Diary of a Temp

Chapter 26 - The Root of All Evil

2008-02-01T19:31:00.000-06:00

A church designed by Frank Lloyd Wright's son Lloyd

In the end, Maria Escalante had grown quite rich. Having spent most of her life without money she did not feel comfortable spending on herself and so she began to make donations. A lot of money went to the obvious charities most of it, she used to improve the various institutions she had worked for or been involved with throughout her life. For instance, a large chunk went to the school district where she had been a bus driver. There were new air conditioned busses, new desks, new chairs, musical instruments, and other things that perhaps would make going to school a little more exciting for the children.

She also donated, anonymously, to the Stirring Water Christian Fellowship enough money for them to get their own building with a sanctuary and a banquet hall, a nursery, sound system and overhead projectors. Even after that, enough funds were left over to pay for mission trips to the major gambling centers of the country and major starvation centers of the world.

While Stirring Water's official stance on their sudden financial abundance was that the Lord was rewarding the faithful, James McInnis, the church treasurer had seen the signed check and was suspicious as to why a woman famous for portraying the woman who invented prostitution was giving vast amounts of money to a small charismatic church. At the time, James was fairly young. He had married into the Stirring Water administrative structure two years after the donation had been received, and therefore had not been present when Maria used to attend church services,

The issue was never formally discussed, but the church had little trouble convincing itself that that the Maria Escalante who pretended to have the Holy Spirit so many years ago could not possibly be the same Maria Escalante who was the second Persephone. The one or two times someone mentioned that the famous Ms. Escalante seemed familiar, a Church elder would put his or her hand on the mentioner's shoulder, look him or her in the eye and say, "Yes, isn't that strange."

When the check first arrived in the mail, Mrs. Pole, the woman who sorted the mail, answered the phones, and vacuumed the worship area, was alarmed. She took the check right up to Pastor Ralph, who was laying hands on a young teenager who had shown up at a youth group basketball match the previous weekend. Mrs. Pole waited patiently in the doorway until the boy, his face wet with tears, was lead out into the hallway.

"See you on Sunday Moose," Pastor Ralph said to the boy. "And see if you can't get your mother to come along too."

Mrs. Pole shoved the young Pastor into the tiny prayer cubicle and held the check out in front of him. "Is someone playing a joke on us?" she asked.

"Huh," went Pastor Ralph. "Let's go find out."

Of course it was not a joke. An emergency elder's meeting was held that evening and the next morning the check was cashed. The following Sunday, after Moose and his mother demonstrated the power of the holy spirit, Pastor Ralph delivered a well organized and persuasive sermon, announcing the miracle of the mysterious church benefactor and outlining the plans for using the money with Christian responsibility.

It should be noted that a great deal of Christian responsibility was indeed exercised with Maria's donation. No one tried to use the money for frivolous personal gain. Mrs. Pole was given a much deserved raise. Some people in financial need were given appropriate assistance and of course the Church itself was improved in the ways already mentioned.

So for the two years before James McInnis found the photocopy of Maria's Check in the back of the file cabinet, no one had ever thought to question Stirring Water's miraculous windfall. James went on a secret investigation as to why Maria Escalante would give money to his church. She was known to be a philanthropist but she had a large foundation for such things and a personal check for such a large sum to such a specific little church could not have been given arbitrarily. James had heard rumors that Maria Escalante had lived in town for a brief period and upon further research was able to discover that fifteen years ago she had occupied a small house a few blocks from the church's original location and that the house had burned down.

Mrs. Pole said she remembered something about someone named Maria attending a few services in the early days but that she could not have been the Maria Escalante. It was Pastor Ralph who finally broke down and told the whole story to James. James was shocked at first, but Pastor Ralph was able to calm him down by explaining that the church's actions had been biblically supported and even pointed out the corresponding passages. "I see," James said, and then asked if he would be able to share about fiscal stewardship the forthcoming Sunday. "Not this Sunday, but the next," was Pastor Ralph's reply.

James McInnis' sermon two Sundays later was about a lot more than fiscal stewardship. In fact the focus was on hypocrisy and the terrible injustice that was done by the church to a then not-famous Maria Escalante. The sermon was quite long and went down unchallenged, thanks mostly to Pastor Ralph, who made a discreet peace sign to a furious elder.

At the end of the week a tape of the sermon and a long letter signed by Pastor Ralph and the Elders of Stirring Water Christian Church (that now included James McInnis, replacing one of the two elders who felt it best to find new congregations) apologizing, asking sincerely for Maria's forgiveness and an invitation to become and official member if she so desired.

Maria wrote back promptly, politely thanking the church for its concern and assuring them that she had never felt they had done her wrong. She also thanked them for the invitation but said she had grown quite fond of the services at the Anglican Cathedral, may God bless them all.

Chapter 25 - Finance

2008-01-24T21:04:00.000-06:00

a pneumatic door closer

The story of how the son of a television programmer and a librarian was able to finance a play like Persephone (although there is, of course, no play like Persephone) can be classified under fables about the Modern American Dream. Not the Classic American Dream where Horatio Alger leaves the farm to sell lemonade on a street corner in New York and uses his profits to invest in the production of his invention of the pneumatic device that keeps screen doors from slamming, but the Modern American Dream where the son of a television programmer and a librarian approaches an old man who made several billion dollars on his invention of the pneumatic screen door closer and convinces him to finance a ludicrously ambitious theatre project that would not even start performances for five years.

There are a number of occasions when Oliver Fagin Thomas has been reported to be visibly nervous but the most detailed account of this phenomenon comes from the section of Vincent Regula's memoir "Hold the Door for Me" that describes the day Oliver first approached him to finance Persephone. As the book is out of print and extremely difficult to come by at the time of this writing I have included an excerpt.

"I happened to be spending the day in my bathrobe. This was quite a nice bathrobe, green with a soft furry inside. I've never been able to find another like that one. I wasn't really thinking about my attire when I answered the door, but the young man who was standing there looked shocked. "I didn't wake you, did I?" I distinctly remember him saying that. He looked like his whole world view would have been invalidated had I said yes. I might have actually been taking a nap, I don't remember that but I know I just chuckled and shook my head and invited him in. This fellow had something about him that won my sympathy. He seemed nervous, but it was an honest nervousness, no attempts to pretend that he wasn't feeling what he was feeling. That's a rare thing to come across in a young man, and rare in anything but the best of old men, in women this can be annoying, there's a threshold of politeness past which the expressions of one’s feelings just makes those around you uncomfortable.

I thought this young man was doing door to door evangelism. He looked Mormon to me, but they always come in pairs. When I let him in I decided that I'd listen to what he had to say, argue with him to make sure he was reasonable and send him on his way. I sat him down in the sitting room. I used to keep a nice set of oversized leather chairs in there at the time. Very comfortable; good for talking. I offered him coffee, and he declined. This brought the Mormon issue back to my mind. To make sure, I offered tea and he accepted without asking about caffeine. That settled the Mormon question right there.

He told me that his name was Thomas. Still thinking that he was at my house for evangelistic purposes I assumed Thomas was his first name, had I realized he was there on business I would have known he meant his last. Still he didn't correct me when I called him Tom. "What is it you're here for, Tom?" I asked.

"Money." he replied. That was a lot blunter than I expected. I remember thinking whatever church he was peddling this was the only one I'd ever seen that was honest about its number one priority. He must have sensed my shock because he started to look ashamed.

"Tom," I told him, maybe too matter-of-factly, "I'm Jewish." The kid got pale in a way you might get pale when you think someone is going to tell you that he subscribes to a harmful stereotype about himself. "And while I'm all for religious freedom." After that he just looked about as confused as a mule in a genetics class. "Hell," I said, "I've always been open to hear someone pitch an idea about how the world works, but truth is I'm very fond of being a Jew and I'm not about to go writing checks to someone else's church."

"Church?" he said. I'll never forget the way he said that.

"Yeah, what are you? JW? You're not Mormon, I figured that out. You look too intelligent to be a scientologist and I'm fairly sure they don't go door to door. I give up." He told me weakly that his father was Episcopalian. I laughed; he sort of forced a smirk. "You're not here evangelizing, are you?" A person always gets a pleasant feeling when things start to make sense. I think our friend Tom got a pretty good sensation because he snapped right back into the role of healthy young man.

"No. Of course not. I want you to finance a play." I laughed even harder. He, of course, did not. "If this was any other play," he told me plainly. "I'd laugh right with you. There are plays that have cost a great deal of money and plays that have made a great deal of money. The play I am proposing is going to cost more money than any play before, but it's going to make more money than any company has ever made."

I've never been quite sure why Oliver Fagin Thomas chose me to be his financial backer. I've never achieved anything that anyone would call prominence. I was just an engineer who loved being an engineer. I once stumbled across a good idea and ended up with a few banks keeping records with awfully high numbers next to my name. I never knew what to do with all of that money. I just let it sit and accumulate--Pretended that it wasn't even there for the most part except to buy a nice bathrobe or sitting room chair on occasion.

I'm not sure why I felt so generous to Oliver. He was not the first person to ask for money but I had never given in before. Too afraid of giving anything to the wrong person I suppose. Not that I was worried about losing my fortune, but more because I didn't want to be scammed. I never once thought that Oliver Fagin Thomas was trying to pull one over on me. He was too honest, too confident for me to question.

That afternoon we went together to visit my lawyer. We set up Persephonia Inc. right then. I gave Oliver pretty much everything. I'm proud of that decision. The money certainly went to good use."

Chapter 24 - The Return

2008-01-09T20:13:00.000-06:00

Michigan Wines

Eleanor Thomas had been gone for twenty-one years when she returned for the opening night of Persephone. She packed enough clothes for the weekend into a carpet bag that had been passed down from woman to woman in her family since the civil war. She read Mark Twain on the flight over, and took a cab directly to the New Globe. She sat quietly through the play, after which she checked in to a moderately priced hotel and went to sleep. The next morning she woke up early, took the subway and made a surprise visit to an elderly aunt, taking her out to lunch before heading back to the airport and taking a plane back to Moscow. Oliver knew nothing about the trip until he received a letter in a peach envelope, attached to a case of fine vodkas.

Dear Oliver

I am writing to congratulate you on your recent successes. But along with these congratulations, which I assure you are most genuine and heartfelt, I regret I must also offer you a confession. My declaration of guilt is not based just on the fame and reputation of you and your work but on the achievement itself. To speak plainly I have seen the work. I apologize for not informing you and apologize even more for not visiting you while I was there, but I know how such things are and I cannot, in good conscience accept any credit for your achievement. Anytime a mother is brought into focus in a situation like this, she is invariably congratulated. I could not bear to be congratulated. You and I both know I deserve no congratulations. I have never put this into words before but I hope you have taken for granted the considerable guilt I keep in regard to your upbringing. I, in my infinite selfishness made far too many decisions that were detrimental to you. That you have become what I at one time most hoped for you despite all of my many many mistakes is to me only more evidence that I have nothing to do with the way you turned out. Still, I want you to know that I love you and I hope you have lots of people in your life who are much better at loving you than I am.

Your Mother.

Eleanor

Oliver sent his reply in a lime green envelope attached to a sample case of Michigan Wines.

Dear Mother

I know.

Your Son,

OFT

Chapter 23 - The Chinese Characters for 'Dialogue'

2007-12-26T14:57:00.000-06:00

Apparently the Chinese Characters for "dialogue"

Sally had spent the whole night practicing writing the Chinese character for dialogue. Not out of some desire to ingratiate herself with her teacher, but first with a genuine curiosity and soon after with intense fascination. Drawing the strange characters was not easy, even with her extensive calligraphy tools. She tried writing them over and over again, in pen, in chalk in finger paint. Her bedroom floor was covered with squiggles and boxes, few of which, to her, bore a satisfactory resemblance to what she was trying to create.

Here parents were concerned. To avoid any complications she told them that she was volunteering at an art program that taught post modern theory to Kindergarteners as a cover for her college career. She knew they would not mind her taking college courses, but they would never stand for the fake I.D., and enrolling in a college the correct way was far too inefficient.

What concerned them was the impenetrable distractedness she was displaying that evening. She kept staring at the wall, tracing strange shapes with her eyes. Food would fall off of her fork, which she would put, empty, into her mouth without seeming to notice. They had raised two teenagers before her, and had once been fairly normal teenagers themselves, they knew that there were two possibilities. She was either on drugs, or worse, in love.

But Mr. and Mrs. Pope were not ones to interfere with their children's lives based on circumstantial evidence so they let the matter go, with the intention of watching Sally's behavior a little more closely.

Sally convinced a maintenance woman to let her in to the classroom an hour early. She left the lights off, she wanted to feel the writing, and the more she could see what her hands were doing the harder it was to write. Her first attempt would have satisfied most Chinese people as adequate, Mr. Thomas certainly wouldn't have noticed that some of her angles were too steep and the proportion of the boxes in the second character was off, he had never seen "dialogue" written in Chinese before. He thought there would be one symbol and not four. Regardless, Sally felt that the attempt wasn't good enough, and, when she could still see the ghost of her failed attempt, unexorcised by the eraser she went to the woman's rest room for some wet paper towel.

Her third attempt satisfied her as a faithful representation of what she had only seen in one book and on a computer screen. No one who saw he writing knew that such perfection, such fantastic emotional expression in Chinese calligraphy, albeit in the uncouth medium of chalk would have made her a very famous person in China. The art form Sally had been searching for her whole life could well have been Chinese calligraphy, and that the circle with eyelashes that haunted her dreams was most likely the character jú symbolizing a bundle of wheat. This would seem tragic, had she not ended up being Oliver Fagin Thomas' most trusted assistant, and one of the very small number of people who could claim to have seen him naked.

Oliver had over the course of his life, three people whom he considered his assistants. The first was Langley Chelmsford, who in early elementary school was often seen on the playground with Oliver behind the large baseball backstop, writing things hurriedly in a notepad. The notepad was lost unfortunately, in a fire set by Langley after hearing that Oliver was leaving for Moscow. The fire also consumed several photographs, drawings and a set of miniature green plastic soldiers that were added just for the thrill. The second was the Pyotr, the doorman at the hotel in Moscow. This was really more of an honorary position based on the loyalty he demonstrated in the whole matter with the cigarettes, though Oliver has said that he would have been very useful if he didn't have other duties to occupy him. Sally Pope was by far the longest and most successful of the three.

The first time Sally spoke to Oliver, he was in dire need of an assistant. At this point the last details of the final phase of Persephone's composition was taking place and Oliver found he was increasingly using his spare attention span to analyze the work that his primary attention span was doing. He grew absent minded and unfocused while experiencing a profound entropy in all of his environments.

Oliver was criticizing his criticism of some particularly intricate dialogue when Sally came to his office to ask him a question. He looked up when she came in, his eyes followed her reflexively. She sat down without being invited and began talking. He instinctively nodded although his consciousness was actually putting off the task of observing anything outside of his own mind in a constant unthought, 'just a minute.'

His mental dilemma was resolved at the same time she finished talking. Oliver's external processing functions returned to him. A vaguely familiar, slightly pretty but awfully young, girl was sitting in front of him. He had the feeling she had just told him something very important and he had no idea what. He felt awful.

"Can you help me?" he asked. He did not know that was the exact question she had just asked of him. She thought he was mocking her.

"Is it inappropriate to ask?"

"I don't know," his reply was thoughtful he was still a bit stunned. "I suppose the age difference makes it a little bit questionable but I don't have any questionable intentions."

"Neither do I." she said. "No questionable intentions on my end."

"Do you cook?" he asked.

"I can follow a recipe."

"How's your memory? Can you organize a mess?"

"My memory is strong and I have an excellent sense of design."

"Will you come to my apartment tonight?" he asked, betraying a modicum of shyness.

"Yes," she said. "I will."

She did go to his apartment that night and continued to do so three nights a week and Saturday afternoons until she graduated from high school, after which she moved into a small wing of Oliver's estate. By then Oliver was more capable of taking care of himself but Sally's duties had broadened. She took on a large portion of the responsibility of planning and coordinating the details of the Persephonic empire. Perhaps they were too heavy for an eighteen year old girl who never really got a chance to experience life, but she was well paid.

Even years later, Sally's most important responsibility was that of being sure that Oliver woke up on time. A theory exists that Oliver's body needed extra sleep to compensate for having twice as many thoughts as a normal person. Although the exact mechanisms of sleep are not understood, even today, a good deal of evidence supports the theory that sleep plays a role in the storing and organizing new bits of memory formed during the day. Oliver was not an ideal subject to study for this theory, however because he was very busy and sleeping in would be a major disaster. None of this, however, changes the fact that, Oliver Fagin Thomas was very hard to wake up in the morning.

For the first few months, Sally needed between an hour and an hour and a half to complete the task. Conventional methods didn't work. Any kind of loud noise or jarring action would make Oliver retreat into an even deeper state of unconsciousness. They day she tried, out of frustration, to use ice water he curled up into a ball and refused to respond to any stimulus until the late afternoon.

Eventually, Sally discovered that the way to draw Oliver out of sleep was to take advantage of his innate curiosity. One of the first successful methods involved her simply sanding just outside of his bedroom door and whispering "you'll never guess my secret." After two days, however the subconscious Oliver had learned not to trust Sally concerning the subject of secrets and Sally had to try other methods. Eventually Sally found she could play a recording of someone reading a interesting book and slowly decrease the volume. If she did this at the correct rate, Oliver would be sitting up in bed with a hand cupped to his ear after a few minutes. This meant that she was always searching for new recordings that were both interesting and new to Oliver because anything not absolutely fresh would bore him and draw him in deeper. Anything, that is except the works of Dostoevsky which she found she could repeat every year or so, always with excellent results.

Chapter 22 - The Third Chance

2007-12-19T20:15:00.000-06:00

The Blue Canoe Saloon is much better than this.

Many of the people who are significant in the development of Persephone were present at the opening of the Blue Canoe Saloon. This is not really a coincidence as artists have come together in groups throughout history, especially in the history of New York City.

The nightclub was opened by a young interior designer named Francis DeLisle who had earned fleeting notoriety as a trendy interior designer. His particular style was to make a space seem grandmotherly. He was into brick-a-brack, ribbon candy and crocheted afghans. He put doilies on wing chairs and dusty ceramic lamps on end tables. He did all of this, not as a matter of personal taste but because he knew the style would be popular and would make him enough money to complete his dream of owning and designing a night club.

The Blue Canoe Saloon was an experiment in sticking to the strictest of design concepts. First of all everything was a shade of blue or yellow. No light was left unfiltered so everything had a green hue that changed in value depending on from which angle it was viewed.

Oliver was at the opening because Francis considered him a friend. Langley Chelmsford was there because he was at the time a much sought-after bartender. Cassandra Calo stopped by because of the event’s prestige, this is also why she didn't remember attending. She also attended disguise, something she did often and very well. This time she was dressed, rather unattractively in an expensive black and white polka dot designer two-piece, a false nose and a curly black wig. She went straight for the dance floor where she attracted as dance partners the less affluent, more ambitious single men, most of whom danced very well.

Oliver, who at that stage preferred to find hiding places at parties where he could observe unnoticed, and who all throughout his life drank far too much at social gatherings, found his way onto the catwalk from which the club's lights were hung and, securely fastened with a stage electrician's harness, lay face down next to the base of the largest disco ball and sipped scotch from his favorite hip flask as he watched people socialize.

Langley, who expected Oliver to be there but had not seen him arrive, spent the whole party looking over his shoulder whenever someone came in through the main entrance. He had a project he wanted to pitch to Oliver and had pilfered a fifth of twenty-five year old single malt to encourage acceptance. As it went, he ended up splitting the bottle with a business card designer who was a natural blond and whom Langley would immortalize in a book of poetry.

Oliver undoubtedly saw both Langley and Cassandra from his vantage point, and we can be almost certain that he recognized them both. Cassandra, though she was an actor of both great breadth and depth, was someone who worked within a style and Oliver by that time must have known that style better than his own genitals, and Langley Chelmsford has never gone unnoticed by anyone, anywhere.

Oliver must have had a reason for not connecting with them that night, and this is most likely not the same reason that he avoided Cassandra at the airport. The play was finished, the atmosphere was perfect, Oliver, Cassandra and Langley were all together in jovial creative moods. Persephone must have been trying to chisel her way out of Oliver's skull but for some reason, Oliver refused to let her out. The night of the opening of the Blue Canoe Saloon is extremely important and worthy of intense study because, besides being a lovely evening with fine music, excellent drink and the good time had by all, that night provides only evidence we have that Oliver Fagin Thomas ever doubted his own ability.

