Trash and Treasure

From Herta Muller’s "The Hunger Angel":

"Little treasures have a sign that says, Here I am.
Bigger treasures have a sign that says, Do you remember.
But the most precious treasures of all will have a sign saying, I was there.”

**********

Dear Kate,

Herta Müller's "The Hunger Angel" is a true treasure. A few pages into it and you know you're in hand-her-the-Nobel-already territory (and they did). Philip Boehm's translation (from German into English), which won the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, brings this reader to a place where I can say I was there.

How rare, how precious a moment, to engage in a conversation with a Person who is totally present, right then and there, Here I am, just for you; my conviction is my devotion to you.

Now you go into a bookstore and check out the latest bestsellers. Most would say (first on their beautiful face) Here I am, pick me, pay for me, I will do you good, a must-read conversation piece, make you look and sound smart, thumbs up from your friends and colleagues, better-than-thou to the face of your enemies...

And then you move deeper into the aisles to words not selling the "best," spoken from a place closer to the diaphragm, pages that help you to recollect dismissed or even missing ones from your past, to make sense of your present and possibly see into the future. Try to remember...

How often do you get addressed by a voice that speaks about you as if she knows you all along, that he was there before you were, and in her speaking about herself she speaks most truly about who you are? Truth Himself is the truest treasure.

Everyday we speak many words, most inaudible to others, often slip under the consciousness of even ourselves. How many of them are little treasures, bigger still, and most precious?

God speaks creation into existence and we too speak our lives into what they are.

Yours, Alex

**********

Dear Alex,

I struggled over the weekend with this pivotal question: what would be my most precious treasure? Time? Courage? One photo?

But imageries of trash kept encircling me. I resisted thinking of it, tried to bypass divert trash this trashy vision. It revolted against me for a few days past till I relented with a plop on the quagmire of cold slippery thoughts.

Trash is my best treasure.

Trashiest of trash adorned with the sign, I was there. Trash and treasure inseparable. Many times I do and feel as trash.

Trash forsaken, no longer useful or desired, a gnawing misjudgment of an inflated appraisal, misplaced misguided ambition, love misunderstood, messes misses and miscarriages hissing at the nucleus of my wretchedness.

And don’t twitch when the pain grinds or the remorse grates on the eyes. Just thrash, trash what does not belong in my home in me now here.

Yesterday breakfast I read about the most precious treasures belonging to the male flame bowerbird. A plumage of psychedelic brilliance, he risks resources and time to create with his single beak a bower of twigs in cone or hut shape for courtship.

On a rare long deep treasure hunt the bowerbird embarks, an awkward hop or peck in grace repeated on repeats, sifting for treasure through trash in the woods to embellish the entrance to his work of love with select colorful findings: torn petals, bloody berries, distorted broken plastic, shrapnel from human pillaging of village earth daily.

Treasures in a cyclone of exorbitant gain waste and trash to simply say, I was there.

Yesterday night while doing laundry, I found a broken clothes hanger in plastic white - plain and cheap, bald but bold, calling me to save it. What audacity! To flee from its destiny in the trash bin, a place and time it deserved for I cared nothing for it. I asked my daughter to trash it.

But then something fragile tugged on me. I looked at my split hanger, placed its brokenness on my desk and mended the two disconnected segments with superglue. I fumbled in full focus for at least 30 min on this $ 1 vulnerable common junk so I could at last at whim at ridicule compress the conjoined parts with two dumbbells on the wooden floor for overnight bonding.

This early morning I found a new treasure unexpected: two halves of my clothes hanger repurposed, re-traditioned to be given the most precious sign, I was there.

Trash to treasure. Me. I am here. Do you remember? I was there. Made in the image of God.

Yours, Kate