People've always
called me a
bird,
but I don't sing
for song's sake
or inspire

I go south
for the
summer, predictably
human
   and instinctively
drawn to
fire

Chances are you don't feel the same
Significant value when I hear your name.
Partly because I've felt no shame
Hopelessly going about playing the game.

That all changed the day you stayed;
One special day our bond was made.
Rules were set that I obeyed,
Everyday I played a different charade.

Everyone in this town has gone by,
Instinctively I tell you another lie.
Vivid dreams distort me of you and I:
Rosa am I and I your guy.

So why can't my dreams come true?
Endlessly I've fallen in love with you.
Simply be yourself is all I ensue.
Tonight I'll wish upon a star for you.

Not out of lust, nor personal affair,
Can't afford to lose the bond we share.
Only God knows how it's not fair.
How a love like you comes so rare.

People tell me I should just let you go.
My emotions have been tethered to and fro.
How can they just say, "Let you go?"
All they see is the pale scarlet snow.

Enclosed is my love for you held secretly,
Never again my face you'll see.
Remembered in my heart you'll be,
Never again your face I'll see.

I could feel it coming
Like a bird can feel the pressure change
Just before a hurricane
And instinctively flies
Away.

But I flew to you.
I wanted to play god.
I clung to memories,
Clung to your flannel sleeves
Blindfolded myself with them
Dizzily,
I walked in circles.

You didn’t say anything
But I know you so well I could read
Every line—
Every crevice in your forehead
Another word.

My lips clung to yours
Begging them to smile.
My fingers danced on yours
Tightroping
One degree from tipping over.

You didn’t kiss back.
Your lips a marble statue,
My fingers fell off the wire.

You gazed through me like glass
And I knew it was
Our last.

(Glade, World, Master, Boy, Hero)

                                                 GLADE

There is a glacier.
Its blue tongue’s tip just tastes a frozen gorge.
There is a gorge, its walls shattered by cold; a once-green thing that, in dying, birthed a thousand aching fissures. It works its jagged way downhill, round ragged rifts and drifts until it comes upon a little frosted wood.
There is a wood, an island locked in ice.
Within this wood the gorge descends. It wanders and it wends; it brakes and all but ends outside a clearing wet with sun. And there, forking, its bent and broken arms embrace a strange, enchanted glade.

