...as blues as the sky, as clear as a mirror,
as thin as paper, and as resonant as musical stone of jade...
---Emperor Shi Tsung

Isi cast another woeful glance into the sadly empty house and then closed the door. He sat on the creaky wooden steps of the porch and picked up a folded newspaper, the latest edition of Gallery Gazette. He turned through its rattling pages and began to read.

April 30, 1996

Aliento sends another old soul into the realm beyond, with the passing of Irene Beatrice Gower. She and her husband, Joseph Davis Gower, who died April 16, 1990, contributed greatly to the few good things in Aliento. Members of a non-denominational Christian organization, they felt called to make Aliento their home and in 1950 built a house in what was to become the Gallery Quarter .

Irene and Joseph established the first health clinics in 1955 at the outbreak of deadly virus epidemic. Only three Aliento lives were lost to virus while in the nearest neighboring city of Welburnt fifty miles west, nearly a quarter of the population was wiped out.

The Gowers worked closely with the priests of St. Genesius's' Chapel, and their presence was felt throughout Grace when they pushed the town council to approve funding to rebuild neighborhoods that had been destroyed by arsenal fires in the summer riots of 1968. They also contributed to the funding and structuring of a community based on peace and self-reliance, a colony that eventually became the Ashram.

The Gowers were also involved in a project to bring together the various Aliento mob leaders in an attempt to forge the bonds of peace. Mr. Gower died before the summit could happen, and the vision of peace still has yet to be realized. Aliento would do well to reflect on the lives of these kind souls. Mrs. Gower spent the last six years of her widow life in solitude. Her efforts should not be forgotten.

Isi folded the paper. Her efforts already have been forgotten, he thought to himself. These people have no idea of her efforts at all.

1993

"The tomatoes looked bad today, Mrs. Gower. But I did manage to come by some decent eggplants at the Harvest Farmer's Market."

A brown bag in each arm, Isi stood in the door way waiting to be invited in.

Irene snapped out of her daze. "Yes. Fine. Well, you may set those on the kitchen counter."

She stepped aside to let Isi pass.

Isi went through the long hallway and into the kitchen. Irene followed in an arthritic slow shuffle, her slippers hissing on the hardwood floor.

Isi began taking the groceries out of the bags and occasionally looked up at the tired old woman.

"Mrs. Gower, have you given any thought to what we talked about last time? It's been three years since Mr. Gower left us. Your grief is understandable, even admirable. But I think even Mr. Gower wouldn't want you to stop living your life."

Irene went to the table in the center of the kitchen, drew up a chair and ease herself down. She watched Isi setting bags of string beans, broccoli and eggplant into the refrigerator.

"I know. I think I found something I might be able to do with your help."

"You know I'll help, Mrs. Gower. I could spend ten life times trying and never finish returning the great kindness you and Mr. Gower have shown me. The Ashram wouldn't be more than a pile of rotten boards and a lost dream if it weren't for you."

"This would not be as simple as bringing groceries, Isidoro. This would be some real work."

He drew up a chair and sat beside Irene. His voice dropped to just above a whisper.

"Mrs. Gower, you have only to ask. I'm no stranger to work. In fact it brings me pleasure."

Irene looked at Isi. His broad forehead suggested great knowledge and power; the lines around his dark eyes told of a sad irony, compassion and wisdom.

"You are what every mother would want in a son."

Isi smiled. "I never knew my mother."

Irene had things all worked out. She kept all her plans recorded in a paisely-coverd journal. All the specifications, all the necessary materials, all the preparations had been carefully noted. She knew what had to be done but felt some trepidation about disclosing the greater scheme of her intentions. If people knew, even if Isidoro knew---and she would reveal everything to him in time---everyone would consider her sufficiently mad and assume that this was the predictable fate of a lonesome old widow.

A large blue pickup truck pulled up to the Gower house situated in the Gallery Quarter just one hundred yards south of the Ashram. Isi jumped out of the cab, along with Sung, an artist from Ashram. The bed of the truck was loaded down with bricks, a few sacks of concrete mix and small cement mixer. Irene came out onto the porch and saw the two men stacking bricks onto a sturdy dolly.

"Isidoro, I have the drawings here."

Isi asked Sung move the first of bricks to the freshly cleared dirt patch next to the garden of hydrangeas and gardenias. Stepping up to the porch, Isi took the drawings and looked the over.

"This looks like an old style brick oven...there's the wood burning chamber..."

Irene seemed evasive. "Do you know when the other supplies are coming in?"

"Well, I put the orders in, but I think we could get that clay cheaper from..." Isi had to pull out a small note pad from his pocket, "...clay...okay, here it is...from Germany kaolin would cost seventy-five percent less of what it does from China. From England the cost is the same as from Germany, but we could get it here three days sooner."

