Maté

Maté. I do like the way each of these is different--these returnings. They tell a story, but one without words. A story we see, perhaps. So that the two maté gourds, side by side, become two brothers. Yes, that fits, even with just a single bombilla. That same perceived simplicity that tells you this is how things have always been.  

Not the romantic, of course--things always change--but the sources they change from are constant. As in color (the deep red-black of the Grifone bottle, its smokey orange label--and the way the patches of earth outside meander through the leaves. Mostly eucalyptus, close at hand, but there’s a redwood, too, growing up from the circle below. That’s where the Lindheim family placed the bench for Roz--it’s also wood, and at one point there was a plaque, with her name inscribed. But these things have their way of not lasting...

She was one of my first teachers here--probably the one who convinced me that I was in the wrong place. That beautiful round cast-resin cafe roof I was so attached to--had very little to do with architecture. But when I came back, several years later, as a teacher, we became close. And I came to appreciate Roz for the broad and generous way she saw things. (The time she invited Ivan Illich to give his lectures at Berkeley--he flew in from Mexico City, and made us rethink everything. Roz liked that kind of challenge. It seemed real to her.)

She applied it in her own way, of course--the work she did with the design of health clinics--that the rooms for the patients should reflect each person’s humanity. A tall order, in the mass-production world of contemporary design. A counter-top with an individual coffee maker--something like the maté gourds above--simple, so that each person would feel at home.

_____

I saw a young guy sitting on Roz’s bench once--an African-American student, with his laptop open. I approached him, and told him some of this story--why the bench was there, the things Roz valued, why she’d have been glad he’d found a quiet place to sit, the redwoods just behind.

_____

Maybe it’s the rose, which still has something of its own color. The way it twists up from the jar, finds its own place, too, amidst the branches…

.