Don't let your silly dreams fall in between the crack of the bed

A few days ago I posted a video of My Morning Jacket performing "Bermuda Highway" at Madison Square Garden. I cannot get that song out of my head. It has the quality of actually making me feel like crying, even when I sing it to myself.

"Don't let your silly dreams fall in between the crack of the bed and the wall."

Wow. The word "silly" here = perfect. This song unlocks a feeling that I had never articulated before, and in a sense, never even knew I was feeling - that I tend to think my dream is silly. That dream, specifically being of finishing Chimneys, is/can be in serious danger of my thinking it's too facile, or silly, or worthless, to finish. Thank you, Jim James.

The Doldrums

Today I got back from a week in New York , and waiting patiently in my inbox were two rejection letters for a story I had sent out this fall. Par for the course, I suppose, though that doesn't make them any more pleasant. However, there was something different about one of them, which is that it rained praise down on my story, quite strongly, whilst still passing on it. Here were some of the things it said:

• 'The writer is a knockout with prose'
• '...orgasmic on the page (much to the reader's pleasure)'
• 'Astounding language. Truly.'

I swear I'm not putting these up to toot my own horn. I'm mostly confused, and a little proud. I know they don't just shoot these unnecessarily laudatory emails out to just anyone, because I sent them a story last summer, and it was rejected outright, with no frills. How strange!

Anyway, there's not much of a conclusion to draw here; I just wanted to share this oddity with the cyber world. It is nice to get some positive feedback from an unbiased source, even if it's coated in rejection. I also feel slightly validated, as it's a fairly respectable magazine, though I wish they were a little clearer about what could be improved about the story. I guess it's good to know there are humans out there reading
my submissions.

P.S. The following poster, from Psychadelic Adventure's blog, is a possible visual representation of the story that was so cruelly rejected:

My Morning Jacket & Brian Jackson: "The Bottle"

Just got back from NYC, where we saw My Morning Jacket at Madison Square Garden.
Seriously, check this out:

Sneak peek of the 2011 ALBUM AWARDS!

They're still a couple weeks away, as far as I know, but here is my current Top 10 list:

10. Tune Yards, W H O K I L L - Not only is the title fun to type, but this album has some of the most bizarre melodies since Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam. Plus, Tune Yards has that insanely fun tribal sound, but this time it takes place in Oakland, CA, not the jungle. Download it now.

9. My Morning Jacket, Circuital - Not their strongest album, but this one has the same power, insight, and beauty as the rest of their catalog. 'Victory Dance' and 'The Day is Coming' are noms for Song of the Year.

8. The Antlers, Burst Apart - OMG this is a good album. It sets itself apart from other existential, heartwrenching records by its brilliant flow - incidentally, the interlude-esque 'Rolled Together' is a SOTY nominee, and it doesn't even have verses. 'Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out' is also a contender.

7. Atlas Sound, Parallax - If you want to sound like you are underwater, in space, snowed in, reading Romantic poetry and listening to lost Beatles tracks all at once, buy this record.

6. Bright Eyes, The People's Key - This album made me like Bright Eyes, and all of Bright Eyes' back catalogue. 'Approximated Sunlight' for Song of the Year.

5. Iron & Wine, Kiss Each Other Clean - More fable-like, timeless songs from the great Sam Beam, who rocked at Bonnaroo but is better in studio, in my opinion, with this record. His Chicago jazz band is put to good use on tracks like 'Your Fake Name is Good Enough for Me' - a cool urban twist on his traditionally rural music.

4. Youth Lagoon, The Year of Hibernation - The sound of the subconscious, created by a college student in his garage in Boise, Idaho. To listen to this album is to feel safe, warm, understood, and okay.

3. Radiohead, The King of Limbs - AHHHHHH SEPARATOR

2. Destroyer, Kaputt - This record changes the template for albums, much like last year's Sufjan gem The Age of Adz. Dan Bejar is a wizard-ringleader who opens curtain after curtain, all while sounding like a smooth jazz singer and looking like Aldous Snow. Beautiful, quirky, and this is the first time I've used the word 'insouciant' in an album award.

1. To be announced at this year's ALBUM AWARDS!

Until then, honorary mention goes to another album that came out this year, which might have made the top 10 if it weren't for Royce da 5'9's mediocre rhymes...sorry Royce fans....

Oops

The Fallacies of Language, Or When the Versalitity of the Word 'can' Becomes Dangerous

...In retrospect, I might have given Thomas permission to hurt other people.

Speaking of solipsism...

TodayI babysat for 3-year-old Thomas.

'And - and - and - we wanted to draw fake mustaches on, but then the police would come.'

'Why would the police come?'

'We're not supposed to draw on fake mustaches.'

'I don't think the police would come if you did that. I think your teacher might not like it, but the police wouldn't mind.'

'Yes they would.'

'No they wouldn't. The police are there to make sure you don't do anything to hurt yourself, or other people.'

(Punching himself in the head) 'Did you know, you can only hurt yourself?'

'No, you can hurt other people too.'

(Freezes) 'YOU CAN HURT OTHER PEOPLE?!'

'Yes.'

'But you can only hurt yourself, right?'

'No, you can hurt other people too. That's why you have to be gentle.'

'But you can hurt other people gently.'

Oh boy. Incidentally, during a lot of this I had 'Smokey Taboo' by Cocorosie stuck in my head, particularly the line 'It's true, I get depressed in fancy hotel rooms...'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdxDV3qBq4o

"Oh my god, it doesn't mean that much to you."

I'm always reading things and hearing people say things like 'Success is 90% perspiration...,' 'Inspiration is for amateurs,' etc - little aphorisms encouraging me to work when I don't feel like it, to talk when I have nothing to say.

Recently Johnny told me about an interview he read with Craig Minowa, the genius behind the Minneapolis band Cloud Cult. (Personally, I believe Craig will be heralded as a prophet a hundred years from now, not just a musician, but that's for another time.) In the interview, Craig said that he never makes himself write. Instead, he lets it come to him. That's how he knew he was a songwriter in the first place, so why should he try to force it now? He knows it will come.

That made me think, about several things. One thing that's held my attention for a week or so now is the transition of identity for 'someone who starts writing as a hobby' to a 'writer.' How does one know when to start calling themselves a writer? In general, the difference might be that a people who likes to write waits for their cue, while a writer sits down and churns out words. This is no comment on whether it's good or bad writing, for either type of writer. But I think Craig has a point. For a long time I wrote because I thought of interesting things. I didn't identified myself with it, and I didn't think about it most of the time. As soon as I changed my methods, when I started chasing after ideas, when I started "perspiring" because that's what writers do, the words became more elusive. I had become a writer, but I had changed the methods that made me write in the first place.

This isn't to say I plan to sit around waiting for lightning to strike. It's certainly more nuanced than that. For instance, I think inspiration has a lot to do with the raw material, from which is shaped a novel - but that novel requires perspiration, non-inspired editing and shaping and molding and cutting. For each there is a time.

P.S. The line at the top comes from The National's song "Racing Like a Pro."

And today's photo....

(This is a drawing I made for Suz when she was in Korea. It reminded me of how she was looking out into the world from her tenth story apartment in Peong-Tek.)

"When you're down, you're always down."

I don't really know what that line means (it's from the new Atlas Sound record), but it's a perfect example of one of those lines that sometimes, when I'm feeling like this (down), I believe I will never have the insight, wisdom, way with words, etc, to write.

That doesn't make any sense! If I don't know what it means, why would I get down on myself for not having thought of it first?

Ugh. I don't know. I do know that I will never write groundbreaking, breathtaking things if I don't write at all. But sometimes...I just don't feel like writing.

What should I do when I feel like that? Force it, and settle for mediocre writing, or wait for inspiration, therefore not write? Maybe that is why I would very much like to be in a writing program, where there is an exterior force compelling me to write, no matter how I feel. Jonathan and I have decided on March 1 as our chosen day, on which we will send each other our completed novels. Right now that seems very far away. I wish I felt more urgent.

I wish I spent less time wishing I felt some way other than I do.

Apropos: it is very, very easy to write things like this, i.e., self-indulgent, slightly whiny, repetitive things about my feelings. It is very, very hard to write a novel.

What this boils down to is this: Can I trust myself?

I think I have to.

If I don't, then why am I writing at all? If I can't, then maybe I need to learn to before I'll be able to finish a novel. If I refuse to, then I am dumber than I thought.

I repeat: I must trust myself.

This is very helpful to me to write. Thanks for reading.

And here is a picture of me and some friends, who made Mike Herbster's album I've Got It All, which will be out soon:

I think I am writing a novel.