"No, the kaolin must be from China."

"And that feldspathic material, that should be from China as well?"

"Yes. The petunse must also be from China."

"Okay...well, the orders are in." Isi put the notepad back in his pocket. "In a week the shipments should be here, but the whole process and those materials are expensive."

"I have an entire life's savings and not much life remaining in which to spend it."

Irene had a purpose for the first time in three years.

"I'll leave you two to get started. Please come on in when you get hungry."

"Thank you, Mrs. Gower."

Sung spread a fresh layer of gray mortar over the bricks. He and Isi had labored for hours digging a pit that dropped several feet into the earth and had build the wooden frame where the brick walls would stand. Isi wheeled over the dolly stacked with more bricks.

"You haven't said a word all day, Sung. What's going on in that head of yours?"

Sung set down the trowel. He wore simple loose fitting clothes handmade from cotton. His black hair was cut short; his ageless face had no lines yet expressed the experience of many lifetimes. His eyes usually bright obsidian were clouded in dull coal, sad and pensive.

"I think Sheila is pregnant, yet she refuses to discuss it. She finds reasons to have minimal contact with me."

Isi handed Sung one brick at a time, Sung setting the bricks carefully on the mortar as though adding a layer of cake.

"Do you think, that if she is expecting, maybe she just needs time to figure out what she wants?"

Sung didn't answer but finished setting another series of bricks, the layer stopping right at the point where the internal wood frame began to arch into what would become the ceiling. He looked at the structure taking shape, a belly slowly growing out from the earth.

"I see her drinking heavily, smoking. She keeps company with other men now, some of the younger poets under her tutelage."

"Sheila has always been a free spirit. In the time I've known her, I've seen her get close to people, but she's on another level. She sees things as crucial moments, important notes in a chord, petals of a rose. But she doesn't linger when the chord has stopped ringing or when the petals fall and whither. When people try to pin her down, she distances herself. Maybe she thinks that way with you."

"I would never want to control anyone. She should know that. I'm just concerned for her health, for if she is with child, with my child, I feel a duty."

"You can only do so much. Here we are building this...oven. And only Mrs. Gower knows where it's going. We can help as much as she allows, but we have no idea where this is leading. And we have no say in the matter either."

Sung looked at bricks taking shape. A somber smile took possession of his face.

The human body begins to run down over a lifetime. One hopes something will last, if not virility, then eyesight, maybe hearing, at least coherent thinking. Irene's mind, on hold during her three years of morning, awoke with a flurry of ideas.

Irene could only walk with pain and discomfort, but her hands could easily handle the pestle and mortar to crush the course pale earth and the stone materials down to powders to be mixed together and flushed with water through a fine mesh sieve. She executed every procedure with none of the trepidation of a beginner.

Van Gogh mastered his art in ten years; I'll master this in ten months.

Immense deep study and preparation led to the refining of a great vision. All the notes and ideas congealed into the soft viscous mass placed on a wheel. Spinning, slicked and smoothed with water, the indefinable material took shape in her hands. With the fervor of a thousand years of dynasties, she would compress and shape the malleable whiteness. The shaping process that, in centuries long ago, would have passed through the hands of seventy work men would now rest in her hands alone. Her specialty would be to specialize in every aspect of an ancient system based on divided labor.

The first piece came together---liprim, opening, foot ring and base. She raised the bowl up, carrying it on bamboo skewers and set it on a tray. By late afternoon, she had completed several pieces in this manner.

Outside Isi and Sung prepared small bundles of wood, larger pieces of oak stacked upon smaller cut branches, then kindling sticks, all bound together with twine. Isi decided to risk indiscretion but hoped the heart of his intentions would not be misconstrued.

"So, have you spoken with Sheila lately?"

Sung knotted the twine around another bundle of wood. "A week ago I saw her briefly. It is gone. I suppose she wanted things that way."

Isi put a hand on Sung's shoulder.

Sung added, "Everything was up to her. She still keeps distant, as though I inspire shame in her. I try to put my mind on other things."

Isi was about to speak when Irene came out of the house.

She saw them standing between the half cord of wood and the brick dome.

"How long has the fire been going?"

Isi looked up. "About three hours now." He walked up to the side of the dome. "Thermometer says 3000 degrees."

"It's ready."

Isi made a silly face. "It's bit too hot for baking cookies. You could probably melt rocks in this oven."

Sung laughed. "It's a kiln, Isi. I think Mrs. Gower has higher aspirations than making oatmeal cookies."

Irene had Isi use a long handled paddle to set inside the kiln a tray full of softly shaped forms in white. For three days Isi and Sung would tend the fire chamber so that the kiln's heat remained constant. Irene's mind, heated in thought, imagined the forms of white---feldspathic bones, liquefying, crystallizing, giving translucence, resonance...heated kaolin, white clay, touched by creative God-fire, growing, expanding, contracting fleshing out the body of a small vase.

