Category: Art as faith

Raja sat on the deck of his bridge, put down his chisel and hammer, and rested. He gazed at the fogbank that hid the land on the other side of the river. No one knew for certain what was over there. Raja was building a bridge to find out.

He remembered the final interview with the three county commissioners.

“He’s a crackpot,” said one commissioner, ignoring Raja sitting at the end of the table. 

“Should we reject the proposal, Fred?”

Sal smacked the papers on the table in front of her, glaring at Raja. “You didn’t follow the outline,” she said. “Didn’t you take our grant-writing workshop? We offer it every month, I’d think you would have at least tried to follow the format!”

Arnold smiled at Raja. “You have to admit, the format is a bit confusing.”

“It is not!” Sal said. 

“He figured it out, Sal. That indicates some level of intelligence.”

“I vote no,” Fred said. “I think you are just another dreamer who can’t get it done.”

“Even though you didn’t follow the format, I vote yes,” Sal said. “I want to see what’s on the other side.”

Everyone looked at Arnold. “I think you are unorthodox and will probably cause us a lot of trouble. However, I suspect only someone like you could succeed. Certainly the County has not been able to muster the political will. The citizens haven’t been willing to donate. We all want to see what is over there, but nobody has stepped up to do the work, until you, Raja. I vote yes.”

That is how the County funded the Bridge to Somewhere project. 

Raja got busy. Within six months, the first pilings were erected. In another few months, concrete was poured to form the roadbed, two lanes wide, with intricately carved side rails cast from concrete and inlaid with tile and glass. The press came daily with their cameras. Crowds stood along the shoreline, enjoying picnics on beach blankets and cheering whenever a concrete truck made a delivery. By the end of the first year, the budding bridge extended almost one hundred yards from the cliff edge, reaching over the murky river toward the mysterious fogbank on the other side. 

As happens on publicly funded projects, Raja relied on volunteer labor. At first, there were more than enough hands to carry bricks, spread concrete, and cater lunches for the workers. However, over time, the project lost volunteers to the glamorous job of installing seats at the County’s first baseball stadium. After all, this bridge could take forever, and meanwhile, there was baseball to play. 

Thus, long before its funding ran out, the Bridge to Somewhere had lost its novelty. Rarely was it mentioned in the press. Beachgoers still napped on the beach but paid little attention to the ever lengthening extension leading to who knows where. Nobody but construction vehicles could access the bridge yet, so it was easy to forget the vision to reach the land on the other side. Raja found himself mostly working alone, with the occasional assistance of his two assistants, Trill and Gary, who came after school and during holidays. 

On December 1, a courier brought a holiday gift basket from the county commissioners.

“There’s a card, Boss” Gary said. He opened the envelope. “We regret to inform you that your funding will end on December 31. Your report will be due no later than January 31, with a narrative summary (minimum five paragraphs) and photographs of your project, with an explanation of why it is not yet complete (assuming it is incompete as of January 1). Yours truly, Commissioners Sal Bindi, Arnold Gretch, and Fred Chang.”

“Don’t worry, boys,” Raja said. 

Time passed. Trill left to go to college in another city. Gary got married. 

Raja sold his house and bought sand and lumber, which were delivered to the approach to the bridge. He hauled supplies using a wagon attached to a bicyle. He rarely went ashore. He slept in a popup tent on the Bridge, a few feet from the end of the span. At night he listened to the murmur of the river. When he coudn’t sleep, he stared toward the far shore he knew had to be there, somewhere, hidden in the fog.

In early January, a storm blew in from the south. Raja secured his wagon and bicycle under a tarp weighted with sand bags, lashed his tent to the concrete railing, and rode out the gale. In the morning, he assessed the damage. Many of his tools had been blown away, but the Bridge itself seemed intact. He pedaled toward shore, checking the fittings and pillars as he went. Eyes on the side railing, he barely caught the front wheel of his bicycle from going off the edge. The approach to the Bridge had been eaten away by wind and waves, leaving a gap too far to swim. On land, a few curious pedestrians stopped walking their dogs to stare. One person waved and called something that Raja coudn’t hear. 

He turned his bike around and pedaled back to his tent, collecting any tools and scraps of lumber and canvas that he found along the way. No way back, he realized. The only way out is forward.