Well, I am writing a novel, and I think I will continue writing it, but today I have been feeling like it's worse than the worst piece of horrible literature anyone has ever read, and so I feel very down about it. My boyfriend calls this not trusting myself, which I don't. I don't trust myself to talk, anyway, so I have always hoped that I could redeem myself in writing. But this novel, which, if I had never thrown any of it out would be over 500 pages by now, is a mess of feelings and disconnected events and wistful passages of people thinking, like what I do a lot, sans conflict. It's very reflective of my life: not a lot of external conflict, a LOT of thinking. A lot of sitting around in bars and going for walks, and an inconsistent narrative voice that sometimes pops in and comments on the characters, and sometimes even uses first person, mysteriously.

The strange thing is, writing this all out, unedited and as I think it, makes my novel sound not as bad, but actually quite good. I don't particularly like novels that have a clear, unilateral arc, and too much action. I like cerebral, multi-facted character sketches. Plus, life-like is good, right? And if, as Gina once said, it is the responsibility of the artist to depict what she sees in her world, then I am doing a great job. My novel is confusing, inconsistent, muddly, and at parts, not all that bad. So why do I have to fight off the urge to throw the whole thing out?

Johnny, when writing music, goes by this rule: If you have to convince yourself not to scrap a part, you should definitely scrap it. I wish it were that simple. As a rather aggressive editor myself (apropos, the lost 420 pages I alluded to earlier), this is terrifying. If I follow Johnny's rule, I will have nothing to show for the past 3 years of my writing life. I will have essentially killed off my characters because nothing was happening to them, which is not their fault.

Overheard conversations

'The strange thing was, she spoke as if she thinks of herself as an artist, but she kept saying how she can only draw things when she's looking at them. And it was annoying for me, because I can draw too, really well, actually, which is strange, because I don't. Not very often, anyway. But I can. I think I maybe have an underdeveloped visual cortex, but excellent hand-eye coordination. And I didn't want to tell her that I think an artist is a person with a very active visual cortex, or imagination, not just plagiarizing skills. But to her, that's her claim, as an artist, is being good at that.'

'I don't...I can't disagree with people, ever, because they always sound right when they're talking. For instance...'

'Maybe your understanding of an artist is different than hers.'

'Evidently.'

'I think the art of compromise is a lost thing. I know a man who all his life wanted children, but his partner didn't. So he adopted a little boy, and she got an apartment down the street.'

'...'

'Today it's all about independence, I guess.'

If you're looking for a great blog with fiction, art, and stories, check out Storychord:

http://storychord.blogspot.com/2011/11/special-issue-39-damon-naomi.html

Publishes every Monday with a new story, artwork and song. Not only am I huge fan of this site, but my story 'Piano Lessons' was featured on it last March, so I'm happy to promote it on my own blog.

Happy belated Thanksgiving!

-kb

Highways: The Video

If you haven't seen this yet, I highly recommend checking it out - it's Highways' album video, made by the band in July 2011 in Brooklyn, to accompany the self-titled LP. You can watch it in 4 parts, starting with this one:
 http://www.youtube.com/user/HighwaysMusic?blend=2&ob=5#p/u/3/DqfVudHuGVE

Cheers!

Doppelganger

‘All affairs are in order. Should be at McAuber’s by 9.’


‘Excellent. Drive safe. Kiss my wife goodbye for me.’


‘Kiss mine hello.’


The bar was mostly empty, except for a few lone men watching the baseball game. Along the opposite wall was a row of booths, lit from above with conical green lamps. In the fifth one back sat a man facing the door, stirring an olive around his lowball and occasionally glancing up at the TV. He wore the entropic business attire of a man recently off work, his loosened tie the same pale blue as his eyes. His hair was graying and cut short around a clover-shaped bald spot.


It was eight o’clock. The wooden door swung open and in walked a crowd of like-dressed men and women, shouting and jostling one another; they swarmed the bar, until someone called his name and a subgroup poured itself into his booth.


‘Ethan!’


‘So this is where you’ve been hiding.’


‘Skipping out on staff meeting, eh? Well played.’


Ethan looked startled as they piled in around him.


‘Hello there,’ said Agnes, who had slid in next to him, a large woman with fluffy red hair and a mustache. She worked across the hall from his friend Tommy. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’


Ethan smiled, nodded and accepted their company stoically. Agnes pressed her ample body to his in a pretense of crowd-coziness.


‘Were your ears ringing today?’ she cooed indelicately, her eyes half-closed. ‘We were talking about you. I could’ve sworn I saw you in the cafeteria! It was—déjà vu? No, another French word.’


‘Menage a trois,’ someone offered.


‘No, that’s a threesome,’ said hapless Tommy. ‘She means—’


‘Seriously, he had the same bald spot,’ said Agnes. ‘I mean hair.’ She giggled into his ear. ‘Your double, that is.’


‘Impossible,’ said Ethan. ‘I was with my double all day, and we didn’t go to any cafeteria.’


At this Agnes shrieked with glee, and someone passed her another pint.


‘An omen! In literature,’ said another friend, a paunchy brunette with an updo, ‘in literature your double often heralds your death.’


‘Well! You feeling okay, Ethan?’


‘You don’t have a brother, do you?’


‘Not too sick to drink, though?’


Ethan graciously fielded the group’s increasing disarray, even as the beer spilled more freely and he himself never got any drunker. At one point Agnes’s Guinness sloshed into his lap and she attempted to dry it off herself. He pardoned her and took the opportunity to excuse himself.


McAuber’s was an ideal meeting spot in part because the restrooms were at the front, near the entrance.


He went in and tried to dry his pants while he waited. Within a few minutes a man in entropic business attire and a fedora came in. Without a word he joined the other man at the urinals and passed the hat over along with his wallet and keys. Their pale blue eyes met for a split second in which they exchanged an identical curt nod. A quick tie adjustment, some whispered names, a splash of water on his groin, and he was gone.


When the man wearing the hat left a few minutes later he stole at glance at the raucous crowd in the booth, still exchanging drunken banter, a mustached redhead fawning over the man on the end. Satisfied, he ducked his head and made his way out to a blue Accord, still warm from its trip north.


Before he started the car he checked his new phone for messages.


‘All clear,’ it said. ‘See you in a year, old buddy.’

Strange, how we are creatures of infinity, yet too many choices can paralyze us.

'We can do anything you want,' I tell Ian, his huge 3-year-old eyes looking up at me, at once both blank and full of life. He stares.

'We can read a book, or we can play lifeguard,' I say.

He throws his hands to his head and stomps his feet. 'Eeee!' he screeches. 'Bof! Lifeguard!'

It's all too much for him. Little Ian, 3 years old. I also can't handle unnamed alternatives. Who can? There are infinity of them!

'We shall love each other here, if ever at all.'

Lisa had always thought there was something lovely about big, croweded houses, the kind where there were several kids to a room, and back staircases that might have been servants’ quarters, and passageways in the basement that might have been stops on the underground railroad. And armchairs where grandparents sat, and breakfast nooks, and thin walls, and older sisters looking for a quiet place to read. She knew they must exist, these houses, but had never actually seen one.

Even better than noisy kids and visiting relatives, she thought, would be that same house but inhabited by groups of friends, people in their twenties who needed cheap living and social stimulation for their creative pursuits. Of course, the house would fall into inevitable disrepair, and probably smell more like smoke and beer and cats than brownies, but that would be part of the charm. She also knew these houses existed, like neo communes, and thought she would very much like to live in one. Where does one find such a house?






Harlow had bought her place, a brick two-story with an attic near Wicker Park, when the economy took a nosedive and she was feeling decisive. She was sick of feeling transient, and sick of writing a letter or number after her street name, sick of not having memories in the floorboards. She wanted a home.

The first person to come live with her was Thaddeus, of course. As he began staying over more and more frequently, he began paying less and less rent to his own landlord, and as far as Harlow knew he eventually just phased out of his lease like a train losing steam. And then his things were in her living room, and enormous oak desk, several trunks full of sport coats, and books. Every room except the bathroom by October resembled a library of sorts, the hallways, the pantry, the staircase, even, a disheveled, shelfless library. There was the occasional overheard conversation peppered with words like ‘ecumenical’ and ‘small claims court,’ followed by a gravelly snort in his disarming British voice, but other than that, there was no discussion about his becoming a resident. He simply did.

Faith came next. Faith, Harlow’s old roommate from DePaul, a skinny Filipino nanny by day who was choreographing an opera at a theatre nearby. Faith’s transition was likewise smooth, as in tacit; she began staying over on winter nights when the drive to Beverly was too snowy to travel. Her studio was in Lincoln Square, near Harlow’s house, so by April, without any notice, it became official; her things were in the second bedroom, and rent checks began appearing on the counter, made our for wildly varying amounts of money, on the tenth or so of every month. Around now every day in the house was an adventure in rendezvous, for Harlow especially, who kept rather normal hours. Thaddeus was home for days at a time in between classes, alternately brooding, writing, and hosting stone-faced reading circles with his lit students, who drank a lot of tea and sometimes left roaches on Harlow’s homemade coasters; Faith had various boyfriends from the theatre who made liberal use of the kitchen as well as her bedroom, often bringing along their own friends and boyfriends too. And then there was Jessi, dark, angular Jessi, the painter; it was odd, Harlow thought, of all her friends, Jessi was the least stable, and yet the most reluctant to move in without asking. The only time Harlow ever knew for sure where Jessi was sleeping was when she was dating Joel. When that ended—however that ended—Harlow did something that for once she didn’t lord over her: she made Thaddeus move his desk and reading circles to the dining room, dragged a mothy futon down from the attic, and invited Jessi to stay.

