Physics of Friendship

 They looked out the window of the bus together, side by side, cheek to cheek.

The heat and humidity of the Brownsville morning and the air conditioning on the bus caused the windows to fog.

Hilcias pulled his sleeve over his hand and used it as a kind of window wiper, moving it back and forth until he and Taki could see clearly the Gulf of Mexico along the coastal road.

“Wow,” whistled Hilcias softly, “Maybe 52 Blue is there.”

“Maybe,” whispered Taki. “I sure hope so.”

People began to stir and stretch and reach for their bags above and around them, but Hilcias and Taki stayed as still and quiet as the leaves on the trees that lined the street beside the bus station.

There are five foundational forces in the universe.

They hold everything together.

They can bring order and cause chaos.

Four of them can be explained by physics - the gravitational force, the electromagnetic force, the weak force and the strong force.

The gravitational force keeps planets in orbit around their suns and our feet firmly planted on the earth.

The electromagnetic force brings us electricity, information in computers, and connection - it underlies the mighty power of lightning and the gentle touch of the human hand.

The weak force brings us nuclear energy and makes stars shine.

The strong force holds quarks inside of protons and neutrons and holds protons and neutrons inside of atoms.

The fifth foundational force can’t be explained by physics, though.

It can only be explained by friendship.

It is love.

Taki and Hilcias stepped off of the Greyhound bus into the early morning sunlight.

“Where should we go?” asked Taki.

She looked at the horizon between the Gulf of Mexico and the Brownsville sky.

She was very still and very quiet.

Hilcias looked at the horizon, too.

“I guess we should go to the water,” he whistled, “If we’re going to find 52 Blue.”

They reached out for each other’s hands.

They walked together down the road toward the gulf.

This created that fifth foundational force, which is the strongest force of all, for it keeps hearts in orbit around each other and gives the possibility of being able to find a lost and lonely whale in the vast reaches of the deep, deep sea.

pay attention

 III.

Taki’s grandmother, Asiavik, was like the Alpine Blueberry plant for which she was named.

She was beautiful like it’s dark pink flowers.

She was helpful like it’s berries, of which living things took their fill, from the humble Arctic mouse to the Iñupiat people themselves.

She was always there like it’s berries, too, for even after all creatures had taken their fill, an abundance of fruit remained.

And she was anatkuq, which is a shaman.

One day she was resting inside of a sod igloo, the traditional dwelling of the Iñupiat people that is dug into the earth and framed with whale bone.

She sat perfectly still.

She didn’t move a muscle.

She didn’t even blink.

Her spirit went traveling, as shaman spirits do.

She traveled far away until she reached a gathering of bowhead whales.

“Welcome, friend,” said the bowheads.

They saw that she was cold in the Arctic waters, so they gave her a parka.

“Quayanaq,” she said. “Thank you.”

She put it on.

Something wonderful happened.

She became a bowhead whale!

Her head became the immense, bow shaped head of the great Arctic whale.

Her body took on a two foot thick covering of blubber to keep her warm in the cold, cold water.

She was Asiavik and also a bowhead whale, both at the same time.

She spent the whole winter with the bowheads, living life as they lived life.

She dove down 500 feet into the depths of the water and stayed for over twenty minutes, until she had to surface for a breath of air.

She created her own breathing holes by breaking through ice up to one foot thick with her enormous head.

She spouted the cold, salt water into a V shaped pattern out of her widely separated blow holes.

Sometimes she swam with her pod and opened her mouth wide to expose her 10 foot long baleen to catch the tiny krill that moved in abundance around them.

Sometimes she swam and ate alone.

She would breach, lobtail, flipper-slap and spy hop above the surface.

Mostly, though, she stayed below the surface, learning the ways of her Balaena mysticetus friends.

She was 100 tons of wonder.

Spring neared, and the bowheads prepared for their yearly migration from the Chukchi Sea to the Beaufort Sea.

Asiavik joined them.

“We’ll meet hunters along the way, waiting in their umiaks,” they said to her.

“Some of these skin covered boats will appear bright and clean and will be pleasing to your eyes.

Others will be dark and dirty,” they taught.

