Artifact

She was wired.

Two friends touched her within the hour. One grabbed her arm near the elbow, locking eyes. Punching him playfully, he pretended to fall to the ground. The other gave a quick hug. Both were shocked. Literally. “Ouch!” and “you shocked me!!” She hadn’t felt the spark. It was a dry winter.

Lying on a beat up chesterfield in that old brick building, she listened. Not just heard. “There’s a difference, you know.” Tilting her head back farther to study the rafters, she shared that according to her favorite writer, ‘it is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.” Tracing her fingers over the cracked and calloused leather felt similar to reading braille. The wind howled and seemed to release secrets of the last century.

Eleven days before Christmas, she would not be going home for the third year in a row. The forty-seven dollar available credit on her MasterCard, for which the interest was barely covered, and yet continued to accrue like aggressive creeping kudzu, would not allow it. She shook her head and tried to ebb out the memories for the reasons why.

“Have you ever seen an avalanche? Like on National Geographic?”

Glancing over his laptop screen, “What, like snow?”

“Yes.” She despised redundancy. Clearly annoyed, Tray didn’t seem to notice. Growing up as a middle child, this was her normal.

“Nah.”

“Well… when you are watching, you see little chips start to fly off. And it seems like nothing is happening. Lots of pieces flake off into the wind. They fly every direction and then a few more…and a few more. And then everything freezes again. And you ask yourself, why am I still watching this massive heap of snow? And THEN….”

She paused, waiting for him to look at her.

He didn’t.

A split second memory of her grandfather blitzed through her mind, “if she wanted attention, she should have gone into acting”. He used to pour his coffee into his left over cereal milk so he could drink it faster. After the war, he came back with shell shock, a hollow essence, and volcanic anger. Work on the railroad suited him until retirement.

Calliope used to imagine the alternative reality for those around him had he not spent all day driving nine-inch spikes into the ground. He’d comment that because her eyes were slightly wider set than normal, being an actress was her default. She hated the spotlight. She was an artist and preferred the shield of a canvas. It was the work that was meant to shine. She would have told him that and all the reasons why. He was always golfing.

“There’s a pause. A sense of calm. Eerily quiet, as though eternity has caved in on itself while the universe holds its breath. Everything feels electric. Intensified. And suddenly, the mountain slips into the heart of the sea...in one chaotic, beautiful, terrible, motion. Like a burst or a birth! Even a death…”

“Uh huh. Yeah… I think I seen that.”

God this man was the most annoying person in the world. It pestered her continually that she also loved having him around.

Baltimore was a garbage town. Or so it was portrayed in the media. In her mind, she kept hearing the voice of her friend mutter, “dumpster fire” in regards to the news. He was French, and with the accent it made 'dumpster' sound almost charming. She remembered looking down at the needles and syringes under her sandals when she first arrived. It was as though they had fallen from a heartbroken pine tree.

She watched as children played, running across pavement strewn with unheard stories and ruin. There was laughter. Squealing. The city seemed to ache, reach out, and turn its face away all at once. Not allowed to be loved, for it bled with scarlet graffiti letters, invisible histories, and pain. Calliope identified with the fortress; broken, used, aching to be loved in truest and original form.

She picked up a bucket and a spade. A roll of blue tape left a faint ring around her forearm. The sweat made it adhere to her skin, like something between a bracelet and a handcuff.

It appeared to be a lockbox, but without a lock. Rusted metal, with a lid that was so corroded she had to loosen it with a screwdriver. The edge of the opening resembled the mouth of an oyster: uneven, covered in barnacles, calcium, and sculptural residue. She wondered how long the box sat buried in the rubble. After excavating so many other artifacts that might prove meaningless to some, to her they were golden dust particles that had floated through space and time: a mix tape, a patina coin, a fragment of concrete etched with the date 1851. She could capture physical objects, count them or choose to release. She used to collect sea glass from the coast and arrowheads from the Black Hills. It was her sacred way of holding onto the past. She nearly troweled over it with wet cement. Had the corner not been so sharp, catching her heel and causing her to curse under her breath, she may have never noticed it at all.

Heavy, something rolled around inside. She hesitated for a moment before carefully shaking free the bonded lid.

A bird. A magpie, actually. The only reason she knew the type of bird was because one summer in the Netherlands she sat outside sketching them in her little black notebook as they hopped around in the catalpa trees. A man took notice of her. Nodding upward, he muttered, “flying rats”.

“Huh?” She looked up.

“Bloody magpies. Like flying rats.” She thought the magpies were the most beautiful bird she’d ever encountered. Not because of their color or sheen, but because of how they felt to her. They were self possessed and confident. Otherworldly. They reminded her of hieroglyphs. Symbolic, and less like ordinary birds.