So anyway, there was only one official tenant at this lovely brick house near Wicker Park, but the post office, and countless other twentysomethings in and around the Chicago area knew that at any given time there were several. Harlow met more people while cooking breakfast in her own kitchen than she ever did at any bar. And she realized, when she saw the first rent check from Jessi that spring, made out for an amount of money she wasn’t sure her friend had, she knew that that was what she needed in a home.

Dear readers,


The strange thing about writing a letter is that you can’t use filler phrases like ‘how are you’ and ‘swell weather we’re having tonight’ to take up time—a letter has to be all content. Although I find myself struggling to articulate why I sat down to write this in the first place—and so my mind turns to fluff, possibly in an effort to make me feel productive, and to trick me into thinking I’m using my time wisely, when really I’m just avoiding the real issue. Although, now I realize I’ve done exactly that without the benefit of pretending I didn’t realize I was doing it.


Let me start over. Another strange thing about letter-writing is I feel I have a lot to live up to. Some writers are more famous for their correspondence than their poetry or fiction. You read those letters in English class and dissect them like they were meant for English classes, not someone’s brother or friend or lover. Those letters are all filled with profound thoughts on life—‘dear you,’ they say, ‘this is what I’ve learned since we last spoke. Thank goodness I have a friend like you who understands, even though so much of my writing is about loneliness.’ Personally, I’m not that close with anyone, nor have I ever felt compelled to write a letter and nor have I ever received a letter of that caliber. Maybe this is turning into one. If that’s true, then you readers are my close but distant friend who is tracking my personal progress from afar, to whom I turn when I have things pressing down on me and can only be lifted by writing them down. That might not be too far off the mark.


It does help to write to an imagined audience—nothing personal, I know if you’re reading this you’re very real—who’s interested in my feelings, not my fiction. I do feel like you’re listening. Strange—this is the first time in years I’ve been able to write what I mean to say. My mind feels more unified. Giving voice to my confusion is calming. It’s like stepping back and letting the id take the pen, and doing so quiets it. Thank you.


I suppose I should get to the point, even though by doing so I’m nearing the end of this meditative state I’ve found. My reason for writing at all is to tell you I’m going on a hiatus, both from writing and editing the magazine.


Funny, as soon as I mention the magazine, my mind goes blank. I’d much rather stay here in this letter and continue talking to you as if you’re still reading, which may be presumptuous of me to imagine you still are. My mind is calmer when I’m not expected to do anything about the magazine. Which is why I’m leaving, temporarily, I hope. I do anticipate coming back, but who knows what will happen? Somehow I feel encouraged right now, knowing that I don’t have to choose between writing and sanity. I once thought all writing that mattered was fiction. Maybe this is why the Romantics were so in love with their letter-writing. For someone who is only good at writing, but no longer able to produce fiction, it’s not a bad option.


Gratefully,


Walter S.

The Highways record is out!

Highways is Johnny Zachman, Elisia Guerena, Joe McLean, Dave Lucas, and me.

This is our self-titled LP - released 14 September 2011. Mixed by Phil Abbott and mastered by Dan Timmons.

Download or stream it for free at http://highwaysmusic.bandcamp.com.

Things that are small

atoms, hair, dirt, letters, eye contact, footsteps, threads, needle eyes

A small story:

Why I was late for everything I went to today, even though I made a distinct effort not to be late for anything, but was anyway, but never more than ten minutes

I'd rather not talk about it.

The tip of a pen. Reasons for doing things. Shattered glass. Note heads on a staff. Particles. The God particle. The moments we pass over. Sequins. Scales. Hang nails. Papercuts, which hurt. Splinters. How come small things are more noticeable when they hurt? My confidence in my writing ability. Rice. Sand. Stars from here. My understanding of a lot of things. Seeds. Everything, when it's divided up. Water vapor. Raindrops. Air sacs. Blood vessels. Brain cells.

Cocktail Party

Praying I don't say the wrong thing. Will they know?

Sandstorm

It was only after the wind died down that I heard I was not the only one calling for help.

Victories. Bursts of optimism. Lightning bugs.

The difference between what is happening and what might have happened. DNA. Temperature degrees. Sips of coffee. Sips of alcohol. Candle flames. Keys. Sharks' teeth. Moments.

Shoe buckles, shoe laces, earrings, hair pins, scraps, pennies, plankon/whale food.

[List of small things] Things that tear friendships apart. Fodder for denial. Little pink crosses.

Things that trigger memories.

Tricks of our senses and chance encounters. I swear it was Jeffrey's black hair, a block ahead of me; his wavy dark hair and crooked nose, I saw that angle of his neck in profile as he tucked his head and disappeared ino the corner store where he worked.

I didn't go in. That would have ended badly.

Things we recognize about each other.

Fictional I Statements: Jessi

I don’t know what to say.

I had a hard day today. I am tired. I wish someone had asked me how I am doing today, but no one has. I should have told Joel how I felt when he asked how I was doing.

I am tired. I don’t feel at home in my body. I love to paint but even while painting I can feel my shoulders and my wrist and my back. I like to dance because it makes me forget.

I don’t know why. I can’t think about that right now. I like men because they distract me. I like living on friends’ couches because if I had a place to myself I’d probably be alone there a lot. I don’t want to be alone.

I am aware that that’s unhealthy. I’m fine.

Fictional I Statements: Walter

I am at the mercy of my neurons. I am not trying to be poetic. I see my reflection in everything. I cannot look inside. I have the feeling my brain is disconnecting. I don’t know where that puts me. I do know that the more I write the more I am afraid. I am trying to stay afloat. I am not a metaphor. I wish I were because then I would mean something else. I am less and less curious everyday. I don’t care. I find peace in looking. I find chaos in thinking.

Fictional I Statements: Harlow

I am a woman. I am a friend. I am a lover. I am a lover of beauty. I own a store. I earned my MBA from Loyola. I earned my store. I am happy. I wish I wanted something more than what I have. I wish I were more creative. I wish I could paint or write or sing. I have nothing new to say. Maybe I love old things. Maybe I’m okay.

Fictional I Statements: Joel

Joel:

I am a father. I am Joel Edward Samson. I am a musician who should be a better musician. I am a father who should be a better father. I love my son. I am trying. I have not done anything I thought I would when I was little except live in Chicago. It is not glamorous. I want a better life for my son. I want him to respect me. I want him to love me. I want him to think I’m cool and smart and everything I wanted to be when I grew up. I need to change. I need my son. I am scared of what might have happened if Jack hadn’t come along. I am scared of dwelling on that, and of that coming to pass. I am scared of not giving him a better life.

V. Take pills

Her breathing is heavy, it comes slowly like the air is mercury, uneven, using all her energy. Blankets have melded into her; their quilted stitches have stitched themselves into her lids, and they travel, like insects looping through undense air, the stitches form themselves first on her body and then on her eyelids. In the distance a door slams. The looping both gives her a visual focus which gives her something to do and agitates her stomach. Which is empty but still rejects its phantom contents. Her eyes stay closed. She wants to disappear into sleep. On the coffee table are an empty aspirin bottle and water glasses. There is more warmth nearby, wet red warmth on her forehead, and then it is gone. Her consciousness is a watery furnace. She has only seen red for days.

VI. Dear

‘Vee,’ her grandmother had said, lying in fluffy repose, her kindness having earned her a bed near the window, from the nurses who were kind to her indeed. The word came like baby’s breath, like the space between words, but it was all she could do; it could have been an accidental union of her teeth to lower lip. Vee knew it was her name. ‘Nan?’ she’d said, her hand gripping Nan’s as tightly as she could without shattering it. ‘I’m here, Nan.’ Her grandmother’s hair was as thin as a spider web. Her skin looked ready to dissolve into dust. ‘I’m listening.’ Her grandmother had been in hospice for a month. She weighed less than seventy pounds and had not opened her eyes in a week. Vee leaned closer.

‘Let me out…here,’ her grandmother said.

IV. Scarlet

Ben gets lost after work and finds himself in a series of one-way streets leading away from home. Vee snores to the title screen of High Fidelity.

Tara sits in the passenger seat. She is calm. ‘This city was designed by a madman,’ she says, gazing out the window. ‘It’s true. Charles Erwin III was the city planner. In 1888 he proposed using one-way streets in this part of downtown, for the purpose of reducing traffic and promoting walkability. That’s why all these storefronts are here, but they never lasted, because people got lost walking around them. It’s kind of a labyrinth, which contributes to the high crime rate. It’s twice as high as the rest of the city’s neighborhoods combined.’