Chapter 21 - The Second Chance

2007-12-09T13:37:00.000-06:00

Children Interested in the Arts

The second time Oliver and Cassandra's positions intersected, Oliver was nineteen and employed as a counselor at Painted Rock Summer Camp for Children Interested in the Arts.

Age nineteen was the height of Oliver's attractiveness, his high school years had been too greasy and ungainly and after college he was always a bit too fleshy to be considered anything more than pleasant looking. At nineteen, however, in the summer Oliver was sun-bleached, a bit shaggy, an acting coach and swimming instructor, and consequently a person quite often whispered about, although he seemed unaware of this.

Cassandra Calo was quite aware of Oliver however, the night she performed at the camp. She was about to perform the role of Emilia in the last scene of Othello, but first she made a speech of her own writing.

"They asked me to come here to give you some tips on acting. I avoided laughing out loud (being an actor, I am able to control all of my natural reflexes) and I said yes. I will tell you now that there are no tips on acting. Acting is something that is impossible to teach, and impossible to learn from someone else. You probably all came to this camp expecting to learn how to act. I hope you all succeed, but understand that learning how to act is not like learning how to do long division or how to fix a car. Learning to act is more like learning how to walk; no one taught that to you. Maybe your parents held you by the wrists, but you figured out how to take those first steps on your own. That is all I am going to say, for the rest of the evening I will perform. Observe well so you will at least be able to recognize good acting if you ever see it again."

And then she went on to perform the scene fifteen times, each with a difference subtle nuance. Everyone at the camp said the lesson was the most educational experience of their lives. Everyone, that is, except Oliver, who was merely happy to find that all of his expectations of Cassandra's abilities were correct.

For Cassandra however, her superb focus and concentration were tested that evening. She had endured countless distractions in previous performances, coughing fits, telephones ringing, set pieces catching fire, even stage rushes, but that night she could not help but be distracted from the young man staring at her from the back of the theatre.

She had been stared at before of course, some would say that the only important part of acting is being able to handle being stared at, but something about the way Oliver was staring at her was different. He was studying her. Nobody had ever studied Cassandra Calo before, reviewed perhaps, observed certainly, but never studied. Cassandra could not understand what was going on and she was distracted, not completely, but there were a few upper levels of her consciousness that were focused on Oliver and his eyes. Oliver noticed this, but forgave her, she would learn in time.

Chapter 20 - The First Chance

2007-05-31T21:30:00.000-05:00

Underground Music

Oliver Fagin Thomas found himself within touching distance of Cassandra Calo on three occasions between first seeing her play Nancy in Oliver! and selecting her to be the first Persephone fourteen years later. Oliver was fully aware of Cassandra and her talents on each of these chance encounters, while she knew nothing about him. In fact, Cassandra has openly denied ever having been to the Blue Canoe Saloon, but there are at least two existing photographs that prove her wrong.

But the Blue Canoe Saloon was the third meeting, it is best to start with the first. The first time Oliver saw Cassandra in public he was twelve years old, and both of his attention spans were concentrating on other matters. He was in an airport, alone, as the cheapest flight to Moscow left during business hours at a time that was particularly busy for Oliver's father. John Thomas did as much as possible to make up for not being present at the moment of Oliver's actual departure. They had a raucous two-man party the night before, with take out Mexican food, a clip-reel of Oliver's favorite moments in the history of television, and a full glass of red wine for each of them. "Children drink wine in Europe," his father told him. "Russia has a history of not being able to decide if it is European or not, and just in case, you should try some so you'll know whether to say yes or not." Oliver enjoyed the wine, and would enjoy wine for the rest of his life.

Still, when the next day came, Oliver came to work with his father and sat in the lobby with his luggage until one of the studio's more responsible production assistants took Oliver and his bags to the airport.

Dan Krahulik, twenty years old at the time, was the Labrador retriever or young men. He was short, blond, had a bit of an underage beer gut and not really very intelligent but was extremely friendly. Oliver's happiness in seeing him temporarily overwhelmed his fear of the future and grief for the things he was leaving behind.

Dan hoisted the over-stuffed duffle bag onto his shoulder and it bumped against the back of his shins as he picked up the suitcase. Oliver carried his own knapsack and followed him into the large passenger van owned by the studio.

Riding in the front seat of the van, Oliver suddenly felt like he had grown older, this was one of the first times he had been in a vehicle without a real adult, Dan, certainly not a teenager, was not a real adult either. Perhaps part of the feeling came being higher than the other cars; mostly it was the music that Dan was playing. Oliver had been exposed to all kinds of music. He knew more about classical music than most adults and just as much about every top 40 popular song released since 1940. This music was neither, it was underground. Music imitating this stuff would be top 40 three years later but now it was undiscovered and raw. The 'fucks' were not bleeped out, but said with a recklessness that made them seem more honest than obscene. Oliver pretended to enjoy and understand this new form of cultural expression but in truth he was scared by how much it fascinated him.

This fascination, this newly discovered notion of the underground was still occupying Oliver's attentions in the airport. Certainly Oliver was experiencing many unpleasant emotional stresses at that time, fear of getting into a machine and flying over the ocean, terror of living in a new county, meeting his mother with whom he had never had a conversation in person, grief for leaving his father, but Oliver knew that he had just realized something very important; something that would change his life far more than this plane trip. Dr. Partee would probably say that this new idea seemed so attractive because it offered Oliver a chance to escape the horrible anxieties facing him, and that is an idea that must certainly contain some truth, but however psychologically complex the situation, a short ride in a white passenger van with no real adults, might have been one of the more important cultural events in the history of cultural events.

So, when Oliver found himself sitting directly across from Cassandra Calo in the airport waiting room, he took this as a sign that these new ideas he felt gestating in his mind's womb should cause him to rethink the entire play and the character of Persephone in particular. This is not to say that Oliver was superstitious, but instead that Oliver understood superstition. He had come to realize, perhaps prematurely that people need drama, and that if they want something to have meaning they will give meaning to something that is meaningless, they will find a mystery plot in the gasoline prices, a romance in the stock market, and a coincidence to be a sign from God. If Oliver was going to write the most popular play ever written, he was going to have to find the drama in its creation.

Oliver recognized Cassandra immediately; he knew that he was looking at the woman who would be his star actress twelve years in the future. He also knew that he had to pretend that she was only a stranger, because to make contact this early would ruin everything. So on this particular afternoon, Oliver could only watch Dan Krahulik flirt successfully with the future most famous woman in the world, while in his mind he started over from scratch.

Chapter 19 - Like Father

2007-05-26T21:35:00.000-05:00

Pointing to Eleanor Thomas as the Major earthly influence to Oliver's Genius is easy. She did intend to develop a child genius and she did have a genius child. Still, the amount of direct contact between Eleanor and Oliver is almost insignificant in comparison to the time spent with his father, John. Oliver's love for so-called higher culture is due almost exclusively to his mother's care but there is also a near certainty that Oliver's superior understanding of lower popular culture, and perhaps the genetic capacity for intelligence (if such a thing exists) came exclusively from his father, John.

John was a second generation television programming executive. His father George Thomas had been mildly successful developing the early situation comedies. John himself was most famous for helping make Saturday morning cartoons a cultural phenomenon.

He Married Eleanor when they were both 27 and Oliver was born just before his 32nd birthday. The idea of being a father was a great excitement to John. Upon learning that his wife was pregnant, he immediately, began to assemble an archive of all of the greats in children's programming that he kept locked up for a time when the new son or daughter would be able to appreciate television, and also perhaps to hide it from Eleanor who might not have understood.

By the time the archive came out, Oliver was eight years old. Every evening when the homework was done and the dishes were clean, John and Oliver would watch an hour of classic television together then the two would discuss what they had watched over dessert.

The discussions always began with John asking the same two questions. First, 'did you like the program?' and second, 'why?' The greatest sin in the two-man household was to say that one liked or disliked something 'just because.' There had to be a reason backing every opinion. This wasn't often a problem for young Oliver who had inherited his fathers propensity for considering many aspects of an idea. Often, if Oliver could not say right away why he felt a certain way he could make a hypothesis and intuitively find his way to something that rang true. John was very patient and encouraging and the evening conversations did much to foster a love of both logic and opinions that was a defining part of Oliver's character.

Chapter 18 - Because it is There

2007-05-09T18:48:00.000-05:00

The theatre must be absolutely dark. Cover the exit signs, bribe the fire marshal if you have to, but when the play starts there must not be one free photon in the auditorium. Of course we cannot provide for the light leaked by glow-in-the-dark writing on an audience member's wrist-watch, but therefore we must be all the more diligent in blocking the light we can.

It will help if you imagine the darkness first. Pretend that you are in the audience. You are there with your Mother or the girl that you met last week at the theatre when your coats got mixed up. Come up with a good story for why you are at the theatre, going to see this play in particular. Don't read any further until you have done this.

Now pretend you have been sitting in this dark dark theatre for, say, thirty seconds. Probably you are thinking this is the darkest theatre you've ever been to. You start to get a little bit nervous, perhaps because you can't see your proverbial hands. Most people at this point will think that they felt something strange about the lighting even when they had first entered the auditorium. This means that you have an observant audience because you have managed to tint all of the house lights slightly orange. And then, just at the breaking point when the slowest audience member has started to worry that someone could be stealing his wallet, just then, and no later, the curtain parts.

You see, the whole time the audience had been sitting and thinking and worrying in total darkness, behind the curtain, which is extra thick and hung with great care to not give this away, the brightest blue and brightest white lights you can afford are shining. The set itself, which is completely white is reflecting this ultra-bright light and it's bouncing around all over the stage trying with all its might to get through that curtain, which it can not do because the curtain is so well-sealed.

So with that in mind, when just the tiniest little crack between the curtain opens the excited light bursts into the theatre. The audience is momentarily blinded. And when their irises adjust they see what appears to be vast sheet of broken ice.

In reality they are seeing an assortment of 21 platforms all in various interlocking shapes. Each platform must be quadrilateral and between 1.5 and 3 feet thick. These platforms are also all suspended from the fly space by sturdy cables and can move up and down into different configurations when needed. Right now all of the platforms are resting on the stage. Things look very jagged and cold.

Once the audience has regained its sight, it is time for the actors. There are five characters, three of them male and two female and they enter in the following order.

James Masterson, 32 a novice professor of history.

Cynthia Van Loon, 28, author of a best selling fitness book.

Francis McStier, 18, college freshman and apprentice of sorts to Masterson.

Sid Cawley, 40, writer of creative nonfiction, adventurer.

Daisy Edison, 21, actress, and lover of sorts to Cawley.

They convene in the center of the stage, each person carries a large knapsack and stands on a separate platform. Daisy sits down, pooped.

SID: You all right Daisy?

DAISY: Yes, yes of course. I just wanted to have a sit.

FRANCIS: How far do you suppose we've gone Jim?

JIM: I'd say we're a third of the way up.

FRANCIS: (Writing in a note book) Day 3: 3:45 P.M. one third of the way up.

CYNTHIA: One third eh? I happened to have brought three bottles of champagne. I say we drink one for each third we go.

DAISY: And not save any for the way down?

CYNTHIA: Who cares about the way down? We'll have already seen the world from its highest point.

DAISY: It does sound nice. Just don't let Sid have more than one glass.

FRANCIS: I'd like some champagne.

CYNTHIA: You're not old enough boy.

JAMES: Of course he's old enough. This mountain doesn't have a drinking age. Give me that bottle. We're going to toast the mountain.

Cynthia takes a bottle from her knapsack.

JAMES: Do you need help with that Cynthia?

CYNTHIA: Of course I do not.

Cynthia lets the cork fly off stage left. The audience should jump at the sound, and before they have landed back in their seats, the loudest, most catastrophic noise your audience has ever heard in a theatre goes off.

The lights get brighter, the stage fills with mist and the platforms shake. Seconds later the platforms begin to shift into a configuration where each is at a drastically different height level. It is also of utmost importance that the five platforms carrying actors are at such a configuration that it is believable that none of the actors can see the others. From now until the final pages whenever an actor speaks he should be hit with a pure white follow spot. If he is not currently speaking he should be hit with an ice-blue follow spot.

Chapter 17 - A New Beauty

2007-04-09T21:27:00.000-05:00

a floral-themed outfit

Just slightly after the tenth anniversary of Persephone (which was not celebrated in any way) Oliver and Cassandra met for lunch between shows two and three for the day.

“You abuse me,” she said. “You know what I am good for and you make me do it anyway.” Then she got into her car and was driven away.

Oliver first realized at that moment—made of those words and that action—that nothing would make sense any more. He knew that she would not be back, he could tell by the way none of the people in the restaurant reminded him of her anymore. Still, he did not feel sad. Not too sad at least and he was practical enough to know that the best thing to do in that situation was to find another actress immediately.

At first, it seemed no one would be able to take on the role. They had all of course, seen and studied Cassandra. The board had narrowed the one million applicants down to the seven hundred who most looked and sounded like Cassandra. Each applicant tried very hard to imitate her. Her unique accent, her calculated gracefulness, her award-winning make up effects. A number of them imitated her very well and there were at least three, which even Oliver could not be sure, were not actually Cassandra. But he was tired of her. He decided that she did no justice to the spirit of Persephone.

Although it was only nine in the morning, he cancelled the rest of the auditions and walked down the street and into a small Laundromat. Immediately he approached a short, round woman in mismatched flower print shirt and pants. She knew who he was; everyone did, and blushed when she saw him. When he spoke to her she scowled.

“But Persephone is the mother of all beautiful women…the first prostitute, the inventor of fashion. I am not even attractive. No. I could never play her.”

“The concept of beauty has changed over time,” Oliver replied. “Beautiful women do not decide who is or is not beautiful, that is up to the artists... and I think the time has come for beauty to have a revolution.”

The round lady stood close to the closed curtain. She had begun to sweat and in an effort to top the nervousness, she looked at her feet. He had forbidden her to change her clothes or to put on makeup. He did not even let her see the script, saying he was sure she knew every line by heart anyways. Even though that was true, she did know the play right down to the lighting cues, she was afraid that she would not know what to do when the curtains opened.

But the curtains did open and the audience saw her, alone on the empty stage in her mismatched flower print suit.

They stared but she stepped close to the edge of the stage and bent down pushing her head as close to the audience as possible. She paused to stare back at them as hard as they were staring at her. The first line rang in her head: ‘I am Persephone.’ She thought about the line for a second. ‘I am not Persephone’ she thought. ‘I am not the mother of beauty, the first of the prostitutes, the inventor of fashion. I am not Persephone.’

She stopped thinking and spoke instead.

“I may not be what you expected to see but I don’t care. If you had expectations of me then you are a fool because I am Persephone. I have always been here, but you—you have just come here tonight. You have come to learn from me. And because—and only because—I am in a generous mood, teach you, I will.”

Later that evening the curtain closed and the audience when home to bed and in the morning everyone knew that Maria Escalante was beautiful.

Chapter 16 - The March of the Siamese Children

2007-04-02T19:06:00.000-05:00

Some production of The King and I

Cassandra's first time on stage occurred at the age of four when she played a yawning munchkin in a neighborhood production of the Wizard of Oz. At that time her name was still Siobhan Bobker and her performance went understandably unnoticed. This would not even be worth mentioning if the role were not the first in a decade of small shows in which young Siobhan was an invisible chorus child. From Siamese Child to Von Trapp child to Depression Orphan to Orphan Pickpocket she learned at a young age the importance of being part of a whole. We can be certain that, even at the age of four, Cassandra was in possession of enough of acting ability to captivate all of the community theatres put together, but something inside her told her to keep this to herself and to play the lowliest parts first. Besides, she could never have appeared on stage in a curly red wig

Chapter 15 - Russia

2007-03-13T19:51:00.000-05:00

Dolly, the cloned sheep

Moscow was a strange period for Oliver. His mother had grown to regret leaving him and did her best to make up. She was pleased that he could now speak and that although he may not be a child prodigy in any apparent way he was at least appreciative of the things of high culture. His education in his "Russian Period," as he would later call this phase of his life, was strictly informal. During the mornings, Oliver would read at the Stanislavski museum library. Lunch was a time to study the finest of the culinary arts and lasted two hours, an hour of eating and an hour of writing about what he had eaten. In the afternoons he was tutored by rotating college students in the more technical subjects of mathematics and physics that his mother had always believed were too masculine for her to master.

The house in Russia was in many ways an ideal atmosphere for a boy like Oliver but he always spoke of the period as merely pleasant. He would explain, if pestered, that Russia simply was not challenging, that he felt a bit guilty about having advantages over other children and the most of all he felt his life was false. False or not, the volumes of information that Oliver was able to absorb during that year and a half provided what has been described has Persephone's historical fullness--That quality that Persephone is the culmination of all of the art and history that preceded it, that no artistic revelation is unaccounted for. Perhaps we have Mrs. Thomas to thank for that.

It was also while in Russia the Oliver was ambushed by puberty. He had been well informed about the changes that would one day happen to him and they did not come early, but he had not expected the experience to be such an interruption. But once the first signs appeared he became secretly and shamefully obsessed with everything about his physical self. He would lie in bed with a hand mirror and examine himself for changes. Any difference excited him not just more obvious occurrences either. When his skin became oily, when his shoe-size changed. He would giggle with glee for every high note he could no longer hit. Becoming an adult made him so happy he was scared, mostly because he had no desire to be a prodigy. He was sure enough that he was as good as an adult in many ways, and he did not really have any desire to hold onto his childhood, he just found the status of child star to be tacky. He knew that premature fame was something that one could never escape and that worse than being subjected to the harmful effects of fame at a young age, after maturity he would be constantly scrutinized to see what permanent damage those effects had caused. He saw that the world treats a prodigy who has grown up like a cloned sheep. The world feels guilty about having created such a thing, and wants to find a definitive excuse not to make the mistake again.

It may seem unrelated, but since we are on the subject of cloning, Oliver Fagin Thomas had the particularly odd reputation for being a supporter of cloning of all kinds.

"People are against cloning for only one reason, and that is fear," Oliver is recorded as saying in his first Nobel Prize acceptance speech. "And I think that is wrong. I will never understand not doing something because we don't know the consequences. Pandora is going to open the box. I see that some of you are surprised about that one. I can see you thinking that opening the box was a bad thing, that because of her opening the box, evil, pestilence, famine, and all that were released upon the Earth. That makes me very sad, I am always sad when someone stops reading two sentences before the end of the story. The story of Pandora's box is not the story of a girl who can't control herself and do what she's told and then unleashes pestilence upon the world. The story is about a girl who, despite the fears implanted in her by others, ventured into the unknown and, because of that bravery, allowed hope to come into the world. Sure murder and hate and body odor slipped out too, but so what? Isn't hope worth it?"

When the newspapers printed their reports they replaced Oliver's speech with someone else's speech from the year before. Only the people who were there noticed the difference, but the Nobel Prize crowd tends to be a polite, unassuming group.

Chapter 14 - Other People's Children

2007-03-06T21:13:00.000-06:00

Maria Escalante was not Costa Rican either, but this school bus is.

Maria took a job driving a school bus. At the interview, she was worried that the school board would look into her record and not trust her with the safety of children but fortunately, the issue never came up and she was offered the position on the spot. She decided right then and there that she would not let seeing other people’s children every day would not make her sad, but instead she would concentrate on being the best of all possible bus drivers. Maria had concentrated on a lot of things in her life but before she had become a bus driver, external circumstances prevented her from getting any benefit out of her focus. However, though she never realized it, she did actually become the best of all possible bus drivers.

The big city school district had a hard time assigning drivers to routes for any extended period of time. The sort of people who were willing to drive pre-pubescent children around town for near minimum wage generally had neither the work ethic nor the strength of character to stay in the position long. The children in Maria's bus had already seen seven drivers that semester. They still talked about the one who would call sports talk radio to scream, the lady who cried all of the time, the mean one who gave assigned seats and did a graffiti inspection at each stop before anyone could get off. The other three were frightening unspoken memories.

But when Maria drove, the kids looked forward to taking the bus. She was the first driver they had seen who actually knew their names and she never had to call anyone young man or young woman. The kids felt that she really knew them and she understood the children in a most un-adult kind of way. She may not know the names of the latest cartoon characters or the popular T-Shirt band but she understood why the kids liked them, why they were important.

She was also very good at divining the flavor of each child's family life and knew how to provide, just by driving the bus, whatever the child missed the most. For some kids a smile was all that was needed. For some it was a steady voice of reason. With one child in particular she found a way to pack him a lunch each day and give it to him without anyone noticing.