There is a glade.
And in this glade the black bears sleep, though salmon leap fat between falls. Here the field mouse draws no shadow, the eagle seeks no prey; they spend their while caressed by rays, and halcyon days are they. Here rabbit and fawn may linger, no longer need they flee. For in this timeless, taintless space, the Wild has ceased to be. (Outside the glade are shadow and prey, are ice and naked death. There blood may run freely. There the eagle, that thief, is a righteous savage, a noble fiend. But once in the glade he is dove, and has no taste for blood, running freely or otherwise).
And in this glade there nests a pool:  a dazzling, blue-and-silver jewel; profoundly deep, pristinely clear. All who sip find solace here, for this is the Eye of Being. They lap in peace, assuming blear, not knowing it is seeing. And ever thus this pool shall peer:  a silent seer, reflecting on—all that Is, and all Beyond.
(Outside the glade there lies a world where rivers ever run, where ghastly calves in random file revile a bitter sun. East, the day is born in mist. West she dies:  her rest, the deep. And North…North the Earth lies mute. Wind gnaws her hide, wind wracks her dreams. Wind screams like a flute in her white, white sleep).
But in the glade are tall, stately grasses, sunning raptly, spinning lore. Roots render the rhythms, blades bend without breeze, as signals ascend from the glade’s tender floor. (In this wise the glade weaves its word, airs its views. All the glade’s flora are bearers of news). They do not wither with fall, for in the glade there is no fall. They do not bind or wilt or brown—they gesture, spreading the mood, the mind; conveying, indeed, the very soul of the glade. As ever they have, as they shall evermore.
Bees do not hum here; they sing. They fatten the dream. Mellow and round are the timbres they sound, sweet is the music they bring. Birds do not sing here—they play. They carry the theme. Dulcet and warm are the strains they perform. Gifted musicians are they. (All in the glade are virtuosi. They were born to create. Melody, harmony, meter…are innate). Now the performance is lively and bright, now full, now almost still. For, though all in the glade may lean to the light, they must bend to the maestro’s feel.
And yet…there was a day, long ago in a dream, when this ongoing opus was torn. And on that day (so the lullaby goes) the wind brought a scream, and Dissonance was born.
There was a noise.
Moose tensed, their coffee eyes narrowed, their patient brows creased. Bees mauled the tempo, birds lost their place. The grass stood *****, all blades pointing east. There was a crash, and a shriek, and a naked, bleeding beast burst stinking through the fern, fell stumbling on its face.
Moose scattered:  unheard of. Sheep brawled, geese burst out of rhyme. The symphony, forever endeavored to soar sublime, fluttered, plunged, and, for all of a measure, ceased.
The pool was appalled…what manner brute—what kind of monster was this? Furless flank to forelimb, hide obscured by blood. As for its face…it had no face; only a look:  of shock frozen in time, of horror in amber. A deep welling rift ran temple to chin, halving the mask, caving it in. Such a grievous wound…the pool watched it stagger, on two legs and four, thrashing about till it came to a rise. There it labored for air, wiped the blood from its eyes, lashed at illusion, looked wildly round. Beholding the pool, the beast tumbled down.
And there this wretch plunged his thirst, drank his fill, fell back on his haunches.
The pool became still.
The two traded stares.
The glass read his features:  that durable eye pondered the wreckage and probed the debris. Revolted, the pool sought the succor of sky. But that thing remained—that face…in all creation…surely there could be…no other creature so ugly as he.
And he gazed in the glass.
Beneath the surface were…images…swimming in currents of shadow and light. He saw half-shapes and fragments…hideous men, exotic beasts…saw blue worlds of water, saw white worlds of ice…it was all so vague and unreal—yet somehow strangely familiar. Deeper he peered, but, as his mangled face neared, the sun smote the pool and the shapes disappeared. The brute pawed the ground and, dreaming he’d drowned, shook his head sharply and slowly looked round:
There were starlings at arm’s-length, transfixed with suspense, their tail feathers trembling, their dark eyes intense. Fantails and timber wolves, stepping in sync, paused for a sniff, stooped for a drink. Bees, pirouetting, threw light in his eyes. Seizing the moment, the pool pressed its hold.
And the glade revolved.
The freak watched it spin—saw the ferns’ greedy fingers reach round and close in, saw the tall grass rise high in an emerald sheen, swaying to rhythms from somewhere obscene. This place was madness; he struggled to stand, but, weak as he was, keeled over cold.
And the glade heaved a sigh, and the tall grass reclined, in curious patterns once rendered in whim. Far off in thunder the hard world replied, as iced pines exploded and screamed on the breeze. Down bore the sun, a chill just behind. The pool, grown blood-red, fended frost from its rim. Details dissolved in the oncoming tide. The pool dimmed to black. Night seeped through the trees.
Now flora found slumber while, pulsing below, the pool was infused with a soft ruby glow.
Soon birds bearing beech leaves, and needles of pine, laid down a spread and returned to the limb. But breath from the North blew their blanket aside. The wind grew in earnest, the air seemed to freeze.
And the wolf and the she-bear, of contrary mind, abhorring their task approached, looking grim. They sniffed him for measure, then, loathing his hide, growled their displeasure and dropped to their knees.
All night these glum attendants flanked his naked quaking form. The rising moon drew dreams in gray.
In time the man grew warm.

