MEET THE NEIGHBORS

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BUT FIRST, MEET THEIR WORK.

EVERY TIME, THE FIRST TIME

If you let them hang around long enough, even the art works and objects you feel most passionately about can become too familiar, turning into wallpaper and candy dishes. But some art works seem to escape this fate. The untitled, undated box-framed painting at left by St. George artist Robin Locke Monda is one of two paintings I seem never to tire of.

It's not that I discover something new in it at every encounter; it's that I never stop noticing it, never stop looking at it as though I'd never seen it before.

Its creator describes herself as "a visual artist, writer, photographer and graphic designer for web and print. For fun," she adds, "I write a blog about artmaking: http://bordertalksblog.com ."

WITH STAINED FEET AND A RED MOUTH

St. George poet Robert Monda, Robin Locke Monda's husband, responded to my request for a poem to appear in Walking is Transportation with these words, accompanying his poem, "Lament":        

"There are numerous reasons to recommend one piece of writing over another," he writes, "--theme, point of view, target audience, among others. My reason is that in my opinion, it's a good poem."

LAMENT

    I mocked myself
    in the caves
    on the rocks by the shore
    I held myself
   in scorn and contempt
   and wept
   in the vineyards
   for I was sore and tired
    and the music left me
    and I lay down without rest
   and rose without hope
   and went to a shallow place
    to dwell among slaves
    and ate the corn
   that had turned to stone
   and saw no reflection
 when I peered into the well
   and my clothes stank
   from the seed I spent
    upon the ground
    and I crushed grapes
    from the vineyard
    to make the bitter wine
    and drank it all my life
    and they buried me
    with stained feet
    and a red mouth.

Though the facts of the life narrative Monda lays out here, line upon line, are more abstract and existential for all their specificity, they reminded me of some of the poems in Philip Levine's National Book Award winner for 1997, "What Work Is."

Here's Levine in a fragment from his poem, "Every Blessed Day":

Waiting at the corner he feels
the cold at his back and stamps
himself awake again. Seven miles
from the frozen, narrow river.
Even before he looks he knows
the faces on the bus, some
going to work and some coming back,
but each sealed in its hunger
for a different life, a lost life.
Where he's going or who he is
he doesn't ask himself, he
doesn't know and doesn't know
it matters. He gets off
at the familiar corner, crosses
the emptying parking lots
toward Chevy Gear & Axle #3.
In a few minutes he will hold
his time card above a clock,
and he can drop it in
and hear the moment crunching
down, or he can not, for

either way the day will last

forever. So he lets it fall.

I howled at Monda's stained feet and red mouth for their tragic absurdity (is this what a life comes down to?) as I considered the idea that a person's life experience could be imprinted on his body, as though the body were simply the receptacle for all the side-effects, the waste products of that experience. And that we lend out our bodies--as, for one example, colliers lent and finally gave their lungs and lives for bread and shelter.


Neighbors

About the photo shown right, Robin Locke Monda admits to some doctoring:

"Here's the photo of your neighbors, Bob Monda and Robin Locke Monda. (It's a composite, obviously. We don't often get good shots of each other--together--for some reason.)"