Raja fell into a rhythm. He fashioned a tent on his wagon and slept on a folded tarp. He ate fish. He devised a bucket and pulley system to dredge sand and mud and kept building new footings and decking. However, with only his two hands, the deck narrowed to the width of a donkey cart. Soon it spanned the width of a bicycle. The Bridge had become a pedestrian bridge—nevertheless, it continued to lengthen, one foot at at time. The imposing fog bank hiding his destination seemed to be growing closer.  

No boats plied this part of the river, but the turbulence carried many treasures. Seaweed, greens, flowers, and seeds all all types floated downstream, as well as logs in various states of decay. He cooked the greens and seeds and incorporated the logs into his design. A couple times he pulled up pieces of living trees, with roots still attached. Soon the Bridge looked less like an engineered construction and more like an organic living creature. 

Raja celebrated the day he found a length of rope caught on one of his pilings. At the end of the rope was a heavy-duty magnet, the kind scroungers used to locate treasure on river bottoms. Some poor scrounger’s loss was Raja’s magnificent gain. Soon he was rescuing objects made of metal and hauling them to the deck—rusted and misshapen bicycles, steel shelves, fishtraps, and even an old-fashioned bed frame. He found all shapes and sizes of scrap metal and many, many guns. All objects were embedded into the pilings and walls of the Bridge, and the Bridge continued to reach toward the fog. 

Raja let his beard grow to his waist, even though he had practically everything he would have needed to open a barber shop: scissors, knives, mustache clippers, even part of a barber chair. Every bit of flotsam and jetsam he found was dedicated to the vision of extending the Bridge to the unknown land beyond. He knew he was getting closer. Sometimes at night, he found himself enveloped in wispy fog.

On that day, Raja pedaled back into the sunshine to see how the Bridge was holding up in his wake. He was disappointed but not shocked to see that his Bridge was failing. Hardly a hundred feet of span remained, half in sunshine, half in fog. Raja sat on the frame of a ragged leather recliner and looked back toward his former land, now a distant pale smudge in the distance. The Bridge was disintegrating faster then he could build it.   

What does a man do in a moment like this, he thought. Should I go back? The life I knew no longer exists. I am not the person I was. It is unlikely the Commissioners would welcome me back, especially considering I never submitted my final report. No, going back is not an option. Then, should I continue forward? Even though the destination I seek may not exist? What reserve of faith will keep me alive and working toward a vision I may never achieve? Or should I stop, give up, abandon my creation, let the river take me where it will? 

Raja caught a fish, made a campfire, and laid between the walls of his living Bridge, now barely the width of his shoulders. He felt safe in the arms of his Bridge. 

I cannot abandon my creation, he thought as he stared at the stars for what could be the final time. This Bridge has become bigger than me. I now live to serve the vision. I must keep going.

And so he did. Raja lost track of time, so he did not know how many years he labored, or even if he was building in the right direction. The fog was so thick, he often worked with his eyes closed. His hearing must have sharpened, though, for one evening, the song of the river had changed, as if it chattered over a shallow rocky riverbed. Raja lay on his tarp, listening. As he waited for the dim light that separated day from night, Raja heard birds calling. In the morning, Raja woke to pale sunshine. The fog had lifted, revealing a lush green shoreline not ten yards away. 

Someone on shore was waving. Raja waved back. A few minutes later, a tiny boat pulled up and stopped by the piling at Raja’s feet. A man cut the outboard motor and grinned up at Raja as he hooked part of a bedframe and secured the boat. 

“You made it,” the man said. “I knew you would.”

“Gary?” 

“Ready to come ashore, Boss?” 

Raja looked back at his creation. Only a few yards to go. Should I try to fill the gap, he wondered, try to dredge up enough sand and rock and garbage to finish the Bridge to Somewhere? Try to make it perfect? Or should I celebrate my arrival at my destination, even though it seems the world arrived before me? As he contemplated his life’s work, part of an office desk broke free and fell into the river with a crash. A flurry of bolts, a rifle, and a filing cabinet soon followed. Nothing lasts forever, he thought, including art.

Raja turned back to Gary. “I’ll be right down.”

“You don’t understand,” Ada said to her parents’ stern faces. “I have to do this.”

“What do you mean, you have to do this, daughter of mine?” Her father said, brow creased. “You seem to think it is our job to take care of you forever. You are twenty-five now. Long past time to become a productive member of society.”

“But I’m an artist!” Ada protested. She turned to her mother. “Mummy, surely you understand why I can’t work at an ordinary job like regular people. I’m special, Mummy. You see, don’t you?”

