Some songs break the surface of the soul like knives break skin. I'm the kind of person who listens to songs on repeat because I'm not satisfied with a mere break, but with a stab and a twist. Music digs me and I dig it. I need it to keep breathing. The whole world can flow by, a maelstrom around me, apt to drown me and everyone else along with me in pain and chaos and questions devoid of answers. But music takes me away from all of that. Turn up the music and let the world float away. Let the world rage. Let the world go on and I will walk safely through it, armed with nothing but two headphones and a music player with the volume turned all the way up.

Usually, I'm trapped in time. The past takes over, the present is too all-consuming with empty promises and the future never comes until it's too late. Music takes me away from all that. Music is timeless. I become super-human, a universal being swimming in the universal language. No more worries. No more necessities. No more desires. Everything fulfilled. Just in some notes. Just in some vibrations that come together perfectly in their imperfection like the innocent dreams of a child. I get lost there, more than I ever did in people. More than I ever did in broken hearts or wishes never granted. If I could, I would keep it playing constantly. I would keep it playing so everything disappears. But, I suppose, beauty cannot be fully appreciated without its opposite. So I welcome the sadness, too. I welcome the chaos. Where would I be without it?

True, I am torn between loathing these two polar opposites for what they do to me and my race, and loving them...for what they do to me and my race. They are both inherent within us, and they tear us apart and bring us together. So I escape to music, where chaos and beauty can be one and I can transcend the Human while being uplifted by one of our greatest feats. This is the mystery I have been long wanting to solve: what keeps me going in the face of hopelessness? The yin-yang nature of the beauty-chaos. I exist on the line in between and I bleed into both and they both bleed into me. We share a mutual existence, like the angel Uriel tried to explain to me once a long, long time ago: we exist because we dream of each other and neither can stop until the other ceases. It is an endless battle. But it is only a battle if we look at it as such. Really, it's an endless gift, but gifts are worth prices, and as always, I am willing to pay the price. The price is worth it. The price is worth it.

A Story

"To get to the point," he said, sprawled naked across the bed sheets, "nobody plans on being born." He sat up on his elbow for a second and tapped his cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside table before taking another drag. "In fact," he continued, "no one plans on getting conceived, either, do they?" He laughed and threw his head back. "But I suppose all life is between those two points--life and death--is what the departure and the terminus are, as well: one big series of fucks. Look at us, after all." He stroked her cheek and she turned away from him.

"Aww, baby, don't be a snub," he said and the smoke swirled around them.
"Do you think we're arriving at the terminus now?" she asked and smiled.
"Aren't we always? Fucks can be prolonged."
"Or cut short."
She tipped her head to the side but kept her back to him.
"Oh, don't be cliche, dear. Half, empty, half full, prolonged, cut short. Either way, we're here now."
"And there's that whole big world out there just waiting..." She turned her head slightly towards him. He sat up.
"Do me a favor," he said.
"What?"
"Whatever comes after this, we go outside, t he world stands still, it starts turning, we fall off--write me down in those autobiographies of yours. Sprinkle a little fantasy on it. Just make me larger than life."
She laughed and stood up, casting a shadow across the bed and onto the wall behind.
"You're already larger than life."
He put his cigarette out, got out of bed, and slipped his arms around her from behind.
"How?" he said.
"If life is just a cup and half empty or half full, well, we're both bigger than a glass."
The two of them stood in silence in the half-light that came in through the curtains and swayed in unison.
"Then let's say it this way: make sure I'm the water."
"Why not air?"
"Air's old hat. Water means resistance. You have to work in it. More true to what all this," he waved his arm around, "what all this really is."
"What is it, do you think?"
"A struggle not to drown, of course," he said and circled around to face her. "But I have you."
"One man survives a shipwreck easier alone than with another," she answered.
He smiled and held her closer.
"But remember? I'm the water. I just decide who to spare and who to swallow."
"Would you swallow me?"
"No, dear. I become you. You are my great river and I meet you right here, at the estuary."
"So we're safe until the water dries up?"
"Perhaps. Otherwise, we're just back to the beginning again, not planning on dying and not planning on getting born."
"But living anyway."
"Yes, dear. Such is life."

I have just finished The Historian and the tale of the vampire haunts me as always. Whether Vlad the Impaler is, in fact, dead or not makes no significant difference. He is, after all, impaled upon my imagination and his legend thrives. In the end, though, it is just a story, like all stories, but for whatever reason, it is this one that envelopes me in fear, like the mist of the vampire. Perhaps it is my search for history and my longing to know it intimately, like clothing, or men, or secrets gone-to-the-grave-with. The Historian gives something to the Impaler that Bram Stoker's Dracula does not: a voice. And it is a voice imagined and cast out through corridors of long-forgotten time that rings out clearly in my ears and that is echoed in my own voice as I read it aloud: "There is no purity like the purity of the sufferings of history. You will have what every historian wants: history will be reality to you. We will wash our minds clean with blood."

How? I have lived a lot of history despite short years and I have always at once regretted and treasured experience. The regret does create in me a longing to wash my mind clean, but I have wanted to wash it clean with wind or water, or pleasant dreams. But life moves swiftly, like a river's current, and perhaps the only way to wash our minds clean is to have our memories overshadowed by newer ones that gleam more powerfully in our minds' eye than those that came before them. Perhaps the only way to wash our minds clean is with blood, as that liquid holds its own both as proof of life and as death, first within our veins and then, without. We do, after all, build our lives in the present upon the decayed lives of past--a past that is very much alive but that moves in a different way from us, a way that is not quite living, but maybe--of the undead? Who can know? I am just wondering and I shrink from the knock of wind on the window at night for fear of letting in a uninvited guest that will make of me something (I am quite certain) is merely a fairytale. But, like I've said before, fairytales are as real as their makers and I am one.

So here I am, retracing history in the present with my eyes and my feet. It is not just to see the world but to understand the past from which I come. There are things of which people do not speak and although I cannot hear the whole story, I have found that land offers up whispers if you listen closely enough and in it, you can find yourself and follow in the footsteps of your ancestors. It is worthwhile to hoard just a slight bit of superstition in the back of your mind. All myths come from somewhere.

I walk around cities that were part of an empire that ruled one-third of the earth. "Be careful and mind the foreigners," I am told, "because look what happened to England. We were once the greatest of all nations. We supposed. And we didn't treat them kindly. Now, they have come back to take us over." The text between the lines? "What can we possibly do? It is no one's fault but our own, but we are seeing the same thing happen to America, this rise and fall from greatness." It is sad, but it is the way of history. Rome rose and fell, as did Byzantium and the Ottoman Empire. This one strikes a chord because it is mine. But from a distance, the earth still looks blue and green and none of those existed at all from just a few miles up. I am a strange mixture of holding things in perspective: I strive to be limitless and without category, but I know I am doomed to confinement. I do not resist. Still, we destroy ourselves and will continue to until the sun swallows the Earth. I resist the destruction if not the confinement to categories. But I still fear the vampire.