Morning swept through the glade in one broad stroke of the master’s brush, dappling the foliage with amber and rose. The pool was roused by the sweet pass of light. He opened his eye and the glade came alive:  into the whirlpool of life a thousand colors swam, chasing the scattering eddies of night. The magic of morning began.
Bluebird and goldfinch descended in rings, primaries clashing with robin and jay. Dollops of sun, repelled by their wings, spattered anew on the palette of day. Banking as one, the hues struck away.
There was a crowd.
And in this crowd that oddity sat, its chin on its chest, its rear pointing west. Its forepaws lay leaning, upturned and at rest. ***** and blood messed its muzzle and breast. Passed overnight. Or perhaps only dozed…tendril by tendril, claw by claw, the crowd decompressed:  the ring slowly closed.
And the stranger cried out and shifted his seat. His eyes sought his feet—rounding the arches, and topping the toes, the tall grass was questing. The little brute froze.
And the fauna took pause, and the flora went slack. Leaves followed talons, stems followed claws. Hooves tromped on paws as the crowd drifted back.
Not a breath taken. Not a move made. Stillness, like fog, enveloped the glade.
Now the grass tugged his feet, now the sea of jade splayed—left hand and right, the slender shafts reared. Gaining momentum, blade followed blade. The green field was torn till a deep swath appeared. The swath hurtled west, reflecting the sun. A hundred yards distant it died. Once more the grass stood, its tips spreading wide. The swath, born again, repeated its run.
Plain was the message, and clearly conveyed. The newcomer gawked. Confusion ensued.
The tall blades were swayed by the pulse of the glade.
But the swath was not renewed.
Something tiny bounced by. He ventured a peek, barely rolling an eye.
A chocolate sparrow, with pinfeathers black, popped past an ankle and paused to look back. The bird cocked its head, rocked in place, hopped ahead. It fluttered. It freaked. It glared and stopped dead. Vexed to its limit, it burst into flight.
The sitting thing watched till it passed out of sight.
Now a breeze bent his back, picked him half off his stern. The wind, done its best, grew flustered at last. It trailed to the west, thrilling lilies it passed. It wound round the willows and didn’t return.
So the fauna repaired to the live oak’s shade.
A strange kind of stupor fell over the glade.
From deep in the wood came a shape through the trees—a pronghorn, perhaps, or an elk swift and sure. But up limped a moose, a flyport with fur, low in the belly and wide at the knees. Wizened he was, scarcely able to see. Neither vision, nor vigor, nor velvet had he. He hobbled abreast, then groveled or died, his nose facing west, his tail flung aside.
The brute merely glazed.
But the glade was unfazed.
Those long shafts reshuffled. A tense moment passed.
The ominous shadows of badgers were cast. Three left their holes, as if to attack. They pedaled like moles and the stranger jumped back. He stumbled, fell flailing, and, kicking his guide, threw out his arms and tumbled astride. First he stepped on his tail, then he stepped on his pride. The moose bellowed twice and shook side to side while the little pest clung to his high, homely hide.
And the old moose unbent to his knees by degrees. He reeled like a drunk down the path of the breeze. Together they lurched through a break in the trees. And all morning long, and on through the day, both beggar and bearer would buckle and sway. The moose lost his temper, but never his way.
And the wind blew the sun to its deep ruby rest; the scrub, in obeisance, inclined to the west. Their slow taffy shadow in slinking would seem to slip round the rocks like a snake in a dream.
And the sun became a beacon, and the underbrush a stream. The wide Earth took their weight in stride, and the wind named him Hero.