On her fifth anniversary of being a bus driver, Maria’s boss gave her a card with a gift certificate for the local coffee shop. Maria didn’t drink coffee but she enjoyed the cup hot cider and cinnamon doughnut very much

Chapter 13 - Sally

2007-02-28T19:41:00.000-06:00

Red Circle by Pablo Picasso (no blue eyelashes though)

For most of her young life, Sally Pope had been a struggling artist. She did not struggle with money, she had plenty, but with art. She knew that she wanted to be an artist but had difficulty finding a medium. She was not lazy or fickle or unfocused. It would be more accurate to say that she had a very strong, beautiful feeling in her head and she wanted only to be able to get it out, to make it physical, to substantiate it. This is probably not an uncommon phenomena. Sally herself thought she could recognize it in others. There was a rock singer whom she admired, and every album had one or two odd songs that on their own may have seemed like filler, like a B grade song. But all of them together felt like a desperate attempt to say one thing. That each of those songs might capture just a little bit of the song that is trapped in his head. She had a theory that Monet painted the same haystack over and over, not because he was experimenting with the way seasonal and daylight changes affected the scene but because each haystack painting contained something that was almost right. Unfortunately for Sally she had never had the luck of even being able to glimpse some substantiation of her idea.

This is evident in even the earliest artifacts of her childhood. There exists a collection of thirty-seven finger paintings, the powder paint flaking off, that Sally did in kindergarten, all some sort of variation of a red circle with blue "eyelashes" It is not immediately evident upon viewing these pieces that they contain the red circle with blue eyelashes because on most occasions the painting was so far away from Sally's idea of beauty that she obliterated the work with formless scribbles. They are very attractive formless scribbles, but formless none the less.

Christmas of her sixth year, she received the camera she had begged for. She had been allowed to take five pictures with the family camera on a field trip to a farm in the country. The adults praised her picture-taking skills and Sally was overcome with the hope that through photography she could find the thing that was missing. The camera was attached to her eye for three weeks before the thought occurred to her that when an adult praised a six-year-old's art, this did not mean that the art was any good or that said six-year-old had any talent, and the camera fell into disuse. When she was twenty-four, Sally came upon the five farm pictures and was surprised to find them to be of gallery quality.

The art forms progressed from there at a rate of about one per year. At seven she explored pottery; all red pots and blue handles. At eight decoupage, but she ran into copyright problems. At nine, textiles. At ten, sculpture. Eleven, dance. Twelve, music. Thirteen, poetry. Fourteen sculpture again. Fifteen, literature. Sixteen, at last, Drama.

Sally would be the first to admit her early plays were dreadful. Most of them centered around a hero or heroine who happened to be, or to be stuck inside, a red circle with blue eyelashes. This in itself was not the cause of the dreadfulness, however. Not that the plays weren't well-conceived, nor were they trite, or impossible to stage but Sally simply lacked any talent for writing dialogue. It seems likely that Sally would have given up trying to express her idea altogether at this point. It is possible, that upon realizing that she did not have an essential talent, after ten years marked by realizations that she did not have essential talents, Sally would have given up. She could have thrown herself into sports, or schoolwork or boys or romance novels. Or else she might have moved on to yet another art form, to fashion design or macramé. She, of course, did none of these things. Instead she got herself a fake I.D., quit her job at the art gallery, and enrolled in a college course entitled "The Art of Writing Dialogue." The class began with an in depth study of Plato's Dialogues, and then through all of the famous dialogues in drama, with the goal of trying to figure out what made them famous. This was not unhelpful to Sally and she felt that she was beginning to understand, and might have quite soon actually mastered the art of dialogue if the professor, suddenly called away to play Prospero on the West End, was not replaced by a young graduate student with the oddly paradoxical name of Oliver Fagin Thomas.

She fell in love with the way he lectured first. He did nothing but speak, there were no overhead projectors, no chalkboard, and no handouts. He would just stand in front of the class and speak, and not a memorized speech, or even a preplanned lesson, but he would simply tell the class things that were true and things that were memorable. Yet another amazing stroke of fortune lies in the fact that the original dialogue professor had stressed the importance to a student of dialogueology of always carrying a mini cassette recorder on his or her person. And to add to the fortune, of the thirty-six students who listened to the advice, seven of them had brought their recorders to class on Oliver's first day, two of whom had the presence of mind to record the lecture, and therefore audio of what was said on that day is available in stereo. However, being able to read a transcript of the lecture is also a valuable privilege, and therefore a selection is included here:

"You are here because you want to learn about dialogue. I know that you have studied for weeks now, and I'm sure that you can tell me a lot about dialogue, and unfortunately, being able to tell someone a lot about dialogue and actually being able to create good dialogue are almost mutually exclusive.

"Dialogue is words of course. What kind of a word is 'dialogue' though? I'll tell you this: it's a weird word. I almost could say that it is a stupid word, but not quite. 'Dialogue' is a hard word to spell, a hard word to pronounce if you haven't heard it. Those are not bad things. Most likely they're good things. If anyone ever tried to make all words easy to spell and easy to pronounce then we might as well be speaking Chinese.

That probably sounds offensive, but trust me it's not. Much can be said about the Chinese Language. Chinese would be a stupid language if it was like English, but thankfully it is not. Those of you who have taken linguistic classes are probably itching to tell me right now that there is no such thing as a stupid language, and I'll tell you that you forgot about French.

But we're talking about Chinese and how it would be stupid if it were English. By that I mean if they used a phonetic alphabet, and if they didn't have tones. The next time Chinese people are sitting next to you in the diner, listen to them. The language is not 'ching chang chong' at all. These people are singing all the time, and if they want to put a word on paper, they don’t' stick a bunch 'letters' together. Look at Chinese characters some time. Really look at them. After a few minutes they stop looking like someone tried to make waffles without enough batter and you'll realize that this is what words should look like.

Has anyone seen the Chinese character for dialogue? Someone out there learn how to draw the Chinese character for dialogue, come to class early and draw it on the board for me before next class."

Sally was that person. Actually she was one of a dozen people, but Sally got there first.

Chapter 12 - Affective Memory

2007-02-17T12:45:00.000-06:00

Konstantin Stanislavsky as Dr. Astrov in Uncle Vanya

Cassandra sat in the alley and cried. Her costume floated atop a puddle of motor oil. The motor oil floated atop a puddle of water. Her hands rubbed the dampness into her face, smearing a mixture of makeup and tears and sweat that beaded up and ran down her neck as though her flesh was melting.

Oliver watched from a window above. His feelings we're not clear. He had warned her against the evil of affective memory. He had banned the practice from his theatre and he had believed that Cassandra, more than anyone, would be able to resist the temptation.

"I didn't mean to do it. It just happened to me." was the last thing she said before she ran offstage sobbing. The chorus girls sat frozen in their positions, one or two of them crying without moving. Oliver did not look at her or follow her or stop the rehearsal. He simply moved his eyes across the auditorium, recording the moment for his gallery of experiences.

Finally he walked away himself, out of the doors at the back of the theatre, and up to his office to watch her from above.

"You should go talk to her," said Sally who had been sitting unacknowledged at her desk. "You push her too hard."

"I never push," said Oliver. "That would be unnatural."

Chapter 11 - Act I, Scene 1

2007-02-10T14:50:00.000-06:00

Rosetti's Proserpine

Lights are very dim and golden. A red piece of fabric, perfectly round, covers the slightly raised, square stage. In an instant, pure bright white light hits the fabric. Looking at it directly is quite difficult. The center of the fabric begins to bulge, it is being blown upward by a wind of unknown origin. The fabric seems to stretch as it takes the shape of a tower. Soon the stage is dominated by a red phallus of cotton. The wind stops and the phallus falls. The fallen fabric reveals the shape of a woman. The fabric is sliced open from the inside by a large sword, PERSEPHONE, pokes her head through the slit.

PERSEPHONE: I am Persephone, the first of the prostitutes, the inventor of fashion, and you have come here to learn from me. You men, you women, you have never seen what I can show you. You have never heard what I can tell.

A chorus of twenty young girls encircles her. Each wears a long thin cord and carries a large sheet of fabric dyed a slightly different shade of red, they drape the fabric on her, some around her waist some around her arms,

CHORUS: (singing) Teach us. Teach us. Teach us.
PERSEPHONE: Teach you I will. But all my lessons begin with weaving.
Persephone holds out her hands and golden ropes descend from the ceiling. The girls split into groups of two. One Girl from each pair holds on to a rope, the other cuts it with her sword. Soon every couple is holding onto a rope and stretching it across the stage. The first five line up their ropes in one direction, the next five line up perpendicular to that and they do a dance jumping over and crawling under ropes until they have woven a net.

PERSEPHONE: The invention of weaving is the beginning of all things. The weave is the first pattern made by man for man’s own benefit. Under over under over under over and it all becomes fabric. Before there was fabric there was not fashion, there was only skin.

Chapter 10 - A Time for Every Purpose

2007-02-06T21:45:00.000-06:00

King Solomon and The Queen of Sheba

In bed one night, when Oliver was old, his mind was warm with the flowing liquid ideas of someone who is searching. He felt, although he could not say why, that he must justify his art, not to a court of humans, for his work had been scrutinized, venerated and even in these late times, remembered, but to some unnamed thing, some creature that stands guard at the mouth of the river of all art--a justification of Oliver’s soul to be admitted into that river.

One question bubbled to the top, burst and fell back down like a raisin in ginger ale: Did originality exist? This question was being asked by the part of his imagination that, at this moment, had become King Solomon.

Solomon stood, balanced on the edge of a blank sheet of paper, reciting Ecclesiastes. Oliver sat below, at first only watching and listening. But then in a fit of boldness, he interrupted the king.

"Everything is new,” he said.

Chapter 9 - Reinventing Fashion

2007-01-29T19:29:00.001-06:00

A word of warning: Although I'm fairly sure my sister and cousin are the only people who read this, the following chapter contains some rather crude language. Pardon me if I bring offense, I am not a vulgar man but, I assure you, my work is.

Current U.S. Poet Laureate, Donald Hall

Langley Chelmsford held a press conference when he was chosen to design the costumes for Persephone. “I am honored to have been chosen for this most difficult task. In fact, this is the most difficult costuming assignment ever: to create clothes for the inventor of fashion. Persephone’s clothing must be absolutely free of all influences. There can be no Japanese style embroidery or turtleneck collars. Even the very notions of “shirt” or “dress” have to be abandoned."

This choice was extremely controversial, especially in the world of fashion, as Langley Chelmsford was not a fashion designer at all, but a rather infamous poet.

"Only a poet would be able to unlearn enough of history--to ignore enough of influence--to be able to understand what must take place in order to create Persephone's clothes. And only a buffoonish hothead with no regard at all for human decency would be able to do the job correctly," was Oliver Fagin Thomas’s official (and only) statement on the matter.

Langley had first become famous when he read his poem "Heil To The Chief" at a presidential inauguration. He had not been invited to read this poem on this particular occasion. He had not been invited at all, although a man by the name of Boggs Henry had. Boggs Henry was the Poet Laureate of the United States that year and, like most Poets Laureate, no one knew what he looked like.

What really happened that morning will probably never be known. That Langley Chelmsford actually kidnapped Mr. Henry has not been proven, although irrefutable evidence exists that he knew of the Poet Laureate's little known weakness for gin and large-breasted women.

When the master of ceremonies introduced Boggs Henry, and Langley Chelmsford approached the microphone no one suspected a thing. Although some have said they remember thinking he seemed handsome for a poet, no one seemed to think it odd that a member of the ceremonies would chain smoke on stage either. It was not until he actually began to speak that world realized something was amiss:

Heil to the Chief

Let us tear the stars and stripes
And bend the stripes into a swastika
And pin the stars
to those tightwad kikes
those diseased fags
those brainless niggers
those lazy wetbacks
the sluts who kill their babies
and the welfare sluts who don't
and the evil a-rabs
don't forget the retards and the poor
and the kids who can't do chin-ups

Let us shred the constitution
And spread it out on the floor
To soak up the piss and shit
Of the fat southern pigs
Who use the Lord's name in vain.
And while were at it
Let us elect as our Chief a
Syphilitic with one testicle
Who rapes his sister and eats the fetus
Who keeps little boys in a wading pool
And make sure he fiddles.
Who would notice another horse in this senate?

To punctuate the ending, he drop-kicked the microphone into the crowd and thumped off stage. Although the incident was the focus almost the entire world's attention for the rest of the day, the news did not break until the next morning that the author and performer of Heil to the Chief was not Boggs Henry at all and another three days went by before the real poet was located and identified.

Chelmsford made his next public appearance on a television talk show where spoke passionately about the country needing to be exposed to poetry again, and how the president was coddled prince who didn't know anything about the real world except how to spend money and destroy things. He refused to read any more poetry saying the world wasn't done digesting the first one yet, but he didn't seem to mind when three weeks later his first collection of poems, The Maiden with the Golden Cunt Hair became the top selling book of poetry that century.

Like most things having to do with Langley Chelmsford there are a lot of theories about how he became connected to Oliver Fagin Thomas, and eventually Persephone. It is widely assumed Thomas, like the rest of the world, first heard of Chelmsford the night of "Heil to the Chief" and was so impressed that he had to have the poet in his staff. Anyone who does even the smallest amount of research into the subject, however, will find a large number of coincidences, including that the two were in the same third grade class, and that Chelmsford spent at least two summers in Moscow while Oliver was living there.

A book, Secret Friendship: Langley Chelmsford and Oliver Fagin Thomas was published around the time the two men were turning sixty. The book has a lot of interesting anecdotes, such as Thomas spent considerable energies trying to cheer Chelmsford out of a severe childhood depression, and that Oliver had shown his friend early drafts of the Persephone. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the book also puts forth the preposterous notion that a connection of a sexual nature existed between the two, and now no one even remembers who wrote it.

Chapter 8 - Flight

2007-01-21T14:31:00.000-06:00

How many attention spans do you have?

Oliver was on a plane for the first time in his life. He was disappointed in the way all of the passengers and airline employees seemed to take flying for granted. He wanted to stand up on his seat and shout to everyone: “Put down your magazines. Put down your cheap thrillers. Turn off your computers. We are flying. We, who seemed bound to the Earth, are flying. Gravity has no power,” but Oliver had not yet gained the courage to shout at strangers.

When the stewardess asked that everyone close the shutters on their windows, Oliver left his open a few centimeters. He pressed his eye to the crack, covering his head with his blanket so as not to disturb the movie. He used both of his attention spans as he imagined Persephone, a giantess, marching along the clouds, winning back the rights of women.

Chapter 7 - Selling In

2007-01-14T19:39:00.000-06:00

Fresh out of college, Cassandra decided to do a favor for a friend and star in a commercial. She sat up late the night before studying the roll of toilet paper she was going to advertise until she felt she could describe every sheet.

The commercial’s director, who was only doing the job for the opportunity to make a music video, was a little impatient when Cassandra asked for a moment of silence before the camera rolled, but other than that the commercial shoot was boring as usual.

Two months later the commercial aired and everyone watching that particular channel at that particular time, stopped what they were doing and just stared for the thirty second duration. The next morning, “that girl on TV” was the number one office and schoolyard conversation topic. At first the toilet paper company was ecstatic, planning an entire series of Cassandra ads, but when the focus group surveys were turned in, not a single person had noticed what brand of toilet paper was being advertised. More than half of the respondents believed the commercial was for hair dye. At this point none of these statistics even mattered, for Cassandra was way beyond the possibility of ever doing a commercial again.

Finding the right vehicle to launch her career was a difficult task. Most people involved in the film industry were afraid that she would take the focus away from everything but her presence. One ambitious producer even tried to get Cassandra to tour the country just appearing in theatres and holding toilet paper. Actually meeting her changed his mind. “People don't want to see me,” she said. “Not the physical presence of just normal Cassandra Calo but her stage persona. That's not something I can just turn on and sell. That would be immoral.” She didn’t have that ability to do that anyway.

Chapter 6 - Conversationalism

2007-01-05T22:03:00.000-06:00

Jean Piaget, Developmental Psychologist

John C. Calhoun Elementary School had adopted the philosophy that social skills were equally, if not more, important in a child’s education and, as a consequence, Oliver Fagin Thomas was cause for concern. Oliver’s teachers could not help but feel there was something wrong although his behaviors did not fit any of the “social learning disorders” defined by Dr. Partee’s influential book, The Adolescent Socialite. He excelled at sports, especially those that required gymnastics or rope climbing. He was good looking for his age, neither to thin nor too fat. He dressed well and was never seen picking his nose.
Perhaps if Dr. Partee had met Oliver at age eleven or twelve he would have added a new chapter to his book entitled “nobody likes a ten year old cultural elitist” but the famous Brooklyn child psychologist was too busy peddling his system to American school districts to do much actual field research these days.

This is not to say that Oliver was a snob, for one of his distinguishing characteristics, even at this developmental stage, was the ability to see great social significance in even the most common forms of entertainment. Oliver was notorious for giving reports to the class on the myth-basis and morality of the current fad cartoon or explaining the exact reasons for the current Top 40 single’s seemingly unparalleled catchiness. Had his classmates actually been willing to enjoy the things that were popular instead of just acquiring them, then perhaps Oliver would have been of use to them, but alas, this was not so.

During the forced random pairings of “conversationalism lessons,” Oliver was often reported to be doing nothing to encourage his conversation partner to speak. In reality the other children had made a pact never to actually listen to anything he said, ever.

Six months of teacher's worries led to a conference with Oliver, his father and the school psychologist. Oliver sat in a red leather chair in the corner. The two adults looked silly to him, neither saying what they meant, trying to find etiquette-approved routes to their desired destinations.

“I think that he may be acting out in an effort to replace his absent mother,” said the Psychologist.

“I don’t think I would quite call that acting out, seems to me more like he’s not doing anything.”

“Yes, yes, I see your point. Still, when was the last time he saw his mother?”

Oliver remembered last seeing her on television the week before. She was marching in the May Day parade. Oliver always looked for news from Russia; he had a notebook in his bedroom where every night before bed he recorded the average daily temperatures for New York, Moscow, and (just for comparison) Athens, Georgia. If on a particular day, New York and Moscow had the same temperature, he was happy to know that he could share something with his mother even on the other side of the Earth. He brought in the notebook one day when the class was learning about graphs. Oliver had gone home one night and charted all of his weather data. He showed the notebook to the teacher, who praised his neatness but explained that he should not show the book to the whole class because complicated line graphs like Oliver’s weren’t taught until at least the sixth grade.

Oliver’s spare attention span had been so taken up by this memory that he had stopped listening to the conversation in front of him. He was still reliving the teacher’s rejection when he felt his Father tap him on the shoulder. Oliver stood up and looked at his Dad. His Dad smiled down at him and said, “Well, what do you think? I’m sure you’ll enjoy the trip, and maybe you’ll make some new friends.” Oliver smiled back and nodded. Three weeks later, alone and on a plane to Moscow, Oliver vowed that he would never let himself get caught up in reliving a memory again.

Chapter 5 - Ally Ally Sauerkraut

2007-01-02T23:02:00.000-06:00

a playbill

Allison Sauer, or Ally Ally Sauerkraut, as she was sometimes known, was famous for being the biggest Persephone fan at Jimmy Carter Elementary. Allison's father, Peter Sauer, had served in the navy with some of the sailors who served as stage hands in Because it is There and because of that connection, Allison was taken to see Persephone at an age that caused several other parents on the block to gossip.

Allison had heard that the show was for adults and the idea of seeing it made her slightly nervous. She had once seen an R rated movie in which a young woman died of cancer and it had made her cry for hours. She also remembered, when she was very young, going to see a cartoon about a mouse that gets separated from its parents. The movie had made most of the children in the packed theatre cry but not Ally, she just thought that they were stupid. That is what she was afraid would happen to her. She was afraid that she would cry and everyone in the theatre would think she was stupid. The fears of course were groundless. Although there are parts of Persephone that are undeniably sad, Oliver Fagin Thomas would never abide by members of the audience actually crying. It was just a play after all.

Though, perhaps to Ally, Persephone was a bit more than just a play. Perhaps, the experience was more of a transformation, although a transformation that took some time. The day after she saw the play, she brought the program into school, ostensibly so she could read it over during lunch. She carried the playbill around the building in such a way that everyone could see, without looking like she was doing so on purpose.

The first person to notice, noticed on the bus. Simone Jefferson, with whom Ally shared an assigned seat, said that her Mother had seen the play and had said she might take Simone for her birthday. "You'll love it," Ally said and letting her hold the program. The situation was repeated throughout the day; someone would recognize the logo on the front of the program and would ask her if she had seen the play. She would tell them yes, and that it was wonderful--the first time she had given a standing ovation.

