends. My grandfather.. My blue car and three steaming trucks barrel up its sides. Wheel brakes burn and give off rubber thick smells reminding my of old cars and my dads persistent advice. I chuckle at my still present desire to harness these hills in picture frames.

Its late summer. The mountains are full of screech owls and troubled youth this time of year. I have settled into week long work schedules and drinking strong gritty coffee on an empty stomach in the mornings. I talk with students about letters. outkast. family. cocaine. wishes. I am still telling bedtime stories and finding bits of time to read Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.
My memories are, most often, tangible images and my attempts to yoke the delicious labyrinthh of landscapes, faces, and materials I have known inside film canisters and developing solution. I cannot take pictures in the woods and there are no mirrors to record our faces. my memory is unused to working off such penetrable, flimsy evidence and so, at times, refuses to draw my particular and present landscape into it.In remedy of this, I am taking more pictures of faces during my off shifts and discovering new ways to catch the rest of my life in baskets. I bought an old upright piano with dark green insides for my room and a big straw sun hat to wear when I write. One addition to my tactile memory is the photograph above. The CVS attendant left it out of the hardcopy role with the exclamation, "I didn't develop a few of them. I don't know if you were trying to be artsy or if it was a mistake." I only came upon the photograph yesterday and will leave its intended purpose or lack thereof to the reader's discretion.