“There is no greater gift that a bowhead can give to the world than to give itself to the Iñupiat people.

By giving yourself to them, you will be helping them live.

Life is beautiful when you give yourself to others to help them live.

You’ll give them muktak from your thick skin and oily blubber that will give the nourishment and Vitamin C in the lean months of deep winter.

You’ll give them baleen that they’ll weave into fine baskets.

You’ll give them what’s inside of you so the can cover their drums and make music.

You’ll even give them your bones so they can frame their houses.

You’ll live through them.

If you choose to give yourself to the people, surface beside a clean umiak, for the people inside will be respectful, considerate and kind.

They’ll share you with widows, orphans, the old and all who cannot bunt for themselves.

They’ll place you in clean ice cellars.”

These words comforted her.

“If you surface by a dirty umiak, the people inside will be selfish and lazy.

They will not help people in need.

You will not want to give yourself to hunters like that.”

Asiavik listened closely to the bowheads, for she was a good listener.

“The best way to teach others about YOU is to share your life with THEM.

That’s why we’ve shared our life with you.

If you give yourself to an umiak, your spirit will not die, but will return to put on another parka, as do the spirits of all of the bowheads who give themselves to the Iñupiat.

Your human body will die.

You will live with us forever.

If you choose to go back to the people of Point Hope, you must take the form of a humble Eider duck and fly back to them.

You must teach the people about us.

The choice to stay with us or go to the people is yours to make.

As they neared the coast of Point Hope, she chose to go to the people.

She became an Eider duck and flew into the sky.

At dawn, she landed in the town and became her human form again.

She wrote the story of her journey and all she had learned from the bowhead whales.

She shared the story with the people.

Now, the people know they must respect and honor the bowhead whale in order to receive it’s gifts.

Trevor’s Poem

Trevor’s Poem

I am

the tear 

on the hungry child's cheek,

the callous 

on the old farmer's hand,

the wrinkle 

around the worried mamí’s eye,

the blister 

on the tired campesino's foot.

I am 

a human question mark

at my writing table

In ordinary time.

- Trevor Scott Barton, poems for a brown-eyed girl, 2020

beauty

 The curves of her body reminded him of the gently rolling hills below the mountains where he lived as a boy. 

Her brown eyes were the land to him.

She was beautiful like the land, like the flowers he found as he roamed the countryside barefooted, like the leaves of the trees that sparkled green after the rains of the rainy season.

“Estoy aqui,” he whispered

“Estoy aqui,” she whispered.

They listened to the sound of the rain on the window of the old hotel in the city, and made love to the rolling thunder and flashing lightning of the evening storm beside the sea.

- trevor scott barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020

Beautiful Feet

Her feet were calloused and cracked. 

They were like rocks in the ground, the ground she walked over barefooted with her grandfather as he turned the earth with donkey and a plow. 

She had the feet of her grandfather. 

She walked beside him down the long rows of beans and corn from the time she learned to toddle. 

He walked down those rows until his feet were broken and bent in ways that made him continuously genuflect to God, or to the land owners, or to the land itself. 

When her feet were in the soil, they were a part of the land.

They held the secrets of the earth.

They knew the mystery of how seeds and dirt and water become beans on plants or tomatoes on vines.

Her heart was in her feet.

Her heart was in the land.

Her heart was the mystery.

Her feet spoke.

 Estoy aquí. 

I am here.

- trevor scott barton, poems for a brown-eyed girl, 2020

Ode to Beauty

An Ode To Beauty

She felt 

the swirl 

around her thighs 

as it moved 

back and forth, 

in and out.

She tasted 

the salt 

of the water 

as it splashed 

against her body 

and caressed her face.

She listened 

to the elemental song 

of the water 

as it shushed the evening 

with a lullaby 

for ages. 

She looked 

with brown eyes

at the shades 

of blue water 

as it moved gently 

toward the horizon.

- Trevor Scott Barton, poems for a brown eyed girl, 2020

self-portrait

Thelonius the monk lived in the hollow center of an old baobab tree. 

He tended bees, ate baobab leaves, and prayed the canonical hours, day by day, week by week, year by year.