The last period of the day, her Science teacher, Mr. Braundy, saw the program on her desk. He told her that once he had been to see the Royal Scottish Tattoo and that it was quite a spectacle. She told him she was sure it must have been, and kept the program in her bag until she got home.

After that, Allison's obsession with Persephone grew more subtly. After a few days, the initial excitement wore down and a true appreciation of the play developed. She would be performing a task that had once seemed mundane, and suddenly see how the task related to Persephone. Soon she was mentioning these connections in class, perhaps sometimes too often, but by the second semester everyone had grown used to Allison's zeal.

As a sixth grader and therefore an important role model, Allison had established a following of younger girls who tried to impress her with their knowledge of obscure Persephonia. And Allison, being both easily influenced and a girl of some integrity practiced the moral tenets of the play in all her life, and therefore, accepted even the most pathetic wannabe into her circle.

Convincing an elementary school to adopt the first of the prostitutes into the pantheon of acceptable subjects was not an easy task, but Allison fought strongly while still in fourth grade for the permission to wear Persephone’s fashion wardrobe in the classroom. The principal, having recently returned from a conference stressing the importance of conditioning young children to persuasive writing was himself persuaded to allow the children to present their arguments on Persephone’s educational merit with a mandatory three-page essay.

Allison’s essay was so convincing that she was asked to give a reading at a school-wide assembly. Her oration resulted in subsequent sightings of teachers in Persephone gear and of the dubbing of the aforementioned sauerkraut name by some of the boys who had trouble understanding their true feelings.

Chapter 4 - The Exercise

2006-12-28T22:29:00.000-06:00

Oliver mounted his first play at age seventeen. He openly admitted that this was not a serious piece but an exercise, a way to find out how things worked before he began to make the play. “Because it is there” was already controversial before there had even been a rehearsal.

Oliver insisted in hiring only experienced sailors for his technical crew. Members of the local stagehands' union circulated rumors that Oliver was only interested in the sailor’s uniforms and as a consequence no one answered help wanted ad. But Oliver was not discouraged. He went down to the shipyard and recruited his stage hands personally. He talked to them about the revolutionary nature of the play in his mind. He openly criticized modern theatre as being in the hands of social misfits with nothing to say to real people. He said he wanted to start anew with true craftsmen. He told them about the history of sailors working in the theatre and showed them the complicated schematic of ropeworks he would need them to operate. Most effectively he emphasized how cool it was to hoist set pieces around the stage. It also helped that he paid the sailors more than the actors.

"Because it is there," has three acts but runs only forty three minutes. The action follows five acquaintances on a mountain climbing expedition. Early on, the characters get separated in such a way that each thinks he or she is the only one missing from the group. The characters spend most of the play climbing alone and philosophizing about whether to act as a group is better than acting individually until the end when they are all reunited at the mountain's summit and lament that they have no more mountains to climb.

The set consists entirely of twenty platforms of various dimensions, suspended from the fly space above the stage. Each of these platforms can be raised and lowered into different configurations by a complicated series of ropes, weights and pulleys. At least one platform is moving during any moment in the play and there are two occasions when all of them are moving at the same time. This precise choreography was achieved (after a lot of practice) in this manner: Each sailor was given a radio with headphones and a "script" for his particular platform. A series of ten ascending notes in equal time intervals was played over all of the headphones simultaneously and the script for each platform listed a level (indicated by a letter between A and J) for the platform at each interval.

For example, from the script for platform seven:
Platform 7
Start at I.
Wait six beats.
Move to H.
Wait sixteen beats.
Move to F.
Wait one hundred and sixteen beats.
And so On.

Being an actor in the play was slightly more complicated. To be in "Because it is there" one had to be able not only to act on a platform that moves up and down but to have such precise timing so that his or her movements coincided with the placement of the platforms.

It is probably not necessary to say that opening night was a disaster. The fault did not belong to any one person. Everyone involved was just a little bit nervous and the combination of twenty-six people being just slightly off with their timing led to quite a bit of falling. Luckily no one was hurt. Less luckily, though perhaps deservedly, the play received a reputation for being impossible to mount and only a small number of people were able to actually witness the stunning profundity of the work. Of course the play comes nowhere near the stunning profundity of Persephone but then nothing does.

Chapter 3 - Cassandra

2006-12-09T18:58:00.000-06:00

Patti LuPone as Nancy in a 1984 Production of Oliver (age 35)

Cassandra Calo was a stage name. A little bit too obviously a stage name was the opinion of the other theatre students but Cassandra did not care. “Theatre is artifice,” she would say. “People don’t really want to see real people on the stage, they want to see actors--actors with pleasing alliterative names.” She was good enough at acting that she was allowed to call herself whatever she wanted.

Even at nineteen years old, Cassandra brought something to the stage that was different. The origins of her style were often debated and the opinions can be divided into two major schools, the first saying she had taken the naïve staginess of 17th century pantomime, added the gracefulness of the Balinese Topeng theatre and then toned everything down to where the style seemed almost natural. The other argued that she had copied the style from a maid in an obscure sit-com that ran for only three episodes in 1964. Cassandra herself always insisted that something just happened when people were watching her. Whatever it was, watching Cassandra act was like hearing that special effect that they do on that Cher song. The quality of the song is questionable but you listen in anticipation of that fascinating sound.

Although, just a freshman, Cassandra was given the role of Nancy in “Oliver!” The part fit her well, as she looked to be seventeen but had the voice of a woman much older. The mix of maturity and innocence in her presence meant that the production could forgo the usual practice of casting Nancy as woman in her early thirties, and there by sticking to the novel’s concept of the character, who was both less and more shocking than the one in the play.

The Character Nancy was brought up in an acting class discussion a few weeks before opening night. The girl who played Bette, a rather jealous senior, opined that Cassandra should be able to justify Nancy and her actions in a post-feminist world. Despite the professor’s suggestion that such a justification is really up to the author, Cassandra walked to the front of the classroom, proceeded to sit down on the professor’s table, crossed her legs, rested one elbow on her knee and propped her head up with her hand. She then established flippant eye contact with Bette and began to speak.

“Nancy has two tragedies. The first is that she is abused by Bill, the second is that she is abused by class-ism. Neither of these, in my mind have much to do with feminism at all. In fact, her song ‘as long as he needs me’ is really just a rehash of Julie’s “My Bill” from Showboat, or perhaps, a prelude to the song. The point is, is that in order to understand these songs, you must really understand acting.

“The song is essentially a soliloquy, a woman talking right to the audience, and in this case, Nancy is telling the audience a lie. She is saying that she will stay with Bill because he needs her. She is saying that staying with Bill is a selfless act. The real question is will the audience believe her. If they do, the actress has not done her job. This song should not be applauded, it should be booed.”

The audience did boo. People who witnessed the performance have said that they had to continually remind themselves that they were watching a play in order to keep from leaping on to the stage to set the poor brainwashed girl straight.

Chapter 2 - Maria - Part 2

2006-12-01T09:39:00.000-06:00

That week Maria had to take the bus across town to get to church from the hospital. On the bus, she wrote a long letter to Sister Agnes, explaining the story and asking for prayer that her youngest son would survive the burns. He was the only child she had left, but she wanted God to help him and not her. She felt so sad and helpless but she knew that God could help her son.

She gave the letter to the Sister Agnes who read it immediately. Sister Agnes gasped then shook her head and looked sad. She told Maria that she would show the letter to Pastor Ralph and the elders immediately.

Pastor Ralph directed his entire sermon at Maria and her story. He said that faith in God and the Holy Spirit could save her son and that if Maria had any faith, even the size of a mustard seed, that her son would be completely healed. He asked Maria to come up to the front of the church and even though she was afraid she went. They had Maria kneel down and the elders put hands on her shoulders and they prayed loud and long that Maria would have enough faith to save her son. They said that fire happened because God was angry with Maria but that he spared her son as a chance for Maria to be saved.

Maria wept and chanted and sang. She begged for the Holy Spirit to give her faith. She begged earnestly and with all of the passion she could muster. She begged and shouted until her throat was soar and her voice was raspy. Then the whole church hugged her and prayed for her again.

After Maria had gone back on the bus, Sister Agnes said to the Pastor Ralph that it was wonderful to see someone so taken up in the spirit and that she just knew that God would save her son. Pastor Ralph made that serious eye contact that they must teach in seminary. He told the Sister Agnes that he sincerely hoped Maria had enough faith for God to save her son, but he was afraid that she might not have the spirit because she had not spoken in tongues.

Maria called Sister Agnes on Thursday to tell her about the final funeral arrangements. Sister Agnes told her she was sorry but the church was very offended that Maria had gone up to the front of the church and pretend to want the Holy Spirit. That she must have been faking or her son would have recovered and that she was no longer welcome at the church services.

Chapter 2 - Maria - Part 1

2006-11-18T16:11:00.001-06:00

Maria Escalante was not Spanish. She did not even look Spanish, though she had when she was a child. It was recently discovered that her father was a gypsy and her mother was Jewish but Maria, having been raised in no less than thirty-seven foster homes and knowing nothing about her heritage, had always just assumed that she was Spanish. The name had been assigned to her by a state agency when she was two, and she never had any problems with it.

Maria went to Stirring Water Christian Fellowship every Sunday. She had chosen a charismatic church because she enoyed watching excited people screaming and hollering more than the sedate catholic masses she was forced to attend while living in foster home numbers six, seventeen, twenty-four and twenty-eight. She was too shy to actually take part in any of the revelry and if anyone had ever asked her, and she was answering honestly, she would have said that the she thought they were all pretending, but she loved to watch the congregation dancing and waving flags and weeping. To Maria, these services were a wonderful pageant about what God could do to you if you let him.

The other members of the church paid little attention to Maria who always sat in the back and would blush and shake her head if asked a direct question. In the first three years she attended Living Water Christian Fellowship she was only mentioned at a church meeting on one occasion. An elder's wife, who had seven children, expressed the opinion that Maria was a homeless woman who just came in for the coffee and bagels and said if she wasn’t going to participate in The Spirit then someone should ask her to leave. The pastor portested that Maria was not hurting anything and pointed out that, even if she wasn’t all together sane, after years and years of witnessing the power of The Lord, The Spirit might one day fill her and she would be saved. The other church members felt that the Pastor was right and they agreed to leave the matter to God.

Maria’s favorite part of the church occurred about two thirds through the service, after the sermon and before the prophecy, when one of the church ladies would take up prayer requests. Sometimes this woman would call up one of the church members who was having a problem and she would put one hand on his or her shoulder, point the other toward the ceiling and would pray out loud for The Lord to provide a solution. Once Maria had seen the lady pray for a young man who had cancer and the next week the man stood up and said that he did not have cancer anymore. Maria did not think that her problems were important enough to have someone tell God about them so she kept them to herself, but she always prayed earnestly for the other people during the service and each night before she went to bed.

Then one day Maria’s life fell apart. She had gone to the grocery store around the corner because upon starting to make Macaroni and Cheese for her three children she had discovered that they were out of milk. She left her oldest son in charge. He was thirteen years old and trustworthy having watched his younger brothers and sisters on several occasions before without incident.

The trip should have taken less than ten minutes but the man in front of Maria's grocery line made a rude comment to the checkout girl and she called the manager. The rude man got very angry and the manager and two stock boys had to drag him out of the store. All of this took some time and then Maria remembered that she had left the stove on. When she called her son from the pay phone, no one answered.

Chapter 1 - "The Thomas Family" - Part 2

2006-11-09T22:40:00.000-06:00

Shani Wallis as Nancy in the 1968 Film Version of Oliver!

Oliver proved, to his mother’s disappointment, to be a decidedly normal infant. He was quiet and well behaved, attending his mother’s lectures, concerts, poetry readings and foreign films, with a benign passivity if not the keen interest she had hoped for. At first, with her husband’s encouragement, Eleanor adopted the philosophy that Oliver’s infant brain was still in the process of congealing and that all she had exposed him to would soon become a part of his mind 'like the vodka in a jell-o shot.' But on his third birthday Oliver had still not spoken his first word and Eleanor took a position as head archivist at the Stanislavski Library in Moscow. She left her son and husband in America.

John Thomas, quickly enrolled his boy in the day care center at the television studio where he worked. Each day John went to work, Oliver was put in front of a television for 8 hours of child-psychologist-endorsed children’s programming. By the end of the first week he was speaking in complete sentences.

At nights and on weekends, John Thomas, who had a tendency to be an optimist, devoted himself to the role of the loving single father. He tried to make up for Oliver’s unusual beginning by engaging him in what he considered traditional childhood activities such as visits to the zoo, puppet shows and cartoon-themed pizza restaurants. Every evening, father and son enjoyed friendly chats in front of the television and once a week, they wrote a letter to Eleanor explaining how they missed her, but not to worry they were getting along fine without her.

Nothing else worth noting happened to Oliver between his mother’s departure and the fifteenth of April, 1986. That day, the teacher, a Mrs. Hermann was explaining the significance of April fifteenth as tax day and she brought in copies of her tax forms to be passed around in class.

“See that very small number at the bottom of form w-2? That is how much money I made last year,” was what Mrs. German was saying at the precise moment that form w-2 was passed to Oliver. He stared at the number, wondering if anyone had ever counted that high. Right then, Oliver felt an urge to attempt the feat himself and he began to count silently in his head. He counted all through the lesson, through lunch, recess, the history unit, the story on the carpet, the bus ride home, dinner, prime time television, while he slept and so on.

In the end it took him two and half days to count from one to a second tier elementary school teacher’s salary. He might have finished sooner had he not taken the time to visualize each bill as he counted. When Oliver imagined himself placing the last of the dollar bills on top of the pile, he happened to be on a class field trip to a community college production of the musical Oliver!

Somewhere in the middle of the song “Who Will Buy,” Oliver realized that he was special. Not because we was able to count to five figures or even because he could accurately imagine what that many dollar bills looked like, but because he was able to do all of this and still concentrate on his other daily activities. Oliver realized that he possessed what amounted to two attention spans. He could devote all of his attention to two different tasks individually with no loss of concentration on either. As he realized this, his other attention span was discovering that he was in love with the young woman on stage playing the role of Nancy.

Somehow Oliver made it through all of the events of his childhood with a practical mind a even though he was six, he decided right then that he must take full advantage of his gift. He made two (simultaneous) promises to himself. One, to devote one of his attention spans to writing the most popular play ever written, and two, to one day marry that beautiful young woman. That he was only able to accomplish one of these tasks does not make his life any less remarkable.

Chapter 1 - "The Thomas Family" - Part 1

2006-11-02T22:40:00.000-06:00

I wonder how many blog posts begin with "I haven't posted in a while?" I won't do that, I will just say that I am endeavoring to serialize the "novel" I've been working on for several years now in hopes that it will get me to think about it more concretely and eventually, if all goes well, get me serious enough about it to come up with an ending. Some of the chapters are long so I'll split those up and some are small so they will stay intact. Also it doesn't really have a title. I usually refer to it by its nickname "Persephone," though it was originally called "What Was Once Abuse" and I've been thinking lately of calling it "And Not We Ourselves."

I hope to add an installment every Friday.

Here goes nothing,

Ian

Chapter 1
The Thomas Family

Stanislavsky as Gaev in The Cherry Orchard

Few people remember that Eleanor Thomas was famous of her own right even before she gave birth to the most important playwright since Shakespeare. A self-improvement book she had written entitled, “Your life in Art” appeared on a few best seller lists and led to a number of talk show appearances. The book, “an insightful, even ingenious plan for living a well-ordered and inspired life,” according to the London Review of Books, was based on the writings of the great Russian actor and director Konstantin Stanislavsky. Eleanor’s method, however, had very little to do with acting. Instead she drew on Stanislavsky’s ideas about inspiration, relaxation and “lines of action” to create a philosophy from which, she claimed, “all people, through concentration and discipline can become commanding players on the world stage.”

Mrs. Thomas’ opponents criticized her ideas as overly simplistic and “advocating phonyism,” but the open-minded reader will find much about the book worthwhile, even when considered separately (impossible as that is) from the life and works for her son. Some of the stronger ideas in the work are Mrs. Thomas’ assertion that if a person desires a change in his or her personality he or she must behave as if this change has already happened and through discipline and practice this change will become an first an emotional truth then, shortly after, a truth in reality as well. The book also puts a great deal of emphasis on setting an ultimate goal and then defining a clear path in which everything one does moves one forward toward that goal. The most inspired chapter of “Your Life in Art,” however, is the section on inspiration itself. “We cannot control inspiration,” she wrote. “It is a force not unlike the weather. But anyone who cares at all about the great benefits of an inspired state will do well to be prepared for inspiration when it does decide to rain down upon us.” I would go so far as to say that anyone who cares at all about Oliver Fagin Thomas will do well understand this philosophy; at least as much as it pertains to his infancy and early childhood.

Eleanor Thomas’ first and only pregnancy occurred at a time of a harsh critical backlash against her book and it seems that she viewed her unborn child as the perfect proving ground for her theories. Eleanor spent most of the first trimester devising a system for giving birth to the most inspired child possible and over the final six months of gestation, she exposed the growing fetus to as much culture as possible. Some of this was achieved by the more obvious methods of reading and playing music into her belly but she also did a great deal of traveling specifically with the intent of breathing a variety of types of air. Some who knew her at the time have noted that the expectant mother could very often be seen simply describing out loud everything she could see in minute detail.

Eleanor knew early on that she was going to have a boy and, after careful deliberation, decided she would name him Oliver Fagin Thomas. Naming her son after the hero and villain of her favorite book, she thought, would create a child who could understand contrast and conflict--two ideas that in combination often lead to inspiration. She was often asked if the brutally evil Bill Sikes would have been a better choice of a middle name, as Bill was nothing but a negative character while one could feel sympathy for the crafty Fagin. “I would never associate my son with that horrible killer,” she would reply and hear nothing else of the argument.

The moment of birth was planned out in intricate detail. Oliver was to be born at home and a small party was arranged to welcome him into the world. A brass band was hired to play a welcome march and a group of fifteen friends were invited to attend. Noisemakers were to be distributed as the guests drank champagne and ate from a buffet table stocked with the finest delicacies of international cuisine. Although Oliver would not be able to eat any of these things, he could at least begin his life smelling them.

The room was absolutely dark when Oliver arrived. The doctor delivered him into a wading pool of warmed saline solution and the baby was allowed to float, still receiving oxygen from the umbilical cord, in absolute darkened silence for nearly five minutes as the band and the guests and the buffet were brought into the room.

Then, on Eleanor’s signal, the baby was lifted out and the strobe light turned on. The noise of the band, the cheers, the popping of corks and the fireworks drowned out his first cry.

Anytime Minutes

2006-03-19T18:53:00.000-06:00

Lisa makes sure that her cell phone plan has plenty of anytime minutes because, she told me, most of the time she is unhappy with the people of the present.

Last Tuesday she thought it would be a good idea to call her grandmother's Great Aunt Ida, who lived on a farm in 1863. Lisa had first heard about Aunt Ida in bedtime stories and she showed such fascination with the ancestor that she was presented with Ida’s diary on the eve of her sixteenth birthday. Aunt Ida had been the first woman elected to city council in the state of Wyoming. Even though women could not vote in 1863, there was no law prohibiting them from running for office, and also no law prohibiting women from refusing to sleep with their husbands if they did not vote for Mrs. Ida Mae Hopkins. Unfortunately the telephone was not invented until 1873 and poor Aunt Ida had to spend a week in bed because of the horrible ringing in her ears. Lisa stopped calling when she read about this in the diary.

Over the weekend she called her great grand daughter's best friend. Her name will be Lupita and, in the year 2102, she will be 12 years old. Lisa, not wanting Lupita to know she was from the past, pretended to be doing a survey about drug use in twenty-second century adolescents. It sounded like Lisa's great granddaughter will already be smoking a half a pack a day by the time she is thirteen. This worried Lisa for most of the afternoon but at dinner she decided that if cigarettes are still around one hundred years in the future then they must have found a cure for cancer.

Last night Lisa called the Lisa she had been when she was in high school. The phone contract had strict warnings against calling one's past, but Lisa knew that the sixteen-year-old Lisa, who aspired to be a state representative, would never recognize the soap-opera-addicted, furniture-polishing, wife of a youth-pastor-who-did-not-believe-in-birth-control and consequently mother of six, she would become. Old Lisa did not talk to young Lisa very long. Not wanting to risk changing history she tried the drug survey act again, and was surprised to discover that she had been a terrible liar.