Sometimes I lose sight of what it is I'm looking for here. Is it a renewed sense of self? Am I just some young wanderer searching for answers like everyone else? Or have I found my answers and am merely out here trying to prove to myself that they are wrong, that there is something I am missing, that there really could exist some greatness in one measly little life? I would ask an oracle if they existed, but wisdom speaks out to me from pages everywhere. I choose this version, by Ursula LeGuin: "'Tell me . . . what is known? What is sure, predictable, inevitable--the one certain thing you know concerning your future, and mine?'
"'That we shall die.'
"'Yes. There's really only one question that can be answered . . . and we already know the answer. . . . The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.'"

And so I put it in permanent ink, with an ouroboros on my back, to remind me that "we all owe death a life" and that we can meet that "permanent, intolerable uncertainty" at any moment, anywhere--so that I do not miss a beat; so that I make the most of it; so that each moment counts. And each moment is alone...but I can share them sometimes, and I can write them down so that they are not lost.

On the way I meet people and I try to keep them with me. Of course that keeping is never in the flesh, merely in thought, but thought is often more powerful than anything else. So words spread across a distance and contact is maintained. But relationships fade across time and people fade like ghosts, in and out. Everything in its time, right? I am no fool for time and my youth never tricked me into eternity. So I record as much as possible: moments, thoughts, absurdities, normalities, the way darkness fades into light and vice versa on a horizon, and how land and sky and sea get lost in each other somewhere between the zenith and the ground beneath my feet.

In two days, I leave England and head for the continent and Berlin, a city in which I have never stepped foot. I am excited, yes. Also: apprehensive, terrified, lonely. But I am used to all of these things. I will also be stepping into a part of history that puts a bad taste in my mouth, yet I keep on moving forward because that taste is from the extrapolation I have made in my mind from the experiences of others. I need to know for myself. However, I have packed accordingly because I have been to the region before. My necklace will never be visible if I can help it and all my labels will be hidden except for the most obvious: that I don't speak German and the fact that I stand like an American and am thus recognizable as one without being conscious of it. The way in which I stand makes me identifiable as an American, apparently, even before I speak and let on that the only language I understand and speak completely fluently is English. But I learn quickly and learn how to hide. It only takes a few rides on a bus and few words in the local language, with the right accent. I have done this before and shall do it again.

The next time I write, it will be from Berlin. I can only wonder how I will fare. The Iron Curtain has been down almost two decades now. I have my own to knock down and perhaps, build up again. We'll see how the reality compares with the theoretical. I have six weeks to find out.

A Musing

I hope that if human beings are born with anything it's a seed of dignity. Nobody's perfect, but it has been a personal endeavour of mine to grow that seed and have it flourish in spite of the human race. Sometimes life drowns out hope and so, we flounder. For me, all it takes is a storm to remind me that there is something greater than individual misfortune or fortune out there. Outside, it's storming. "When the rain comes, we run and hide our heads. We might as well be dead." (Beatles.) I have a tendency to walk outside, slowly, in the rain. Something about water from the sky always gives me the feeling of replenishing those intangible things, like dignity, that I have lost or been robbed of. Of course, the rain would give me these things. It has nothing to do with people.

Now, there's something to think about: people. Over the past few years, I have not changed or assimilated into the crowds. Rather, I have learned how to pretend up to a point. All things pass away and through in the end. The relevance of all of this? A shame that I am working through inside myself: shame because I am a fool, proven, once again. I trusted in the myth of community, of acceptance, of what-goes-around-comes-around, and of the sincerity in what some leaders preach. I am always foolish because I was born with hope and not dignity--dignity, if I possess any, came from elsewhere. I forever harbor hope even in the realm beyond despair.

What am I talking about? Hypocrisy at its greatest. A quintessential text-book case. Before I get into this I should make clear that I am a secularist Jew and my faith resides in the potential of humanity to transcend the animal human and to attain the Humane quality. I reiterate: the potential. My faith resides in the race's hybridity and our ability to rationalize and overcome our inherent fear of "Other" in order to attain new levels of social and individual evolution. But all of this is nothing but a pleasant and foolish dream. It is merely potential. Still, I dare to hope.

In the beginning (yes, let us begin in a biblical fashion), I was brought up with and taught Jewish values. It all boils down to standing on one leg and summing up the entire point of every tradition and every teaching with "Love your neighbor as you do yourself." Silly me, I take that to heart. Yes, I'll take in an absolute stranger for an indefinite amount of time, until they're family, because it's what is right. No questions asked. No favours. Because blood is not thicker than water. Intentions are. Actions are.

When you preach a doctrine, follow it. I'm not much of a preacher in that sense. I just do what I think is right and for no other reason other than the fact that I have faith in its correctness. I don't do anything for a prize. I do it for myself and for the Providence that tells me that it is the right thing to do.

But people are selfish and preach good (but often empty) words with bad intentions and the actions (or inactions) follow the intent. Sincerity is not in the formula for being accepted, but rather for being excluded. I must say, beforehand, that this is directed at a specific group of people. I must claim them as my own: the contemporary American Jewish community.

I have been thinking about this in depth for a long while: what went wrong? I'm about to attend a program in Berlin that has me reading the history of Jewish life in Germany over two centuries (1743-1933). The Jews of Europe, and particularly Germany, tried to assimilate; they were more German than Germans; more French than the French; etc. etc. Yet, everyone knows what happened in the end and anyone who denies it is proof of this incontrovertible fact: assimilation is impossible.

Except, possibly, right here in the United States. We are so well assimilated, if we choose to be, because we have been allowed, unceasingly to do so, that we have utterly forgotten, as a community, what it means to be Jewish. All the while we flaunt the jargon of Mitzvot and Tzedakah. This is all only rhetoric, a platform from which to jump and reach the ever-coveted status-quo. Fortunately, I refuse to jump. I even refuse to climb to the platform. And thus, I am a secular, well-assimilated, strong American patriot who realizes that I will never fit in to the communities into which I was born, because I choose to adhere to my dignity. I also realize that I will never be fully accepted into the American community, either, precisely because I am both an American Jew and a Jewish American.

Thus is my dilemma. I am not a neutral entity, but one who by my very nature walks the line between the two worlds of masked exclusion and feigned acceptance. For me, the line becomes an entirely new, third world. I will claim that all of us Jews who dwell in the midst of the American diaspora make up this third world. I will also acknowledge that most of us fail to recognize its existence and claim allegiance to one side of the line or the other, or disavow ourselves of the idea of Jewishness, assimilation, and what it means to be an American Jew or Jewish American. This disavowal is perhaps even worse than denial, for it resides in ignorance and the antithesis of Jewishness: amnesia. We have forgotten our roots.

Yet history will tell us that for all of our lofty dreams, we remain rooted, despite our forgetfulness. History reminds us that Jews are those deemed so by the general population and not by individuals or those who claim membership in the Jewish community.

And yet my friends range from Christian to Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, agnostic, and atheist, and from Jewish to outright confused, and to indifferent. I will not call this assimilation and I will not call this a "melting pot," but a tentative and cynical faith in that human potential to transcend the animalistic aspect of our selves.

