Chip

Chip took a small notebook from her pocket and jotted down the code to the alarm and a few other indications. She wrote quickly, barely looking at the page, which, by the time she finished, was cramped with arrows and diagrams and terse captions written in several different languages. She had been doing this throughout the night, throughout the shift, the third shift, my usual one, her first.

Naturally, her compulsion to write everything down, to create an archive, a hand-drawn map, an oeuvre of sorts, endeared her to me, as did her tattoo, the one on her left forearm, her writing hand, between the cuff of her rolled-up sleeve and wrist.

It depicted two strands of a link, interlocked in the middle, yet open on the extremities, on each of the opposing ends. This one link in an otherwise broken chain suggested emancipation, a clipping of the chains, as well as an embrace, the gentle embrace of the two strands, braided together in the middle, bellies touching.

I knew the image well, having seen it hundreds, if not thousands of times, printed discreetly at the bottom of the liner notes to the 1985 Embrace LP. I saw it every time I took the vinyl out of the sleeve and placed it on my record player, back at The Peterbuilt House, all those years ago, in a punk past life, a punk past life whose ghost haunts the ruins of middle age, the hallways of The Community Center, even, its supply closets and shadowy stairwells.

My generation of punk stood on the shoulders of The Revolution Summer, the DC sound, the politics of DIY, the messthetics, Ian Mackaye and Guy Picciotto, Joe Lally and Brendan Canty, the LPs of Embrace and the Rites of Spring, released the same year. They were the tradition upon which our non-traditionalism was built, the indivisible nucleus of continuity within a project of radical rupture, the only stone left unturned, the only piece of furniture left standing in the room, unsplintered.

The tattoo would have been at home on my own skin, among the others, its blood relatives. The sight of it opened a cellar door within me, a hidden passageway, deep in the dark recesses. It set the specters loose, set them loose to interrogate the present, to complicate it with the difficult question of the relationship of a distant past to the troubled present, as specters tend to do.  I felt interpellated.

But was it really the same image? Was I confusing resemblance with identity? Confusing an echo for the burst of sound that sent it reverberating? In its new context, its new present of enunciation, on the skin of Chip’s left forearm, did it continue to have the same connotation? Throughout the shift, in my new role as the senior janitor, showing Chip the ropes, the secrets of the trade, the shortcuts, I had been struggling to find a way to broach the subject, to broach the subject without being indiscrete or inconsiderate.

Arturo was on medical leave, interred, locked away in a tiny room at the end of the corridor of the general hospital, to be interrogated by the doctors and by secrets from his past. What started as a chest cold, from the precipitous change in weather, the bottoming out of the temperature and tightening up of the sky, the merciless icing over, until the city was nothing but slick surfaces and sharp edges, what started small had quickly developed into a lung infection, a pulmonary crisis, high fever, night sweats, delirious dreams, flashbacks perhaps of clandestinity, carefully crafted blueprints, coded conversations on prearranged street corners, double agents and dictatorship.

At the same time that, at work, I found myself without my mentor in the custodial arts, my beacon and book smuggler, I became a mentor myself, tasked with training the new hire, Chip, who appeared without warning at the start of my shift with a note from The Big Boss. She had been assigned to “shadow” me, as if it were possible to shadow a shadow.

My heart sank at the news, sank faster than the outside temperature, not by any fault of Chip, certainly, but for the simple reason that I am used to working alone, in fact, deeply attached to doing so. What I like most about my job, about janitoring, is the possibility of being left alone with my thoughts, to work through problems related to my research, to untangle the spool, to detect the inconsistencies, to burn off the impurities, to hone the arguments, sharpen their points.

I did my best to dissimulate my disappointment. Recalling Arturo and the care with which he mentored me, I put on my best face. I made the effort to resignify my shift.

My fears, however, quickly proved unfounded. Chip was no ordinary new hire, anxious to make a good impression, ingratiating herself, with something to prove, overshooting the mark. No, she was calm but not passive, spunky but not obnoxious, smart but not arrogant, distant but not detached. She chose her words with precision and care, with the respect that they deserve, on account of their immense power and their lasting effects, so difficult to predict. Most of all, she was discrete, unassuming, dignified, at odds, in other words, janitor material.

Following in the footsteps of Arturo, determined to get it right, determined to transmit The Custodial Code, so reticent, so ineffable, sublime even, I showed her all the keys and all the locks, all the chemicals and all the drains, all the tricks of the trade, or at least all the ones that can be put into words. Chip removed the notebook from her pocket and whispered secrets into its pages, then put it back again, removed it, put it back again, with each new keyhole, at the threshold of each new door.