Her mother sighed and shook her head. “Let’s call the local committee.”

“Mummy, no, you must be joking!”

“They will hear your case impartially, my child. I will abide by their decision.”

Ada’s father nodded. “That is a wise suggestion, my wife. Thank you. I will call Member Smat at once.” He stood up and went into the kitchen to use the wall phone. Ada followed him into the kitchen. He picked up the receiver and waited politely for the party line to clear before dialing the local committee precinct number. 

“Message for Member Smat, please, from Member Bhart. The Bhart family is requesting an evaluation of our eldest daughter.” Ada’s father hung up the phone.

“Daddy,” Ada pleaded. “You understand that creative people need special accommodation, don’t you?”

Her father fixed her with an unsympathetic stare. “Disabled people receive accommodation, my daughter. You are not disabled. Best you prepare for your evaluation.”

Three members of the local committee arrived the next afternoon. After eating a light lunch prepared by Ada’s mother, Ada’s parents went for a walk, leaving Ada to face the committee alone. 

The committee sat on the couch. Ada sat on a low ottoman she used to use to store art supplies when she was a child. For today’s evaluation, Ada had worn her best dress, a red and pink frock she had embellished with dots of lime green and orange paint. Her stockings matched the green perfectly. That had taken some time to achieve, not an easy feat, she would be the first to tell you. 

Ada smoothed her skirt and gazed at the three men, or was one a woman? She imagined painting their portraits. The light coming in the frosted window fell at an intriguing angle, illuminating the creases and crisp folds of their gray overalls. Gray was not a color she liked to wear, but she appreciated its subtle nuances. That was one of her major talents, appreciating things that were gray—a valuable talent given so many things in her community were gray. 

“I beg your pardon?” she said. “Would you repeat your question?”

Member Phat wrote something on a steno pad. 

Member Singh leaned forward slightly. “Please explain why you are unwilling to work.”

“It’s not that I’m unwilling to work,” Ada said. “I’m an artist! I am perfectly happy to work diligently at my craft, like a digger on the railroad, to perfect my talents and skills for the betterment of our community. I simply feel that a . . . normal job would not be conducive to my artist temperament.”

The three members looked blank for a moment. Then Member Singh’s eyes lit up. He nodded at her. “You believe you are entitled to accommodation because of your unique talents as an artist!”

Ada clapped her hands. “Yes, you understand exactly! That is all I’ve been saying.”

The other two members looked a bit more lively. Member Phat said, “Perhaps we have misunderstood you. Please explain again in your own words why you deserve special accommodation.”

The third evaluator, Member Dinh, flashed a gentle smile. “Yes, Ada, please help us understand your point of view.”

“Well, you see,” Ada said, crossing her hands in her lap. “I’ve always been a creative child. Everyone told me how talented I was. From the very beginning, as far back as I can remember, my family said, ‘Ada, you are so creative, so talented, your art will take you far in this world.’”

“And you believed them,” Member Dinh said.

“Of course!” Ada said. “They were my family, my community.”

“Tell us more.”

Ada proceeded to describe her art classes at school, where she learned how unique and special she was from other children who respected and envied her talent. How the teachers fawned over her paintings and built her a display case to show off her artwork. She grew enthusiastic as she expressed how she felt when she was channeling her creative muse, noting how spiritual the creative experience was at times, how the art just seemed to flow to her from elsewhere, as if she were receiving it directly from God itself. 

Finally, Ada realized she’d been talking quite a while. “Please forgive me, I’ve gone on and on. Thank you for listening so deeply. I feel you now understand why I must be allowed to pursue my creative path. I am called to be an artist, the way some might be called to be cooks or housecleaners or sanitation engineers. Art is an essential part of human existence, don’t you agree? I’m fulfilling a higher purpose, bringing my art into the world. I simply have to make art, now do you see? It’s who I am.”

The members were nodding. They conferred quietly with one another while Ada waited. 

“You simply have to walk this path, is that it?” Member Phat said. “There is no other path for you?”

Ada shook her head. “I was destined for a creative life, it was plain from the moment of my birth.”

“And you would not consider . . . adopting a more humble stance, to perhaps become a hair stylist or maybe a manicurist?”

“That would diminish my gifts,” Ada said. “I could no more become a hair stylist than I could fly like a bird.”