I am a fish half-way out of water, and the water is my element. I am one who drowns in the air. Yet I am aware of my precarious position in this strange and ambiguous world. My tail is on the land and my eyes in the waves. I am half drowned in air and still, indecisive. Nevertheless, I suspect that has and always will be my position, for I can neither neglect the religious part of me nor abandon the secular. My comfort rests in the notion that I do not pretend to be one or the other, but somehow, a master of both. Thus, I must live in a curious brine of cynicism alongside hope, expecting nothing of the world but what I may make of it.

Of course, the idealist in me continues to seek out a dignified existence, a utopia of thought where we live in a world like "Imagine"--it's easy if you try...The idealist pulls back and sees the world from a distance, where dignity and hope can be derived from something as simple as rain, and where small children don't grow up only to die for some old man's esoteric agenda. But I'm not stupid. Idealist, I may be, but even more so: a Realist. On any plain, I am a fish half-way out of water and I drown in air, one eye above the surface and one below.

I cling to my roots.

A friend's question wakes up the Little Girl. The answer comes.

"So, you question us on matters of Good and Evil," says the angel, Micha'el. "We have been here before, have we not?"
"I have," she says. "But not with you. And my questions weren't really answered."
"Perhaps they were. You just couldn't comprehend." The angel sighs.
"Then what was the point?"
"Fair enough. I will begin again. What is it you wish to know?"
"These meetings with you and the others...could the same thing happen with your opposites? Could I meet with a demon instead?"
"This is not your question, but a favor you are fulfilling."
"What's wrong with that?"
"Nothing. Except people get their answers. Although they may not comprehend. We do our jobs as best we can. But you may act as a liaison this time, since you, too, are genuinely interested, if not in the actual meeting , then in the theoretical meeting."
"Ok."
"You must understand that the distance between an angel and a demon is vast. As vast, in fact, as the distance between you and I. An angel exists on a higher level of order. Not because we are better, but because of our natures. An angel follows a path and does not stray. A human being has freewill and therefore exists in chaos.
"Let us take the 'curse of holy'--of course, it is not really a curse in the manner of demons. This is merely a translation from the untranslateable. Holiness is not a curse, you see, but a covenant we have made. There is no way for us to break it, much like the Brit Millah cannot be broken. Skin cannot be grown back. Yet we see the freedoms of the human being, and the follies. It is a matter of definition. 'Angel.' We are messengers and you see, quite clearly, how we often fail."
"But that's because people aren't listening properly. Or listening at all."
"That is besides the point. Whether one believes in our existence or not, whether one listens or not, it is our purpose, our reason for being--only to convey a Truth in a manner in which a person will comprehend. The 'curse of holy,' then, is our failure to do so and part of that failure is due to the difference in our natures. We cannot show you the beauties of Eternity. We can only convey the idea. If you merely glimpsed it, and I mean directly, you would die. You would lose yourself. Human beings are meant to live until their time is up. Then, you may see Eternity, but still in a different way than we do. You become it and we observe and remain couriers between Eternity and this, the Mortal World.
"And you, the human in this relationship, cannot show us the beauties of the Moral World. Nor can you show us the horrors. Sure, we comprehend the tragedy but we can never feel it. Yes, you will say that's a blessing. And for you, we are able to comfort you. But for the majority who do not listen, mostly because they do not know how, our inability to experience prevents us from being able to truly make a connection, to teach them how to listen when they don't even know we are here. Yet we persist, and gladly.
"And so you ask of meeting with demons and I will say that they are our Curse. You have met with demons many times. All of you have. For unlike angels who exist beyond this realm, demons are integral.
"Look at it this way, my dear: Every time you look in a mirror, you converse with a demon. Every time you encounter another one of the human race, you encounter a demon. Freewill is the creator of demons and the human race chooses. And yes, we angels fear that evil in you and yet, we are intrigued. The human race chooses and there are some who choose goodness, right over wrong, listening over deafness. Nonetheless, it is in the nature of Man to make mistakes, thus the demon in everyone, thus the residue of evil that forever lingers in the air you breathe."
"But aren't there some who are solid? Who possess people? Who have their own names?"
"Certainly. People allow themselves to be possessed in every moment. You have to understand that possession is not from the outside, but from within. And human beings are solid, are they not? And most of you have names, as do your vices.
"Most of you are mongrels, good and evil mixed. To meet with a demon directly, you must merely make a choice. You have already made it, have you not?"
The Little Girl smiles: "I have. I'm talking with you."
"Yes. You are."

June 17, 2009

Before I say anything else, I just want to let everyone know that I'm posting all of these on a blog, so if you miss any, you can look them up at this address: http://escapefromkipple.blogspot.com/ --I will post this address at the top of all entries from now on.

It's been a while. I basically gave up on going to Israel because I have no funding and no one will help me within the Jewish community in Atlanta, stating that it is "unethical to help an individual" whatever that means. I have a $1500 deposit to hold my place in OTZMA due Monday. Let's just say that for all of my cynicism, I remain dichotomic: I hold the world both dear and repulsive simultaneously, hopeful and hopeless, etc. etc. People disgust me but they also make me happy. And let's just say that help and good will comes from anywhere, even unthought of and surprising places. For the first time in a while, I believe that I will be putting my faith in people for once. Not people I thought I would be putting faith into, but people, nonetheless. We'll see how it all plays out.

Either way, I've been praying hard and hoping more than I've hoped in a long time. My letter with my plea for help funding my year in Israel has gone out to a million people and people are responding for once. I am hopeful. I work and then I wait.

What's playing in the background? Jackson Browne: "Late for the Sky"
I saw him in concert three years ago with my then-friend James at the Philadelphia Folk Festival. It was great. When I was there I happened to sit next to a woman who had a guest pass around her neck...issued to her by Jackson himself. She told me to send her a demo. I never did. But perhaps she'll remember me and listen and like what she hears.

For the past two weeks, I've been doing more than scrambling for funds for Israel. I've been going to the gym, trying out Zumba and Yogalates classes. I'm so sore but feel really good and, as usual, once I start, start shrinking so fast that it scares me. In eight days I've gone down one size. I still miss dancing. The Yoga instructor is an ex-Broadway dancer, out of Britain, who came over while performing with the show "Cats". We started talking about dancing and she said that she thought I was a dancer when she saw me just because of the way I move. That surprised me. I didn't think it was that apparent in ME. But I suppose so. Then we started talking about setting up ballroom classes at the JCC here, which would be splendid.

On other notes, I finally started working on my book, Early Silver, again. And reading for the Leo Baeck program. I've been slacking like no other on the reading. I read five books in three days of a series, just for fun. James Patterson. Seriously...not my favorite of eloquent writers but seriously good for brain mush food and entertainment. All a great procrastination technique to avoid Amos Elon's straight history text, The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch 1743-1933. I thought it was supposed to make things clearer, but now I'm more thoroughly confused about how the Holocaust came to be than ever before. I still have about 150 pages to go. I read 100 today. A record for this kind of book. But that's how I work when I'm on a deadline for school or work. Efficiently and quickly.