The form was created from what appeared to be onyx. Jet black. Not flat, but full, as if it contained the depth of a clear night sky. Meticulous inlay made up the feathers and white belly. The marbled material glistened. She could not remember what it was called —similar to the inside of a seashell or when oil spills on hot asphalt after the rain and a myriad of colors flow into one another. Thin lines of blue ran along the feathers and tail as though painted from an artist’s brush. “Lapis lazuli”, she whispered.

Studying the head, its mouth was open fairly wide. Not in the way a bird flings back for a feeding, poised to receive. It was as though this particular magpie had something to say, a message perhaps. The eyes, slightly wide set, were pure diamonds and two perfect bezels with delicate rims of silver held each stone. This was the work of an artist. Multiple questions flooded her mind but she was unable to focus because the sharpness of its beak was striking. She pressed her right index finger against it to see if it was pointed enough to draw blood, but held back because inside the mouth, she noticed something.

Calliope’s grandfather died the year before she graduated high school. She remembered walking across the stage and being hyper-aware of all eyes on her. That moment was inexplicably both fleeting and frozen. This was not her peak.

He left a note, as most do when they leave this world by their own hands. Multiple wooden birds were found the afternoon he was. In essence, they were the notes. He spent night after night in his wood shop, hand carving the seven striking aviary figurines. Around the necks, he tied a piece of brown paper. It felt like linen, but smelled like moss— each name, handwritten. He meant them to be love letters to his children and grandchildren.

Calliope experienced a distinct sense of déjà vu. Her note contained a short poem about wind and thrushes that was foreign and offbeat. The last line simply said, “the cabinet must first invite curiosity before labor / connection, before magic.”

Prior to the sale of the house, she snuck down to the shop where wood shavings littered the floor. She opened his cabinet. Small glass bottles, bones, butterfly wings, geodes, dried flowers, and other artifacts from life itself were kept inside. He used to tell her when she was little, ‘it’s important to ask questions, Calliope. You must leave space without needing to fill it.’ She didn’t understand what that meant.

He left a trail of subtle wonder wherever he went. She gently took a single butterfly fastened inside the cabinet with a small pin. Gently pulling off one papery-thin pale blue wing, she pinned the other back. It would connect him to her. Closing the cabinet door, she tucked the wing into an old cigarette paper. Wrapping it gingerly, she slid it into a hidden folder inside the back cover of her black notebook. With modest resolve like one stores away a secret, knowing it may never emerge again; she walked back up the stairs.

The following spring, Calliope found herself sitting under a flowering dogwood tree. As she often did, when gazing upon an interesting form or if an idea begged to be written down, she pulled out her notebook. With initial intent upon continuing her visual study of a single dogwood flower, instead she flipped through pages of past seasons. Remembering the magpie, she smiled.

The mysterious onyx magpie now lived in a cabinet made of glass. On a pedestal high enough to be fully observed and appreciated by children and adults alike, yet low enough to see inside the open mouth. Calliope’s intuition had proved correct. The gesture and pose of the bird indeed offered a message. In elegant script inlayed with gold, one could look inside and read, “it is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.”

The local museum was thrilled, as museums uniquely are, to adopt a new artifact such as this. While it was agreed the individual who created it was technically unknown, the piece dated back to a “not-so-very long time ago, when men worked these old railroads,” The pale woman shared. Her face was worn, not from a difficult life, but from one unvaried. There was too much reading, squinting, and not enough fresh air or water. While she dug through her filing cabinets like a determined squirrel looking for an acorn, Calliope waited patiently. Hazel was her name. She worked in the department that was described as “curiosity filings”. While the objects sometimes had value for their materials, the story held the authentic treasure. The humble museum dedicated its existence to preserving local history, the arts and sciences and offered Calliope $20,000 for the magpie.

Thanking Hazel, she turned toward the door. While saying goodbye to her beloved discovery was bittersweet, she knew in her heart that this is where the magpie belonged.

“One more thing, dear.” Hazel went on to share that while working for the museum supported her, she was passionately devoted to the study of etymology. As Calliope listened, a soft haloed glow replaced the dullness in Hazel’s face. She collected words and names, the way the museum collected artifacts. What came next from Hazel’s thin lips caused Calliope to sit down.

Calliope understood at last her grandfather’s words. Her name meant, “beautiful voice”. While she couldn’t sing to save her life, as a painter her voice had power. For while the telling of a story was important, it is in the way information is framed, that matters most. Intention and space must be held around the unknown--like an artifact placed under glass. In this protected sanctuary the viewer of a work of art, the reader of a story, or the hearer of a musical performance is graciously invited in. The meaning is determined by the listener.