                                               WORLD

When the sun was low the old moose began to stumble, at last limping to a halt beside a swift river lined with stunted pines. He’d half-expected a somewhat graceful dismount, but Hero, dug in like a tick, wasn’t about to let go. The moose knelt until his joints objected, shimmied, bucked, and with a sudden whirl sent the little bother flying.
Hero scraped himself out of the dirt and looked up forlornly. The ancient moose, his good eye gone bad, glared a long minute before hobbling away, his bony **** rocking with dignity, his scraggly tail fighting off imaginary flies.
Hero managed a few steps and dropped, staring in disbelief as the moose disappeared between half-frozen pines. He remained on his knees for the longest time, his jaw hanging, waiting for the moose—waiting for anything to show. At last a ruckus to his left snapped him out of it. His head ratcheted around.
Fifteen feet off the bank, three screaming gulls were dancing on an immense stone outcropping, fighting over a rapids-tossed sockeye. Hero was instantly famished. He wobbled to his feet and stumbled twice wading out, only regaining his balance by leaning against the current while rapidly wheeling his arms. The shrieking gulls reluctantly backed off as he stepped in slow-motion through the rushing water. Hero lunged at the slapping fish, cracked an ankle on the rock, and hopped around howling with both hands holding his shin. One foot was as good as none in the surging water. He went right under. Before he knew it he was being swept downriver.
This was glacial meltwater, so cold he quickly lost all sensation. Hero swallowed a mouthful and surfaced fighting for life; too disoriented to combat the current, too numb to realize his waving arm was striking something solid. That solid something turned out to be a swirling clump of rotted birches tangled up in scrub. He embraced one of these trunks as the mass slammed against isolated rocks, kicked his feet wildly, and somehow hauled himself aboard. The raft ricocheted rock to rock until repeated impacts sent it spinning. Giddy from the whirling and soaking, he clung freezing to the trees, retching continuously while the river roared in his ears. Through spray and tears he made out only cartwheeling fragments of the world.
But then the river was widening, its fury dissipating. The raft was approaching the sea. Hero gasped as the seemingly boundless Pacific swallowed the broad red belly of the sun. And as he spun he was treated to a panoramic, breathtaking spectacle:  the great indigo ocean with its slow traffic of driftwood and ice—voiced-over by the dismal calls of foraging gulls, and broken rhythmically by intermittent glimpses of the river’s rocky banks growing farther and farther apart. Whirling as it went, the dying man’s soul was taken by the sea.

