by Jonah Kruvant.
A symphony of the street and a universal smile
The sun beats down on my head as I write at Pause Café in the Lower East Side on a New York City street. The people passing by my table are in their own individual worlds while simultaneously in mine. Thumbs bend, flex, swipe, and press down on phones. Vacant eyes dart and shift, lost in a digital haze. The clinking of ice from coffee cups, soft laughter, and fragments of conversation blend together to create a symphony of the street on this emerging spring afternoon. Eyes gleam as hands remove muffin wrappers. Stomachs grumble as mouths take their first bites into egg sandwiches. Lips part, welcoming the coming season with a universal smile.
Extinguished
I’m in midtown Manhattan days later on a Saturday afternoon. I grab a chair at the sculpture garden at the Museum of Modern Art. With its marble platforms that glisten in the sunlight, its trickling stream that lures toddlers and tourists, and its ever-changing variety of lifelike and abstract sculptures, this place is a spot of reflection, of pause, of observation. In this city, where we are always on the go—doing, striving, and moving—it’s a breath of fresh air to be seated here with nothing to do and nowhere to be. I’m not even wearing my watch.
Two giggling preteens pat Picasso’s She-Goat on the top of its head. A mother and daughter take pictures on the little bridge that arcs over the rippling pool of water. People chat. They sit. They wonder.
One sculpture catches my eye. It’s a three-legged mythical creature standing as sturdy as a tripod. I examine it. It has no hair, lips that stretch beneath its ears, eyes shaped like lemons. I somehow sense movement as I let my gaze linger on its flabby hands, which reach toward the sky with outstretched fingers. I get a feeling of intense yearning when I look at those hands, even desperation.
I’m just one mind surrounded by others. I can never know what those around me are really thinking. Yet the people here, with their own individual stories, emotions, and opinions, all stop. They are present. Their worries and stresses are extinguished, even if for a moment.
Back to reality with swirling, squiggly spirals
It’s Monday morning. I write in the courtyard of the former FAO Schwartz, where I stomped on its giant piano keys as a toddler, and which is now an Apple store. I’m a few blocks from work, where I have to be in thirty minutes. I take the first bite of my bagel egg and cheese (scrambled with cheddar on an everything). On its wrapper, my name is scribbled in black permanent marker: ERNIE. The Plaza Hotel, the Paris Theater, and the trees of Central Park are in my field of vision. People hurry by my table, tidbits of conversation whipping by like a passing wind. The horses pulling buggies give me furtive glances. I glance at my watch. I know I’m supposed to feel lucky that I’m employed at a corporate job with a good salary, but I hate it with every inch of my being.
I look down at my notebook. My handwriting looks sloppier than it did before, the “g’s” eloping with the “e’s,” question marks swirling into squiggly spirals. My mindset has changed. It’s left the serenity of the sculpture garden and entered a trance, that anxious cycle of stress after stress, clinging to my neurons and refusing to let go.
I begin the walk to the office, trying to shake off these feelings. Then paranoia sets in, violet diamonds sparkling in shop windows, the odd sense that someone is watching. How can I bring back the positive energy that welcomed me at the Lower East Side café? The cheerful trumpets of a jazz band have transformed into the blaring static of a defunct radio station without me turning the dial. How can I control my mind—the incessant chattering monkey?
I shoot back to reality to see I’ve eaten half my bagel without realizing it. I look at it, clutched between my fingers. It looks back at me. I take a deep breath.
Chocolate Sprinkles
In search of the elusive stillness I felt at the sculpture garden, I’ve found myself in the Adirondack Mountains. It’s the weekend and I have nothing else to focus on but my craft. I sit on a wooden deck of a cabin gazing at an expanse of three mountains. In the south, there’s Whiteface Mountain with two beaming lights you can see at night, one sloped near the top like a faraway planet, and one balancing neatly on the summit like the North Star. The eye travels down from there as it traces the ridges and valleys to the north. Trees cover the mountains entirely, so green and fuzzy that you can feel the Earth when you look at them. The sky is complete with wispy clouds, moving gently and swiftly, forming images of the mind, the glow of the sun diffused above the peaks.
At the top of the highest mountain, the trees are at their darkest, and they dot the upper landscape like chocolate sprinkles on a scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream. A round hill in the foreground resembles a hobbit dwelling, while the stone cliffs of the second mountaintop jut out like Mordor. You can just about make out the hiking paths, swirling up and around the hillside like spirals. In the very middle of it all, the ridges dip, forming a wide smile.
100 colors and a wink
It’s just drizzling but with the feeling of an oncoming storm. The forest is damp from the tips of the trees to the deepest roots beneath the soil. I’ve hiked into the middle of the woods and sit on a rotten log with my notebook on my lap.
Between two crooked birch trees a short distance away, a creature emerges. Short, flat-faced, with multiple double-chins that look like stacked silver dollar pancakes. It has three legs but walks with no limp and its knees poke out just above the high brush of scraggly plants. It doesn’t see me, but it does walk toward me. I don’t move.
This is my imagination, I say in my head with a loud inner chuckle, as this mythical being, which looks oddly like the sculpture at MOMA, takes shape in front of my eyes. All this nature has gotten the better of me. I should go back home to the city where I belong.
