Juxtaposition

throughout the years I have designed high-end custom homes crafting spatial poetics with vigas and latillas hand peeled by mojados whose sweat translates into profit for developers working at a nifty rate sometimes I go visit these homes as they are being finished may I help you? I am asked by the realtor standing at the door, thinking that I may be the guy who mixed the mud and pushed the wheelbarrow I introduce myself as the designer oh, well, it’s so nice to meet you, what a wonderful job!please, come in. I was once asked by a home magazine journalist if I felt insulted by such incidentswell, no, I said, my mind mixing for an answera good batch of cement is never accidental last year on my way up through Santa Fe I made a detour and drove by a house of my design the season’s first snow on the ground, smoke rising out of the fireplace chimney inch by inch I know that house through its X, Y, and Z axis but, I cannot approach the front door knock and expect to be invited in to sit in the corner of my pleasing and lounge around with the owner as we sip on cups of hot herbal tea making small talk about the weather or discussing a reading by the latest author come through as the sun’s last light streams in gallantly through the window just where I placed it and for that reason I take a handful of snow to my mouth toss another into the air my blessings upon the inhabitantsque Dios los bendiga y les dé más my grandfather would have said I turn my car toward home to my mother’s house a place near and far to me she, my mother, is bedridden and my brother is the self-appointed caretaker to bathe and feed her bring her morsels of conversation it is their own world now ruled by a juxtaposition of understanding against what I have come to know, now here, so far and away I am greeted at her front yard by an old, propped up trunk hood proclaiming my brother’s spray-painted inscription Jesus Saves on the opposite side it reads Keep Out! I guess it just depends on what kind of day he’s having, someone once remarked like a rattlesnake it’s a fair warning years ago I accepted this madness and called it not my ownit’s better that he be drunk on Christ, said my motherthan on what he used to drink we all agreed