This morning, Lisa called me. I am actually a caveman named Pelto. A few years before I wrote this, I found a rock that was making a ringing noise. A noise I would later learn was a ringtone of "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" from the musical Showboat. I picked up the rock and when I put it up to my ears I heard someone speaking a language that I would also later learn was English. I know that may be hard to believe, but I have a lot of spare time as my wife does most of the hunting. Anyways, I first started talking to Lisa a few weeks back. She called me by accident, (This happens a lot--my phone number is 3.) but we hit it off. She calls me now almost every day, tells me about her life, and keeps me up to date on all of my favorite soap operas. Yesterday she told me about a doctor on a talk show who stressed the importance of keeping a journal and I thought I'd try it. This is my first journal entry. Come to think of it, it's probably the first journal entry. I promise to write in it every day.

Pooh Sticks - an attempt at a poem

2006-03-13T20:11:00.000-06:00

Pooh Sticks

The equidistant pines are
more conjured than those
of the second growth.
Rows for running down
and proof of endlessness
while tennis shoes, red that year
or black, not quite touching
the needle sponge.

And the hill. What grass
would be if we let it
and always wet. Tumbles taken
here and here and back
in the woods. Abrasions
often showing under the hems
or as bridges over tan lines
will be gone by September

Then where the horse bridge was
but isn't now but still where
where a girl, haircut crooked,
crooked teeth, father
with a forest beard and the son
who will not describe himself
dropped sticks into the river
and watched them come out on the other side.

Thrive - Part 10

2006-03-05T18:47:00.000-06:00

INT. CAFETERIA - DAY

Bill sits at a table by himself. He has a newspaper and a plate with scrambled eggs, toast and a slice of cantaloupe.

The headline of the newspaper says: "Hospital Director Resigns."

Bill looks down to his plate and picks up the cantaloupe. He takes a bite.
The headline of the newspaper now reads: "CDC: "Aluminum not responsible for memory loss."

Bill is holding a honeydew, there is a bite taken out of it. He takes another.
The headline of the newspaper says: "Bill Janus indicted in hospital scandal."

Bill puts down the paper and uses a knife and fork to cut his steak. Someone coughs behind him. He turns his head and June is standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes. She wipes the back of her hand on a dish towel.

Bill picks up the copy of Gray's Anatomy he has been reading. He looks at a picture of the liver.

Bill cuts the liver and onions on his plate. The sound of people clicking knives on water glasses makes him look over.

Janice sits next to him, she is wearing a wedding dress, he is wearing a tuxedo, he leans over and kisses her. He closes his eyes. When he opens them, he is kissing June, she is wearing a negligee.

Bill is in bed with June, he is wearing purple satin pajama bottoms. June is asleep. Bill gets out of bed and sits down on the floor Indian-style.

Bill plays with legos wearing purple flannel pajamas on the floor of the hospital room. A very old man sits on the bed watching him.

OLD MAN: Do you love me Solomon?
BILL: Is that my name?

Bill looks at the old man for a response. The old man looks confused, he is trying to find words to say.

OLD MAN: Well...um...ummm.

The left side of the screen starts to turn blue in an irregular moving patch. The patch consumes the old man and becomes a vaguely human shaped patch of blue.

BILL: Is that my name?
PATCH OF BLUE: Do you love me Bill?
BILL: Do you love me Solomon?

The patch of blue is now green.

PATCH OF GREEN: Kilimanjaro

Bill sits next to Solomon, everything else is white.

BILL AND SOLOMON: (simultaneously) It's hyphenated.

The patch is now a circle, the color shifts from blue to green and changes in diameter.

CIRCLE: Willy-um-Janus. Solly-mun-Janus

Solomon's face is very big. His lips don't move, his eyes blink rapidly.

SOLOMON: Butler-Janus. It's hyphenated.
CIRCLE: Solly-um-but-ler-willy-mun.

Bill and Solomon's heads are fused together at the back, Bill's face on the right, Solomon's on the left.

BILL AND SOLOMON: Janus.

Absolute Chaos. Several bits of the film overlapping each other, in increasing states of digital decay. Sounds from before, sometimes lines said by the wrong people, nothing disctinctly audible though. Everything progresses toward absolute white which is achieved about thirty seconds before absolute silence.
Credits come out of the white in a neutral gray and scroll to both sides of the frame from the center.

THE END

Thrive - Part 9

2006-03-03T17:31:00.000-06:00

INT. BILL AND JUNE'S KITCHEN - DAY

JANUS: Happy Anniversary.
JUNE: What?
JANUS: Thirteen years right?
JUNE: Thirteen years?
JANUS: January 17th.
JUNE: Thirteen years since what, Bill?
JANUS: Since we've been married.
JUNE: Two years, Bill. Three next June.

Thrive - Part 8

2006-03-02T16:08:00.000-06:00

INT. JANICE AND BILL'S BEDROOM - DAY

Janice and Bill come into the bedroom, it's nine o'clock in the morning and they have just returned from staying up all night in the hospital. Janice goes to the closet and starts to undress. Bill stands in the doorway and looks at her.

JANUS: I can't do this anymore.
JANICE: I know how you feel. It seems impossible that this is happening.
JANUS: No, you don't. You don't know how I feel. This isn't an expression of frustration. I seriously cannot do this any more.
JANICE: What choice do we have?
JANUS: There are some people who are able to do things like this, there are people who can suffer through tragedy and feel like it makes them stronger. I'm not one of them.
JANICE: How do you know? How have you suffered before this?
JANUS: You, I think, are one of those people. You can be the hero in this, the patient one, the longsuffering one. I'm the villain here, I know it. I am designed to be the asshole.
JANICE: You need to go to sleep Bill, we have to go back in four hours.
JANUS: I am the weak one, the one to hate. The one that had to be lost. You can be the one who was somehow able to make it. The woman who's only son is in the hospital, who's husband left her, just when she needed him--
JANICE: What?
JANUS: Who's husband left when things started to look bad, he just dropped her, left everything there his son, his house, and found another life, another woman to live with.
JANICE: Stop it. Bill. Stop it.
JANUS: Who never saw him again.

Janice picks up a shoe from the ground and throws it at him.

JANICE: Quit it right now. How can you say those things?
JANUS: Who fought against him, begged him to stay but he wouldn't listen. When she held onto his feet when she punched him as hard as she could-- which is not very hard, she's a small woman--he pushed her away, he ran, he literally ran out the door, slammed the car door as she stood on the steps crying until she collapsed.
JANICE: Why are you doing this to me now. Stop. Please stop, I can't take this.
JANUS: You can. It's me who can't take it-- and he backed out of the driveway looking her in the eyes the whole time. You see he never had a soul, never really loved her, or his son, and he had to get out.
JANICE: Get out!

Thrive - Part 7

2006-03-01T12:51:00.000-06:00

INT - JANICE'S KITCHEN - DAY

Bill and Janice are preparing food for Solomon's birthday party. Solomon, now fourteen years old is in the dining room, he has a basket of crayons in front of him. He is coloring pages in a coloring book. He draws overlapping squares of color, disregarding the lines on the pages..

Bill cuts beef and chicken into chunks for shish-kabobs, Janice is cutting the vegetables.

JANUS: It was two days late, they don't even charge a late fee for five.
JANICE: You think it's late fees I'm worried about? Bill, that was two days thinking that you had abandoned us, or that you had died, or worse.
JANUS: What's worse than that?
JANICE: There are things worse then death.
JANUS" Yeah, I've heard that before, but nobody can ever tell me what they are. I don't think there's anything worse than that. No matter how much you've accomplished…
JANICE: Don't try to change the subject.
JANUS: No, Janice, this is the problem, no matter how much you've planned and prepared, when you go, there will be something you never did, some part of being alive that you have never experienced. While you're alive there's at least the possibility that some day you'll do it, but when you're dead, you're nothing but a list of what you didn't do.
JANICE: (sarcastic) You know what, you're right, every time I think of Martin Luther King I think of all the things he didn't do.
JANUS: He doesn't think at all any more, he doesn't exist; everything we know about him is made up--what someone else thought about him. Even stuff he wrote down, we only know what it means based on what we think ourselves.

Thrive - Part 6

2006-02-28T12:12:00.000-06:00

EXT. JANICE'S BACK DOOR - DAY
Bill tries to open the back door to Janice's house but it's locked. He picks up the doormat. Just dirt under there. He looks in the potted plants--nothing. He reaches up over the top of the door, there's the spare key.
He unlocks the door and puts the spare key back.

INT. JANICE'S HOUSE - DAY
Bill walks quietly and carefully through the kitchen into the living room.
The phone rings, startling him.

He walks straight back to a coffee table, opens the drawer. The drawer is full of junk, which he pushes aside, retrieves a photo album, messes the junk up and closes the drawer.

Bill locks the door from the inside before leaving.

EXT. JANICE'S NEIGHBORHOOD - DAY
Bill walks through the back yard, cuts through the neighbor's yards and walks around the corner to where his car is parked.

INT/EXT. BILL'S CAR - DAY
Bill sits in the driver's seat, the photo album is on the seat next to him. He looks at it sitting there. He looks back in the direction of Janice's house. He picks the photo album up.

EXT. JANICE'S NEIGHBORHOOD - DAY
Bill goes back through the neighbor's backyard, this time a little girl is playing in the sand box. He ignores her and goes through to Janice's yard. The little girl runs into her house.

EXT. JANICE'S BACK YARD - DAY
Bill reaches up and gets the spare key to the back door again.

INT/EXT. JANICE'S CAR - DAY
Janice is driving, talking on her cell phone with a hands-free device.

JANICE: I'll be there soon, call me at home.

INT. JANICE'S HOUSE - DAY

Bill walks through the kitchen quickly and into the living room. He opens the drawer. He hears a car pull into the driveway.

JANUS: Fuck.

He puts the photo album back into the drawer, closes it.

He runs back through the kitchen to the back door.

He opens the back door. Janice is standing with a bag of groceries looking through her keys.

JANICE: Bill.

Thrive - Part 5

2006-02-27T15:29:00.000-06:00

INT. BILL AND JANICE'S KITCHEN - DAY

Bill winces in expectation
Janice squeezes his fingertip, a drop of blood bulges and starts to run. Janice catches the blood on a blood sugar test strip.
They wait in silence. The blood sugar test machine beeps. Janice looks down.

JANICE: (pleading) Bill.
JANUS: I’m sorry.
JANICE: Drink some water and walk around the block.
JANUS: I know.
JANICE: You’re like a little kid sometimes.

INT. SOLOMON'S BEDROOM - NIGHT
Solomon lies on his back on the top bunk of a sturdy white bunk bed. He stares at the ceiling. His breathing is heavy. He rocks his knee back and forth nervously with increasing speed. Soon he is breathing faster and faster to the point of hyperventilating. Janice approaches the bed.

SOLOMON: I think I'm going crazy.
JANICE: Go take a hot bath.

INT. BATHROOM - NIGHT
Bill sits in a bathtub. Condensation drips from the mirror. June paces back and forth outside the door with a cordless phone to her ear.

JUNE: I don’t know...an hour ago?

Junes disappears. Bill gets out of the tub, dripping. He dries himself off.

JUNE: At his age?

Bill closes the bathroom door, and turns the lock.

Thrive - Part 4

2006-02-26T13:07:00.000-06:00

INT. BILL AND JUNE'S BEDROOM - NIGHT

Bill is undressing down to his boxers. June is brushing her teeth. She spits.

JUNE: I love you Bill.
JANUS: I know June. I always know you do.
JUNE: Bill. He loves you too. Don’t worry.
JANUS: That’s what everyone says. That’s what Janice said.
JUNE: Janice was there?
JANUS: No. On the phone. Don’t worry.
JUNE: I don’t.

Thrive - Part 3

2006-02-25T21:22:00.000-06:00

INT. SOLOMON'S HOSPITAL ROOM - NIGHT

The chart on the bed reads "BUTLER-JANUS, SOLOMON TOBIAS"
Janus sits on Solomon's hospital bed, a cell phone to his ear. Solomon has emptied the bucket of all of the Legos.

JANUS: Janice Butler please.

During the pause, Solomon removes Legos from a small area of the floor and puts them back into the bucket. He curls up in the empty space.

JANICE: (on phone) Hello?
JANUS: It’s Bill. I’m at the hospital.
JANICE: Where in the hospital?
JANUS: In his room. They let me in.
JANICE: When?
JANUS: A few minutes ago.
JANICE: How is he?
JANUS: He hasn’t responded to me yet.
JANICE: You have to ask him direct question.
JANUS: I...I know that. I just wanted to watch him first.
JANICE: You should talk to him. He loves you.
JANUS: I just wanted to call you first.
JANICE: Don’t worry Bill, he won’t break.
JANUS: I wanted to let you know I was here, in case...so you would understand if he mentioned me or something.
JANICE: They would have told me. They keep a record.
JANUS: You’re right. I’m sorry. Sorry to bother you.
JANICE: No, it’s Ok. I understand. Don’t worry about him, just talk to him.
JANUS: I...I will. Thanks.

He hangs over and looks at the boy who is still curled up, his eyes are very wide open.

JANUS: Solomon?

No response.

JANUS: What are you making Solomon?
SOLOMON: The blocks fit together.
JANUS: That looks like a dog...Is that a dog?
SOLOMON: No. It’s blocks.
JANUS: Do you love me Solomon?

Thrive - Part 2

2006-02-24T11:56:00.000-06:00

INT. KITCHEN - DAY
Bill Janus sits at his mother's kitchen table with his mother.

MOTHER: Why ‘Solomon?’
JANUS: After Janice’s Uncle.
MOTHER: Why’s he so great?
JANUS: He died as a baby.
MOTHER: You’ve named your first child after a failure to thrive.
JANUS: A second chance to thrive.
MOTHER: Solomon Janus...Solomonjanus...Kilimanjaro.
JANUS: Simon Butler-Janus.
MOTHER: Mother’s maiden name as a middle name. Just like you.
JANUS: Butler-Janus. It’s hyphenated. His middle name is Tobias.

Thrive - Part 1

2006-02-23T21:08:00.000-06:00

INT. WAITING ROOM - NIGHT

BILL JANUS sits on a waiting room bench in a hospital. He stares into the camera, his eyes questioning the audience from the very beginning. Why are they watching him at a time like this? Why is there a time like this? He is staring like he knows that he has been created to suffer for the entertainment of strangers. He pauses in total resignation to whatever evil has caused him to exist, and then is overcome by the idea that he was placed here to suffer so that others may suffer less.

A voice comes from behind him.

NURSE: Mr. Janus.

Janus holds his stare for a second longer, then looks over his shoulder slightly bewildered. A nurse stands over him. There is no one else in the waiting room.

JANUS: Yes?
NURSE: I will take you in.

Janus stands up and takes a step toward her, remembers his bag, steps back and retrieves it. Looks up at the nurse realizing that she is taller than he is.

JANUS: Ok.

The nurse leaves the waiting room through a door and Janus follows. They walk through a long hospital corridor, in the first rooms the oldest people Bill has ever seen are sitting up in beds, they are connected to respirators and intravenous tubes. They are as brittle as dead spiders. Janus and the nurse turn a corner, now rooms contain retirement aged men and women eaten by cancers, drowning from congestive heart failure. They turn again and pass middle aged people, wheezing because their lungs do not work or yellow with kidney failure. The next turn leads to young adults, accident victims, blood-stained sheets. The final turn leads to children: leukemia, birth defects. The nurse stops in front of a doorway.

NURSE: In here.

Janus nods at her and enters. His seven-year-old son, SOLOMON, sits on the rough grey carpeting. He is taking legos out of a bucket. He sticks two or three together and sets them onto the floor, then gets a few more, sticks them together and puts them somewhere else. He is already surrounded by a patternless mess of different-sized Lego clusters.

JANUS: Solomon.

The boy looks up at his father.

Four Hours in Glasgow - Part 6

2006-02-20T20:16:00.000-06:00

It was raining again when I left the Cathedral. I went around to the back to see the cemetery. It was even foggier in back. I walked along a stone path. I looked up. The cemetery was on a hill. The gravestones slanted towards me, covered in soot and soil. I looked down and saw that it was not a stone path but that I was standing on grave markers embedded in the ground. I jumped back and in my peripheral vision I saw a figure, a dark man, a bum, sleeping in one of the crypts. He looked at me.

Glasgow Necropolis

I left the Cathedral and headed for the train station again. The further I walked, the more unbearable my backpack became. I reached around and fastened the waist-straps at my bellybutton.

I wonder if the support straps on backpacks make them at all easier to carry or if the feeling of being hugged just makes the ordeal more bearable. Either way I made it to the train station and the train to London was waiting with two cars of unreserved seats. I sat down and I listened.

I tried to console myself by blaming my failure on Glasgow—on the weight of my backpack—on the rain. I told myself that I like riding on the train more than being in a place and that I would be better to enjoy the train ride home than to try and spend the night in a city I didn’t like. I wonder if I was right.

In front of me a roughish looking Scottish couple with red hair and leather jackets was speaking caring words to and old lady. They arranged sandwiches and juice boxes on the table in front of here and kept telling her not to worry. The announcement came for “those not intending to travel to leave the train” and the couple stood outside the car and waved and smoked.

And then the train started. Out the window there was grey and grass and sheep and heather. A Scottish conductor checked my Britrail Pass and moved to the young lady across the aisle from me. She appeared to be around seventeen years old and was sitting with a one-year-old baby with silver stud earrings and seven or eight bracelets. The girl tried to pass off a ticket that had already been punched and the conductor spoke to her so sweetly and understandingly yet he still made her pay. As the trip progressed the baby, whom I soon learned was named Nicole, began to wander the train, further and further from her mother. Wherever she crawled it seemed that children would appear wanting to play with her. Among them was a seven-year-old with round glasses and a thick brogue who was increasingly worried that Nicole would ruin his Pokemon game. Nicole’s mother tried desperately to keep her daughter to sit still. She even resorted to having her was the train’s windows with baby wipes. As I watched this young woman from between the headrests she looked to me like a mix of tough and beautiful, caring and suspicious. I felt sorry for her and proud of her. I was fascinated.

Eventually, the clouds dispersed again and the land began to glow in the magic hour. Nicole and her mother disembarked and I watched the sunset and the moon rise from among the sheep to take its place.

A new conversation gradually took my attention. At first, I could only hear the boy. He was yelling stream of consciousness facts in the thick voice of a Scottish Lad. I peered over my seat and understood. It was the Pokemon boy and he was talking to the old lady, he started addressing her as “Gran”.

“Yesterday,” he said, “Yesterday was the Queen’s birthday and she was a hundred.” Gran Nodded and whispered something into his ear. “You’re not! You are not one hundred years old,” he shouted into her hearing aid. She whispered again. “You’re not sixty-three,” he replied.

“The problem with me,” he said. “The only problem with me is that I can’t always finish my work. There’s this boy Jimmy and he keeps me from finishin’.” His vocal tone rose with each sentence.

Eventually, she said something out loud. “The train’s quiet and I can hear ya’ fine.” By then it was dark and as the Scottish grandmother and a grandson whispered to each other I watched the stars speed by listening to the rhythm of the train.

Platform at Euston Station, London

The train at last arrived in London. I got off feeling numb—-not triumphant or defeated. I wedged my way through the crowd and stepped quickly to the end of the platform. I noticed that my shoe was untied and as I kneeled down to tie it I heard a voice.

“Mah!” I heard, then the pat pat pat of a running child. “Mah! Mah!”

In front of me a youngish, motherly looking woman held her hands out.

“Mah!” I heard it one more time before I saw him. The Pokemon boy ran past me and jumped into the arms of his waiting mother. She swung him around and I understood why I had gone to Glasgow.

St. Anthony and the Key Chain - Part 5

2006-02-07T20:42:00.000-06:00

He had never been the only person in a train car before. He noticed that the ride was bumpier when the train was not packed with a rush hour crowd. The rhythmic rocking of the train made it easy for him to think about nothing. Thinking about nothing was not worrying. He was not worrying if moving to the city by himself had been a mistake. He was not worrying about getting mugged on the walk between the train stop and his apartment. Most importantly, he was not worrying about what would happen when he got back to his apartment at two o'clock in the morning with no keys.

Only when the train had reached the end of its line, far beyond his stop, did he become aware again. Stoic, he crossed the platform, and, even though he knew it would be at least twenty minutes, he waited patiently for a train in the opposite direction.