He dressed in his only frock, a yellow one, for yellow was his favorite color, the color of the early morning sun, and wore his only pair of sandals, simple rubber ones, made of recycled tires, to keep his feet from scorching and breaking on the scalding, rocky ground.

He wrote at night by the fire beside his tree. 

It was a good time and place to write. 

It helped him remember that writing is a light against the darkness, a way to help people listen.

He was alone, but he wasn’t lonely. 

The loneliness birds came and laid stone eggs in his heart. 

But he was friends with the trees, friends with the bees, friends with the people, and friends with God. 

When he was looking for a tree in which to make his home, he saw some beautiful trees. 

They seemed to be tended in a garden. 

But he chose a very ugly tree.

It was old, misshapen, and broken, one that was dying away. 

He hollowed out the trunk of that tree and made his home in the heart of it. 

A miracle happened there. 

In his first year of living in that tree, it sprouted more leaves than any other tree in the land, so many leaves that it looked as if it were a brush stroke of the greenest of greens on an artist’s palate. 

It produced an unending source of baobab fruit for everyone near and far.

He tended the bees that lived in his tree, and the bees tended him.

The bees made honey in the branches of the tree. 

He climbed the tree and took the honey out of it’s holes with his bare hands and never received a single sting. 

It was as if the bees made the honey just for him. 

He stood in front of his tree and raised his left hand and the bees came down from their work, lit on his face, and buzzed a hymn to God.

He ate the leaves and fruit from his baobab tree and this, along with the honey, was the whole of his diet. 

Each morning he scraped the fuzz off the shell of the fruit, cracked the shell with a stone, pulled out the white, sweet and sour fruit, placed it in his iron pot of water over fire, boiled it until the fruit separated from it’s marble sized seeds, removed the seeds with a small cotton net, and dipped out the drink with a clay mug. 

Each afternoon, just before prayers, he crushed leaves from the branches of the tree in his mortar with his pestle and, after his prayers, would eat the baobab salad until he was full. 

Each evening, he added a cup of honey as a dressing to the salad and ended the day with a sweet taste on his tongue. 

Because of the vitamin A in the young baobab leaves, he could see amazingly well.

He prayed for people. 

“This is my vocation,” he thought, the why of why he was there. 

For him, prayer was holding people in his heart, much like the tree held him in it’s heart. 

He brought the people into himself and let them stay there for awhile, offering them a place to be heard. 

Together they would find God in the stillness of the tree and the silence of the heart. 

He prayed this way for each of the seven canonical hours of the day, for people who would come to the tree, and even for people who would never come to the tree.

He healed people. 

His heart went out to them. 

One morning, he heard a meek voice at the door of his tree.

“Please, help me.”

He sat on the boulders in the courtyard around his tree and listened as she told him of her painful journey over rocky roads and high hills. 

He understood her when he saw her grotesquely shaped left foot, large and layered, like the foot of a full grown elephant. 

He watched a tear roll off her cheek and splash onto her elephantine foot, baptizing it in sadness. 

He took some of the baobab fruit, crushed it in his mortar, splashed three drops of water on it, and anointed her foot in faith, hope and love. 

He wept. 

As she lumbered away, she knew she had been healed, even though he elephantine foot remained the same.

He only had one frock and one pair of sandals because he learned from the one who had no place to lay his head. 

The less he had, the less he needed. 

He washed his clothes before he laid down to sleep and donned them when he rose to begin his new day. 

During tierce, the 3 a.m. prayers, he wore nothing at all. 

He sat naked and remembered that God saw him just as he was.

He writes by a fire beside his tree tonight. 

As the smoke rises up and loses itself in the blackness and brilliance of the starry night, he hopes his words settle down on the whiteness and emptiness of the page and lose themselves in stories.

- trevor scott barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020

minimalism

Both of my grandpas were farmers. 

They held other jobs in their lives, did other work with their hands, but in their hearts they were always farmers. 

By the time I came along, they were no longer working 40 acres with a mule and a plow but they both had gardens, wonderful gardens. 

