This Ruler

 

She opens the back window of the car. She holds the edge of the condom out the window as the car races down the highway at sixty mph. The condom inflates like a windsock at an airport.

The other four kids in the car explode into laughter, as the condom balloons to three feet long, flapping in the wind. James has his arms around Sandy’s waist and his head on her abdomen, as half her body is out the window. Blond hair is whipping around her smiling face. In the reflection of her mirrored sunglasses is Hector hanging out the front passenger’s window videoing the whole thing. The condom flies out of her hand as she rolls back into the laps of James, Helen and Sialia crammed into the back seat. Ryan is driving and looking around, and over corrects; the car jerks and changes lane. All falls silent for a second, then everyone bursts out into boisterous laughter again.

James yells out, “Hurry, I can’t be late. Park in Africa, don’t look for a closer spot. We’ll run from there.” Africa is the kids name for the far dirt parking lot at school.  

The gang parks the car; laughing and giggling, they enter school and proceed down the hallway with a stream of other students.  

One kid yells out, “Dude, nice,” as he looks up from his phone at the video posting.

“Yo, Mali. Totally outrage man. Yeah.”

“Mr. Malachite,” the principal formally addresses him.  

James turns to face his fate. “So, you’re playing soccer today.  Good luck.”

“Ah, thanks Dr. Stufa.”

“Now, let’s get a move on.”

The group disperses down to the junction of the hallways as teachers bark out, “Ladies let’s get to class now.”

Helen and Sandy, arm in arm giggling, split down separate hallways. Sialia rolls on to art class. James glides down the hallway empty handed, snatching a pencil off the ground as he jumps into his classroom. A lone kid is left in the now nearly empty hall as he kicks his locker that is stuck half open. Teachers are closing doors in every direction. Exasperated, he kicks the door one more time, turns and runs for his class.

Sialia Torres sits in a lounge chair in the corner of the art room at Elysium Hills High School. Outside the afternoon light is illuminating the school on the bench-like hill, as traffic flows by on the highway down the hill. In the corner of the art room is a large soft chair with padded armrests. The air duct vent, in the ceiling, is immediately above the chair. Hot or cold, the air duct hums with a slight clanking rattle. The chair is partially hemmed in by a low bookshelf. Paint brushes by the handful sit on paper plates stained by water and pigments. Large oversized art books are stacked, leaning to one side. Sialia sits cross-legged in the chair with a giant book in her lap. It is here the world unfolds, blazing color, violence, some story she does not know. A chosen place. She reaches out and touches the color on the page with her fingertip. She sighs and leans back and stares out the window to the north. And so, we look at a journey that goes nowhere in place, but so very far within.   

The elegant, smooth hand of Sialia turns the pages of the art book. The large-format book lies heavy upon her lap. Flipping and skimming these pages deep in the book reveals subtitles such as: 16th-Century Art, Northern Europe; within these sections there are old maps, woodcuts, visionary imagery during Reformation, divergent views, shrines and gilded panels from far off lands from a time long ago.

The line and form of her thin wrist show her tendons pushing against the purple embroidered bracelet tied in a knot, a bright contrast to her golden-brown skin and pink painted nails. There on the left-hand page, Sialia’s right hand falls heavy with her forearm across the entire book. At the top left is Quinten Matsys’s Money-Changer and His Wife, 1514. Oil on panel. She stops flipping pages, lets gravity take her hand and arm so that they lie still across the pages.

Strange and odd are the clothes of the man and woman in the painting. But that is not what captivates Sialia. No, it is the gaze of the woman, so transfixed looking at the money in the balance scale and in her husband’s hand next to her. Gold and silver coins lie on the green table top. Golden standards of weights and a small pile of pearls on velvet also lie there.

Sialia’s head is cocked to the side, and the lines of muscle are taut in her neck showing down to her exposed collar bone. She breathes softly but does not blink. The thick jet-black braid of her hair hangs across her right shoulder as she leans to her right and looks intently down to her left.

The woman in the painting has both hands on the Bible. The painting depicts her flipping the page, but distracted, she holds the page still. It could fall either way, barely held by the tips of her fingers. The money is there; you can hear the coins clink and ring as they fall through the man’s deft, thin hands. The pious biblical words are silent on the pages. Also, on the table is a small round mirror-like orb reflecting a window to the outside world. Within the mirror is an entire other painting, so small as to seem an insignificant image within the painting. Dark and mystical—the dream of haunting thick green black oil flows underneath, caught in the edges of the reflection. Money, the balance, the Good Book, transfixed with eyes on one thing, mind elsewhere. Silent; but for the metallic sound of coins dropping.

At that moment, the entire school spins a hundred and eighty degrees upon the green slick oil underneath and zooms in to a back conference room. There, Principal Dr. Jonathan Stufa, an educational consultant, the superintendent, and two school board members sit around a long scratched-up wood table. The table is almost too big for the room, so that once seated, each individual is pinned between the wall and the table. Projected on the whiteboard on the wall is the school’s Mission Statement. It is projected as an overlay to a shadow of weakly erased words that were hastily wiped away. The room, even with the shades drawn and closed, is too bright, and the projection is weak and almost confusing. A strange reflected sheen bounces off the whiteboard making it difficult to look at the words projected.

Stufa’s hands are holding the paper copy of the Mission Statement. But his eyes are on the consultant, Joel Haustoria, as Stufa speaks. The reason they are here is for a presentation by Haustoria about the new curriculum adoption. The Spring Forward curriculum put out by Bradmoor Publishing is aligned to the new state standards and standardized tests. Stufa has just purchased a new car for his wife and is staying in a large well-furnished home on the golf course. In the hollow wall behind the screen a mouse deftly scurries along the top of a copper pipe. Pipes and wires thread their way behind the walls, under the concrete and in the space above the drop ceiling.

The pipes and wires, behind and underneath the school, lead to the science room of Zack Tyndall. There on his desk is a cluttered array of piled papers, science magazines, shiny rocks, old bones and a feather or two. There is a fist-sized piece of green-black obsidian reflecting the light. Within the shiny rock is a dream-like image of shadowy dark thick hands moving erratically. Black oil flows underneath. Blood drips red over the edge of a white stone table, red and bright, squirting in long rhythmic spurts from a slit throat. Large towering stone pyramids with iconic monster heads jut out from the sidewalls. These images dance within the rock like a tiny painting within a painting, then they disappear with the blink of an eye.

The coins and pearls slide through the fingers. The pearls slide and roll onto a black velvet cloth. Papers slide and roll off printing presses. Uniform sized boxes slide down rollers into boxcars that are then attached to semi-trucks that roll down highways like a mouse running on a pipe. Traffic sits frozen at a red light, commuters look down and read texts, a mother looks in the rear-view mirror at the infant in the seat facing backwards. It all flows by.

The balance of the scales. To load one side and then add to the other. Sway, sway down, swing up, rock back-and-forth. Does it balance? Can one good deed balance out the bad action? The mind with its own rationalization is pulled by actions and real consequences. Mystic forces run underneath, weigh heavily on the mind in the tearing agony of sleeplessness uncompromised in the brightness of the day.

Youthful beauty gazes at an image of a painting. Clear, bright and strong, straight limbs, impressionable and naïve; lost in a world of dreamy thoughts. So free from the scales that weigh us all. So capable—capable of seeing, rational, wise, a royal gift of insight, a blessing for one who can truly see. Set upon the path.