At the 59th Parallel in winter, the Pacific coast plays host to numberless floes and minor bergs orphaned from Alaskan coastal glaciers. Hero cruised into a watery gridlock on a boat of ice-glazed birches, one bit of flotsam among the rest.
The cold wouldn’t let him move, wouldn’t let him breathe, wouldn’t let him think. He lay supine, feet crossed and hands clasped, terrified that to budge was to roll. An ice patina grew over the tangled trees like a white fungus—this growth soon webbed his fingers and toes, speckled his chest and thighs, glazed his hair and face, danced and disintegrated with his breath’s tapering plumes.
Floes and frozen-over debris tended to group with passing collisions; Hero’s married birches bit by bit accrued a mostly-submerged tangle of trunks and branches, all becoming fast in a creeping ice cement. Night came on just as resolutely, until land was only a flat black memory. The raft moved silently over the deep, still accepting the occasional gentle impact. And the floes became thicker and wider in a freezing doldrums; soon the proximate sea was all a broken field of packed ice, bobbing infinitesimally with the planet’s pulse.
Long ghostly strands of fog came striding over the torn ice field. They leaned this way and that, their mourners’ skirts tearing and patching and leaning anew. The ghosts were there to seal it:  their locked fingers and gray diaphanous wings were quickly becoming a wholly opaque descending shroud, its boundaries lost in the soughing wind.
Collisions came less and less. Darkness and silence, breaching some previously impenetrable barrier, began to take up residence in Hero’s chilling marrow. From his very center broke a weak little cry of refusal, of denial, as mind mustered frame in one desperate bid for freedom. His skin, frozen to the raft, peeled right off, and at that his inner brave succumbed. Hero’s smashed head arched back. His face contorted frightfully while the little lamp fluttered and paled within.
A raucous chorus slowly worked its way through the mist. It emerged a few hundred yards off—a tiny, terrified barking, growing in clarity as it grew in volume and urgency. It was a sound beacon. Hero strained eagerly, and when for one excruciating minute the beacon was cut off by a large passing body, was certain death had claimed him. Then it was back, and his heartbeat was quickening. He caught a heaving sound…something was moving his way down a wide tributary between floes. Hero could hear a gasping and snorting, accompanied by a hard slapping and splashing. The sounds vanished. In a moment the raft was rocked from below.
A sputtering muzzle blew salt in his eyes. A cold slimy flipper flapped across his chest and slapped about his face. The fur seal barked directly in his ear. Whiskers raked his dead cheek. The seal barked again.
Back below the surface it slipped. Hero listened anxiously as the splashing sound retreated whence it came.
The seal swam off perhaps a hundred feet and began barking hysterically.
From much farther off came a profusion of answering barks.
The seal swam back to Hero’s raft, circling and calling, circling and calling, while the responders approached en masse.
Now a sallow beam could be seen cutting through the fog. Several more showed vaguely along a plane yawing with some huge, barely discernible object.
A herd of northern fur seals burst into sight, barking madly, beating through the ice. They converged on Hero’s raft, really bellowing now.
Those odd yellow beams came in pursuit, and soon were close enough to eerily illuminate a gigantic wooden vessel parting the ice. The seals barked ferociously. Whenever the vessel leaned away, those nearest Hero’s raft would absolutely howl.
The fog deepened, condensed, crystallized, and then the collective light of a dozen lanterns was playing over a low, listing nightmare. Hero could hear the shouts of many aggressive men, but the waterborne seals, rather than scatter, boarded the ice and redoubled their din, fighting their way onto his quickly mobbed raft.
The sealers hurled serrated spears even as they clambered down rope ladders. When these men reached the ice the seals snapped and gnashed madly, refusing to be dislodged. The sealers lost all composure with the thrill of the hunt:  wielding clubs, spears, and hatchets—sometimes using iron bludgeons or any old utensil handed down—they crushed skulls, dragged carcasses, hooked animals still spurting and bleating. Clinging though he was, Hero was flabbergasted by the way the slipping and scampering men went about their butchery, hacking and smashing more with passion than with precision. But not a single seal attempted to flee—throughout the carnage they barked all the louder, egging on their slayers, carcass by carcass drawing the impassioned sealers to Hero’s ice-locked raft.
It was all so hazy and macabre. Hero’s eyes rolled back, and the next thing he knew he was sitting hunched on the vessel’s sopping deck. Two men were rubbing his limbs while another poured warm water down his back. He looked around in shock. The very notion of a boat containing more than one or two individuals—a sort of floating tribe—was way beyond his ken; so to see it, to have it come looming out of nothingness, was an experience almost supernatural.