Phat put his steno pad in his shoulder bag and stood up. “I believe those are all our questions. Thank you for your time today, Ada. It’s been illuminating.”

The other two members stood up. “Come with us, Ada.”

“Why, where are we going?” Member Phat took her arm. Member Dinh took the other. “Let go of me,” Ada cried. 

The members marched Ada out to their gray utility van. Member Singh slid the side door open, and motioned Ada to get inside. 

“I want to see my parents!”

“They are watching from across the street,” Member Phat said, pointing. Ada saw her parents standing on the sidewalk. 

“Mummy, Daddy! Help me!”

Her mother looked sad. Her father thinned his lips. Neither moved.

“You’ll regret this!” Ada screamed. “I will be a famous artist someday, and then you’ll be sorry.”

The members drove Ada up the mountain, ignoring her pleas for leniency. When they reached the top, they grabbed her arms and dragged her from the van to the edge of the cliff. 

“I was only kidding, I was joking, I was mistaken,” she wept. “I’ll get a job. I’ll be a manicurist, if that is what you want. Please, let me go!”

Ada struggled against their grip and fell in the mud. Member Singh picked up her legs. Member Phat lifted her up under the arms.

“My dress! My dress!” Ada shrieked as they swung her once, twice, and tossed her over the edge.

She screamed all the way down. The landing was a bit awkward, but there wasn’t a great deal of pain; something had broken in her back. The angle of her neck allowed her to see another person lying nearby, equally paralyzed and bloody. 

“Ada, is that you?”

“Nancy?” Ada croaked. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m an artist,” Nancy said. “Or I was. I won’t be doing much painting anymore, looks like.” 

“Yes, I see your fingers look a bit crushed,” Ada said. “I can’t move my legs.”

“Someday they will be back, if only to bury our dead bodies and weep over our graves,” Nancy said.

Someone nearby wheezed with laughter. “You think your art will have more value after you are dead?”

“Who is that” Ada whispered.

“That’s Bild, you remember him from school? He’s been here longer than I have. Yammering on and on about how his children will inherit millions after his music portfolio is sold at auction in the States.”

“He has children? I thought he liked boys.”

“I have a niece!” Bild gasped. “And two nephews. My heirs!”

“Incoming!” someone across the ravine shouted. A body flopped hard across Ada’s legs. 

“Sorry,” the new person muttered and spat out two teeth. “I’m Deenie.”

“Ada. That’s okay, I can’t feel anything below my waist,” Ada said. “So what, we just wait here until we die? I can’t believe my parents called the Evaluation Committee. How can parents be so cruel?”

“My parents threw me off the cliff,” Deenie said in a glum voice. “They said there was no room in the household for a freeloader.”

The broken artists contemplated the melancholy of their situation in silence for a few minutes. 

Finally, Ada said timidly, “Were we wrong to cling to our principles?” 

Nancy coughed. “No! We’re artists! It was our divine obligation to bring our art into the world. We had to do it. We had no choice.”

Ada thought about her ruined dress, now torn and drenched in blood. “What good is art if nobody is willing to pay you to make it? I probably would have been an excellent manicurist.”

“Yes, but would you have been happy?” Bild grunted. “Nothing is more important than the art.”

“Like a digger on the railroad,” Nancy hummed. 

Soon Deenie joined in, humming through broken lips. 

Ada finally joined in, although a quavery thin voice was all she could muster. 

They sang “Artists making art, like a digger on the railroad” until the breath left their bodies.

Ming had been collecting Supercups since he was a child. They weren’t hard to find. All over his neighborhood, plastic cups had piled up in alcoves and along fences, dropped by consumers or carried by the wind. Ming picked up cups on his walk to school, around the playground, and on the way back to the small house in South Central L.A. where he lived with his parents. Each day when Ming got home, he emptied his collecting bag and stacked the cups in neat rows in his bedroom. The cups, with their narrow bottoms and wide mouths, were perfectly shaped for stacking. Stacked, the cups didn’t take up a lot of room, and they weren’t heavy. However, by the time Ming was ten, his rows of cups had reached the ceiling.

His parents suggested he move his collection to the backyard. Ming started building a circle of stacked Supercups. After a while, he moved some cups around to create a doorway. The cups grew into a turret. Before his twelfth birthday, Ming had expanded the footprint of his creation to make a castle. By the time he was fifteen, the castle had multiple rooms, two tall turrets complete with archer slits, and some rudimentary furniture, all made from Supercups.