Throughout the first half of our shared shift, I gradually warmed up to the idea that we would eat lunch together on our break, as Arturo and I had on my first shift. It was a concession that I was willing to grant, begrudgingly at first, but progressively less so.

My presupposition, however, turned out to be a misfire, a false alarm: when break time rolled around, Chip looked me in the eyes without blinking and stated flatly that she preferred to eat alone. By way of clarification, she added that she had the longstanding custom of reading on her breaks. Then she removed a used book from her knapsack. Not just any paperback, it was The Impractical Cabinetmaker by James Krenov.

I was as disoriented as I was delighted, having a little lunch break reading of mine own to do, some of the usual light-hearted aphorisms about exile from Theodor Adorno’s Minima Moralia. I kept a copy in the supply closet.

In the last minutes of my break, book already closed, the theme of exile lingering, I couldn’t help but think of Arturo, about our past collaborations. In light of his situation, the distance, and the difficulties that come with it, I vowed to go see him over the next few days, in case he needed to talk to someone about The Old Country, about his past life, which overlapped, in some many ways, with my own.

I also tried to imagine what it would be like if one day Chip were to visit me, bedridden, stricken, in the clutches of a past that refuses to pass, in some hospital or other institution. I imagined that there was a bridge that connected Arturo, Chip, and I, a common thread that informed our struggles, that outlived them, an idiom or code that spanned three generations, three generations of janitors, three generations of conspirators.

As Chip and I returned from our respective breaks, our respective readings, and embarked on the second half of our shared shift, I learned that Chip is an apprentice at a joinery school, a furniture making studio, the Bauhaus Institute. After a series of rigorous interviews, Bertoldt, the founder, wood chips in his beard, deep crevices in the thick skin of his calloused hands, told her that she had been accepted. The news came as somewhat of a surprise, Chip admitted, since The Bauhaus Institute only accepts one apprentice per year.

The rules of the Institute are simple but strict. She would have to live by The Cabinet Making Code. No power tools. No nails, nuts, or bolts, only joinery. No graven images, only art conscious of its medium, its language, its distance, its ultimate impossibility. No financial transactions, only an exchange, rigorous instruction in the craft in exchange for tasks done in the studio, for collaboration in the furniture making process.

In the long term, Chip intended to specialize in rocking chairs. She needed, however, something to keep her afloat throughout the year, to see her makeshift skiff through to the far shore, to proficiency in her field and professional autonomy. If all went well, if all went according to the blueprint, her carefully drafted plans, she would become, after the completion of her apprenticeship, an associate of the furniture makers collective. Chip was confident that, at the other end of her apprenticeship, she would find her place, her enjoined rocking chair niche, not because she had stumbled upon it haphazardly but, rather, because she created the niche herself, because she willed it into existence.

Off hours at The Community Center. A book in her knapsack. Nobody breathing down her neck. Not a bad setup, Chip concluded. “It’s almost like the job chose me, instead of the other way around,” she added. If her words sounded familiar, it is because I had said them to myself countless times over the past year.

Before finishing the shift, before setting the alarm, before punching the code into the keypad, I considered asking Chip about the tattoo on her left forearm, asking her to tell its truncated story, to reveal its enigma.  I considered telling her about the blueprint that I had drafted all those years ago. I considered telling her about The All-Consuming Project and about how I almost didn’t come out alive. I considered telling her about my own apprenticeship, at The Punk University, about The Craft. I considered telling her about the artistry, The Custodial Categorical Imperative, about the manifesto I had been writing, day in and day out. I considered telling her about The Code, our code, our condition, a shared solitude, perhaps.

But it wasn’t necessary. Words would have only dirtied the pane. Any explanation would have been superfluous. Because the thing about The Code, one of its defining features, its first clause, is that it can’t be captured in words, can’t be transmitted in words, not without being endangered, diminished, impoverished, as Chip, I was certain, was well aware.

Lights off, alarm set, doors locked, building secured, Chip did one last thing before we parted ways, towards our respective studies, our respective struggles, our respective languages, our respective solitudes. She removed the notebook from her pocket, for one last time, and wrote something down, with the same calm urgency as before, as if our lives depended on her getting it right, as if the words had the power to splinter furniture, to delink chains, to unleash something unforeseen and improbable into the world. It was too dark, of course, to make out the words, but I could recognize their uncanny potential nonetheless.