The temperature was around 95 today. Not too bad, actually. And it's supposed to start raining again next week. We've been getting extreme torrential downpours lately and we're almost out of the drought! Over the weekend, I took my first solo road trip to visit my friend Steve in Alabama and there was an AMAZING tornado-esque storm about two hours after I arrived. The air pressure was insane, thunder and lightning everywhere. Rain coming down with drops the size of me from the waste up. Serious rain. I loved it. The wind was so strong, trees were bent all the way over to the ground.

Playing in the background now: The Eagles, "Best of My Love"

Anyhow, I'll keep you posted. I leave for England in two weeks from today. July 1. Then, the adventure begins. After Europe, like I said, I'll either go on to Israel or pray that one of the jobs I've applied for comes through. I'm also applying for more in the meantime. I suppose I'll just have to wait. Until then...

You can definitely tell the wealth of an institution by the quality of its toilet paper. When you've got a high school with the plushy "Charmin" aka "it's good for your baby-soft-butt" toilet paper and automatic flushers, you know you've got some overly rich patrons on your hands. Too bad they're not my hands, but at least the benefit of the plushy paper is mine.

Ok, so I was at a place with those lovely benefactors today, where they all dress their clone children (all under the age of five) in pink with pink bows and they all run around in one pink fluff flurry like little cotton-candy avalanches across the floor, all giggly. Aah, I wish life were that simple. I pick them out by their struts: who's going to be a nerd in ten years and who's going to be a player. This one, that one. "How can you even tell the difference?" Oh, yes. That. I can't. They'll grow up to be Hallway Girls, all upper middle-class and pampered to perfection in a line and I'll be singing "Bless the Children" in the background. I'll be (like) too old to even (like) think about walking those hallways for a visit to old teachers, so I'll be lucky enough to miss their P.D.A. Their parents will donate to their self-righteousness and the bathrooms will be stocked fit to burst with the plushy and I will be proud of my grunginess and roughing-it style: newspapers and scrap paper recycled. Nothing goes to waste.

I've been busy, as usual, before today and before the pink fluff haven that brought me back to reminiscing about my Day School days. Getting everything in order, seeing friends off to Israel and Italy. The news came in on Thursday for me, though: I made it into OTZMA and now I'm hoping for those last funds and for scholarships to come through so I can be on my way. I will. Spent yesterday dealing with stupid student loan companies deferring. Have to resume that on Monday. One won't let me defer right now because I'm not in a "period of payment" due to the six-month grace period between graduation and loan company vulture mode. I have three weeks to get everything in order. If not, I'll deal with it from Europe.

Sorry for not writing for a few days. I've been in contemplation mode. I wrote a few days ago, but the writing slips into another kind of narrative with which some of you may not be so familiar. Seraphim are the main characters and a little girl is the other. Think of the little girl as me or you, or just a figment of the imagination.

June 4, 2009
Tonight is one of those nights where the heat keeps me awake and my mind races around like it's running for its life. I'm caught up in a very good book for once. It spits mythologies at me--and people I know. Fairy tales aren't the only places where people meet gods. Sometimes you meet them in real life, too, staring down at you from rooftops or holding your hand when you're alone in a crowd and need someone, something, to keep you afloat.

It has been a while now since I have met with angels. My life shifts into magical realism and myth. I accept it. There are some lives that cannot sustain sanity without dipping their feet in madness. Mine is one of them. I let myself float in dreams like this because these are the dreams that are real. These are the experiences that feed me.

Time is irrelevant. I skip back into your past and make it my present. This was three weeks ago, on the tip of the Cape, in Provincetown, on May 15. Angels were everywhere, and so I recorded them:

When I was young, I lived on the ocean. I used to see angels there. They spoke to me. I asked them why they deemed me worthy of holy. They said that holiness for them is a curse and human beings lack in perception.

Everything is a matter of perspective.

"You question us, yet you remain," says Micha'el.
"I know. It's for want of a friend. And if I have to go beyond humanity, I will."
And I do.
So they take me in and I understand, just a little bit, the curse of holy.

Above me, a black egret flies. Maybe it's a sign. The wind blows freely. I climb a dune and stand atop it. "Queen of the hill!" someone shouts. My arms spread out and an angel is behind me, wrapping itself around me. We clasp hands. No one else can see it.

When I was young, landlocked meant nothing to me. Water was all around but not a drop to drink. My toes are stuck in the sand and the sun beats down on me. There are some places where the perspective is more becoming of me, places where it's just me and nothing ahead but ocean.

Here, I forget sometimes that my heart is a time bomb. The clock stops and lets me live a little. I take my chances. The tide goes out. I do an about-face and resume my search for home.

This is an example of dreaming while I'm awake. I can get to a place where Time is malleable and bends to the whim of my hand. No, I cannot change the past, but I can bend it so that it is the present for observation. Yes, I can peek into the future and see its infinite possibilities and their collapse, in favour of one, as fate, or circumstance, or choice, passes them by. I can live those other choices in the state of observation, but I always come back. Fiction and reality intertwine and it doesn't matter where one ends and the other begins. If we believe something strongly enough, like angels or gods or nonexistence, eventually, it becomes real.

I dream of a house balanced precariously, like a seesaw, on a boulder in the middle of a riptide, even though the tide is low and I get to it on foot. "One day, you'll be stuck here, too,"/"You'll be here one day, too," says the person inside as he laughs and keeps the balance on a three-legged stool, and chews on an unlit pipe.

I never knew where "here" was and I may never know. Angels will say that "here" is irrelevant, too physical, as long as I am present in myself. I trust them because there has been no other reliably consistent direction.

A year ago today, my friend Brianne died. Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. She was twenty-two years old...

I knew this one was coming. We had been waiting for a while. That's a terrible thing to say. But it's true. We knew about three weeks before that she definitely wouldn't make it. After going into remission a few times, with each remission only lasting about a month, with the last one ending in the choice between hospice and home, I prepared myself for the news of her being gone. On June 5, 2008, exactly three months after Eve died, and a few weeks after Winston Napier, I was prepared, but more in the numb kind of way.

I was working in Worcester for the summer. Info desk in the mornings, administration in the afternoons. She was having a "celebration of life" party that day. All of us, friends and family, were invited. I couldn't make it because I was in Massachusetts. She lived in Georgia. The saying that "only the good die young" seems like such a cliche to me. The good die young, but not everyone who dies young is good and not everyone who dies is young. Three months of 5ths, though, had brought the end of two twenty-two-year-olds, one by bullets and the other by disease. And one in his fifties, by choice. Two-and-a-half months later, there would be a fourty-five-year-old, too, because of a heart-attack, even though he was in top shape, in the best of health, and one of the best dancers in the country.

I swallowed my grief and held it in. I'm still holding it. Slowly, though, it dawned on me. I had been wrong all along and Douglas Adams was right: it was stupid to search for the meaning of life. It really is 42, whatever that may mean. Life is chaos. Life is madness. Life is a maelstrom of brief moments of celerity and large plains of fear. It is worth what we make of it, and only that.