Ben stares straight, clenching his jaw to keep from scratching her eyes out of her freckled face.

‘The city accepted it, obviously, and began building right away. He designed one more park, the Arboreum, and then committed himself to a mental hospital. He was never released.’

She’s still. She doesn’t have the nervous energy a lot of people have when sitting with a stranger. Her small hands lay carelessly in her lap.

Ben is calm on the outside but raging inside.

‘Isn’t that interesting?’ she says.

‘Where do you live?’ he asks curtly.

‘Keep going. I’ll tell you when to turn. What’s odd is, he, Erwin, never had a crazy moment until the day he committed himself, and then he was never lucid again. His madness was complete. Some people say he was one of the earliest recipients of ECT, though there aren’t any records of that being used in the U.S. until almost fifty years later.’

‘Mm.’

‘We’re going to turn left at the next intersection. Thanks again for driving me. I think I’ll take the apartment.’

Ben’s fiddling with his tie, feeling the rage boil within him, like lava about to erupt; it’s the kind of anger he finds a morbid pleasure in keeping hidden.

‘Fuck you,’ he says under his breath.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Fuck you. You had no fucking right. You’re a manipulative, selfish slut.’

‘I’m sorry you feel that way. I didn’t make you do anything you didn’t want to do.’

‘Give me the pills.’

‘No.’

‘Or you won’t get out of this car.’

Still calm but with a quiver she hands him the baggie.

‘Thank you. We’re here.’

‘Get out.’

II. Memory

‘Vee,’ her grandmother had said through motionless lips, her skin delicate and clinging to her bones like crumpled silk, her breath a miniature burst of moist warmth in the surrounding dryness of a hospice room, ‘Vee,’ using the name she’d adopted as a teenager, and then proceeded to tell her something.

III. Your brain

Ben’s come home with a bouquet of red roses for Vee on the third day she’s sick; he sits with her, tells her he loves her and hopes he doesn’t come down with it too. The next day at work he meets a woman named Tara, while Vee is lying on the bathroom floor watching the ceiling enclose her and periodically sitting up to vomit, missing the toilet once.

‘This is one of the nicest in the complex,’ says Ben, a leasing agent, holding the door for ginger Tara, lithe for her height. ‘Corner unit, cathedral ceiling in the great room, balcony overlooking the pool.’

She turns and her freckles make his stomach jolt. ‘It’s nice,’ she says, looking at him, not the room.

He swallows and walks farther in. ‘New carpets, all walk-in closets…’

She prowls into the kitchen where he tries to show her new appliances. ‘Show me the balcony,’ she says.

And there, overlooking the pool, where he can see his own building’s roof a few blocks away, she pushes him against the railing; she’s soft and orange-hued; she runs her little hands up his back and says in his ear ‘I have something for us.’ Her small fingers with their clipped nails slip in between his shirt buttons and stroke his prickling skin. In her other hand she produces a plastic bag with two little white tablets, each with a little ‘i’ on it.

At this moment is when Vee misses the toilet; a chunk of watery vomit spews onto the floor before she rests her chin on the bowl’s rim, eyes almost shut with fatigue, and then a new wave of full-body gagging wracks her, and more liquid hits the bowl. On her eyelids the wavy gray pattern of brains wiggles across and forms a lifeless maze.

I. Fever

Pastel streaks bristle thick and harsh on the other side of eyelid veils, behind which everything is red and spangled, kinetic static. It is drawing shapes and they revolve. The heat is unbearable but also pleasing. It would be more pleasing if she could find a position to endure it in. Prone is not low enough. She needs to sink into the cushions but the spangles are too hot. She moves. Her body is a long lump of clay. Melting it sticks into the couch. It is coarse and scratches where her skin is exposed. The red black is soft but sharp. She turns. Her eyes are bristly. Behind her her head is molten and thick.

They open. Her vision is liquid but cooling. The ceiling has shapes in it but fading. Sweat coats her burning skin and then the blankets.

Later she stands up and all her weight has transferred to her head. In the bathroom the cold faucet gives like a spring and the walls are caving in. She falls back onto the bristly couch.

Ben is asleep in the other room. He is blue and under a sheet. Above him the square digits say 4:44.

When he comes home from work the next evening she has eaten soup but is unconscious, the title screen of a DVD looping in the corner.

Plea

‘I mean, I don’t have anything against my parents. I don’t. Nobody expects to get divorced, or have all the shit that happened to them happen. I’m not here to get back at them, or anything like that. And no, I don’t blame myself, either. I mean, would this family be as fucked up as it is now if I hadn’t, like, “joined” it? I don’t know. I guess it doesn’t matter. This isn’t about that. This is something I need to do for myself.’

Q.

‘I need to know the names of my birth parents.’

Q.

‘My name is Caitlin Shelley. I’m seventeen. I was adopted from Seoul, Korea, when I was four months old, by Bob and Christine Shelley. I have two older brothers, neither of whom was adopted.’

Q.

‘Yes, I understand that there’s a policy. I’ll be eighteen in October, and I have two reasons why I need to get around that right now. One is that neither of my parents is capable of giving parental consent. The other is that I don’t know 100% for sure whether I am seventeen, do I? I won’t know until I see the situation around my birth in Korea. So, until I see my records, I can’t be sure how old I am.’

Q.

‘I haven’t seen Christine in a few months now. Last I heard she had an apartment in Grand Rapids, but I never had an address for it. She hasn’t called. As far as I know, Brian and Anthony don’t know where she is either. This is all confidential, right?’

Q.

‘Bob is at home. He’s always home. He looks the exact same when I leave for school in the morning as when I get home, except drunker. He might leave while I’m at work, sometimes, because when I get home from that, his door’s always closed, and he has a porch off his bedroom, so he could leave if he wanted. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, though. There’s always food in the house, it’s a safe environment, et cetera. Listen, by confidential, you know I’m not telling you this to rat them out, right? You’re not going to do anything…okay. This has nothing to do with them. I’m telling you these details so you’ll understand why I need to bypass the parental-consent thing. My mom is M.I.A., and Bob is far too inebriated to sign anything and have it hold water. Plus, he is just not in a mental state to handle this.’

Q.

‘When he lost his job, he kind of lost it. Mentally, I mean. He’d been working for the city for like twenty years, he was in a really respectable position, when he got laid off. I guess it was pretty traumatizing. He did the city budget, so he was well aware of how money is allocated, what jobs are in danger, et cetera, and when the new mayor was elected four years ago, he handed him this new project, and it involved noticing that his job was being cut. It was horrible, for him. He had one kid in college and two kids at home, and a good job, and a normal marriage, at the time. Anthony was a freshman and all of a sudden we couldn’t pay tuition anymore. It was around then that Christine’s breakdowns got worse, too. She’d stopped coming home regularly even while my dad was still working, and he thought it was infidelity, so he was already on the edge, but then we found out she was…very unstable. She spent six months in a mental hospital. Yeah, in-patient. She checked herself in, and I went to see her, and my dad did too, but it was like she didn’t know me. That really hurt my dad too, I could see. Then she started accusing him of all this stuff that didn’t happen, and we got scared, both that she had all these false memories and that somebody might take them seriously, so he stopped going, and I didn’t have a way of getting there, so I did too. Stopped going, I mean. Honestly it was easier not to. I felt bad, and I would’ve gone, if she’d given any indication that she wanted me to, but she never called and asked. It was like we just didn’t exist to her. When she checked herself out, she didn’t tell us. That she was leaving or where she was going. Sometimes she calls Anthony. Somehow my dad managed to divorce her. It’s all very weird. Ten years ago I would never have thought this was possible.’

Q.

‘Anthony seems fine. I don’t really talk to him. He stopped coming home for holidays like his freshman year. It was like college became his family and he didn’t need us anymore. Brian, kind of the same thing, but he was always quieter. He was around for Dad’s…decline, but he was always quieter. He moved out a couple years ago and comes home occasionally, but he doesn’t really share. With me. I have not idea how he is.’

Q.

‘When I was little, things were normal, though. We took vacations, we ate dinner together. We have a pool and had friends over, I went to summer camp, I played soccer and took dance and violin lessons, all that stuff. I got braces and had surgery on my knee when I broke it, and they were always more than happy to pay for it. I got the same treatment as Brian and Anthony. They talked to me about being adopted, and about Korea, and told me they’d take me there someday, maybe for high school graduation. Which is now approaching, and no one’s mentioned it. I doubt Christine will make it there at all.’

Q.

‘I mean, that’s how it is, right? It’s fucked up. But that’s life.’

Q.