Birthed from the smoldering womb of brick, emerging from three days of infernal utero---cracked and collapsed, glassy streaked pearls, bent blanc de Chine, how beautifully sad are the accidents of creation.

"Something went wrong." Irene looked at the misshapen pieces of ceramic on the tray. Sung and Isi stood beside her and looked.

"Look at the brilliance of white," Sung said, "There's something there..."

Irene shook her head and turned away from Sung and Isi, away from the kiln, and away most of all from the brilliant white contortions that failed to become tea cups, bowls and vases.

Isi called out, "Sung's right, Mrs. Gower, the radiance is amazing. This is only the first attempt. The next batch should turn out better."

Irene turned around just before going into the door. "I have no time to waste. The kiln must be ready by tomorrow. This time five hundred degrees cooler." She went inside.

Isi understood; she needed no reassurance.

We look at a blank page with disappointment and reverence. Daunting, snow-blinding vastness, even an ink dot would be welcome as long as it had been placed there before. But to fill the page on our own accord, this is precisely when ineffable vastness assumes limitations and a name---mortality. This is the page of predicament; the would-be living, the living, the would-be-dead, the dead, the would-be-resurrected and the risen, they all have this page within their own books. Every book contains this page somewhere, though it cannot be found in the table of contents or the index. We look at this page hoping to find something written, a plan of sorts, a few sketched lines suggesting direction and shape. But it is written that it shall not be written. So we must choose paths without foreknowledge of the terrain.

Dear, we had thought of ourselves as missionaries and had hoped our path would led us to the East. East. The mere thought of a direction conjures so much significance. We made it as far east as Aliento where we made our home. We started clinics to combat outbreaks. We helped rebuild neighborhoods after razing riots. We helped establish a community of free thought and creative force. We did all these things, but we never went into the East. We never went to China. We wanted to look to the page and see it confounded with China---the expansive lands, the richness of dynasties, the elegance of Emperors, the destitution of peasants, the uprisings, the oppressors and the dreamers who dared to embrace the moon...

How could we miss something so grand? But miss it we did. Or, we can approach everything from another direction. What if we go far enough West, all the way? We turn the page over itself. We round the corners, shaping a continuous form, a cycle without beginnings or endings, an option beyond the two dimensional boarders enclosing blank emptiness. In every thought, imagine disclosing China, building it piece by piece. We must find this whole through all the pieces of China. Our time in Aliento was not in vain, but why ignore what the other calling could have meant...could still mean?

The house felt cool; the aroma reminded him of damp earth. This winter brought heavy rains and nothing escaped the rain. The dry stores of wood, both at the Ashram and in the shed next to Gower home, gradually grew damp from the humidity. The kiln could no longer burn. Everything slowed down, especially Irene.

Isi went to the bed room on the first floor, for Irene's arthritic knees made the climb to the bedroom upstairs much too difficult. Through the open door he saw Irene lying in bed of many thick quilts. The night stand lamp was on, and she had fallen asleep with a book in her hands. Isi removed the book and saw the jade colors that filled the pages in the pictures of celedon vases. He put the book on the shelf above the one lined with a series of celedon wares Irene had made.

Isi then delicately removed Irene's reading glasses and shut off the lamp. Out in the hallway, shelves full of china lined the walls. In three years time Isi and Sung had built barely enough shelving in the house to hold all the porcelain pieces Irene had made. She explained how she had made pieces to reflect the major periods in Chinese porcelain design. I'm recapturing the essence of the dynasties.

Along one shelf stood a collection of opalesque blanc de Chine, pure sparkling whites of the Sung dynasty. Blue and white tea pots and cups, urns and flower vases reflected the Ming dynasty blue colorings that China had imported from Turkey during the sixteenth century. Another shelf held polychromatic pieces. Irene had mastered various glaze colorings by creating blends of maganese for violet, copper for red and green, iron for brown and green, and cobalt for blue.

Isi gazed in awe of the designs, rendered with accuracy and passion. Irene had painted many of the pieces of porcelain with wonderful designs, each with intricacy, color and significance. This persimmon stands for joy, that fish for creativity...this pine is friendship in adversity. Isi, I would want you to have this vase..

A week before the rains, the cooling weather and long hours of work left Irene in exhaustion. She developed an acute case of pneumonia. A week before the rains, the last piece of porcelain emerged from the kiln. Irene had crafted one thousand pieces of china.

Spring 1996

"So there are no known relatives?"

Isi spoke quietly. "Please, let's go to the living room. Sung, can you stay with Mrs. Gower?"