So, I was an English Major. I dedicate myself to fiction and the analysis of it. I claim it tells me about life. But I know it's all only theory. Theory upon theory and I become the living dead. It's not real life. It's everyone else's. It's fantasy and fantasy is an escape. Forget the Subtle Knife. I don't need a blade to cut a window out of this world and into the next by finding the smallest of gaps in the fabric between this world and the next. All I need is a book and light to see by. Then, I'm gone. I fall in love with characters who don't exist. I cry for them and I leave real life behind.

Eventually, inevitably, I come back. I am no Sibyl Freid. But I make up names for myself. I am Nyx Waterhouse. I am Shae D. Fields. I am Aurora Borealis. The list goes on. Call me by one and I'll answer.

Yesterday, I found out that I'm going to Israel next year. As long as student loans are deferred, which is taking some maneuvering, but going well, and if more loans or scholarships will fall down on my shoulders or fly out of my ass like butterflies. Either way, it will happen. I get what I want. And I want this. I have three more weeks of Georgia before I don't see it again for at least a year. I have three more weeks of America.

Next year, I hope, will bring only life, unlike last year, where the stars were wickedly aligned. I reiterate: I hope. That's the thing with life. You never know what it'll bring and everything's a part of it. All we can do is step forward, one foot in front of the other, one by one, never missing a beat.

This is for Brianne, who I met on my sixteenth birthday, while I was singing under an awning in the rain in Southern Georgia, at Valdosta State University and there was a double rainbow in the sky. Just for me. This is for her and for Eve, and for all of us who have to keep on living despite the hell of today; it's for us, who have to prepare for anything, things that are even worse than 5A.M. cements or cancer, or hangings--and I'll stop there because we all, unfortunately, know the rest.

I only sent this out to ten of you. I'm in a crappy mood. But it's an anniversary and on anniversaries like this, I brood.

Farewell on Charlotte Street

Today I realized that it's the first time in my entire life that no can tell me to "have a good summer." There's nothing to come back to, only things to step forward into. The long haul of formalized education via bureaucratic institution, whether or public or private has finally come to a close. Most people, I suppose, will not be surprised as I say this. Nevertheless, I surprise myself: I'm feeling nostalgic. I'm feeling at a loss.

Nine months ago, I was ready to leave, pack up and go and never look back. I decided to stay. Ride it out. Be brave. I can take it. Of course I can. I, of anyone, can take anything. But I made a promise to myself: if I stay, I make a genuine effort to pull myself up from the ground; I enjoy life; I make it worth it, I make it count, and I build friendships. I take chances.

I did all of these things.

People told me at the outset, way back four years ago, that this was the beginning of the rest of my life. It was a new chapter. I'd come out with the best friends I'll ever have. I'd keep them forever. They were wrong.

College, for me at least, was not another chapter, but merely a subsection. The path I am about to dig up a mountain, is. It will be long and hard and strenuous and I know there will rain. It will cause the inevitable mudslide and I'll slide down. But it will be worth it like the time I really dug a trail up a mountain and slid down in the rain. I'm not remembered for that trail, but the trail exists. I made my mark.

The past four years have been, if not the most wonderful, the most important. I have learned what it is to grow up. I have learned to stand on my own and I have learned to accept and be content, even happy sometimes, that people come and go and that the ones you love and trust the most are the ones who are the most spiteful and the ones who kill you from the inside out. I have learned how to forgive. I learned that forgetting is not part of that equation. Forgetting is not productive because the reason those people have the ability to destroy us, is because we let them. I have learned that to love something more anything else, it is inevitable that you hate it, too, because that love shows you truths about yourself you never wanted to know. Scorn makes you look yourself in the face and hate it, accept it, move on, love it all over again. "To be born again...first you have to die" (Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses).

I have died. I have been resurrected. I have learned not to wait, because Godot isn't coming. But I have to be surprised when I am on someone's list of priorities. I have learned quite recently that people tell the truth when you want them to tell a lie because it makes you feel good and they tell the lie when you want the truth. I have learned to my own inadequacy in the face of other people and I have decided, officially, concretely, that if people view me as insufficient, it's their problem. I do not change. I will not change. Not for anyone. Not if it compromises who I am in any essential way. I would rather be alone and real than false and deluded. It is a fair price. I am willing to pay it.

But I have dedicated four years of my life to this place. I love it to death. I can't wait to leave but it's killing me to see it go. Thus is life. I am my own best friend. No one gets that title anymore. The moment it's given, is the moment they abandon me and I'm tired of starting over like that. But make room for chances and I make room for love. Reciprocate and I open up the world to you.

I spent the day walking out in a chilly May rain. God knows why it's chilly. It's New England. I'm going back South where, if the climate is right for once, the air will be so thick with water I'll hardly be able to breathe. The storms will run like clockwork and I'll go hiking in the dark at the edge of a waterfall. What the hell, right? I'm already at the edge of the world. The air will be thick and hot, stifling, my limbs immovable like in the Egyptian's plague of darkness with all the light to goad me as to what I cannot reach. The world moves more slowly there. Another surprise: I miss it.

But it won't be long until I'm gone again and left to my own devices. Love is woven over distance if it's strong and I don't trust in anything unless it's strong. Time flows by and then it's gone. We all owe death a life. Let's make the most of it.

I suppose in the end, everyone's a hypocrite, no matter how hard we try to avoid it. The point is, I do care. The point is, I pick up on my own hypocrisy and hate myself for it. I recede.

Today, I spoke to the Gypsy. The one who went over the hills and stood by the River Clady and won the heart of a lady. The Whistlin' Gypsy. The one that jumped out of my childhood dreams and wove me around indelibly into post-adolescent schemes and left me hanging by a thread in the tapestry. He makes the world explode with angels in his wake. They appear on rooftops and trees and walk beside me. Life is a ride on air and after all this wasted time, I find there's still nothing to confide but the same old story. The difference: no one who will be my confidente. The Gypsy Rover is gone.

"You know nothing is impossible, Little Girl," the angel says.
"Most things are not. If we're talking about Time, though, we both know I can survive Eternity."
(I'm not like Quentin Compson.)
The angel bows its head.
But surviving Eternity is nothing much when it is impossible to survive myself. I don't believe a thing about people except their hostility, their apathy, their compassionless being, their utter lack of consideration for other people.

I discard them. I become what I abhor. But I am aware. I am a corrosive substance. I eat myself from within. The fact that I am unloveable kills me. The fact that I am a hypocrite kills me even more. I live in spite of these things. And yes, the information collects.

In a year from now, none of this will matter, no? All right, I've made my decision. Again. And of course, the best course of action is the one that is Right and the one that creates of me a masochist. But no matter. It is the most considerate of other people. Either way, I lose. So I will disappear because this is what is best. I will be there only when people want me to be there and that is only when I am needed for use. Fine. For what else was I created other than advantage? I understand. I am forgettable, except as a resource.

No matter. I will hope that people get well. I will neglect my own well-being. Nothing can hurt me now anyway because two-and-a-half years ago, I said "Yes" when someone asked me if I was all right with having my heart shredded. I said "yes" because "no" would have been selfish and she was happy. I said "yes" because it was the right thing to do.

But now I wonder what is right and what is wrong and where I fall on the spectrum. Sometimes you have to be selfish just to keep surviving. I don't survive. I exist. There's a difference.