‘I applied to a couple places. The guidance counselor pretty much forced me to. I don’t really want to go to college. I’m definitely moving out this summer though. I work at Costco and I might be able to go fulltime after school’s out. I’m trying to save money so I can go to Korea. I might take some classes at GCC. I just don’t see the point of spending all that money, and taking out loans, when I don’t even know what I want to do.’

Q.

‘Well I know what I want, I want to find my birth parents. I want to live in Korea, at least for awhile. Maybe a year or so. And college doesn’t exactly fit into that plan.’

Q.

‘No, I haven’t told him. I don’t even know if he’d hear me over the TV. And it might just make things worse. He’s been taking Prozac for a year now but I don’t think it’s doing anything. I mean, I feel bad for him, but no wonder he can’t get a job, when he just drinks and mopes all the time. Anyway, no, I’m not going to tell him, until I know for sure that I’m going to Korea. He doesn’t need to know.’

Q.

‘I think he would have been hurt by it ten years ago, in a fatherly kind of understanding “I’ll support you whatever you do, honey” kind of way. Now, though, like I said, 180.’

Q.

‘I want to find my roots. I’ve been asking myself these questions nobody else can answer. Who am I, where do I come from. What diseases am I susceptible to. Does Alzheimer’s, or male pattern baldness, or even like low blood pressure, do those things run in my family? I need to know these things.’

Q.

‘Because what am I going to do until October? Fuck around and pretend college is right for me, or just sit and wait till I can look at my own file? Six more months of just waiting? I want to start planning my trip to Korea, do you see? And no, I’m not going to go off and so anything rash, I’m not booking my flight just yet. I’m being rather adult about this, given that no one else in my life is. I want to start learning the language, and get accustomed to the culture. But the first step is knowing my real name. Which I understand might not be in the file. But I have to know that.’

Q.

‘No, I’m not running away from anything. I’m very grateful to have been given this chance, to live here in Michigan, to grow up with brothers and loving parents and have the opportunity to go to college if I want to later in life and all that jazz. But I can’t settle here, I can’t accept all this shit that’s happened as the only life I have—when it’s like I have a whole other life, and family, in Korea, that didn’t happen, while this one, this degenerating, fallen apart, suddenly not-so-great-anymore one did, you know?’

The Strangers

I’ve kept count of the times one of the roommates has left their empty coffee cup out with the spoon still in it, rendering both mug and spoon unclean even after the sticky residue at the bottom has been washed off. Six.

The first time was on a Tuesday when I got home from work at eight o’clock. I am always very tired when I get home from work because it is very tedious and I concentrate very hard. That is the first reason I dislike having roommates. However on this particular day I got home at eight o’clock and I was pleased to find that no one was home.

What did irritate me however was that my key got stuck in the lock again so that by the time I did get inside it was 8:05 p.m. and so I missed the introductory remarks on my favorite program. Regardless I came inside and settled down on the couch. Myself was already on the couch and I started petting him. He was sitting up, not lying down.

Let me explain that I am very tired after work because all day I am sorting envelopes with addresses written on them in small fonts, and it takes the utmost concentration. So when I get home I often want to watch TV with Myself and drink some ginger ale and go to bed. Sometimes I do a puzzle.

I was thinking about doing a puzzle because I had already seen this particular episode when I saw the living room doorknob start to turn. And in walked Tomtom, the skinny man with the sagging face. I was not happy to see him.

He wandered in as though he were lost in his own living room and stood for a minute in the V-shaped light the TV made on the floor. He was holding a white mug in both hands.

I continued to pet Myself because Tomtom’s presence made me very nervous. At this point neither of us had acknowledged each other.

“A little dark in here, isn’t it?” he said finally.

“Yes,” I said.

“Mind if I turn on a light?”

I would mind very much but I am trying to be hospitable, so I said, “Okay.”

“I don’t mean to disturb you,” said Tomtom, as if he needed the light on to begin talking. “I do have a bit of a…wrinkle, though.”

“What is it?”

Myself strutted over to the other side of the couch and sat upright right in the middle of the cushion, as if saying to Tomtom, “This couch is full.”

Tomtom continued to stand and blow into his mug.

“Well, the project I was working all month…fell through, so I was hoping I might be able to give you your rent check a little bit late.”

I hadn’t taken my eyes from the television yet and didn’t intend to. I didn’t mean to be rude but I also wouldn’t know what to do with my face if we were looking at each other. I wished Myself were back so I could continue to pet him.

“How late?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. A few weeks, at the most. I’ll get it to you, though, I promise.”

“Why? Are you getting another project?”

“That’s…up in the air.”

Because it wasn’t a question I didn’t know how to answer it so I didn’t say anything at all.

“So, is that okay?”

“Yes.”

Then he looked around as though he were looking for something to do. He still seemed very lost.

“I’ll need it by the twentieth, though,” I said.

“Yeah. That’s perfect. Thanks.”

I nodded. I didn’t know if he had other things to say. After a minute he kind of nodded back and then left, closing the door behind him, which made me glad I had made allowances for him.

After that I was too tired to get up and set up a puzzle to do, so I finished watching the episode. When it was over I walked down the hallway to the kitchen, which has windows on two sides. Myself followed with her tail in an S in the air. It was almost bedtime and because I wouldn’t be able to go to bed without a full stomach I made toast. After I buttered it I put the knife in the sink and it was then that I noticed a mug in the sink with a spoon still in it, and around the bottom of the inside of the mug was a ring of brown stickiness. But it was not the color of Tomtom’s mug so I do not know whose it was.

“I just feel like I have so many ideas but no way to channel them, so they’re useless, even though they’re awesome. Like gunpowder without a gun.”

“George?”

“Oh, hi, Callie. Yes. It’s like, everyday I think of a new situation. Or, it just comes to me, I don’t actually think of it. And sometimes they’re tedious, but sometimes they’re really interesting, and I have no idea what to do with it.”

“…”

“You know?”

“Not really. Are you…are you talking to someone else?”

“No. You.”

“Oh. You caught me off guard.”

“I apologize. But anyway, back to the point, it’s like I don’t know what to do with them all. For instance, just today I thought of two interesting things: one is empty ice trays, and one is playing guitar with a papercutted fingers.”

“Ouch.”

“I know. Painful, right? Aren’t those great images? Subtle, everyday, yet they start to tell a story. They suggest a story. Meaning, little instances that are indicative of something greater. My problem is, I just can’t think of something greater.”

“Greater than ice cube trays?”

“Yes. Who’s doing it? An annoying roommate? A lazy bachelor? A faltering marriage? A couple with differing ideas of ice cube maintenance? Eh?”

“It’s nice to see you too, George. How’ve you been?”

“Other than the current predicament, fine.”

“You mean the gunpowder thing?”

“Yes. I knew you’d understand. Also a good image, yeah? But nowhere to put it in. No greater context in which to give it meaning.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Eh? How’s Peter?”

“Philip? He’s…you know. He’s fine.”

“Good living situation, Callie?”

“Actually, I go by Callista now…a little more professional…but yes, we have a place out in Willsboro. A duplex, I believe it’s called.”

“Ah. Glad to hear it. Are you here for a book?”

“Um—no, just…just browsing. I had a few minutes before class tonight.”

“Mm-hm, mm-hm. So, does Peter fill the ice cube trays? Tell me, would you have married him if he didn’t? Just kidding, you don’t have to answer that.”

“George, I…are you all right? Where are you living now?”

“Oh, you know. Not a duplex, whatever that is. More like an, ah, an apartment.”

“Oh—oops, I uh, I have to go...”.

“Mm-hm, mm-hm.”

“Um, well, it was good to run into you, George...”

“Yeah well, I come here occasionally, to find a place for my ideas, you know, so if
you ever want to do it again.”

“Okay. Well, good night, George. Take care.”

“Yeah, yeah. You too, Callie.”

if that's what it takes

She knew it was over when he tried for a whole minute after she said stop to coax the spoon into her closed mouth, that morning.

Later, the former maid of honor raised her glass while someone strummed a banjo, and told Anny that she appreciated that she had “come to her own truth.” Anny had a little piece of black and red tulle sticking out of her hair; her dress was black, white, and red, and some of the more traditionally minded guests said it was a sign.

How did this happen?

Picture this. J.J., dressed in white, with his chopped black hair and matching blue eyes and vest, stood on the steps above the street; around him were like-dressed men, his groomsmen; the guests were flocking the streets (this was a huge wedding) and he stood above them looking out, actually holding hands with David Lee and Anthony, two groomsmen, and saying "I feel luckier right now than I've ever felt in my life."

Meanwhile down the street was Anny herself, blonde hair short and straight, face wide, eyes black rimmed and vaguely Oriental. She had on the veil, complete with the sprig of tulle, and the dress, white and billowy with too-tight black sleeves, the tightness being the second sign that it was over.