A few minutes of waiting in the silence with nothing to distract him, and he was back to the worrying that had perforated his entire day. It started with the memory of a feeling. He was there again, standing in the chilly foyer, waiting for the superintendent to let him in. That was the most humiliating part of the memory. Worse than the image of her in a dirty lavender bathrobe pressing her lips together in general disapproval of his existence. Worse than remembering that she had made him wait outside her door as she looked for her copy of his lease. Even worse than when she made him read aloud the section that said the superintendent had the right to charge ten dollars if a tenant had to be let into the building. It was always the moment between ringing the doorbell and her appearing around the corner that paralyzed him. He knew that she must hate him. He was sure she complained to her friends about the stupid kid who moved in upstairs. The stupid farm kid who locked himself out four times in three weeks and does not belong in the city.

When he came out of it, he was angry at himself. He had to try harder not to think about it. He reminded himself that it was throwing all of his belongings into his car and moving to the city was an accomplishment. He had adapted to working in the main branch of the bank, almost without problems. It did not matter that he did not know anyone here. He was where he had always wanted to be. He had his own apartment, right above the superintendent, who by now was sound asleep.

He knew he should have just gone home right after work. At least then he wouldn't have to wake her up; but he couldn't do it. When people started leaving the office to go home, his mind kept going back to the night before. Midnight, and she was standing outside his door, still in the lavender robe. She was screaming. He was sorry, he said. He hadn't realized she could hear him. She just screamed.

When he got hungry, he went alone to a restaurant and pretended to read a newspaper while he ate. At the movies, he tried to act as though he was waiting for someone, looking at his watch every minute and sighing when the previews began. After the movies, he went to the bar alone. He sat at a table in the corner, listened to other people talking and only once thought about how pathetic it was to be afraid. He was also alone, or nearly so, on the platform, and by now it was very late.

From the elevated platform, he could see far down the street, wet and reflective of the ambers, reds and yellows of a city at night. The wind blew gently but steadily, blowing through the spaces between his skin and his clothes, taking heat and anxiety with it.

It was quiet enough that he heard the train coming before he could see it. He watched almost like an animal, as the light spilled down the tracks followed by the train itself, slithering.

This train car was empty as well. He took a seat in the middle, set down his bag, and leaned his elbow against the cold glass. He watched the city move past the window in a sleepy fog of taillights, traffic lights, neon lights.

At the next stop, he watched with his peripheral vision as a old woman stepped into the car and chose a seat across the aisle. She was a black woman, grandmotherly and tired. She sat in a seat that faced the back of the train; riding backwards made him queasy. He wondered where she was coming from so late at night and where she was going. Every possibility he could think of seemed wrong. She was impossible to know.

He looked out of the window again, now pressing his forehead against the glass. As the train began to move again, his face slid down the window, and he did nothing to stop it until his chin touched the rubber seal at the bottom. That is when he noticed the paper square on the seat next to him. He recognized it even before his eyes had focused. It was the prize from a box of Crackerjacks.

He rubbed the small package between his fingers, held it up to the fluorescent lights, and wondered what kind of person would buy Crackerjacks and not care about the surprise. He tore open the paper and smiled when he saw that it was the temporary tattoo. Using his free hand to unbutton the stiff white cuff of his shirt, he rolled the blue-striped sleeve up to his armpit. He peeled the paper backing off of the tattoo and licked his left biceps impishly before pressing the thin paper onto the moist skin. He counted out thirty seconds in his head and then lifted the damp square.

He smiled at the reflection in the window as he flexed his arm; he smiled wider when he saw the heart-with-arrow stretch as his muscles changed shape. He stopped smiling when he noticed the woman across the aisle staring at him.

Embarrassed, he unrolled his sleeve and looked down at his feet. He was buttoning his cuff again when he saw something that made his eyebrows squeeze together. There, under the seat in front of him, were his missing keys.

It is hard to interpret just what this meant. For some people, ending up in the exact seat of the exact car on the exact train would be proof of the existence of God. Most others would at least experience some awe at having the law of probability demonstrated so eloquently in their favors. But this young man was not thinking about the universe. It was almost as if he had expected it. When the keys were lost, he had still been almost certain, unless they had been melted or broken or disintegrated, that the key chain had to be somewhere. That knowledge that the keys still existed turned into a small bit of hope and had always found hope to be worthwhile. Any feelings about the matter however, were overshadowed by something less complicated: he was relieved to avoid the superintendent. He returned the keys to the front pocket of his pants before turning sideways in his seat.

"I just found my keys," he said. The woman, who had been close to sleep, turned her eyes but said nothing. "I lost them this morning. They must have fallen out of my pocket. All day I worry about how I'm going to get back into my apartment, and then I look down and there they are. I must be on the same train that I took this morning. Only it can't be the same train; the seats were different. But they were right there, on the floor." When he stopped speaking, the woman looked down at her hands, paused, and then looked back up at the man.

"It's hard to believe," she said.

"Yes," he replied. "It is hard to believe, isn't it?" They were interrupted by the recorded voice announcing the next stop. He stood and kept his balance by holding onto the bar above the seat. "You be careful out there," he said, and she nodded. He walked along the decelerating train car, the bars steadying him until he made it to the doors. When the train stopped, the doors opened and the wind spilled inside.

"Doors closing," said the voice. The man patted his front pocket, heard the faint sound of metal rubbing against metal, and then stepped off of the train.

Four Hours in Glasgow - Part 5

2006-02-03T13:41:00.000-06:00

It only took a block or so of walking before my shoulders began to hurt but I bucked up and forced myself the ten blocks or so to the Cathedral. I watched so many strange combinations of those looking very old and those looking very young standing at the street corners. Traffic lights seemed to last longer and everything was telling me that I was simply not tough enough for Glasgow.

Glasgow Cathedral

Then the Cathedral poked over the Horizon. It surprised me because I thought it was going to be the much larger building across the street but once I saw it, it was unmistakable.

The whole structure was blackened like it had been barbequed, and roofed with a soft fuzzy-green copper. Dark stained glass and a sign saying “Cathedral Visitors to the Right.”

There was a peaceful trickle of Germans Japanese and others like me (white, disheveled, large backpack and not talking to preserve the mystery of their origin.) The inside was amazing. The echo of the door handle’s crash, as I entered, bounced around the gothic ceiling. There were two separate post card racks, one of Glasgow and one of the Cathedral and two separate Auntie Jean types at desks beside them. I tried to look at the stained glass but the organ music, strange chromatic baroque-ness, coming from the chapel pulled me in.

At first glance I thought that a church service was going on. The back and front rows of the pews were filled with people who were looking at the ground. Suddenly one got up and snapped a picture, revealing that we were all tourists.
I sat in a pew and peeled the bag from my shoulders. I stared at the ceiling and prayed—for myself, for my family, for The Campout but I forgot to finish.

The music ended and I completed my tour. It was wonderful but not in a particularly describable way. There was repetitiveness: every corner was the chapel of saint someone-or-other, every stained glass window a restoration by some Glasgow Guild. But it was also varied. The Nurses Chapel had flags, some had plaques, some relics. Some windows had abstract patterns. Some had pictures.

The largest window was a giant purple depiction of Adam and Eve. Detailed right down to orange pubic hair. Not ideals but humans--sinners.

Original of the Species

I bought two postcards after waiting behind a guy who didn’t speak English. The old lady at the counter was kind and smiley and patient. I shifted my backpack.

Four Hours in Glasgow - Part 4

2006-01-30T19:34:00.000-06:00

Down the block there was a sign for a three-course lunch—-"only four Pounds ninety-five"-—and a picture of a fish pointing up the stairs. “Best Fish Tea in Britain” it said. It took me a moment to clear the idea of a tea bag full of guppies and I started climbing. I waited at the landing while old lady to stumbled down the long staircase and then for an old man to stumble up them. These did not seem like good omens but I entered anyway, possessed by the strange “who cares” courage that can take me without warning. Actually I think the main source of the courage was a desire to relieve myself of the weight on my back. Despite Glasgow being a big, bustling city I couldn’t find anywhere on the streets to sit down. There was nowhere to stop and pull out the “Let’s Go” which was much bulkier and more embarrassing than the London A-Z which, I discovered, was carried by pretty much everyone and not just tourists.

Someone else's photo of Fish Tea with Mushy Peas.

Either way I entered “The Tree’s Family Restaurant” and sat in the no-smoking section because the table was smaller.

A young, sort of tough looking, blonde waitress was at my table almost immediately. She asked what I wanted to order in a startling thick brogue. I wondered if there was a physical border you could cross and hear one dialect on one side and one on the other.

I asked how the three-course lunch worked and, like most people who have been asked a question by me, she answered by saying “What?”

I asked again, paying more attention to my lips and teeth. I ordered the soup (scotch broth of course) and fish and chips. While I waited for the soup I slipped the “Let’s Go” out of the bag and quickly memorized the path to Glasgow Cathedral. The soup came. Having not eaten since the night before, the soup felt like life in my stomach. It was warm and thick and salty and I scraped the bowl of its last bits. I thought about, but decided against, holding my fork in the right hand.

I felt very American and I was sure everyone in the restaurant (all fifteen senior citizens) would notice if I did it wrong. I think I cleaned that plate cleaner that I have ever left a plate before, and it was time to choose dessert. I asked for the trifle and she said, “Aye.” My heart leapt. I had left London after all.

When the trifle was gone I suffered a small panic attack about the acceptability of my English money. I knew that English and Scottish bills are interchangeable but there was still that fear. The bill came on a plate and I covered it with a ten-pound note. Just as I was about to worry about whether I was supposed to carry it to the cash register, a waiter snatched it up and replaced it with a Scottish fiver. I put the purple bank note into the secret compartment of my wallet with my leftover American money, re-strapped my backpack and bounced down the stairs.

I was temporarily elated as I started towards the cathedral. It had been a long time since I had eaten such a complete meal and the feeling of peas in my stomach warmed against the rain.

St. Anthony and the Keys - Part 4

2006-01-26T20:24:00.000-06:00

She slid the key chain across the scanner, just like she had done with tens of thousands of groceries, coupons and key chains before. The motion sensor turned on the laser. The laser was absorbed by the thin black lines and reflected by the white plastic between them. The computer translated that pulse into a number that, in turn, it translated into an address in a database. Ten kilobytes of information traveled just less than six miles at three hundred million meters per second and, upon arrival produced the brief high-pitched beep that still satisfied her each time she heard it.

She switched off the light at her station before picking up the phone and dialing the number at the top of the screen. A very tired woman answered. It was the emergency number of a veterinary hospital. The number must have been changed or faked. She checked the name again and realized that it was fake too. Sandy Klaus. The address section said just "North Pole". He or she must have applied for the card around Christmas time.

This fascinated her. Who would be so paranoid as to give a fake name to the grocery store? Had the store been busier she would have thrown away the keys right there, but she was curious and so she went deeper into the customer’s record.

In a few seconds, she was analyzing a list of all the groceries the customer had bought over the last two years. Having been a check-out girl since high school, she thought she could tell a lot about a person by the groceries he or she bought.

She knew it was a man by his brand of shaving cream. Always the same kind too, even when it was not on sale. He was not as loyal to his deodorant, however. He bought whatever was new or improved.

Further in, she noticed that he had recently moved to the city. Up until one month ago, he shopped at a grocery store on the other side of the state; the country, she thought. She began to create a picture of him in her mind.
He was alone in the city, shy probably. He was single; she was sure of it. Half gallons of milk always gave that away. But he could cook. He bought a lot of spices and oils and strange produce like leeks and artichokes. He ate meat but in moderation. He bought steaks and lamb chops, but no pork. He took vitamins.

On Friday nights, he often bought a slab of fancy cheese and a bottle of wine. But he had not done so in the last two months. She imagined him showing up at her door, setting the bottle on the kitchen counter while she set the table with a plate for the cheese and two wine glasses.

She continued to imagine him long after she was finished looking at his record. She gave him a name and a college degree, tropical fish and a newspaper to read in the mornings and before bed. She gave him a face. She made him a little funny looking but with beautiful dark eyes. She stared at him in her mind and thought she felt a bit warmer inside.

She imagined him waking up in the morning in blue and white striped pajamas. As she balanced her drawer, he was shaving off the moustache she had told him she didn’t like. She rang up one last figure, added a crinkled dollar bill to her drawer before locking it, and picked up a box of Crackerjacks for the ride home.

She put the key chain into her purse when she left, pretending he had given her the spare keys to his apartment. She played with the keys on her lap during the ride home. She imagined him getting onto the train and sitting next to her. He would see the keys out of the corner of his eye and ask her how she got them. She would tell him, and, full of surprise and gratitude, he would ask to buy her coffee, and that is where it ended.

Her stop had arrived. Through the window she could see a man standing on the platform. He was looking at a train schedule and she thought he looked troubled or confused. He had a moustache. She approached him as she stepped off of the train.

“Are you lost?”

School Play - A Short Screenplay

2006-01-23T19:41:00.000-06:00

Sir Andrew begs for forgiveness.

INT. THIRD GRADE CLASSROOM - DAY
About fifteen third graders sit in a circle on a large area rug in an enormous experimental class room. The room has three different levels. A pentagonal section in the back of the room is raised above the floor on three step like tiers. It has a piano on it and rolling carts filled with musical instruments. The middle of the room is a pit of sorts sunken three steps below the floor. The rug is here the rest is empty and can be used for games and running around. The ground-level portion of the room has different configurations of work tables some with computers some with art supplies, etc.

CELICE, the teacher, is a twenty three year old woman with shoulder length brown hair. She wears navy blue corduroy overalls over a plain long sleeved raspberry top is also in the circle.

ESTELLA: We could... I don't know.

CELICE: It's ok Estella, speak up, I'm sure it's a good idea.
ESTELLA: Could we do a play?
CELICE: That's an interesting idea. Does anyone else want to do a play?

The class assents.
CELICE: What play should we do?
LUCY: Let's do Cats.
CELICE : I don't think that's possible. In order to do a play you have to get permission. And Cats is currently playing on Broadway and usually they won't give permission if the play is still running. There are lots of plays that we could get permission for, or if we do a play that was written long enough ago, we can do it without permission and it won't cost us any money. For instance we could do a play by William Shakespeare.
LUCY: Or could we write it ourselves.
CELICE: That's a very creative idea Lucy.
What would we want to write a play about?
LUCY: No, I mean we could write our own play of Cats.
CELICE: Does anyone else want to do a play about cats?
LUCY: Not a play about cats, we could write Cats ourselves.
CELICE: I don't think I understand.
LUCY: I'll get some paper and we'll start writing it you'll see what I mean.
CELICE: Um ok.

Lucy runs and gets a pad of paper.

LUCY: Ok let's start the play in a junkyard with lots of cats in it.
What should their names be?
ESTELLA: Gerizzabella.

Lucy writes it down.

DAVID: Rum Tum Tugger
TINA: Mr. Mistopholes
LUCY: and how about Old Deutoronomy
CELICE: Wait, aren't those the names of the cats in Cats.
LUCY: Exactly. We can think of the rest of the names later.
MEGAN: Oh, Jennyanydots.
LUCY: Ok got her, now what should happen? I think it should start with an opening number.
CELICE: Wait wait, are we sure we want to use the same names as the cats in the play?
ESTELLA: We came up with those names ourselves.
CELICE: No you---
SAM: Let's call the opening number, um "Jelly" cats.
LUCY: It's good but maybe something longer than "jelly" a funnier word.
TINA: How about "jellicle?"
LUCY: Good! The first song will be called Jellicle Cats.
MEGAN: We need a show stopper. I'm thinking maybe something called "Memory"
LUCY: Ooh, good idea, I like the way that sounds.I have some ideas for the words already but let's come up with a plot first.
CELICE: No, no, no. I know that there is a song called Memory in the real play Cats.
DAVID: We're writing a real play!

Celice does not know what to do.

INT. CLASSROOM - NIGHT
Rows of chairs are set up around the raised stage area of the classroom and are filled with parents. On the stage the kids are dressed in costumes exactly like the ones in the Broadway production of Cats. Lucy is standing on a giant tire that is lifted up toward the ceiling a fog machine spills clouds of smoke across the classroom. A real theatre orchestra plays the Cats' ending music from.

EXT. FRONT OF SCHOOL - NIGHT
A couple of dads stand outside smoking as excited kids in cat costumes are led out to the parking lot.

DAD ONE: (discreetly) So, what did you think?
DAD TWO: Well, not bad for something written by third graders.

Four Hours in Glasgow - Part 3

2006-01-20T12:05:00.000-06:00

It was 12:15pm when I arrived. I was shivering in Glasgow Central Station. I sat down and extracted my jacket from my backpack.

I stepped onto Union Street and into shock. I can’t say exactly what I expected but I can say what I wanted. I wanted a vacation from London. A small, friendly place--somewhere to eat and sleep and wander. What I got, on first glance, was still London. But it was Glasgow as well--much colder and sadder and cockier than London. And it was drizzling.

Buchanan Street in the rain. Again, not my photo.

I stepped into a crowd and tried to direct myself to the tourist’s office by memory. I ended up in the shopping district. Crowds of activists and socialists and shopping bags. Something in me panicked. I felt like everyone could see that I didn’t belong there; that I was some snotty rude American kid and who the hell did I think I was trying to visit their city. Almost automatically I headed back to the station. The next train back to London wasn’t until four.

So I stepped back out. It was spooky. In the drizzle I kept looking into faces for pieces of myself. Logically, I knew there was little chance, but this place, at least in my head, was full of my ancestors.

Four Hours in Glasgow - Part 2

2006-01-18T15:19:00.000-06:00

The magazine stand opened and I joined the stampede inside to buy a Coke for breakfast and some water just in case. I spent Ben’s Change. While I was in line for the cashier, the arrival my train to Glasgow was announced so I picked up my bag and made for my seat.

I shoved my bag under the seat and drank my breakfast. Suddenly the train was off. I was going to Glasgow.

I was facing the back of the train. I hate that. Things disappear before you can figure out what they are. The ride was a long, absent six hours. People got on and off. I wrote a bit, read even less, and slept not at all.

It had been sunny in London that morning. Well sunny for London, but as we left the clouds ganged up in layers. For hours I stared out the window watching the dull hazy scenery run away from me, reading about each town in the guide book as I passed it.

I had read earlier about the Lake District, how it had been an inspiration to the Romantic poets. I was excited to see it, even though I never really appreciated the Romantic poets. I wondered if I’d be able to tell when we passed it. Then suddenly the flat pastoral scenery broke into hills unlike any I had seen before. They were green and grooved a flowing.

The Lake District (photo from wikipedia)

I was mesmerized. Then just as suddenly the Lake District ran away form me the clouds returned and the land changed to scraggy grass and heather. I had crossed into Scotland.

St. Anthony and the Keys - Part 3

2006-01-15T12:19:00.000-06:00

The beer cans were moving toward him. He chuckled. The beer comes to me all by itself, how can I resist? The six-pack stopped moving when it reached the end of the conveyor belt. He looked at it and wondered if the check-out girl had a foot pedal or something that made the conveyor belt stop. At the end of the thought, he realized that the beer had been sitting still a lot longer than usual. Normally, a pair of hands would have appeared and lifted the six-pack out of view, but these cans just sat there, static, looking happy to be plastic-bound into a little family of six. He looked up and met the expectant eyes of the cashier.
"What?" he said. "Believe me. I’m old enough to buy those."
"I’m sure you are," she replied. "Do you have a fresh values card?"

He had not expected this. His hands explored the pockets of his jacket and found the key chain his wife had given him. He tried to think of a way to explain everything to the girl, but she had already snatched the keys from his hand. She ran the keys over the gadget at the end of the conveyor belt, and something beeped. He took the keys back, deciding it was better to just pretend they were his.

She picked up the six-pack and turned it over to find the barcode. He did not like the way she was looking at the beer. When did it become wrong for a forty-eight year old man to like beer? The thing that beeps, beeped once more, telling him it was time to pay.

"You kind of look like my wife, but younger," he said, setting a wad of bills and change on the platform. She did not react; she just counted the money, twice, and then held crinkliest of the bills over the little platform.

"It’s a dollar," he said. "It might be wrinkled but it’s worth the same as the others." She gave him a look that made him feel old.

"They’re on sale," she said. He was not sure if was smiling. "One dollar off ‘cause you used your card."

"Oh," he replied, looking at the green paper like it was a writhing wasp. "Why don’t you keep it?" She put the dollar into the pocket of her apron, and he left.

It felt good to pull the can from its plastic choke-chain. It felt even better to crack the seal and to hear the bubbles popping as the gas escaped. He drank it slowly, just like he did every Friday, thankful that his wife had insisted on getting the minivan with the tinted windows. Then, before he felt he had even tasted it, the can was empty.