Just don't remind me of my inadequacy; I am already quite aware. Don't remind me of my ugliness; I'm aware of that, too. Just don't pretend that these things aren't so. Please, don't pretend because that only gives me false hope and when it vanishes, I lose yet another crucial piece of myself and although that doesn't matter in the long run, it matters to me because I am all I have.

Perhaps I am just unlucky. No doubt, I am a fool. But like the Tin Soldier said, "Time goes by." That, it does. But I want to cherish every moment before I die and I would rather die after having lived and not merely having existed. But that isn't my call. Some things are left to the Fates. Some things are left to God.

I have surrendered.

I don't have it in me to be a writer like that:

splurging raw truth out on the page, gritted through my teeth, down to the wire, and then the airwaves. I just don't work like that.

I work the truth, but not the conversion of truth in thought into the Symbolic truth conveyed by words. Our communication system just isn't adequate. But what's the answer to this problem?

Music.

Yes. "I've Seen All Good People: Your Move"

I let myself sink into that and turn inside out.

I've never really seen myself as a musician. The cliche is spit out everywhere: Music is the universal language. So is math. They are the same, just viewed through different lenses. But the more I think about it, the more I know that music really is my forte. It's the only place I completely get lost and release myself from the weight of human triviality. No thought involved. No initiation. Just instantaneous holiday.

Give me some soma, Aldous. Headphones and a recording. Check, check. Just for the heck of it, a notebook and a pen. A blank screen and a keyboard. Check, check, check. I'm set.

Maybe I'm disheartened with the human race. Yes, the human race. All of us clumped together. We are all guilty of the situation we find ourselves in today, where there is discrimination based on the vain differences of the color of skin, an irrational fear of alterity, and the instinctual and immediate assumption of a monstrous "other" the moment we are confronted with even the most miniscule of differences.

Sure, we "dance around" the subject of race. We still can't even concretely define it. It exists, certainly, but as something negative, something in opposition: we are always not-someone else; we never really are anything, because we fail to pinpoint what those differences really are and what it is that distinguishes one group from another. So, of course, we dance around the subject of race. What else can we do with a bottomless pit of an idea like that but fall down it?

The irony here is that we have already fallen down that abyss of an idea; the problem lies in the fact that we fail to realize it or understand what that "falling" means. We have no solid ground to compare it to because the culture we have been born into never taught us what it is we're supposed to be so afraid of, or so celebratory of.

I suppose I'm frustrated. The last class was very good, from my perspective. We asked a lot of very good questions concerning "race," ended up discussing personal experiences and ideas instead and still, people call this a "dance." What else can we do with such an ambiguous notion other than discuss our own experiences and bat around our questions? In order to concretize race into something definitive that we each can understand, we have to talk about our personal experiences with what we think it is, about our qualms with it, about our fears and about our frustrations, perplexities, and agreements.

I have the sneaky suspicion that we will never know what "race" really is, because I suspect that it is whatever we want it to be, or believe it to be in any given moment. We pass those abstract ideas on and the cycle continues. Perhaps race really is merely an illusion, but an illusion believed in so zealously by all of us that it has grown a personality and substance that has chained all of us. Maybe instead of griping over dancing around the subject of race, we should ask ourselves why we dance and whether that dance is really around the subject. Maybe it is subject, because, like race itself, the dance is just an illusory construct and all of us are prisoners in our own delusion.

There's nothing like sunset from the air. I saw it two weeks ago and have been dreaming of it ever since. Now, I'm looking at it from the ground. Just as miraculous. Just as worth it to be alive, for those five minutes in the day when the sky turns golden and pink and purple. Here, I've spent the day failing to dance with my feet, but it felt good anyway. My reward? I get to dance with my eyes. Never turn a good sunset (or sunrise, for that matter) down.

I guess I'm in a very good mood today. I've been thinking about miracles. The little ones and the big ones. I talked to the Tin Soldier yesterday. For the first time in months he was happy. I guess that's what happens when you let it all go for a dance in the rain. The good news is a possibility. Perhaps he won't be tin for much longer. But the past never leaves you. Hopefully, I'll be there soon, too. I can fill the tin with something other than emptiness like he filled me with disbelief and no way to left to doubt. It's hard to be a skeptic when miracles happen and people come back from the dead, right? This is one ghost I will not dance for. I'll dance with him. And even though I can't dance well, it'll feel just as satisfactory. That's always how it is when you're lead by someone who was born to be a dancer.

The sunset's over and life calls. At the moment, at least, I can say that there's always tomorrow.

Little Blue Hawk

When I was seventeen, I left the Rosebud Reservation of my birth and had nothing left to lose but my life. Like most Lakota in the twentieth century, I'd lost my father to shame and the drink that made him forget it. When I was you,g I often wondered if he was still alive. Now that I am wiser, I understand that he had been born robbed of life. But life will come again, beyond these imaginary gates. So says the Father. A'te he'ye lo.

If I had not been born an Indian, perhaps, I would know how to dream. Perhaps I would dream of owning the White Man's holy collection of refrigerators and barbed wire fences, and flushing toilets so that I would qualify to keep my children and so that the Great Father's Social Services do not deem me the dog they've made of me. But I would rather spit into the wind and give my shit to a hold in the earth, as it should be, than dream the White Man's dream. Ya'nipikta' e'ya u'-we lo. "You shall live," he says as he comes. Ya'nipikta. A'te-ye he'ye lo. The father says so.

When I took my first step onto the soil of the United States of America, in the state of South Dakota, I sought to save myself from the spiral of disgrace that the White Man's wheel had wrought upon us. I sought to shed my name in this White Man's world that had laid waste to the holy Badlands and Black Hills by covering them over with ribbons of cement, immigrants' toil, and Indian blood. So many trails of tears flow freely here, those trails have turned to rivers. I spoke the White Man's tongue and knew his god better than I knew my own. But like I cannot shed my red skin or my slanted eyes, I cannot remove the Indian from myself. To become the redemption for my own people, I set out upon the father's road, to learn the White Man so well that I should become him, in order to defeat him. Give me my arrows so that I may carve a grave out of my heart. Wanhi'nkpe mi'chuye.

I see a child walking towards me. It is my child. YOu will live, he says as he comes. E'ya ye'ye. Michi'nkshi mita'waye. Ya'nipi-kta e'ya u'-we lo.

In the plains country, where the buffalo roamed free so thick you couldn't see the ground for miles, I met my destiny. Sometimes, the father makes the wind blow in strange directions. I stood upon the White Man's highway, sticking out my thumb. Crazy for an Indian girl from Sioux country to trust in the good faith of the White Man of the United States. But not all preconceptions ring true across a population. Tell my grandfather that some White men have Indian souls and he would ring a string of turtles for protection around my neck to ward off evil spirits. I would set the turtles free. My heart was sent into the Badlands, running after my feet, and the Silvers stopped their bus for me and I denied them my voice for one whole moon before I finally gave it.