She was alone, standing on the crowds' fringes, and she could see J.J. and his white-
suited groomsmen in a messy triangle on the church steps. Out this far most of the crowd didn't know she was the bride and left her alone. Those who did said later that she looked "busy" and left her alone also.

Next scene is of her running - just booking it in the other direction, veil and bulbous skirt streaming behind her, black almond eyes wide and turning back to make sure she wasn't being followed, even as she thought the words "and she never looked back."

Really though she just tore away from there, down the street, while J.J. looked on, held hands, and had tears in his eyes.

Where did she go?

The reception was going to be at a bar on the other side of town; the band was booked and actually there now, hanging out on the couches and pretending to soundcheck. Anny's aunt was the owner; the bar was converted from an old house, so there were high ceilings and bay windows and lots of rooms. The actual bar part was in the center of the old living room, and Harriet stood in it now, plumply wiping glasses clean and hanging them from their stems above her head. Through a curtained doorway sat the guys of Coxswain!, a local band with sufficient noise and beats to keep the crowd dancing.

Anny, out of breath and sweating, and wondering if this was even slightly appropriate, spread the curtains and poked in her head.

“If you guys haven’t started yet,” she said, “is it okay to hang out here? Or should I go find the party somewhere else?”

They looked at each other, the two guys, the third one being MIA, and said, “No, here’s fine.”

“Anny,” Harriet disapproved through the doorway. “This is absurd. I’m not making you any drinks.”

Later the place filled up; Miranda, the MOH, in her black dress and red sash, other friends, some family, miscellaneous guests. At one point after the band played they were hanging out on the deck, a two-leveled, screened-in affair, on which Anny stood, or rather fell over, talking to Miranda and Eric, and singer.

“I mean,” she said, most of her weight on the railing, “I suppose—I’m just not sure
whether to live in Brooklyn, South Bend or Atlanta.”

“Those are all really different cities, Anna,” said Eric into his cigarette.

Miranda was tan and brunette, and pretty, and had a lazy eye, which kept lolling down to her martini. The other one rested firmly on Anny.

“Yeah but,” she said, “that would be great if you lived in Atlanta. We’d see each other all the time.”

Anny lurched sideways, and her lowball crashed to the ground. Earlier Harriet had rescinded her threat and made her something mint chocolate liqueur-flavored.

“If you’re going to drink at a time like this, you’ll at least do it under my watch,” she’d said.

“Should I still be wearing this?” Anny said now.

In the other room with the couches sat J.J. and D.L. and Anthony.

“It’s just that—I don’t know what this means,” he said.

When it got too buggy despite the screens the porch people came in and surrounded the bar, and that’s when the toasting started.

Miranda, who had the lazy eye and was a lounge singer, sang her toast of appreciate to Anny, “for having come to her own truth.” Anny was grateful for the support but didn’t understand the word “appreciate,” which implied that Miranda somehow benefited.

Eric gave her a toast too, which was inappropriate as it was mostly about how now she was single and still hot, and in the couch room J.J. put his face in his hands.

The third member of Coxswain!, who was tall and easily distracted, drifted into the couch room. He sat across from the triad of groomsmen and lit a cigarette.
"What's the deal, man," he said amiably.

"She's gone," said J.J. "I mean, she's here, but she skipped out on the wedding. But
we're still having the reception."

The third member nodded. The smoke produced during this motion came in zigzags.

Anny threw up under the railing, having forgotten about the screen, which was now a filter, of sorts. The reception was winding down.

She remembered the hours of indecision, and the split second it took to start running. She threw up again when she remembered running.

"J.J. is still here?" she blurted out, to no one, and stood up.

J.J. was gone, said Harriet, cheeks bobbing as she replaced another clean glass
overhead.

"What did I do?" said Anny.

What did she do?

Man, woman, waitress

THE WAITRESS

It was empty, for a Thursday. Some regulars, taking advantage of our $8 Labatt pitchers and our one television; some kids, taking advantage of our bouncerless door. As long as the game was on, people were still ordering wings and nachos, but I imagined I'd spend most of my shift watching HGTV with Bill after they left.

In the second quarter, I came out of the kitchen and found the jukebox newly lit, for the first time in ages. I could hear the scratching sound it made over the music, as if pretending to be a vinyl player, like it could fool people that it was authentic, instead of broken. In the glow of its pink light a couple sat across from each other, in one of the far booths. The man was leaning back, hugging his chest, his face turned to the wall. The woman was leaning toward him, black hair covering her face, feet crossed under the table. I approached them, armed with menus.

As I neared them the woman's position changed; she recrossed her legs and withdrew, folding her arms over her chest. Her hair settled around her face, revealing knit eyebrows and pinched lips, an expression I couldn't place. His face turned slightly to reveal a tear sliding down his cheek.

"I can't find my way home; there is no place to hide..." (Scratch, scratch.) I turned away, suddenly uncomfortable. If they needed menus, they could find them at the bar.

THE WOMAN

I didn't know why we came here, to get out of the apartment, I guess, but now that we were sitting here, under a green lamp, too far away to even be seen by the bartender, let alone pretend we were watching the game, I missed the couch.

Harold was quiet. He had gone straight to the jukebox, and I had sat here because it's where I thought he was going. Initially he started talking about the guitar he still had in storage somewhere, which was odd; then he trailed off, which was normal, for him. I looked around for a waiter.

I hummed along with the song Harold had picked - "I don't ask for much...won't you just speak, please?" It was one he'd put on at home quite often, one I enjoyed but didn't know all the words to. Still looking around for some sign of life in this place, I was surprised when I turned back to him and he was all folded in over himself, hiding his face.

"Harold, what's the matter?" I leaned forward; his scratchy cheek, pale and stubbled with brown, greeted me, and as I watched, a tear blazed a pink trail down to his chin. "Honey, what is it?"

He shook his head, not wanting to let me in, again.

THE MAN

Something about the jukebox called to me as soon as we walked in. It was pink and blue, like cotton candy at a fair, like nurseries. It stood in the far corner of the bar; it was clear no one else had given it a second thought, but to me, it was a little neon beacon in the dismal brown bar.

In my coat pocket I found a dollar bill, somehow not too crumpled to fit into the slot. $1 for 3 picks, it said; I only had one in mind, it had begun in my head without my noticing, and now I had to hear it. Of course nobody wants to hear Dave in a bar, but – there, play.

Mary had chosen the booth right next to the jukebox, where we could sit in its warm light, beautifully alone with the music and each other. It is these times I feel she understands me the most - I want to be alone, which means, with her, but out of the apartment, and of course, bars are so public, but this one is uncrowded and -

The song came on. Immediately the chords brought me back, to where I don't know, but all at once, I was overcome with lyrics, with meaning.

"The air is growing thick/ A fear he cannot hide/ The dreaming tree has died..."

The Experiment

Of course there’s no pressure, the doctor says, probing my hair with rubbery hands. His eyes squint over his mask. This is entirely voluntary. But should you decide to participate, all I ask is that you report back to me in the morning. Do you understand?

He fades into my eyelids. The room is dark, except for the blue glow of a blinking 12:00 and the horizontal shine of a streetlight through the blinds. The light makes circles in the water glass and the empty green bottle on my nightstand. Thunder makes it sound like the sky is breaking. I pull the blankets up around me.

He is back; I am lying in a dentist’s chair, the room blue, him towering over me still talking: And I trust you’re aware of the monetary incentive?

I turn my head away. Headlights pan left to right, casting lamp-shaped shadows onto the floor before leaving me in the dark again. The windows are ghostly rectangles of gray. I turn over and face the wall, close my eyes again; I feel my thoughts start to detach; the doctor is replaced by the woman I met at his office today, walking toward me, his assistant, maybe. Oh, hello, she says, thank you for being on time. It’s nice to meet you. Are you ready?

Her eyes are lined with black but otherwise empty. She is wearing a lab coat. She doesn’t wait for me to answer.

Thank you for answering the ad. We need as many volunteers as we can get. She opens the door and stands back, serenely watches a bird fly by. We’re in an airplane. White eyes look expectant. More birds fly.

Jump, she says.

A flash of lightning and angry thunder. I turn over again, blue light blinking. The bed seems to stretch halfway across the room, vast and empty like a minefield. It is taunting me: look how much space you have when you have no one to share it with.
The sheets are tangled and the blankets in a big heap around me. Across the room there is a crowd, a party, in my kitchen. There is music and people I don’t recognize. The far wall looks to be on fire. No one notices the smoke crawling across the ceiling.

I walk in. There is boxed wine and a vat of soup, people talking. They turn when they see me. You came!

Hello, you came! Thank you!

I greet them nervously; I’m supposed to know who they are; I have the vague suspicion that if they find me out, they’ll be angry. I smile and keep walking, hello, nice to see you too, thank you for coming.