He remembered some of those fur-covered men force-feeding him mouthfuls of halibut and seal fat, and he recalled a small group standing around him, shouting words that made no sense at all. After that he had a very vivid memory of their angry little chief repeatedly punching him while hollering one angry little word over and over and over. Hero couldn’t make out his inquisitor’s face, for the large feather-lined hood quite engulfed the man’s head, yet he could see those quick eyes flash as they caught the oil lamps’ light. Finally this man stopped boxing Hero’s ear. He stared hard. In these remaining decades of the tenth century it was fully within his power to administer as he saw fit—he could have ordered Hero’s immediate execution and not a man of his crew would have objected. He hesitated only because there wasn’t a hint of resistance in his prisoner’s pinched and frightened eyes. He leaned forward, studying the wound that all but split Hero’s face in two before grunting, raising his right arm, and yanking down its seal hide sleeve. Attached to the stump of his forearm was a primitive prosthesis consisting of a thick oak cap strapped to the arm with lengths of gut, and, hammered squarely into the center of that cap, a broad, cruelly hooked blade chiseled from a narwhal’s tusk. He held this obscenity in front of Hero’s eyes, traced the face’s deep diagonal rift, and once more demanded his captive’s identity. Hero then vaguely remembered being dragged along a tilting deck and thrown into the ship’s tiny hold. He retained a strong mental image of landing in a place of musty odors and dank projections.
There came a soft scuffling in the darkness, and presently a blind and exceedingly old woman felt her way to his side, mumbling as she approached. Her speech was comprised not of words; it was rather a running gibberish of cooing vowels and clucking consonants. The old woman was as mad as her circumstances; sick with sea and solitude, bedeviled by age and confinement. She sat cross-legged, patting her withered palms up his arm until she came to his face. Her strange mumbling soliloquy rose and fell as her bony fingers daintily explored the newly opened wound. Hero let his head fall back in her lap. A pair of hands like emaciated tarantulas scurried through the filth and tiny bodies until they came upon an old otter’s pelt bag that held her secrets. The woman loosened the bag’s cord and extracted an assortment of herbs, sniffing each in succession. She then scooped a handful of blubber from a bowl made of a previous occupant’s skull, kneaded the selected herbs into the blubber, and commenced gently massaging the wound, clucking and cooing while the black rats watched and waited.
For nine interminable days Hero remained in that cold, stinking compartment, rocking back and forth between life and death. The old woman never gave up on him. She clung to him during his seizures, rubbed his limbs vigorously when his blood pressure fell. She gathered various accumulated skins and, using woven strands of her own long hair, sewed him a multilayered, body-length wraparound with arm sleeves and very deep pockets, working by touch with a needle formed of a cod’s rib. By this same method she was able to fashion a pair of heavily lined snug-fitting moccasins. The old woman made him eat; she masticated the cod and halibut their keepers pitched into the hold, then shoved the results down his throat with a long gnarly forefinger. She called into his screaming nightmares, talking him out of sleep and back into their foul little reality. Together they lowed in the dark, while the keel groaned along and the waves beat time.
At the end of those dark nine days his strength was restored, but not his mind. Once again he was taken on deck.
The vessel had reached a chain of remote wind-swept islands, rocky and treeless, naked except for patchy carpets of hardy grass. These islands stretched far to the west, shrouded in mist. The ship was making for the smallest; just a chip on the sea. When they reached depth for anchorage Hero was hustled into a rowboat and lowered over the side. He looked up, saw two men climbing down by rope. These men positioned themselves at the oars and slowly rowed toward the islet. Seated between them, Hero felt like a man being led to his execution. He snuck a peek. The rowers’ heads were lowered, their features completely obscured by the heavy feathered hoods; they had all the somberness of pallbearers. Not a word passed between them as they rigidly worked their oars:  the only sound was the dip-and-purl of wood in water. Hero looked away. Against his will, he found his eyes drawn to that rocky islet waiting in the fog.
Not a bird, not a sea lion, not a shrub. It was lonesome beyond imagination.
Upon landfall one of the men used a spear’s point to **** Hero ashore. While his companion steadied the boat, he removed a skin sack full of half-frozen halibut, followed by a few armloads of precious tinder. These articles he tossed at Hero’s feet. He resumed his place at the oars and, without looking back, used the blunt end of his spear to shove off.
Hero watched the boat moving away, watched the men climbing their ropes, watched the boat being hauled aboard. As the mysterious vessel receded he saw a number of those silent men standing at the stern, stolidly returning his stare. Their hooded forms grew smaller and smaller, finally becoming indistinct. The vessel was swallowed up in fog.
Hero looked around, at a desolate world of rock and drifting ice. In the sunless pools at his feet a few purplish, flaccid sea anemones were waving in a sickly phosphorescence; along the rocks ran a tattered quilt of wild grass and lichen. It was the end of the world. He began to pace in his anxiety, only to crumple bit by bit inside his furs. At last he just sat with his face in his arms and wept. When he could weep no more he raised his head and opened his red, swollen eyes.
There were gulls all around him, staring like statuary in a madman’s garden. Standing in their midst were auks and puffins and murres, absolutely spellbound, unable to lean away. The silence was broken only by a wild, fitfully pursing wind—a wind that seemed, eerily, on the verge of producing syllables. And on that wind a flock of terns was rising slowly, their beady eyes fixed on the lone sitting man. The terns watched as he trembled, and banked as he swooned.
Then, beating as one, they threw back their wings and blew into the sun.