The neighbors began to take note. Mr. Green and his wife, who lived in the house behind, thought it was a work of art. They waved at Ming as he organized and stacked cups. Ming always waved back. Other neighbors weren’t so amenable. He didn’t wave at Mrs. Tran; she had reported him to the city inspector, calling his Supercup castle an eyesore.

An inspector visited but found no vermin. The Supercups were clean and impervious to rot or decay. “These will be here long after we are gone,” the inspector joked. Mrs. Tran fumed but could do nothing. The years passed. Mrs. Tran moved to Phoenix. Mr. Green died and his wife moved into assisted living. Ming’s parents suggested Ming take a break to attend college. Ming declined, preferring instead to expand his Supercup castle.

Ming’s building efforts slowed for a time as his parents aged and eventually died, first his mother, then his father. After the final funeral, Ming resumed collecting full-time, roving around the city on a bicycle, towing a chicken wire crate he’d built himself. Children sometimes ran after him, not quite sure if they should cheer him for cleaning up the plastic waste or if they should taunt him for being the town eccentric. Meanwhile, the Supercup castle had coalesced into one main tower, which was now several hundred feet tall, with a sturdy interior staircase, all made of Supercups.

When Ming was sixty-five, the word about the Supercup tower reached the desk of the CEO of the corporation that manufactured Supercups. “Who is this nut?” the CEO asked his staff. They gave him the rundown: From what they could tell, the man was an old, mentally ill man of indeterminate ethnicity who collected discarded Supercups, which he then stacked.

“Let’s get the press out there,” the CEO said. “This is a PR goldmine.”

The national media descended on Ming’s neighborhood, bringing long trailers of grips and gaffers and vans equipped with cameras on telescoping tripods. Even the tallest camera scaffold was dwarfed by Ming’s tower. Ming stopped stacking cups and looked over the parapet at the crowd gathering in the street outside his house.

“What are you doing?” a reporter shouted, waving at Ming. “Come down! Are you making some sort of statement?”

The CEO of Supercups arrived in a long black car. His staff had thoughtfully prepared a podium, three steps up, so he could stand above the assembly and be easily seen by cameras. The CEO wore a suit but no tie, and his shirt collar was unbuttoned, to show he was just a regular guy.

He addressed the media, speaking toward their microphones. “This man is a devoted consumer of the Supercups brand,” he declared. “For his loyalty to Supercups, I would like to give him this check for $100.”

“That’s hardly enough to buy five Cherry Chokeberries,” a reporter laughed.

“He clearly has no need of money, if he can afford to buy so many Supercups,” someone else said.

“I see him in the neighborhood,” a citizen said. “He picks up cups along the streets and in the ravines. You obviously don’t care what happens to your cups after they are used. This man has created something amazing from your trash.”

“Shut that guy up,” the CEO said. He turned and waved at Ming, who was watching from the top of his tower. “Come down! We want to hear your story!”

It took a few minutes for Ming to descend his tower. On his porch, he paused and caught his breath. A lifetime of retrieving trash had taken a toll. The crowd parted respectfully as he shuffled to the podium. Everyone wanted to hear what he had to say.

“Come on up here, old man,” the CEO said, motioning an aide to give the old man a hand. He posed with an arm around Ming’s shoulders. Facing the cameras, he said, “I’m going to name you the first official Supercups Ambassador. You can go on the PR circuit as part of our social responsibility program. We’ll pay you $1,500 a month and give you a small Class A motorhome with a driver. Plus, you can have a lifetime supply of Lemon-Lime Fresher, our newest Supercups flavor.”

Ming hadn’t spoken to anyone for quite some time, and certainly he had never met the head of a large corporation. However, he wasn’t impressed, and he didn’t have anything to say. He turned to leave.

“Wait, okay, we’ll make it $3,000 a month!” the CEO said. “And all the flavors you want, not just Lemon-Lime Fresher. Even the Cherry Chokeberry, you can have as much as you want.” The CEO made one final offer. “I’ll give you unlimited access to our plastic manufacturing facility! You can make Supercups of any shape and size! They’ll last forever!”

Ming shook his head and descended the podium. The crowd made way for him in silence, watching him shuffle back to his front porch, which by now had been incorporated into the Supercups tower. Ming went inside his creation and shut the door.