The crowd parts as I walk through; I realize I’m the guest of honor. All these strangers gathered to greet me. Their smiles are maniacal like clowns and I don’t know if they are mocking me. If you’re here to see the doctor he’s not coming, someone says. Yes, I am, I say. Then you need to go to the cellar, he is waiting for you. It is down through the stove. The crowd ends and in front of me is a fire where the stove should be; everyone looks, waiting.

The fire rages, tall as the ceiling. My face burns.

There. Noah is waiting for me. His hair falls over his face, over his blue blue eyes. He is wearing his black t-shirt and the firelight dances across it. My heart jumps, I am safe here, something warm swells up inside me.

The crowd fades behind me. You came. Noah.

He is staring into the fire. He is still; the fire rages; his eyes glint, like ice.

He holds a glass of red wine. It’ll be okay, he says without looking at me, it only hurts for a minute. I need you to go.

My breath is squeezed out of my chest and I feel the fire burn. No, this isn’t right. Not again. My body fills with nausea, like his words are a virus and my cells are rejecting it. Please Noah, don’t do this.

He still doesn’t look. His eyes are in the shadow of a lock of his hair. He shakes his head and my heart compresses, my lungs fill with smoke, I am choking; my breaths come short and quickly, my stomach is a weight. Noah.
I’m afraid, I tell him, I’m afraid my eyes will melt in the fire, that no one will be down there, that there will be no way back.

He is unperturbed. Feet first, he says matter-of-factly. Besides, the doctor’s there, he’ll help you.

I am cocooned in sweat. Noah is behind me now. He puts his hand on my back, and my whole body relaxes; I feel his breath on my neck. I can breathe again. He wants me to jump. He says, If it hurts, just wait and you won’t remember it. My mouth, dry as fire, my hair, soaking wet. I want: his hand on my back, to do what he wants. The fire blazes. His hand doesn’t move. I jump.

I can breathe again when I stand up. The cellar is blue and the edges are in shadow. There is a table filled with papers and bottles, and the chair again, cushioned and adjustable; why does this chair keep coming back? In the doctor’s real office there was just a normal chair, not some reclining dentist chair, there was no procedure, only an interview and a pill—

You came, says the doctor, Thank you. He is behind the table, snapping his rubber gloves over his wrists, mask hiding any emotion. Thunder rumbles overhead.

I feel the sweat on my pillow, a sheen of cold slime that is the first thing my mind feels as it surfaces. My arm gropes to the edge of the bed and my heart drops when Noah isn’t there, like my blood is made of mercury, or ice. The sound of the party above me materializes, low and rumbling. Noah’s voice rises above it—he is there—where is he?

Snap. The doctor again. On the table, papers and bottles. His mask covers everything except his squinty eyes. He holds a clipboard and a pen over it.

So how is the experiment going for you? he asks.

I don’t know, I lie. I just fell asleep a minute ago.

Is it what you thought it was?

I didn’t think you’d be here. Is that part of it?

He laughs. Don’t be ridiculous.

I hear Noah’s laugh upstairs, his flirty laugh; my stomach tightens again.

What’s the matter? asks the doctor.

What do you mean? Nothing.

So how is the experiment going for you? he asks again.

Noah laughs again, this time accompanied by a nervous female one. I am falling, I cannot breathe, who is he with? What are they talking about?

I told you, I say, angry, it’s…it’s…

It’s not what you thought it was?

I want to get out.

What’s that? he asks calmly.

They laugh again in harmony. The laughing comes more quickly now.

This is…this is not what I thought it would be.

What did you think it would be?

Well—I mean—I thought it would be…I thought it would be exciting, like a—an escape—

An escape? Inside your own head?

I know—but I thought—please make it stop, I don’t want to be here—

The pill lasts about eight hours, so you’ll just have to wait till morning.

Again they laugh, but it gets quieter—are they leaving? Are they going upstairs? My eyes dart toward the fire-door and sweat pours down—

The doctor sees. Ah, he says.

What? I demand.

I’m sorry, he says sadly, I didn’t realize about him. That could make tonight difficult, I’m afraid.

What are you talking about?

He sighs. Dreams can be just as painful as reality. They themselves are an illusion, but the feelings are real. I’m sorry.

I think I’m going to vomit. What do you care? Don’t you just need data?

Well, yes. I’ll need you to come back when you wake up and answer a few questions.

The laughing is gone, which is worse than when it is there. Even my eyelids feel nauseous. I am shaking. There is nothing around me to hold onto.

Please let me out, I beg him.

I can’t, says the doctor. Nobody can help you here. Just relax. It will be morning soon.

I don’t want to be down here. I don’t want to be in your experiment, I just want to go to sleep. Please, just let me sleep.

You are asleep, he says, and he starts to get fuzzy; I see the table with the potions and papers and dream-remembering pills on it; I see the backs of my eyelids. I turn toward the wall. I can’t hear the laughing anymore. Did he take her upstairs? Where is he? Wherever he is, it isn’t him, he’s an illusion, this isn’t the real Noah, or the real doctor—

Are you sure? he’d asked me today, are you sure you want to do this. Yes I’m sure, I want to get away, see what my dreams are like, I want to see what I forget when I wake up.

Well, this is it, he says now. Thank you for participating in this experiment. Your experience is very valuable to us.

Please. Please, let me out.

There is nothing to do but wait, he says.

Parallax

What is going on in Walter’s head this whole time? Why does he vacillate between ravenous interest and apparent obliviousness? Is he darkly brooding over Harlow, with whom he seems to get along, however inconsistently, who was able to persuade him—him, the elusive Walter Shirrey—to join her at Baci this evening? Is he considering Jessi, with whom he is exchanging a restrained sort of banter, by whom he seems at least mildly intrigued, especially, and incongruously, by her most recent painting? Is he more concerned with the glorified Thad and his poetry, the self-appointed foci of the evening so far? Or is he, for some reason, interested in Diana, Faith and Eli, who have barely entered the story yet, although they’ve been sitting at the table the whole time?

No: in fact, he has been distracted by the opacity of his own thoughts, among other things. He was having trouble remembering what he was thinking about. He was frustrated with his inability to focus on anything he really cared to think about, overtaken as he was by storm clouds and flurries that blocked his reasoning and demanded his full attention. These flurries came in storms and in whispers, irregularly, and when they came they take no prisoners, so to speak; it was like a mutiny in his brain, all thoughts hastened to obey the new deviant subject as soon as it appeared, leaving no room for continuity; not one thought is capable of staying back and fighting for the original topic. He is struggling to regain control over what goes through his head, instead of being pushed along with wherever his mind took him, and it is a losing battle.

For awhile, he’d been thinking about his magazine, Parallax, and the troublesome direction it had been taking lately, which caused another level of anxiety. Some background: Walter Shirrey was well-known to a very small, dedicated group of people as the founder and editor of the cutting edge literary magazine/literary circle, Parallax, which provided its followers sporadically with a collection of contemporary literary fiction and poetry, often falling into the categories of experimental and maximalist. He had become something of an underground celebrity in the few years it has been circulating because of its innovative and writer-centered structure: that is, what was in its inception a journal quickly turned into a series of urgently attended meetings and discussions. All that started because when Walter came across a submission he wanted to publish, he first needed to know something about the piece that wasn’t in the query letter, and was practically incapacitated with curiosity that could be sated unless he spoke to the writer himself, something which struck him and all who knew of him as the misanthrope he was, odd. What happened was, he would receive a submission in the mail or on the computer, and upon reading it, if he liked it, which was often, would be too intrigued—inevitably, it was uncanny how inevitable it was—he would obsess over it for hours without leaving his desk, and finally he would overcome his shyness and contact the submitter, asking for a personal interview, that had nothing to do with their previous publishing credits (as they often showed up expecting) but entirely with their agency in writing what they’d written. Agency was Walter’s word. He wasn’t really interested in the writers’ other works, as they earnestly tried to tell him in edgewise, or their C.V.s or any of those sundries. What he needed to know, and what many of then couldn’t grasp, and so their interviews with him went on for hours, sometimes until the sun rose, was what specifically made them write a certain part of their piece, or sometimes the whole thing. His rabid fixation while sitting as his desk apparently masqueraded as indifference in actual conversation. He was obsessed with finding out from the mouth of the writer what it was that made him or her write what they did. The first submitters to his magazine were heartily bewildered; some didn’t show up at the appointed time; some actually came and withdrew their work after the interview; but some stayed up all night with him in his all-encompassing confusion, and those came to be the first disciples of Parallax.