The five full cans swung back and forth limply when he picked them up by the empty ring. He put them back into the paper bag along with the empty and scrunched it shut. He went over, as always, to leave the leftovers in the empty shopping cart, but a car full of teenagers had pulled into the spot next him. Their windows were rolled down and the kids were singing along enthusiastically to a song that he had once owned as a forty-five. He threw the cans in the dumpster.

On the way back to the van, he felt the intrusive weight of an extra set of keys in his pocket. He changed course and walked back into the grocery store, reliving the time he had lost his keys and sprained his ankle trying to break into the house.

"My wife found these on the train," he said, passing the key chain over the platform for the second time that evening. For the second time the girl snatched the keys, but didn't say anything. She didn't notice him slipping the pack of gum into his pocket either.

Four Hours in Glasgow - Part 1

2006-01-11T13:48:00.000-06:00

Saturday August 5, 2000

I woke up at 5 am after a night of staring out my window at the students across the courtyard. I only hit the for minute snooze button once, waking before the second alarm would sound.

I must have been the first person to wake up because I did not have to jump over a slimy puddle in front of the shower. I didn’t even have to bother draping my towel over my chest while I shaved because there was no possibility of anyone seeing.

I put on the same dirty clothes as yesterday and packed my bag with the following:
One outfit of dirty clothes:
One t-shirt
One pair of jeans
One polo shirt
One pair of underwear
My jacket.
Downriver by Iain Sinclair
Let’s Go Britain and Ireland
This journal
Two Maps
Pens
My Britrail Pass
A towel
A bathing suit
And a hat.
I did not pack socks.

I poured all of the change from my dresser drawer into my pocket including the 20p piece I had been saving for laundry. I hoisted the backpack high and walked straight out the door.

Euston station was a block away and I arrived for my 6:16 departure at 6:00. A man with a hand full of change blocked my view of the train arrival board. “I lost forty pounds and my visa card,” he said. I stared into his palm, displaying about five one-pound coins and an assortment of other change. Beneath the coins his hands were greasy and black. “I just need about nine pounds forty to get home,” he said and looked at me expectantly. I reached in and pulled the top four coins from the hoard in my pocket.

“This is all I have.” If he was going to lie to me I was going to lie back.
He looked at the sixty pence with desperate disappointment. “Can you give me a few pounds?” He looked at me and changed his approach. “Perhaps you could give me a fiver for this.” He arranged for one-pound coins in his other filthy hand.

“I don’t have a five.” I lied again.

“Well how about a ten for this?” He started to rearrange his change in an attractive pattern.

“Wait!” I said. “Maybe I do have a five.” And with great care I took out my wallet. He watched it a little too closely as I extracted the five pound note.

“How about you give me the five for this and I’ll have enough to get home.” He handed me a pound and a half.

“I guess.” I said revealing my exasperations. We exchanged money.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Ben,” he said and smiled. They always seem so surprised when you ask that.

“I’m Ian. Good luck.”

“Thanks,” he said and disappeared. I patted my pocket to make sure my wallet was still there.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday Born I was

2006-01-08T19:47:00.000-06:00

In honor of David Bowie's 59th birthday today I will forgo my usual laziness tactic of raiding my back catalog for blog entries I will compose a short impromptu stream of conciousness essay on the man, his music and how it affects my life.

I think I grew up always knowing that I would be a David Bowie fan but didn't actually get around to it until around my nineteenth birthday. I was reminded of the prophecy by a track on the Lost Highway Soundtrack entitled "I'm Deranged," a song which begins:

"Funny how secrets travel
I'd start to believe if I were to bleed"

It's a spooky song, sung with a voice full of diaphragm and mystery. It always makes me stop and listen. It aches.

David Became something I could claim as my own. I would never say I like him better than U2 or that he has had anywhere near the influence that that band has had on me but loving them was joining a group of the obsessed, people who evangelize and meditate on their music. David Bowie is like my private chapel.

Todd Hayne's movie Velvet Goldmine, which is based on Bowie's life and manages to grasp the spirit of the style without any of the spirit of the man does have one brilliant insight in a scene where a UFO comes down and bestws an emerald ring upon Oscar Wilde and that ring is later passed on to the David Bowie character. There's a lot of truth in that connection. Both Bowie and Wilde are aesthetes but not superficial. Makeup and theatrics for Bowie are what velvet suits and witticisms were for Wilde. Both men play characters as a way living out a truth. Both men seem to be amoral bacchanals but if you look deeper both display a great understanding of God. Wilde wrote "happy they whose hearts can break and peace of pardon win, how else man man make straight his plan and cleanse his soul from Sin, how else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in." David Bowie wrote "Lord, I kneel and offer you my word on a wing And I'm trying hard to fit among your scheme of things It's safer than a strange land, but I still care for myself And I don't stand in my own light." The legend is he wrote that during several months of living entirely on whole milk and cocaine.

God is an American.

St. Anthony and the Keys - Part 2

2006-01-06T16:11:00.000-06:00

She was sitting on something, and she did not know what it was. This was precisely the type of thing that she hated about taking the trains. Next time, she advised herself, she would use this experience as an argument when her husband was too busy to give her a ride down to the church. The idea of having an unfamiliar object pressed into her bottom was unsettling, but she could not stand up now; not with so many people on the train. Someone could sneak up and steal her seat, and then she would be stuck standing next to God knows what unpleasantness.

She tried to determine the shape of the object using her sense of touch, but there was too much flesh getting in the way. It was best to try and think of something else.

The train at rush hour should have provided enough distractions, but she could not find a place on which to fix her gaze. If she looked straight ahead, she would be looking at that young man’s crotch; down and she had to stare at the garbage on the floor. To her right, someone had written a swear word on the window, and to the left, well, she did not like the look of that man.

She remembered reading about a young woman who contracted AIDS from a hypodermic needle that someone had left in a vending machine. Whatever it was she was sitting on she was sure that it was sharp.

Her mind wandered from there. Around the time she was imagining the color of the lining of her casket, the train wobbled out of the subway tunnel, and her weight pushed the mysterious object deeper into her substantial thigh. Startled, she stood up.

The back of her thigh was hurt--that she was sure of--but she could not quite tell if it was serious. She was still too afraid to look, and, now that she was standing, she had no free hand to feel the wound. One hand was squeezing the pole, and the other hand was keeping her purse close to her kidneys. Next time she would take a taxi; she would even use her own money if necessary.

A black man, an old black man, squeezed his way through the crowd at the doors and grabbed on to the pole across from hers. She looked at him and thought maybe she should smile, but she was worried about her leg; to smile would be like lying. She turned her head away.

There were so many people on the train, girls with too much makeup, children who needed bathing, that rude man on his cell phone. A beer bottle rolled from under one of the front seats and smacked against a partition before rolling back. Maybe she had sat on a piece of glass. The man with the phone might be a doctor; she could turn, and he would notice if her leg was bleeding; maybe he had some antiseptic in that briefcase. A little bit of antiseptic would keep the germs out until she could get off of the train. She hoped that she would not have to go to the hospital.

The black man was looking at her. She looked at his wrinkled clothes. He was probably homeless. She looked at his eyes looking at her; even the whites of his eyes seemed to have some brown to them. He slid his eyes deliberately, pointing with them to the empty seat and then back up to her face. What did he see? Was he trying to warn her about something? No. His expression was tired and pleading. Maybe he wanted his needle back. She squeezed her purse more tightly and tried to look stern.

The pain in her leg was almost gone, she decided. The object, whatever it was, had most likely not broken the skin. Still, it was best to be safe. Besides she was so tired of standing. She rearranged her hands on the pole and looked over her shoulder. There was something there but it was not glass or a needle. It was not even all that sharp, just an ordinary looking set of keys. She could not imagine anyone getting sick from a set of keys and so she picked them up and reclaimed her seat.

She put the keys into the crevice between her legs and consulted the map above the door. There were still thirteen stops left, and so she passed the time by looking at each key and trying to guess what it opened. Most of the keys were ordinary, but one small key stood out; it looked like the key to the liquor cabinet where she now kept christmas decorations. Along with the keys there was a plastic bottle opener that advertised Southern Comfort. The name brought on memories of nausea and she let it fall.

The last thing on the key chain was a small plastic tab with a picture of a tomato and the name of a grocery store chain. There was one just like it on the key chain in her purse. Her fingers slid across the raised ink as she read the tiny print on the back:

"If found, drop into any mail box. Postage guaranteed."

She dropped them into her purse instead.

London - Part 6

2006-01-04T15:51:00.000-06:00

6. Russell Square

I sat outside at the back of the museum and looked through the TimeOut to find a movie. There was one playing near Russell Square so I went there. I though that if I sat in Russell Square I might be able to see the theater and there was plenty of time, so I took out a cigarette. I looked around. This, I thought, is what London is like. I t was quite different from Central Park. Russell Square is tiny by comparison but somehow wilder. Maybe it’s the overcast sky or maybe it’s because I’m not used to British gardening techniques. Whatever it is I think the strange panic that I had been carrying in the small of my back lifted. “I’m here,” I thought. “I survived.”

I pulled the lighter from my pocket and flicked it. Two puffs and inhale.

“Pardon me,” a voice cam from over my shoulder. I turned to see a man wearing a gray T-Shirt that barely covered his protruding stomach. He was holding out a 20p piece with one hand and making the international sign for smoking with the other. “Do you Mind?” he asked as he sat down beside me. “You see I don’t usually smoke. It’s just that I’ve just had a bottle of wine.”

“Not at all.” I replied, and fished out a cigarette from my bag. I motioned away the coin but he insisted. I handed him the tiny lighter. It was running low and he was having trouble.

“It seems to be spent.” He said. “ Could I…” and he pointed to my cigarette hots.

“Oh, of course,” I said and I pressed my cigarette’s end against his awkwardly until smoke was bellowing satisfactorily from both.

“Thank you very much, you see, as I said before, I don’t usually smoke except when I’m drinking and I just had this bottle of wine. I get so terribly depressed you see.”

“Not a problem,” I said. “What was your name?”

“Oh, I’m Paul.”

“Nice to meet you Paul you, I’m Ian.” I reached out and shook his stubby hand.

“Likewise and thank you. I get so depressed you see. All the mistakes. The memories of all the mistakes.” I nodded with half understanding and half behavior copied from characters in movies. I wanted to say something encouraging, to give him advice that would solve his problems. But I was scared and in a foreign country and talking, I suddenly realized, to another human being. Really talking, for the first time since getting on the plane. I just nodded.

“Did you grow up here?” I eventually asked. “…In London?”

“Oh, no. The midlands. Nottinghamshire.” I nodded some more.

“Oh really. Is that a good place to go visit?”

“Erm… yes. There’s lots of historical things and the forest is nice. You know Robin Hood?”

“Yes, I know a bit about him.”

“Well that’s there, Sherwood Forest, Nottingham. You know. Well legend a lot of it, but there’s history to it as well.” I wanted to tell him that I thought legend is more important than fact when history is concerned. Instead I nodded.

“Yes, then you know Richard, King Richard the first. They called him Richard the Lionhearted.

“Yes”

“Richard… King Richard was off on the crusades you see, and his brother erm… what’s his name?

“John, Prince John,” I offered

“Oh yes, John--Prince John they called him, took over and he was not very good. Sheriff of Nottingham and taxes and all that.”

I almost brought up the Magna Carta but decided against it.

He asked where I was from and everything to him was “amazing”. Detroit is the “car place”—Amazing.
Washington is a state and Washington D.C. is a city—Amazing. D.C stands for District of Columbia? —Amazing.

He mentioned being in a pop band in the sixties. He played bass. The conversation turned to a detailed biography of Eric Clapton who was a guitar player who was amazing.

And then by chance, Paul asked: “Do you like the movies then?” And I told him I was in London to study film.

“That’s Amazing!” Do you know Alfred Hitchcock?” I explained that I did. I had recently taken a class on his films.

“I like some of his films.” And we proceeded to go though the Hitchcock cannon. He liked Psycho but not North by Northwest or Rear Window. He didn’t remember Strangers on a Train and I couldn’t remember that it was Farley Granger who played Guy.

He then thoroughly questioned me about Psycho and for the next hour, I kept passing him cigarettes and he kept giving me change. (I ended up with about one pound twenty). And he and I recalled every detail of Psycho—the motivation for every action in more or less chronological order. When we got to the end he said, “Yes. ‘I wouldn’t hurt a fly.’ He says that, doesn’t he?”

Paul Stood up and said. “I don’t know about you but my bladder is full. Wait here and I know a place around the corner where we can get a bottle of…”

“Oh, I have an appointment at 6:00,” I lied.

“All right then. Sorry to be keeping you.”

“Not at all. I had fun.”

“Well then, let me just tell you that I can tell you are very smart and I can tell you are going to go far.”

“Wow, thanks.”

“So, you’ll just wait here and I’ll go…”

“Sorry, but I’ve…”

“Oh right. You’ve got to go. Good luck then.”

“Good luck.” I said and he was gone.

St.Anthony and the Keys - Part 1

2006-01-02T11:42:00.000-06:00

"Doors Closing." The words echoed through the subway tunnel, but no one was listening. A compressed knot of people squeezed between the sliding doors and, hitting the cool underground air, exploded into a swarm. The human cloud wafted up the escalators and through the streets to settle into offices and to begin the day's work. But they had left one man behind. He stood stiffly, his back to the departing train, patting his pockets in a slow panic. Wallet, change, lighter, cigarettes. Receipt, change, lighter, cigarettes. No keys. He turned and watched the red eyes of the train disappear into the black subway tunnel.

London - Part 5

2005-12-30T15:40:00.000-06:00

5. The British Museum.

I was not too difficult to find my way back to the British Museum. I entered from the back and donated a pound. The museum was strange. They didn’t hide the fact that they were remodeling. Debris was everywhere and lots of exhibits had artifacts replaced by signs that said, “Temporarily removed”.

I saw bits of the Parthenon and the Rosetta Stone and then my stomach started to growl. I dashed to the cafe, which was quite fancy and paid five pounds for a smoked salmon sandwich and a glass of “lemon squash.” The cafeteria was packed and I had to sit next to a man whom, when I asked if the seat was empty, quickly put his wallet into his pocket and look in the other direction.

The lunch felt good but did not really make me full. I continued through the museum. The medieval English stuff bored me but I eventually found the Hall of Egyptian Funeral Art. I had never seen so many mummies in one place. They were all over. Still I didn’t really have any desire to look at them so I left the museum.

War and Peace II

2005-12-27T17:57:00.000-06:00

Crash. Glass. Brick. Note. Cries. Anger. Grumbles. Determination. Telephone. Ring. Ring. Ring. Crash. Glass. Brick. Note. Anger. Fear. Perseverance. Police. Ring. Ring. Ring. Crash. Glass. Brick. Note. Anger. Fear. Desperation. Newspaper. Ring. Ring. Ring. Boxes. Moving Van.

London - Part 4

2005-12-21T22:15:00.000-06:00

4. The Second Day

I awoke at a reasonable time. 11 I think, cleaned my room and washed my hair in the sink again. The night before I went to bed starving but I felt only sickish in the morning. I set out for the British museum and found it quickly, before I had expected. I couldn’t bring myself to go in yet so I walked past, telling myself I was searching for breakfast. Still I was too nervous to actually go into any place. I walked in a huge circle passing every café. Too expensive or too crowded I tell myself. At last I turned back towards what I thought was the British Museum and got enough courage to buy a coke, 60p. Prices seem so cheap until you think about them, and then they seem expensive.

I walked on, drinking my coke, expecting to see the British Museum but no luck. Soon I was in the West End. Staring at the Les Miserables theatre I almost got hit by a car. I stepped back too far and just missed getting hit by another. The streets got busier but I restrained panic. I turned down a less busy street and almost walked into a bum. He asked for a few pence and I gave him twenty. “You should be more careful walking alone” he told me. I thanked him but forgot to ask his name.

I walked some more following some Arabs and ended up on Oxford Street. There had been a parade earlier and the street was as packed as Times Square. I put may hand into my wallet pocket and thrust myself into the crowd. I trusted the compass in my nose and headed across Oxford Street in the direction I thought was north. Streets were deserted which made me even more nervous. It was follow the crowd and get pick-pocketed or walk down an alley and get mugged. I found a newsstand advertising phone cards and bought one for ten pounds along with an orangeade drink that was gross and good in alternate sips.

I stopped in a stairwell and nervously pulled out my A-Z. I was afraid to be seen with it. I glanced and tried to orient myself. I put it away and walked down Bond Street, then New Bond Street at last arriving at Grosvenor Square Park. I sat on a bench. Memorized the way back to the Museum with the A-Z, relaxed and had a cigarette. I felt strangely comfortable here. The park was beautiful and British looking but for some reason I felt welcome. Days later on a train I would look up Grosvenor Square park in a book and learn that it was called America in London. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin had lived nearby. I understood.

After the quick rest I made my way back down Oxford Street. An old lady was yelling for me to get my “Pokemon Bubbles” there were kids all over pulling off Pikachu’s head and blowing bubbles out of his innards. I considered her offer but decided against it.

I saw a phone booth, turned off and called home. It worked well. I didn’t tell my Mom about spending the night in the airport. She seemed disappointed that I hadn’t seen any sights yet. I told her I was having a good time as I stared at a photo plastered to the phone booth wall of the biggest nipples I had ever seen.

Something from 2000

2005-12-19T09:13:00.000-06:00

The key ring made that key ring sound. That sound that sounds like change when bums are walking down the street. The gate clicked. Then it was city silence. The air was thin and cooled the nostrils for the first time since winter. It was that kind of air that feels oxygen saturated, or at least what she would have expected oxygen-saturated air to feel like.

There were three windows with lights on, making the objects in the courtyard golden and nicely contrasted with the deep blue crayon shadows. Cats peered down at her like statues. In that way that statues can peer. Her ears were filled with the hums and buzzes of the inner workings of her body. The sound that blood makes when it runs through vesicles—especially those that are close to the ears.

Tits tits tits tits tits tits tits went her thoughts as she stepped quietly across the pavement. The mantra of the unoccupied mind merged with thhhhhhhhhhhh a sound similar to that coming from the radiators in her apartment—the radiators that were expelling all of the moisture that accumulated during the summer. Only she was not yet close enough to hear them.

If someone were watching her from one of the darkened windows above, he may have thought that at that moment, the two round-globed lamps lit her as if she were on stage. The purer cleaner light of the lamps making highlights, the reflected gold from the windows mid-tones and the blue of the ambient light, wherever that came from making shadows far nearer to perfect than the ones she had drawn on with makeup some time earlier.

The glass on the door that led into the foyer was cool when she put the palm of her hand against it. She put it there to push open the door and the door opened and she entered the small tile floored room. It smelled like dust and Murphy’s Oil Soap. They key ring repeated its sound.

The stairwell carried the greasy spirits of the nineteen twenties—and mixed itself with the odors of everyone’s dinner. The ancient carpet crinkled under her feet, but it was so used to being crinkled that you would only notice if you were small enough and not distracted by the creaking of the stairs.

She had left her door unlocked and stepped through the barrier of the outside smells—the community smells—into the smell of her apartment: a mixture of smoke and pan-fried meats. She hung her coat on the hook on the inside of the door in the front closet, it folded elegantly and went to sleep, for it had just been through a long exciting night in a coat check room.

Although her dress was light and creamy, her skin was warm to the touch, if anyone had been there to touch her. Her face was flushed as her body got used to the warmth of a heated living space. She walked slowly and flat-footed through the living room and the dining room and the hallway and into her bedroom.

Three pulls on ribbons and the dress fluttered to the ground without touching her. She stepped over it and under a nightgown made of the same material and it fell over her shoulders then hips then knees then toes at last brushing against the top of her perfect feet.

She walked around to the far side of the bed and lifted up the covers and rolled over against the man that was already there. She pressed herself against his back. He was naked and warm.

Where have you been, oh wife, oh wife? Her thoughts asked her. To the theatre alone, my love, another level of thoughts answered back. But why alone, oh wife, oh wife. She paused and thought. Because there was room for only one.

And did you not stray or break your vow?
I did, but once, and in my thoughts.

“But now I’m home,” she said out loud.

Her husband rolled over and put his hand across her shoulder. And they both slept long into the morning.