Since as long as I can remember, I've never been able to sleep at night. So I lay myself down when the sun comes up and sleep through most of the day. Phin says it's because I have a little bit of memory like he does. I say it's because I have a problem with nightmares and figuring things out for myself. The whole world's mostly asleep when the dark is out and that's the best time for me to sit and think through everything. I still don't understand why, when Phinnaeus goes, I stay. I've never been able to leave Early. She's too much a mystery and if I leave for even a moment, she'll reveal the answer, and I will have missed it. She was always something more than human for me and at the same time, something less.

I remember watching her once, when I was younger. She was standing in the middle of a rainstorm, thinking we were too young to remember.

"Stay her, boys," she said to us, leaving us behind in the Wheels, while she ran out into a summer downpour that ended up carrying half the state away. "If I don't come back, you won't remember anyway. But you just don't understand about water. It's the only way I can get to River." When we were little and too young to talk, she'd mention River every now and then. Now, she stops at rivers and stays silent, like Phin did after the ice-pick rod, for days. But rainstorms are different. She'll go out in them like it's the last thing she ever wanted to do in life.

Me and Phin watched her climb out of the car and run down the road and we climbed out of the back and stuck our faces to the window. When she came back, she was completely dry, as if not a drop of rain had touched her. This happened often. She'd run out into the rain, into storms that should've left her dead and drowned and she'd come back completely dry. Untouched.

"Damn it!" she always said when she got back in the car. "Damn it." Then, she'd remember we were there and look at us with a puzzled expression, as if we weren't supposed to be there, look ahead, stick the key in the ignition and start driving again without mentioning anything. So Phin and I grew up on the road with a mother called Early, who did everything she could to get soaked in a rainstorm but always came back out of it dry.

"I suppose, little brother, man," Phin said, "that she's just got herself followed around by a column of air. No rain for her, no sir. She's got a pocket waiting on her in the sky."

IT's only February and I'm already thinking of Eve. I guess it's appropriate. Her one year anniversary is coming up. A year ago, she was still alive, and probably more alive than most of us ever will be. She was unsuspecting. She had her whole life ahead of her. I only regret one thing: losing touch with a person like that, who did more in twenty-two short years than most people do in a full, long lifetime.

She was the first of four, but the rest weren't like this. There was always a cause, a reason: loss of intellect, leukemia, heart attack. But Eve died for nothing. There was no cause. No freedom to fight for, no ideology to save. Just...pointless violence because a teenager and a twenty-one-year-old were looking for money to blow and a thrill. So because of that, she got a shotgun bullet through her skull and four more pistol bullets throughout her body.

That's when I realized that I'd been wasting my time searching for the meaning of life. It really is 42. There is no meaning, except what you make of it, for yourself. In the end, we die alone just like we're born alone. The crowd surrounds us but we live our lives trapped behind our own eyes. All other perspectives are imagined.

I sang your song, Eve, probably twenty times yesterday. You're the bridge, you're the bridge, you're the bridge, and the point is to not be afraid. But I am afraid. I'm not a mystic. And I thought it was supposed to be me first, with the doctor's clock ticking so close now. Three-and-a-half years to go. I'll beat that, I'm sure now. As long as a tree doesn't fall on me, or I'm chosen for those mid-night games like you.

I'll dance like there's no tomorrow, Eve, like you did, because for all we know, there isn't. Everyone separates into factions: extremist this, zealot that, political left and right. The question is screamed out in the veins of all the people: "What do you want from us? What are we supposed to do? Sit back and take it?" So the bombs drop and the guilty and innocent, alike, are slaughtered. Nothing solves the problem.

Maybe you're lucky, Eve. You didn't get to witness this. The dead are the lucky ones. They don't have to deal with themselves, or the burden and the guilt the human race forever lays upon itself. No more searching for love or hate. Just eternal rest, eternal Oblivion. The cement must have been better than their eyes, when they left you lying there. No more fear. No more questions. Nothingness. For nothing.

As usual, I'm an empath, so the emotion wells up inside of me and I package it within myself because there's nowhere for it to go. I turn the music up really loud--I can't take it. Too much love turns sour after awhile when all it is is stagnant. Love turns sour, like rotten milk. If you open me up, that's what you'll find. Underneath, I'm still a little girl, poisoned by the whispers of Seraphim and impossible dreams.

I turn to small things, like calendars filled with Hopper's sunlight, and soapstone, ready for me to carve what God tells me is inside. I already know. It's myself. As cold and lonely and imprisoned as the stone with nowhere to go and no means of getting there.

But that's life.

Lone Dancer

Note: If anyone's actually reading this, which I don't think is happening, this is a song and sounds much better with music.

I almost died tonight walking on a foot of ice.
Well, that's life and it's not so high a price.

When I got home, I picked up the phone,
called a friend and he said
"Well, you just don't get it, do you?
Do you know what it's like to wake up alone?"
And I said, "Sure," because it's all I've ever known.

So I wake up early every morning and craft my day,
I tell him make it worthy,
it's the small memories that stay,
but don't dwell in yesterday.

I live for the moment,
so the present won't pass.
I'm slipping and sliding
and hoping that someday, Someday comes.

But he said "Well, you just don't get it, do you?
Life just full of lies."
And I said it's no big secret that the baby grows into the man who dies.
He said "You're too young and never have had to wake up alone."
And I said, "Youth is the myth of age and it's all I've ever known."

I almost died tonight walking on a foot of ice.
Well, that's life and it's not so high a price.

I'm the lone dancer,
Time circumvents my answers.
I tread on thin ice
and I fall through.

I'm the lone dancer
and I endure,
don't ask for an answer,
'cause this is all I've ever known.

Silver Roots

Phinnaeus Silver was a Doctor of Philosophy at a small university in New England. His life was simple and his time was happy. His wife, Cassie, was loyal and loved him and gave him five children: Judah, the oldest, who liked to climb trees and buildings and who loved the power of words; when he grew up, he wanted to be a Doctor, just like his father, but in the discipline of literature. Annie, who dreamed of going to space, who kept her body in top physical shape even at the age of fifteen, because she needed to be at the top of the physical game as well as the intellectual; she studied physics and mathematics and prepared herself for aerospace engineering. Mato, who read away his time, dreaming of other worlds while ignoring school assignments, but somehow, always got by well enough for his parents not to complain. Olivia, who loved to watch things grow and spent her time in the garden, planting, whispering encouragment and stroking baby leaves so that they might grow tall and outlive her. Agnes, the youngest, who trailed her father like a shadow, and whose grasp of his ideas surprised everyone.

Phinnaeus's particularly close relationship with his youngest child began when she was just four years old, when Agnes walked into the study and planted herself in the big, leather recliner while Phinnaeus was talking to himself out loud in preparation for a lecture on Boethius's concept of time. He turned to her and asked, "Well, what do you think, Agnes? Do you agree? Is it all just now, do we exist in one moment and the illusion of linearity, or is the line of time what's true?" It was meant to be a rhetorical question, and as soon as he'd asked it, Phinnaeus had turned back to his papers. Agnes surprised him.

"Just the dot, Pappy," she said and Phinnaeus turned back around.
"What was that?" he said.
"Just the dot," she repeated.
"What dot?"
"The 'now' dot," she said. "No line."
By the time Agnes was six, she'd sat in almost all of his classes and understood it all, although sometimes with a little help.
"My little genius," Phinnaeus said, ruffling her hair. The girl smiled up at him before skipping off ahead down the sidewalk.