What happened from there was that word spread, and people interested in these things heard more and more of an eremitic editor who insisted on meeting the people who submitted work to him, and actually had the affect of making people’s work better, which was not at all what he was trying to do, make them change it, even if they only made one change after that initial meeting, but pretty much everyone who met with him felt compelled to make at least one revision and then resubmit it, often winding up with another such meeting, not because Walter insisted on a revision but because in his questioning they had come upon something they hadn’t hitherto come upon that inspired them to change something, and he needed to know what catalyzed the change. And so his reputation saturated New York, and then emanated: this man was creating a magazine in which people knew each other, because oftentimes he would schedule meetings all in the same hour or afternoon, and the submitters elect would run into each other while waiting for him, and then they’d sit in on one another’s interviews, and soon they weren’t one-on-one but rather groups in which one person’s work was ripped apart in the best way possible—that is, he didn’t rip them apart in the negative way you imagine professors and workshop facilitators ripping a manuscript apart, but he did the positive counterpart, he tore sentences into shreds that made you pay a ghastly amount of attention to every word of your own writing, in a way you didn’t really do before, although you might have thought you did, but this was different; he had a way of identifying their strengths, not dwelling on their weaknesses, finding phrases of beauty and patterns in grammar and the littlest nitpicky things that arrested him so much he just needed to know where they came from. And by hearing their strengths they were able to build on them, and so their weaknesses diminished, and they became passionate about sharing their work and hearing others’, and they began to listen differently, they listened for strengths instead of faults, and so the participants came to see one another as geniuses of contemporary short fiction or poetry, they saw just how much potential was in themselves and one another, and they remained loyal to Walter because it was his initiative that had triggered this phenomenon, and that’s how Parallax spread, as those meetings continued even when he couldn’t be at them; it was a magazine, but it was like a community, an ad hoc assembly of people who were passionate about the same things but didn’t know one another from the grocer and liked their own work but were accustomed to hearing what was wrong with their stories, not what was right.

And so, by word of mouth alone it spread; in the Venn diagram of readers of and contributors to Parallax, the circles overlap a considerable amount (an image which lends itself to the cover design quite nicely, thanks to one more visually inclined subscriber, whose submission necessitated another nightlong gathering of the minds). Funny, it is now generally likened to an independent publishing house, with fans and friends of scattered throughout the country, and some say it is one that can weather the next economic storm because of its loyal and active and interactive following, who believe Walter has revamped the model of literary journals, taking the hierarchy out of contemporary literature and returning the power to the writers. And because the caliber of the writing has been so consistently high, literary critics and established magazines and MFA programs across the country had slowly started to pay attention to this fanciful new magazine, the word magazine having come to connote, re: Parallax, both the paper publication, which subscribers saw as a mere side effect of what was the other part of the sobriquet “magazine,” the gatherings; at first it (Parallax) was flagrantly ignored, then grudgingly acknowledged, then wholeheartedly criticized, and now wholeheartedly praised. It had thrived because, while critics made their cynical comments and lamented aloud the loss of discipline and standards and Dickensian integrity in the literary world, writers at every level of skill and education flocked to Walter’s creation, a haven of creativity, a print journal from which you were just as likely to get rejected but at least in the essential part would be heard and your strengths validated. The more the critics disparaged it, the more submissions Walter received, and he was inundated with submissions of all conceivable media and requests for invites to his next workshop and people asking for letters of recommendation, and he had to limit it to fiction and poetry only, and he came to require a submission before one was invited to a workshop, and so people who had read but never been interested in writing fiction or poetry, wrote fiction and poetry, if only to get an iambic foot in the door, and a couple found that they really liked it.

And but what else happened was that the magazine got so big that he couldn’t possibly respond to everyone and request an interview tête-á-tête (as he still did even though every single one of them turned into group efforts, now), and so the ones who had been with him since the beginning, the writers that is, began to form offshoot groups who could almost “facilitate” the way Walter did, like journeymen and -women. Of course naturally they were mistaking the point of Walter’s little powwows as for the betterment of the writers and the building of community when really it was for Walter’s own intellectual satiation, and neither Walter nor the journeypeople knew that there was such a misunderstanding, despite the fact that both their intentions were clear (the journeyers thinking Walter was teaching them something by insisting he wasn’t trying to, Walter not really hearing them when they tried to discuss it with him). Nonetheless they were a raring success, and newcomers to Parallax understood that they wouldn’t get to meet Walter who was now a fairly impressive celebrity in that particular annularity unless they were really good, and were often surprised and thrilled just to meet kind of a great-great-apprentice of his, someone who’s learned from one of his protégé’s protégés, hoping earnestly to move up in this new weirdly unbeknownst-to-its-creator hierarchy. And of course these new rings of strength-based passion-enthused writing workshops with their new cohort of leaders were not limited to Walter’s geographic area, but instead were now popping up all over the country, like the Suzuki method.
So about the fact that on this particular evening in this new social milieu, Walter was drinking moodily away his woes about the magazine, you might be wondering, because it seems that Parallax is really popular, and it is, but the woes it brought him were magnified by the accumulation of guilt he felt by passing over so many submissions unexplored. Note, though, again that it wasn’t guilt that he wasn’t giving a writer his or her proper due. It was really a very self-interested urge that drove him to contact the person and explore with him/her the source of their creation; it was his own desire, craving, really, to find out where certain turns of phrase had come from, why they chose a particular gerund, what made them indent here and double-space there, in short, why did you do that—and the better the submission, the more inflammatory his curiosity, so his new time crunch brought about by the onslaught of submissions forced him to weed out the best ones sooner and with less deliberation.

But the woes that were magnified by that guilt were these: that it did not have the literary oomph to carry it out of its nascent years into a respectable adolescent. That words were passing before him, waiting in his inbox at this very moment, that offered clues to the questions that haunted him, and he was missing them. But the woe that burdened him most of all: that the critics were lying.
To generalize in the interest of brevity, he was not satisfied, but also not overly concerned about the trend toward mediocrity he had been seeing lately from his writers, either; these things wax and wane; what disturbed him profoundly were the responses that had been coming from reviewers who were usually quite harsh. Where they would normally laugh condescendingly at Walter’s editorial style and try to prove by their scathing scrutiny that his was a magazine for amateurs, a circus for self-conscious neurasthenic journalists, a pandering, top-heavy, lenient, quaint but ultimately unsustainable and ineffective support group (belied, surely, by their own attention to it)(the amateur part), they now sang his praises. They loved it. They raved that Parallax had never seen more talent and was churning out innovative, rocking new material that would surely launch it, once and for all, onto the path of becoming a national literary powerhouse (something he wasn’t sure he wanted, given his increasing unease with every incoming ignored email). They equated it to a new school of thought emerging in the literary tradition; they compared it to Semina and 1950s Manhattan coteries, celebrating the return of literature to the people, the meiosis of readers and writers. They threw around various studious-sounding names with varying degrees of legitimacy and pedantic self-importance; they had most recently agreed quite pompously on “reactive postmodernism,” dubiously heralded as a more respectable spin-off of hysterical realism, a phrase that meant nothing to Walter except the threat of complete misunderstanding, of passionate support for a direction he did not wish to take, of a near mutiny, of his position being compromised by the hype and imminent paparazzi and the type of weird glamour reserved for iconoclastic hermit-writers. Yes, that they could be lying haunted him in the extreme, the idea that they were doing this on purpose to deceive him and as a ploy to overthrow him was foremost in his mind, because really, that was what they had wanted, and this was the best way to do that, by lulling him into a sense of complacency and then…what? Instead of trying to pretend he wasn’t on the stage, as they had for so long, never bothering him, barely even reaching him with their pitiful attempts at savagery in his direction, while he was far too busy tearing through the poetry of people who might conceivably have some valuable insight; instead of pretending he wasn’t there, they (the critics) were shining all spot lights on him, making him squint and make mistakes, inviting onlookers to see his flaws in the bright light under which no literary house could stand. They proclaimed that Walter was finding his niche as an editor, that the publication had overcome the last of its obstacles as a grassroots organization and was now ready to continue expanding as a stable entity, ready to enter into a relationship of equals with universities, journals and MFA programs nationwide. Walter, they said, was a genius who inspired genius. And if it was a ruse, it was damn good one, and if they were trying to get him to fuck up, they just might succeed.

Yes, this concern did weigh heavily on his mind, but it would be false to say that it was powerful enough to stave off the aforementioned chaos that reigned too, the unannounced intruders on his mind that redirected his attention to something trivial; it was as if his mind were in cahoots with the critics and was sabotaging his efforts at formulating an intelligent response to this outside threat. Sometimes the chaos masqueraded as reasoning, and he did not realize that it was an imposter until it was too late, before his mind was off on another tangent, and all previous ones mattered not at all. He often found himself embarking on a long line of seemingly complex reasoning only to return to his original premise later and spot a glaring discrepancy, rendering the previous hour or two a waste, and then forgot what the premise and ensuing discourse was altogether. Or, other times, he would be enjoying a rather normal thought-train, but then without warning it would veer off track, into another train or off a bridge or in some other nightmarish metaphor that conveyed certain thought-death—what is this? Why such morbid imagery? Why so many mixed metaphors? Well, both are in keeping with Walter’s mind right now: it is dark, and dangerous, and haphazard, and subjects came and went like weather, without concern for whether he was interested in them.