And then it looks at me and I know it’s real. It stops advancing. I take in its odor, a mix of earth and lavender tea. Its large, ovaloid eyes, as startled as the pupils of a deer sensing a wolf, stare back at me. In the next instant, they close halfway, peering into mine with suspicion like a criminal eyeing a cop. Finally, the eyelids open all the way, revealing its irises. They are shaped like puddles, retreating and expanding, concave then convex, a deep brown hue, fluid in motion, giving off a sense of pure relief.
I watch them morph into shimmering silver stripes.
“It’s called ‘translumation.’”
My mouth literally drops open. It speaks!
“The changing of color and shape. Translumacion en español. Tanchumaban nihongo desu yo. Tamach en ivrit.”
“Tamach,” I say out loud. That’s what slips out of my mouth.
“Oh, you speak Hebrew! To pronounce the ‘ch,’ you must go deep in the throat.”
“Who…are you?”
“Ah, I would expect you to ask that. I was hoping you would. I wanted to find you here.” It speaks with its fleshy hands, outstretching them in my direction. Its sagging fingers sway like batter dripping off a pan.
“But as far as your question: who am I?” It points to its nose with a drooping finger in a slow, coagulating gesture. “I am a creature who exists in a world your species has not yet discovered. I will tell you that much.”
“Why did you come?”
“Why? That’s what you ask next? Oh, I see. This is the moment I’m supposed to be philosophical. Were you expecting me to recite a poem?”
It makes a high-pitched wail, its silver dollar double chins flapping in the breeze. The yell is so piercing that I jump and three birds fly away. I assume this is its laugh, but it sounds like a cry of pain.
“I’m sorry for the hostilities. It’s just been a long day of work. Commuting through the dimensions of space can be very taxing, you know. I need you to transmit a message to the rest of your species. You call yourselves ‘human beings,’ do you not?”
“Yes, we do.”
“Yet so many of you beings cannot simply be. Take in the moment and you will feel alive. Don’t let your mind wander if it’s the source of your pain.”
“And what do I call your species?”
“We’re the Ichibans, familiarly. Genus Ichibanus. You know the Japanese word for number one? They got that from us.” Its eyes translumate into diamond-shaped violet jewels.
“Why did you come to see me?”
“The majority of humans can’t resist the urge to be busy in mind or action. Either that, or they find being overstressed too enticing. Or they’re on their smartphones or watching TV too often. You, on the other hand, have heightened senses—a certain…awareness of your surroundings that others don’t possess. I could tell by the way you examined me at the museum. You wrestle with the big questions. You’ve earned my visit. But even you have developed this uncanny ability to further a selfish ambition.”
At first, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this creature come to life; then I was insatiably curious; but now, I’m just annoyed.
“Did you call me selfish?”
“You use your ability to enhance your writing.”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
“So defensive—you humans! Where’s the humility? You know you do this, Ernie. I’ve seen it in my observations of you. Have the courage to shed the armor you’ve built around yourself or you will not be able to see things from another’s point of view—or the truth of who you really are. Homo sapiens love to form their own opinions and beliefs. Once you do that, however, as comforting as it may be, you’re limiting yourself. The universe is infinite.”
My ears tune into the slight drizzle, droplets of rain hitting leaves, bouncing off them, and collecting on the surface of the ground. I realize that the sun has set long ago. Fireflies light up the forest like stars. I hear the rainwater submerging into the dirt and trickling around the roots of trees.
Everything is so unreal all around me. But this thing thinks it can outsmart me? We’ll see about that. I’m from New York.
“And what makes Genus Ichibanus so perfect?”
“We have problems too, believe me.”
“Such as?”
“Well, for one, we can’t stop playing Candy Crush. We’re stuck in 2017 and it’s bringing down our civilization.” It breathes again, emitting a deep blue mist that floats through the branches of trees like the Milky Way spiraling through the night sky.
“A storm is brewing so I’m going to get to the point before my long commute home—and I can’t believe I forgot my headphones again!” I notice that it doesn’t have any ears. “You have been seeking an oasis where you can write these past days, have you not?”
I pause. “Yes, I have, but didn’t consciously realize it until you said it.”
“That’s because you want to be able to fully appreciate what you have in front of your eyes. You want to be honest with yourself even when it hurts and express it in your art. Don’t focus on finishing your book but on living it.”
“I thought you weren’t going to be philosophical?’”
“Society is a fabrication of homo sapiens. The modern world has little to do with the natural order of things.”
I yawn. “What’s all this supposed wisdom you are so willing to impart to me? Totally useless!” I lift my chin in the air. “Give me something practical that I can actually help my species with. It can pertain to ‘society.’ We built society, by the way, so it matters to us, just like art to its creator.”
The purple diamond irises stand erect for a moment. Then they melt into juicy clementines.
“There’s a wider world than what you can create.”
Beneath the brush, the roots begin to glow, and as the creature’s lips stretch across its face, I somehow feel the energy of a mystical aura. Then the outline of its body begins to fade away. It slowly breaks into fragments as all the fireflies of the forest light up at the same time. Then the particles disappear altogether, along with the lavender aroma and blue mist, into the void between the two crooked birch trees.
The last part of it to vanish are its eyes, which flicker into a hundred colors, and then wink.
“The Armor You Built” is the title story of Jonah Kruvant’s upcoming book, a collection of short stories from the author of The Last Book Ever Written.