Maybe there was something about rising out of bed before the sun came up, or smelling the dirt in a freshly plowed ground, or seeing a red, ripe tomato hanging on a vine, but until the end of their lives, they loved to pull on their overalls, put on their caps, pick up their hoes, and plant themselves into those gardens among the vegetables, fruits, and land.

"Being a farmer takes 'lots of hard work and 'lots of humility," they told me at one time or another as I followed them down the rows. 

"It takes 'lots of hard work because each morning from spring 'til fall you get up in the dark, walk the rows with seeds, hoes, and buckets in your hands, plant those seeds, hoe the weeds, and fill those buckets with tomatoes and squash and green beans and strawberries...you plant, hoe, and pick until your feet look as if they have become a part of the ground, until the sweat from your body mixes with the dirt on the ground." 

They were farmer poets, my grandpas were, some of the last of those wonderful farmer poets who used to walk the farms and fields of South Carolina. 

"And it takes 'lots of humility because no matter how hard you work, you can't make the brilliant green bud pop through the deep brown dirt; you can't make the bright flower fold into a baby tomato; you can't make the rain fall to help the corn grow. 

Nope, when you lay down at night and close your eyes to the day, you can only know that you have given as much of your heart, mind, soul and body as you can to the ground and that you will receive the produce as a gift.

- trevor scott barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020

courageously human, humanly courageous

Hold each other.

Kiss passionately upon the tender kiss, and tenderly

upon the passionate kiss. 

Again and again.

Make love in colors.

Yellows.

Reds.

Blues.

Oranges.

Purples.

Greens.

Primary to secondary, secondary to primary.

Create beauty.

Hold each other closely.

As closely as you can, so as much of your bodies can be as close to your bodies as possible.

- trevor scott barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020

minimalism

The night was dark. 

Thick clouds blew in from the sea and covered the moon and the stars until no light came from the sky. 

"The night is so dark. I can’t see," he thought. "Where is the light?"

Gabby lay beside him. 

He couldn't see her. 

He could only feel beside him.

“Gabby is a light. I can’t see that light, but I can feel it."

The old priest's words stayed in his mind. 

He couldn’t see them. 

He could only hear them moving around and around in rhythm or counterpoint with his own thoughts.

"Father Gustavo's words are a light. I can’t see that light, but I can hear it."

The flowers from the doctor's garden sat on the table beside the bed. 

He could smell their sweet smell.

"The doctor's kindness is a light. I can’t see that light, but I can smell it."

The supper from the teacher's home gurgled in his stomach. 

The simple meal was a feast for him, for Gabby, and for the poor neighbors who joined them around the table in the small house in the city center. 

"The teacher's meal is a light. I can’t see that light, but I can taste it."

He couldn't see the light, but the light was there.

- trevor scott barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020

minimalism

The sun rose on the horizon, half way over the earth, half way under the earth, coloring the land with the yellows and reds of morning light.

He laid on his side and looked out the single window of the one room house. 

He felt her body against his, her chest on his back, her leg over his hip, her arm around his shoulder, holding him. "

"Her hands are my hands,” he thought, “Her feet my feet, her heart my heart, her life my life.”

 "See with the eyes of your heart," he had learned as a boy, "For it is then that you will truly see."

He saw her brown eyes filled with kindness, her dark hair on her shoulders, her naked body beautiful, beautiful, her worn hands and feet calloused from hard work, her soft smile a light for the world.

He turned to her in that morning light and held her until he could feel her heartbeat upon him.

- trevor scott barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020

minimalism

Once, the old priest told him, "Do not fear. You are never alone. God promises that. God is with you.”

He loved the old priest and respected his life and work. 

He didn't have much use for his metaphysics, though. 

There was much more comfort in the priest's friendship than in words and ideas about God.

"Words and ideas, ideas and words," he thought. 

"They are worth so little, yet so much." 

They were. 

He remembered his childhood, when he was a boy in his first years of primary school. 

His mamí held his hand and led him over the threshold of the door of their small house toward his first day of school. 

He stopped suddenly, grabbed the door frame and exclaimed, 

"I'm only going to go to school to learn to write!"

After he learned to write, he wrote and thought and thought and wrote. 