Despite her grasp of complex philosophical ideas, Agnes was a relatively normal child and balanced childhood and intellectualism with an ease that bewildered Dr. Silver's colleagues and that please him and Cassie. Agnes would come home from academic immersion and probing by intellectuals and jump into the family activities. She'd climb trees with Judah, stargaze with Annie, sit reading with Mato, and get full of dirt, gardening with Olivia. None of her siblings resented her in the least. They loved their youngest sister and boasted about her almost as much as their parents.

So life went on until one day in the summer of Agnes's eight year. Twelve-year-old Olivia's plants were thriving, having been moved to her makeshift greenhouse. Judah was lazing around in his last summer before college and Mato and Annie were studying, as usual.
"Hey, guys," Olivia said, after she'd gathered them all together. "Let's do something together."
"Like what, Livia?" Judah asked.
"I don't know. Build a campfire or something. Just hang out," she said.
"Sounds good to me," Mato said, looking up from his book.
"Yeah, just put that down for a minute, all right?" Olivia said.
Mato sighed and dogeared the page. "Fine."
"Oh, come on, Matt, it's nothing personal," Annie said, poking him in the arm. "Plus, this'll be good. Our last stint together before Judah hauls off into the horizon of intellectual hermitage, right?" She grinned.
"Shut up, Annie," Judah said and rolled his eyes.
"Yeah, yeah," Annie answered.
"Ok, ok. Where's Agnes? She was just here," Olivia said, biting her lip.
"Oh, you know her," Mato said.
"Yeah. Probably lost in some book just like you," Olivia answered. He stuck his tongue out at her.
"Oh, come on," Annie interjected. "She's always late to everything."
"But she was just here! That's not being late."
"It's being vanished," Mato said. "But what else is new? She's probably with Dad."
"Ugh!" Olivia grunted and stomped her foot.
"It's all right," Judah said calmly. "I'll just go get her." He bowed out of the little clump they'd made in the backyard and turned toward the house. Agnes came bounding out of the door so quickly, it almost knocked Judah over.
"Whoah, there, missy! What's going on?"
"Sorry! I had to just get..."
"A book."
She nodded and blushed slightly.
"Well, I'd keep it far away because we're making a campfire. Come on."
Agnes put the book in her back pocket and followed her older brother back out into the yard where everyone else was.
"Ok. So marshmallows for s'mores, right?" Olivia was saying.
"Yeah!" Agnes exclaimed jumping up and down.
The Silver children set to work.

Agnes didn't realize what was happening until it was all over and by that time, of course, it was too late. She and her siblings had spent a good part of the late afternoon and early evening talking and singing, making s'mores and laughing about God knows what around the fire. Her siblings had tossed her around like a ball, a game they all played because Agnes was so little. She loved flying through the air and knowing that no matter what, someone would catch her. The five of them had developed a nearly perfect trust.

When they were done, with the summer air dry and hot around them despite the dark, with Annie's stars clear and bright above them, and with fireflies lighting up the air around them, blinking in time to the crickets' song, they put out the fire, covered the pit with dirt, and went back inside.

The burning started at the back of the house, so Phinnaeus's and Cassie's room got hit first. Sharing a wall with their room was Judah's and Mato's. The fire spread quickly. Annie smelled the smoke and was awoken by the crackling sound, and was the one who called 911. Olivia and Agnes were the first ones out, because they were at the front of the house, and they were the youngest. Annie ran back to get her parents and her brothers.

Phinnaeus had awoken to a room engulfed in flames, all exits blocked, and his wife already swallowed by them, screaming in agony and fear and calling out not for her own life, but for her children's. Annie ran back to find her father covered in fire, having run through the door despite the flames in order to get to his children. She watched him burn and ran without thinking to her brothers' room, knocking down the door and releasing the pressure, which released the fire and killed her instantly.

Olivia and Agnes were held by the state until the family's lawyers dug out Cassie's and Phinnaeus's wills. The two remaining Silvers, who happened to be the two youngest, would be sent to Georgia to live with Betty London, Cassie Silver's best friend and confidante, and her husband, Charles London. They lived on a farm where cotton grew along the fences and goats roamed the fields, where peanuts grew under the earth, where it rained oceans in the summer, and where the divide between human races remained at the forefront of everyone's mind.

Olivia was silent for a year after the death of her family, unresponsive, always staring off into the past. If only I'd just picked something else, she kept thinking. And she layed the blame on herself.

Although Agnes had the intellectual capacity of an adult, she was, essentially, just a child. Nearly everyone and everything she'd ever known was gone. She clung to her silent sister.

"Livia," she whispered. "Livia. It's me. Wake up, Livia."
But Olivia never answered. After a year of silence and numerous sessions with a variety psychologists, the Londons sent Olivia Silver off to an institution paid for by her inheritance. Agnes saw her once every three months until she turned fifteen. By that time, she couldn't take seeing her sister like that, refusing to eat, forced to be fed nutrition intravenously, saying nothing but the words, "I am guilty. I'm a murderer," if she ever said anything at all.

Agnes still remembered her family clearly and understood Olivia more than anyone could imagine. She thought back to the first day she'd exposed her affinity for ideas to her father, and to her assertion that time was a point, one, eternal ungraspable point and that the linearity of time was an illusion. It's funny, she thought, that I end up here, with the Londons in the deep South. Maybe two states over, from Faulkner's Mississippi. Olivia! she cried out in her mind. You've become Benjy and all pain is forever and ever and ever. Can't you make it joy, too? But she knew Olivia couldn't. Pain was more powerful than joy. Pain was sustaining and it corroded her sister away.

"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?-- it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies." -Jack Kerouac, On the Road

I swear, you can go up and down, through hell and back and think you've seen it all. When my brother was around, we saw it all together, living from one bright moon to the next. But people aren't always around. We lived our lives like sand in the wind, never staying put for too long. Doesn't matter anyway. Whether you sit or whether you roll, the great world will beat you down or rise you up depending on the whims of nothing but complete and utter chaos. It all depends on the moment.

One moment at the dawn of our second decade and the eve of our first, Phin and I encountered a moment that changed us forever. But what can a ten-year-old do when it's him against the strength of a man and he's though up until then that the world is a fairytale? I guess me and Phin both are survivors, but I survived less, and so make up for it with survivor's guilt. Phin runs off into the sunset and I stay with our mother, Early, as she winds over and over this world, tying the ribbons of the road together in bows around us, and somehow, Phin finds us again and rides high on life just to spite the darkest night of his life.

Some nights, boys can't forget. Not when they steal your dignity. Some nights, I guess, stick with you and behind your eyes they're all you can ever see. That moment becomes a border: Before and After. On both sides of that divide, we were just looking for a place to sleep and somwhere to call home. Now, though, I know that I've always been home, sitting still or running fast, watching the scenery go by in a blurr. I just took the long route around to figure that out and on the way I lost and gained more than most people see in a good, long lifetime. But that's the way it goes.