London - Part 3

2005-12-14T19:09:00.000-06:00

1. London In the Morning

Then time, at last moved quickly. I was delirious and confused and blissful because an ordeal was over. I stumble around the corner and into the Tube station. I wait in a long line, tell the man in the booth where I want to go and he hands me a token. The next hour and a half seems like a blur of streets and past advice. I haven’t even noticed that cars drive on the left. It seems like they just drive everywhere. Unlike what I expected, London is not New York. There is no order and there is room to breathe. It is both cleaner and dirtier than New York and after a period of being pleasantly lost, I find Campbell house.

It is 9:30, check in at 12 but I ached so I sat down, ate some cookie and then made my way to the door. There was an intercom that you press and sign that said, “Clearly announce your arrival and someone will let you in.” I stood for a while trying to think up what to say. Some one lets me in before I have to debase myself by talking. The lady says I can check in as son as the room is cleaned so I sit in the TV room and read Q magazine.

Someone comes eventually and I get my key and put down my stuff, set the alarm and collapse on the bed. I awake eight hours later. I wash my hair in the sink and get dressed and set out to find food, a magazine and a calling card. There is more wandering but less lost. It is eight o'clock and everything is closed. I buy Time Out in a posh little grocery store and look for food. I find myself in a district of expensive trendy restaurants. Nothing looks right. I get courage from desperation and I enter a friendly looking kebab shop. It is good I think but hard to eat so I throw half away. A man walks by yelling to himself and asks me where Courtford Street is. I tell him I don’t know and he screams “What do you fucking mean you don’t fucking know? Why did you come to this fucking country?”

I come back and nap before embarking to find a phone to call home. I feel guilty, certain that they are worried. No phones take change outside. The phone booths all smell of piss and are plastered with pictures of naked ladies. I go back to the house and ask. When I find the phone it is surprisingly easy to use. I leave a quick message and feel better. On my way back to bed someone in the common room talks to me. There is a group of about ten, all from MSU. It feels good to talk to Americans, shamefully good. They are friendly and fun and encouraging.

I have more hope for social prospects while I am here. After a while some Irish students come and strike up conversation whilst drinking vodka and iced tea. We discuss stereotypes and impressions. Someone actually says, “fanny-pack”. It is fascinating, though I have the impression that this conversation will be repeated countless times before I get back.

I Love You Yes

2005-12-13T20:13:00.000-06:00

I.
“I love you.”
“You do?”
“Yes. I do.”
“You do, do you?”
“Yes.”

II.
They arrived outside at six-thirty in the morning. They spread their blanket on the wet grass, set the cooler precisely in the middle, and then perched under separate umbrellas. They stayed under the umbrellas all day even when the blanket was soaked. She read a book. He had his headphones. At noon they took the prepared lunch out of the cooler and ate it. She knitted a scarf. He did the calculus problems for the next six weeks. They took the prepared dinner out of the cooler and ate it. They dumped out the cooler. They put the wet blanket into a garbage bag. They stood in line. When the time came, they went inside. They got a spot by the stage. The music started. She drank three beers. He smoked a joint. The encore began. He spoke:
“I love this band.”
“Yes.”

III.
The bottle of dish soap advertised that it moisturized the hands while you washed. That is why she bought it. That is why she did the dishes last. She did them after vacuuming the carpet, after dusting the entertainment center, after frying the potatoes, after clearing the table.

When they were in bed she touched his chest with her moisturized hands.
“I love you,” she said.
“Yes.”

IV.
He had returned from the store with a rubber bone for Rufus. Rufus snatched the bone, squeezed himself behind the refrigerator where he chewed it until it became a foamy mass of plastic chunks, and then fell asleep.
The man pulled the refrigerator away from the wall. He scooped the struggling dog in his arms and carried the dog up the stairs and put him into the tub where he scrubbed the dog with special dog shampoo.

“I love you,” he said, rubbing the dog with a special dog towel. “I do. I do.” He set the dog down in his special dog basket. “Do you love me? Do you? Do you?”

The dog went back to sleep. The man thought the dog looked angelic while it was sleeping. “Are you an angel?” he said. “Here to watch over me and protect me?” He looked at Rufus one moment longer and said one word:
“Yes.”

V.
It was the last day of school. He was the last student in the room. The others were in the hall laughing and throwing their textbooks. He stood next to her desk. She looked at him. He looked back.
“Good bye,” he said.
“Good bye,” she replied.

He stood there.

“Grandma?” he said. She was not his Grandmother. “No. I mean Miss Rogers.”
“Yes?”

“I wanted to give you a goodbye hug.” She hugged him. “I love you,” he said. He took a step back. He put his backpack on both shoulders. He stood in the doorway. “Will you miss me?”
“Yes.”

VI.
She put the box of bulletins down on the table, just next to the cassette tapes and the Styrofoam cups. The people in the sanctuary were still singing. She could smell copier toner coming from the box. She blew some coffee breath over it. She volunteered for three things by writing her name on three pieces of paper. She checked her purse to make sure she had brought enough singles. She had. She picked up the bag with the coffee cake, went inside, and sat down in her seat: third row, aisle.

The man at the front was shouting. She watched his mouth. He shouted some more. She heard him say something. “Do you love Jesus?” Everyone in the room shouted at the same time:
“Yes.”

London Part 2

2005-12-12T19:13:00.000-06:00

2. Gatwick

Gatwick is bizarre. It smells like smoke and I try to figure out who is English by the way they look. I follow the black man who sat in front of me on the plane. He looks familiar. He is safety but he steps on a conveyor and disappears. I am now on my own. There is an instant of panic when I feel like I can’t speak this language but I walk it off.

I pick the most congenial looking passport officer. He’s friendly but it’s a hassle. He wants a letter and I show him several. None of them are what he wants but he lets me go anyway. My bag is already off the conveyor. I walk through the doorway marked “Nothing to declare.” And to my surprise I am in the airport lobby. Without talking to anyone, without my bag being searched. I feel guilty.

I have walked into the ulcer I have been creating for the last month. My courage is gone. I think of all the better decisions I could have made but as punishment for not making them I spend the night in the airport.
What now seems like an adventure seemed like Hell at the time.

I find a bench and sit but I feel conspicuous. There are too many people so I go upstairs to the Mall. The benches are bigger here. Less people. So I sit but every time I get comfortable someone comes to mop under the bench. As it turns ten I am trying desperately to avoid the cleaning crew. I wander in circles trying to find the right spot

I finally get the courage to get some money—and panic when the ATM gives my card back. I can’t breathe. But the sign changes and the money comes out. It’s backward here. I look over my shoulder but I can’t find the rabbit anywhere.

I find a man sleeping and sit near but not too close. Finally I can read The Third Man but I can’t concentrate. I reread a page about every ten minutes. The shops close and more people come to sit down. I hope they are camping for the night. Some go to sleep. They are my imaginary companions and I can read a little better. People walk by periodically, late for their flights. Kids play video games. I am dead bored but I think I can make it. My head constantly calculates time zones. It is eleven in England and Six in Detroit but it feels like neither. At least I’m comfortable

Then these men walk by and smile at me. They look like taxi drivers or doormen but they have machine guns.
More sitting and reading and worrying. I look at the clock every two minutes. Whenever the hour changes I have to do more math. I get to chapter ten and see the machine gun men talking to boys at the other end of the benches. I panic again.

The boys pull out IDs and boarding passes. The machine gun men look unconvinced. I want to leave but don’t want to call attention to myself. Eventually the machine gun men leave. An old man who was sleeping asks a lot of questions but I can’t hear them. I stare at a page for ten minutes and then move downstairs.

There are more people here and it feels a little better. Lots of people are sleeping. I hope they are all spending the night. I take a seat across from a sleeping girl and I can read better. I try not to look at the machine gun men as they pass. At 1:00 I finish The Third Man. It has only been four hours—eleven more until my check-in time. I sit and do nothing for the rest of the night. I read a little but it doesn’t make time pass. I try to convince myself that it is ok to sleep buy I’m too scared. Around three, I close my eyes. There is no mental drifting. I count yoga breaths. Suddenly this seventeen-year-old girl pounces on the space next to me and lies down. I make room for her. A few minutes later she speaks. “How long you reckon you’ll be here?” I think she wants me to leave so she can have my spot but she just wants me to wake her at quarter to six. I accept. Around four, things start to change. Stores open again and flights arrive. Slowly, it gets busier. 5:45 finally arrives and the girl is tough to awaken. I have to shout “Hey you wake up” and she does. I feel like a Yank.

I spend the next hour between sitting and wandering. The airport gets really crowded. I force myself to sit until 7:00. Then I board the Gatwick express. I spend my first British money on the ticket. I’m afraid to look at the strange handful of bills and change I get in return.

I sit next to a couple from The States who talk about Egypt. And the train starts. My hellish first impression melts away. England seems so familiar and so foreign at the same time. The countryside recalls a movie but I cant think which one. I can’t help nodding off every ten seconds and seamlessly the country becomes London.

Palm Sunday

2005-12-11T21:39:00.000-06:00

A purple bicycle, a girl’s bike with plastic streamers on the handle grips and glitter in the seat, was chained to a tree at the corner of Lancashire Street and Gainsborough drive. Both the tree and the bicycle stood in a flowerbed that, at this time, was swollen with marigolds, irises, pansies and an ivy that had begun to weave itself into the bicycle’s chain.

Stephen Hicks was mowing a lawn. The lawnmower’s hums added a more interesting bass to the generic performance of the Bach concerto playing on his headphones, but Stephen was looking rather than listening. He was looking at the men standing in the marigolds.

There were two of them in suits, one brown, and one grey. The man in the grey suit was kneeling in front of the bike with the hacksaw while the other stood above him offering directions.

“No,” said the man in the brown suit. “You have to pull back on the saw a few times to make a groove and then you go back and forth”

“Does it have to be backwards Mr. Brown?” asked the man in the grey suit. “It would be easier for me to make the groove by going forwards.

“Hey!” shouted Stephen. “What are you doing?”

Both men stood up and bowed. The man who had been called Mr. Brown walked over and put his arm on Stephen’s shoulder.

“Hello friend,” said Mr. Brown. “I am Mr. Brown, and this is my friend Mr. Grey, we are going to take this bike because the Lord has need of it.”

"He will send it back, immediately of course," said Mr. Grey.

Stephen Hicks did not know what to say. After all, it was not his bicycle, and he'd never seen it there before.

"Could you try not to step on the marigolds," he said.

"Certainly," replied Mr. Brown and then Mr. Grey after him. They lifted their feet carefully off of the flowers, many of which were already flattened by the lightly grooved soles of their dress shoes.

* * *
The Lord came riding down Grand River Avenue, on a purple girls bicycle. The plastic streamers flowed in the wind. The glitter in the seat reflected the glorious sun. And when we saw him coming we took off our jackets and laid flowers in his path.

London Part 1 - Saturday July 22, 2000

2005-12-09T19:13:00.000-06:00

1. Airplanes.

Airplanes and airports at least in the moment of hindsight are surreal. Window seats showed me wings and the patchwork of human development contrasted with the divine landscape of clouds viewed from above.

The first plane is short and satisfying, babies and businessmen. It was early and everyone, even the flight attendants, were subdued. The excitement was numbed. Although most of the time I felt like I was eight years old again. Orange juice and a cinnamon roll seemed like nursery school snacks and I was light—in awe of New Jersey and how many baseball diamonds. The landing was rough—Pure physics of going very fast and trying to stop. Noisy and painful as an amusement park.

Newark was so smooth. A modern monorail to a circular terminal. So many girls from Kentucky and the British family with the disappointed boy (The metal detector never beeped from him). The blonde Europeans with the blonde toddler and the wispy haired euro-infant who probably couldn’t focus to see he was in America. The Kentucky ladies smiled and cooed and I wondered what it is like to be eight months old.

The second plane was more of a spectacle. There were Dividers and hallways. Below, mostly ocean. So frightening to see just clouds and blue as if you are upside down or in between two skies. But when the movie comes on I have to close my shutters and I am in a tube or a Pringles can that is not really moving, and look, there is a movie. The same thing on three separate screens. It’s crap. She has cancer and dies and he learns that money is less important than love. But she dies. So he’s off the hook. There is no sacrifice for his revelation.

The stewardesses constantly pass out strange foreign objects. I am startled when I discover that I am holding a heated moist towelette. I have no idea what to do with it. The man in front of me puts it on his face and I do the same. And then I notice no one else is putting it on his or her face so I stop. What if that guys is just weird? What if I am just weird?

I drink way too much Dr. Pepper but only gather the courage to go to the bathroom once. I plan it so that the carts are on the other side of the plane. I will be quick and not make a scene but there are so many signs to read and symbols to figure out. When I try to open the door I hit the cart, startling the stewardesses and myself. How embarrassing.

It seems like the stewardess brings things just to me. A chocolate chip cookie--my survival food. I put it into my backpack and I live off of it. There is still a piece left.

Then I sleep a little anyway. I refuse to watch “You’ve Got Mail” but sometimes I try to analyze the editing. I don’t learn anything.

When the movie is over the screen shows flight information: maps, distances, temperatures, and times. I stare at it. Each time it changes, I’m hundreds of miles closer.

I open my screen and England appears under the wing. Even from up here you can tell it’s another country. New jersey was pools and all squares and houses and baseball. This is a jigsaw puzzle or a stained glass window of abstract art. Everything looks like it might be a castle and there are actually sheep.

I watch the sunset and the suddenly there is a runway. The landing is uneventful I kept waiting for the roughness, the pull but it was just land and stop. I am in England.

When it snows

2005-12-08T23:30:00.000-06:00

When it snows the sky is as white as the ground and only her red brick building seems to have any color.

She just didn't know how to talk to people, otherwise she was a great hair dresser. She didn't understand why people had to talk while they were getting their hair cut. It wasn't like they tried to talk either. They just expected her to have interesting things to say. Personally, when she was having her hair cut, she liked it to be silent. That's how she could be sure that the person was concentrating.

But that's why they fired her. That's what she had to say to her mom at dinner that night. Dinner was ready when she came inside, the farmland ham all warm and pink, the potatoes chalky and falling apart. It was food that normally would make her feel warm inside, leaving trails of health-bringing energy in her esophagus, but today it was like spooning food into an empty drum.

She had to tell her mother because her mother could see that something had changed. Maybe it was because she had shoveled the sidewalk without being asked. She had to go through the closets for nearly twenty minutes before she found her snow boots. She hoped that doing some honest physical work would make cutting hair seem like a frivolous profession. That she could atone for going to beauty school as a loophole to the "college degree" clause in grandma's will. But the cold air just made her flushed and pink like the ham.

Head Hunters

2005-12-07T20:27:00.000-06:00

1-3-2001

To start, I was glad for Harry Potter, the English accent that has taken over the voices in my head was comforting and I made the drive to Oakbrook Terrace flawlessly. Once there, however, I felt lost, I had only an address and no visual picture of where I was going... I went to the wrong building and almost slipped on the slick marble. Feeling stupid I got back in my car and found the right parking garage and parked. I missed the elevator so I waited.

When I got off of the elevator a man was standing there. "What was the floor you were just on?" He asked me. I was startled. I mumbled, backed up and tried hard to say, "What was the question?" The second time I understood. "Two" I said. "Two? And not three?" "Yes two." He disappeared around the corner.
I found the elevators inside. I pushed the number 13 and shuddered. The last job was on the 13th floor. I shifted my weight back and forth to get the full rush of riding an elevator. It was fast. The doors opened and I stood in front of a giant letter U with an elongated C encircling it like a halo. It was the right logo, I had looked up the website the night before. I was in the right place

As I later would discover I was lucky that there was someone at the desk. "Can I help you?" she asked, and I wondered if anyone could. "I have a ten o clock appointment with Lauren" I said, glancing at the clock above her. 10:10. "Have you filled out one of our forms before?" she said her eyes telling me that the whole appointment formality was a scam. "No." I said and she explained the forms to me and I pretended to pay attention. I took the forms and sat down. She hurried away.
I started with the checklist, thousands of computer terms I sifted through, most of them I had heard of but the rating system was not thought-out well. The categories were "1. School, 2. Junior, 3. Average. 4. Above average and 5. Expert." There was also a space for the number of years. I made up my own system and checked off all of my knowledge depending on if it was stuff I liked to do or not. I flipped back to the resume section filling out what I could, feeling stupid for not bringing reference addresses with me.

A woman came in and stood around a while. She asked a young Indian man if anyone had been at the desk in a while. He said no and she rang the bell. A fat woman came out and gave her the forms. The other lobbyists handed in their clipboards and she left. They were called out one by one and I took extra time on my forms. I finished but no one was at the desk. I didn't want to ring the bell or talk to the fat lady so I just sat and listened.
I could hear people shouting in the other room but not what they were saying, and I realized that below it all there was a familiar sound. I couldn't place it at first it seemed like a hum but it comforted me. I tried to focus in on it. The hum changed and I found I knew what the next sound would be, then I remembered it, the singing started but I couldn't hear it well. I sang in my head instead. It progressed and I tried to keep up, veering off rhythm. Then for some reason the talking died down and I heard the first clear words. "And when I go there I go there with you"

The bell-ringing girl put her clipboard on the desk. I got up and placed mine exactly in line with hers. "Good idea" I said. She nodded. Finally the fat lady came in and took the clipboards. She came back a few seconds later and said "he'll be with you in a minute, and so will she". The other girl got a man I thought, wondering if I should have put the name Laurie n the box marked "recruiter. A good-looking young man came into the room and looked me in the eye. "Ian" he said and I got up he told me his name but I didn't hear it. He asked how I found the place and I said fine but it was hard to tell which building. He smiled sort of emptily and said, "Yes, they aren't marked well."

So we sat down and he explained the open office philosophy as if it was this amazing thing and explained that after he looked through my form if I could just give him 20 or 30 minutes he would go and talk to his colleagues and try and get some leads and maybe even a phone interview. I was kind of confused but I said it sounded fine. He went through my form and my resume and I felt proud of my accomplishments. He seemed to respond favorably to things I said and I felt like I answered questions pretty well. Although I felt really stupid every time I saw a section I hadn't filled out. I wanted badly to make excuses but I restrained myself.
He finished with the form and told me some more formalities and then asked if I had 20 or 30 minutes once more. Sure I said, that will be fine. And I sat in the lobby. Two lobby ladies were talking about kids and how bad the drive was. One didn't like her drive to work and she wanted something closer. The other had just graduated after 6 years of school and raising kids. She kept saying she couldn't find work because she had a degree in Information Systems Management and not computer science and she didn't have any experience. I felt bad-- and young. Recruiters came in and talked to people, they said company names and asked about late shifts nodded a lot and then said goodbye. My guy came back in asked me if he had written the address to the Children's Village website correctly. He forgot an S and he left. I thought about going in to tell him that most of the site was mine but there was some bad new stuff that I didn't do. He came back in and said the address didn't work. I looked at what he had written down and said it was right. That it worked last night. He shook his head and walked away. I picked up a Newsweek and read the cartoons. One of them said something about a dotcom. Then I remembered. I told him the site was a dotorg but it was a dotcom, I almost got up to tell him but I thought better of it

A young woman came in with an old woman to tell a chubby young man about some crap data entry job at Motorola and he pretended to be excited, mentioning several times he would take anything, smirking to conceal his desperation. The old lady stood behind the desk a moment trying to look official and a young woman came in from behind a frosted glass door that I had been watching for reflections of my guy. " My guy" I thought, I don't remember his name. The young woman was wearing a trench coat and sneakers and she looked pissed off. "What is it this time?" the old lady asked. "I' don't feel well” said the young one. The old lady gave her a nasty look. "Sit down and I'll deal with you in a minute and she did.

I pulled my guy's card out of my pocket and found his name. Brent. I looked up and the sick girl was gone. Maybe she snuck out. Brent came back with a list. I told him about the .com and he smiled and wrote it down. The list had cool names like Black Dog and Planet Interactive. They sounded promising. He asked if I had two more minutes and I said yes. He came back two minutes later and said some banter about checking with colleagues and making presentations and then said it was lunch time and to call him on Friday if I didn't hear from him first. So I packed up and said good luck to the chubby guy who reminded me that I put my envelope under my chair. I thanked him a little too much but I was grateful. I pulled on my hood and hit the elevator button got on an up elevator by accident but I had where the streets have no name in my head.

And I was back to Harry Potter, I cheered out loud when he won the quidditch match and I kept shouting at the radio as the suspense built. I got on the wrong freeway and had to get off at the other end of the city. I drove slowly and calmly engrossed in the plot, cheering for Harry, being worried about him. And then I was home, for the first time I took Harry in with me, I lay on the floor and listened until it was the end. Harry was looking forward to the best summer ever. So was I.