His mamí, on the way to the garden to pick fruits and vegetables from the plants and vines and trees of the land, would find him beneath the apple tree beside the fence of the garden, writing.

His bony shoulders hunched over his notebook as if he were a human question mark.

His long fingers gripped around his pencil as if he were a human exclamation mark.

Writing the things he saw and heard and smelled and tasted and touched.

Writing the things he thought and felt.

His papí, on the way back from the fields, would find him on top of the giant rock in their yard, writing, his eyes to the sky as if he were seeing something others barely missed seeing, his ears to the ground as if he were hearing something others barely missed hearing.

Both his mamí and his papí saw that in these moments a soft light encircling his body, a faint halo that left his parents to wonder. 

For, even though they didn’t believe in the god of the church, they did look for evidence of god in the people, hoping against hope that god was real, that god was with them. 

"Perhaps god is here," they thought as they drifted off to sleep, worn from the work of planting, gathering, tending, and hoping, holding each other with calloused hands in stick thin arms with full hearts.

- trevor scott barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020

minimalism

She closed her eyes and remembered the night before he left for the mountains. 

She laid naked on her back and he laid between her knees. 

He kissed her softly on her thighs, his lips and breath brushing against her skin. 

With the kisses he whispered a poem from Pablo Neruda. 

Amo el trozo de tierra que tú eres,

porque de las praderas planetarias

otro estrella no tengo tú repites

la multíplicación del universo.

I love the handful of the earth you are.

Because of it's meadows, vast as a planet,

I have no other star. You are my replica

of the multiplying universe.

“Amo el trozo de tierra que tú eres.”

- trevor scott barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020

minimalism

As he wrote, light glowed around him like the halo of a saint, or the mischievousness of a sinner, or a bit of both, at his bare work desk. 

He used words to fight loneliness.

The loneliness of the farmers giving their hearts to the land day after day, year after year, until they became the dust from which they were made.

The loneliness of the workers, giving their bodies to the factories, day after day, year after year, until they became the gears and grease themselves.

The loneliness of the servants, giving their souls to their patróns, day after day, year after year, until they became the rags and buckets from which they served.

They were all working, the farmers, the workers, the servants, and the writer for subsistence, enough to live.

They were all working for shelter, enough wood and tin to build a small house.

They were all working for song, enough music to bring beauty to the world.

They were all working for nothing, and yet for everything.

- trevor scott barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020

minimalism

He remembered a time when he was a boy. 

He was sitting on a wooden stool in front of a broken window, looking out at the rain falling in great sheets from a cloudy sky. 

His mamí stood behind him with her arms around his chest. 

“Te quiero,” she whispered in his ear. 

Then she walked away and returned to her work cleaning their house and cooking their supper. 

In that moment, he knew he was loved and was able to love.

Did his mamí know that her simple kindness helped him love the world?

     

He remembered a time when he was a teenager. 

He was walking beside his papí in the late afternoon down a long row of beans. 

"Take my hand and come with me," said his papí. 

He took him to a tree and sat down with him under the shade of the giant branches. 

He took out a notebook, a notebook filled with words, beautiful words, powerful words, about people and about life, words he had written but never spoken, for he was a quiet person who spoke a little and worked a lot. 

"These words are for you, my son," he said. 

Then he walked away and returned to his work weeding the plants and nurturing the beans. 

In that moment, he knew that his own thoughts and words were important. 

Did his papí know that his simple kindness helped him write stories?

He remembered a time when he was a young man. 

He was sitting at the foot of his bed. 

Gabby stood before him. 

She lowered her dress to the ground. 

He saw her naked for the first time. 

He looked at her sonrisa, her smile, and it was as if the sun had risen upon him. 

He looked at her brown skin, and it was as if the rich soil of the land was before him. 

He looked at her body and couldn’t breathe for a moment, and it was as if all of the beauty of the world had fallen upon him softly with light. 

"Hold me close," she said. 

They held each other for a long time, and they didn’t speak, but only held each other. 

In that moment, he knew companionship.

He knew love.

Did Gabby know that her simple kindness helped him find the meaning of life?

Simple kindness.

 

- Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020