Postwar Houston. Texas in the '50s. A young commercial artist in Houston is putting the last touch on an ad campaign for a local bakery. As he adds an extra flair to the large lowercase "g," he is replicating a calligraphic gesture that originated 1,700 years before in a monastery in Constantinople. There, a quill-wielding scribe put together the loopy strokes that made that letter special. In those earlier times, gall ink on vellum spread the word of a Christian god through handmade copies. Now a buttery rubber-based ink, silkscreened into the pores of a screen door, would carry the new gospel of baked goods to the consuming masses from corner groceries all over town:

On alert, I felt my level of apprehension increase as he advanced, grinning. Teeth clenched, I made the quick assessment: big-assed whiteboy, jock, REDNECK. I was looking back at the smoking and hacking engine, a deliberate meditation to avoid ridicule and harassment, when his large paw thrust something between us, breaking my concentration.

He said, "I think you need this." It was a gift from a titan to a lowly human: a can of SAE 10/30 weight, high-performance motor oil. As Prometheus gave man fire and hope, this man gave me oil and the possibility of fifty more miles.

As he walked away, I stood there, stunned by this act of generosity and ashamed of my false reading of his character. I prepared to stab the can in sacrificial ritual and to bleed its geologic gift into the car, but stopped and turned to give a nod of thanks to my benefactor. With a smile, I prepared to wave good-bye as he and his friend slowly drove off in a brand new red pickup truck. The truck slowed, and with his arm resting outside the window, he grinned and bellowed, "And another thing, you fuckin' Jap, I wish it was an A-bomb so it would blow you and all you gooks off the face of the earth!"

My reaction was immediate. Though I could barely make out their laughing exchange through their rear window, with all my might I hurled the can of oil at the truck. As the can rose, arcing high in the sky, a dark and furious blood rose within me. I stood my ground, tracking the torpedo of paper and tin as it twisted and flipped toward its target, finally exploding on the tailgate, oil dribbling down. He stomped on the brakes. The taillights gave off a lit exclamation, then the truck smoked back in reverse. He paused, and then came out of the truck.

He asked, "Why did you do that?"

I did not speak. I could not speak. All the insensitive, degrading, cowardly, hateful, and racist remarks I had heard in my life, directed to parents, brothers, sisters, and friends, were now howling in me in a single voice. My whole life I had watched as the comments were met with a shamed silence. A fuel of dangerous volatility, once shoveled into my gut, was now driving an urge and rage of impossible magnitude focused on one motivation: to kill this man.

He asked again dully, "Why did you do that?"

His face in my face, I responded slowly, "You know why. I'm tired of talk. You can try to hit me first."

It was useless to explain a primal instinct. Everything indicated that a struggle was about to transpire. I was resolved and silent, beyond explanations, living in a quiet space, immersed in the moment before the chaos of a clash. I was beyond thought, beyond consequence.

He broke the silence. "Okay. We're gonna walk away from this, okay?" He backed up slowly, got into the truck, and drove away with his friend, head buried in his hunched shoulders.

The collision of my internal chemistry and a need to place all that had transpired into reason rattled my core. My body broke down and wept inside.

Lesson III: Congress and Crawford • 1980s

The all-night drinking and smoking at Warren's was starting to take effect. In fact, my memory remains fuzzy to this day. Was the eviction pending at Studio One? Had Bill moved to Mexico by then to free himself of local demons? Was Kurt still getting practice with that 9mm in the studio? Was I left in charge? And of what?

Still, it wasn't the loss of wit or the dangerous driving; it was physical degradation that spurred me into restorative action. After a day of barely working at the Rice Museum for Dominique de Menil, I stopped at the Sears on Main Street and negotiated for a single-blade ax. I had seen George Foreman splitting wood to stay in shape before a big match and was convinced that method would work for me. With hardwood logs in short supply in downtown Houston, I felt I could start at home, wrecking the interior of the studio. Bringing down plaster, lathe, and old yellow pine boards with an ax seemed like the right thing to do to put some mass on my weak trapezoids. That's how I reasoned before heading to the bar for a stiff G-and-T.

Pulling up to my corner, I saw Jack pitching a fit by his car. The Guys were planning an installation in the remains of Studio One, and I supposed he was scoping it out. I went to see what condition his condition was in. Apparently his skates and his new shoes had just been swiped. I knew there wasn't a moment to lose and instructed Jack to head over to the side door of Annie's 24-Hour BBQ, the local fence. I would follow him up in the front. I took the ax along, not for protection or enforcement, but to make sure it wouldn't be stolen as well.

Jack was in top physical shape. He raced over in a blink and was soon haggling with a drug addict who was trying to reach a reasonable settlement on the price of the skates with the proprietor of Annie's. There was a great deal of suspicion on the part of the thief as to whether the skates really belonged to Jack, and the customers, mostly pimps and whores fortifying themselves with coffee and brisket before an all-night shift, were amused. Then I came in the front door holding the ax, and that was all it took. A Superfly-wannabe let out a yell, "It's an AX!" All the necks at the bar pulled in turtle-style, and the skates were handed over to Jack without contest.

I told Jack that the new shoes would not be far away and we should trek up the insolvent side of Commerce Street. As we walked around the block with skates and ax, a team of cops rousting a drunk spotted us. I walked toward them, honestly seeking the support and protection duly afforded a citizen of the city, hoping to solicit their service in apprehending the other thief who had taken Jack's shoes. The Man pulled his .357, took aim in my direction, and shouted: "DROP THE FUCKING AX!"

We never found the shoes, but one out of two ain't bad. I eventually made it back to the studio, where I took a mighty swing at the wall. It shook a little and yielded some nasty nails and fiberboard, but it wasn't the dramatic workout I had envisioned. Nevertheless, every swing got me in touch with a primordial memory.

What I Learned
I.
The practice of art in China, by the time of the Southern Song Dynasty, was propelled by Chan Buddhism and was considered "neither speaking nor silence." Some meditation is required to achieve this state, after which a powerful bolt of recognition transforms you.

Disturbing shocks dished out regularly by the world eventually have little effect on the matter of our minds. What I observed in my youth happened before I had the internal connections to judge meaning. Still, it did not take long for the memory of those moments to be understood. Growing up in Houston would reveal the nature of violence repeatedly. These early memories set up the need for me to question the relation of violence to the creative act.

II.
A climate of racism and class division mires us in a world that will not let an act of goodwill to a person of another color go unqualified. One thing or another will come up to prove that generosity is an unnatural trait and that, if it exists, it must be trained out of us. In that ring, one action proved me wrong while another proved me right, a combination punch that provoked me to the edge of the destructive violence I think is trapped within us all. At that point, I understood the unbearable failure of language. It confirmed a belief: art is a catalytic structure that clears a space for the formation of language not yet born. It also confirmed that the struggle is never over.

III
A forensic study was made of a stone hand ax in the late 1980s. Traces of paleo-hemoglobin tagged it as a murder weapon. Some 100,000 years ago, when Europe was the land of the wind chill factor, folks were chopping at heads just as they are today. The psychological freight that the ax carries is heavy. Just as Homer describes the arrow that strikes Achilles as "freighted with dark pain," forms are loaded and can be useful tools in the transmission of ideas.

The ax incident at Annie's eventually propelled a work of art and spurred a continuing investigation into the origin of forms, the material used to make them, and the words used to describe them.

The psychological weather of Houston, Texas, has been extreme, and the forecast remains the same. I have learned it's not about "making it here" (or anywhere), but "making it through" with some empathy, some dignity, and some critical reason for being. That seems to be what matters.

Copyright©2000 Mel Chin