Sung went into her room and closed the door. Isi led the two men in suits out of the hallway walled with china. They sat on sofas with a small coffee table in between them. Isi looked at the men. "Mrs. Gower has no living relatives that I know of."

The man with a push-broom mustache and caterpillar eyebrows flipped through a manila file of papers and receipts. "The Gowers have outstanding debts--loans that were taken out when this house was built. If there are no relatives, in other words, no one to make payments, the bank, by state statutes, can take possession of the house."

"What is the outstanding balance?"

Mr. Pushbroom handed Isi a sheet of figures. Isi glanced it over. He leaned back into the sofa and pushed his dark hair up away from his forehead. He let out a sigh and handed the sheet back to Mr. Pushbroom.

The other man wore thick glasses, wire frames barely holding the lenses. He spoke with some concern. "If Mrs. Gower has a will prepared, I would advise that we get her to sign it now. You will be the witness I take it."

Isi looked at the coffee table. There was a tea set, a blue and white pot with four little cups. He picked up one of the cups and rubbed its smooth surface as though summing a genie. "If the bank is taking the house, what point is there for a will? I mean, why not spare her this legality if you're here to take everything away from her?"

Mr. Pushbroom leaned forward and cleared his throat.

"The bank can only lay claim to the house. As to everything else in it---"

"Mr. Chumpel is right. The house will have to be turned over, but not the furniture and all this porcelain."

They all gazed around the room filled with greens, whites, blues---if gems were as large, they would hold the same splendor as these radiant pieces of porcelain.

Dearest Isidoro,

You have been kind in so many ways. I realize you have kept hidden from me the tiresome

details of the Gower estate. But you can't deceive someone who's been

around the block twice as many times as you. I know they'll take the house. Maybe you'll have

to auction off the furniture. But please do what you can to keep my porcelain together, all those

delicate pieces of china.

Making them, making each cup, vase, tea pot, took me closer to a place I'd never been, a place

I'd never expected to know. I wish everyone could know what that feels like, to see something

take shape in your hands, to become something of a jewel looking like it came into existence

by beauty's will.

I once thought God wanted me to go to China. Now I realize He wanted to bring it to me.

Thank you, Isidoro, for helping know this.

Love, Irene

Irene Beatrice Gower's final wish was that she be cremated in the kiln which Isi and Sung had built. She then wanted her ashes inurned in a porcelain vessel she had made and then for the urn to be buried in Aliento Del Dios Cemetery next to her husband, Joseph Davis Gower. Isi saw to it that all her wishes were carried out.

Also, in observance of Mrs. Gower's wishes, Isi had the entire porcelain collection put into an Ashram bedroom that had been vacant for the last year. Keep the pieces together--would they lose their meaning if the pieces of China weren't together? Isi wondered and would continue to ponder this in light of the strange situations following.

Marty, an Ashram oil painter who was not fond of doing the dishes, once came into the China room to borrow a clean cup. He randomly selected a blue and white. While in the kitchen, Ashley, a poet and historian, saw the cup and asked to see it. Well studied in Asian arts, she examined it and exclaimed, "This comes from the Ching dynasty! It's centuries old! The luminescence, its pearly eggshell beauty. Where did you get this?"

"I just wanted a drink of water." Marty shrugged his shoulders as Ashley ran off with the cup.

Not long after, Isi began to notice pieces were missing from the China room. After weeks of inquiries, he uncovered a minor theft ring---pieces were stolen and pawned for top dollar at the Institute of Asian Arts up state. Isi put a lock on the door and kept the key on a string around his neck. Well, most of the pieces are still there.

On another occasion, he saw Sung and Sheila in the Fauve room. They seemed to be getting along, nothing too serious. Sung was showing Sheila a red vase which Mrs. Gower had modeled after a favorite of an emperor of the late Ming dynasty. While holding the vase up to towards the skylight, the vase slipped from Sheila's hands. Isi ran up to the scene of the debacle and nearly wept. He watched in despair as Sung and Sheila gathered the shattered pieces, Sheila whimpering, "We can fix it, we can fix it, don't worry..."

As the pieces weren't holding up too well under such abuses, Isi decided he had best keep for himself a few pieces to protect and mostly to admire. He kept in his room a celedon bowl, for he liked the vibrant jade color. In it he transplanted a small pine sapling. On his night stand he kept a pearl white cup. Water took on an extraordinarily delightful taste when sipped from its porcelain body. Isi ritually poured hot water into the cup. He liked drinking it slowly before going to bed. One night as he prepared to drink his hot water, he was interrupted by an emergency and had to go the kitchen to help a young student bandage a cut on her hand. As she was in near hysterics about blood loss, Isi had to help her calm down. When he returned to his room and hour later, unlocking his door and going inside, he found the water was still hot and tasted of plumbs.