Crescent

The boy entered the cool, quiet place in the evening. Outside, it was still very hot, but in here was blessed relief, surrounded as he was by thousands of blue tiles painted with swirling designs. He left his worn shoes at the door and began to wash carefully. He cupped his hands together and dipped them into the bowl of water to wet his brown face. He could still smell the freshly ground coffee he had helped to roast and bag all day in the shop a few dusty streets away. It perfumed his hands even through the water. He tasted the water and could detect a taste of the bean. He bent down again to scoop another palmful of water. Lifting his hands he saw dancing there the thin slice of the moon. The light was pouring in from an unshuttered window. He held the moon there, between his two palms and watched it tremble, as if it were cold.

In a dark, falling-down house in the middle of a muddy field, a small girl was hungry. Her mother lit a candle and placed a bowl of thin soup with some pork floating around in it on the table. It wouldn't be enough to assuage her hunger. She picked up a spoon to eat and noticed a reflection of the moon dancing in her bowl. The moonlight was pouring in from the window. There had been curtains once, but they had long ago been torn to nothing by summer storms. It didn't matter. There was no one around for miles. Her father rode at first light each morning in a battered pick-up truck along with seven or eight other men, all hanging on for dear life on the back, just to get to town and find work on someone's farm. The girl sometimes watched from her bed in the corner her mother make coffee for her father before the sky turned rosy. She thought of the coffee as almost a relative, so brown like her parents and so constant the presence of its smell.

The girl held her spoon poised above her soup, transfixed by the sight of the moon trembling in her bowl, as if it were afraid.

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This painting combines two of the recent coffee paintings. To make the connection between the two children I glued glass beads, abalone shells, coins and coffee beans in a rough crescent shape over the image of a market, other moons that resemble the shape of a coffee cup stain, and navigational charts.

The girl's dress fades into the plank walls of the shanty.

Acrylic on paper, with cotton, silk, glass beads, abalone shells, and coffee. 30 x 56 cm.