There was a blaze.
Behind that blaze a pair of black, bug-like eyes met his and immediately withdrew. A man wrapped in caribou hides stood abruptly, drawing angry swarms of sparks.
The Aleut peered queerly into the icy Pacific, his craggy profile merging seamlessly with a jumble of rocks showing just beyond his shoulder. The man was very tall, closer to seven feet than to six, and thin almost to emaciation.
He was also a mute. Soon enough he would display a talent for communication through gutturals, but now his body language spoke louder than words. It told the shivering stranger that he was not only disliked—he was feared.
The islander removed the hides he’d piled on the sleeping man. He produced a bone awl and strategically pierced a caribou hide, draped the hide over the old woman’s handiwork, and ran a cord of tightly woven tendons crosswise through his made holes, knotting it at the bottom to create a kind of cloak. He then killed the fire, heaped wood, fish, and remaining hides into Hero’s arms, and led him to a tiny cove where his long skin canoe lay in the grass. This was not the one-man kayak used by his people for centuries, but an actual canoe modeled on the graceful vessels he’d observed under the control of northern coastal tribesmen. After dragging it into the water he perched Hero in the fore, placed the cargo in the middle, and stepped into the rear like a gaunt furry spider. The Aleut dug out a paddle and began pulling with smooth strokes of surprising muscularity, his black eyes trained on his quiet companion’s back.
So began their long island-hopping journey. They stepped the chain one stone at a time, living off the sea. But much as the islander disliked Hero’s vapid company, it was not in his nature to proceed expeditiously; his people, remote as they were, had learned to count not in days but in generations. Given this, the Aleut took his time. He showed Hero how to build shelters of skin and gut; during bad weather the two would sit on an island in utter silence while rain hammered on their stretched seal-intestine window. And one very clear night he pointed out constellations while attempting to demonstrate, using broad gestures, just how the brighter heavenly bodies were in perfect alignment with the Aleutians. Hero followed his guide’s gestures as a pet follows its master’s movements and, like a pet, soon became bored. The Aleut did not grow flustered. He grew ever more wary:  behind that granite, weather-beaten exterior squirmed a very primitive imagination. Superstitious as he was, the Aleut was almost certain Hero could read his mind. So one time, and one time only, he threw a searing look at the back of Hero’s bowed and listing head. After a long minute of vigorous thought-projection he shifted his gaze aside. The brute appeared to feel this shift, and gently turned his head. And both saw the ocean break rhythm, and watched as otters and sea lions surfaced, noted their progress, and slipped without tremor beneath the waves.
In spring the fogs lifted. The grimness gave way to serenity, a generous sun buttered the dappled sea. On the islands grass grew lushly. Wildflowers leapt on the color-starved eye.
And one day the islander’s nape itched. He turned to see a flock of arctic terns casually tracking them under a gorgeous, white-plumed sky. As the day progressed the terns came drifting high overhead, slowly but surely taking the lead.
The Aleut squinted against the sun. He’d never known these birds to pursue a westerly migratory pattern—the terns were distributing themselves into a rough wedge shape, much like geese on the wing.
For a while he let the flock be his guide. Then, to test his stars, he cunningly steered his canoe north. At once the wedge disintegrated. Not until he’d lowered his eyes and pulled purposefully to the west did the disrupted pattern reassert itself. He peered up timidly. The wedge was now in the shape of a perfect arrowhead.
Just so were the fates of mariners and aviators inextricably entwined. At night, once the Aleut had landed his canoe on the nearest pearl, the terns would light in a quiet circle and remain until sunrise. As the Aleut and Hero took to sea, the flock would quickly form that same authoritative pattern.
In time the Aleut paddled his companion clear to the westernmost islands of the Aleutian chain. His people had dwelt, even here, a thousand years and more, but no contemporary islander knew for certain what lay beyond. Legend told of an enormous land mass forever gripped by cold, where a cruel people waylaid innocent seafarers for barbaric sacrificial rites.
So here the islander paused. But even as he vacillated he noticed the terns were veering south.
If the Aleut had been able to curse aloud he would have been vociferous. He was being compelled to follow an even less desirable course—that of the unknown open ocean. Now he looked upon his passenger’s hunched back not with fear but with loathing. He took a deep breath, rolled his shoulders, and defiantly continued west. The wedge broke up immediately. The terns dive-bombed the canoe, whirled around the windmilling Aleut, tore skyward and hovered determinedly. Something huge broke surface behind them, but the Aleut was way too frayed to turn. He dropped his head, a beaten man, and began paddling south. Little by little the birds returned to formation.
The tiny canoe had no business going up against the mighty Pacific. It would soon have been swallowed and smashed, had not the terns veered in close formation whenever the distant sea appeared too rough. Once he’d lost his bearings the Aleut religiously followed their serpentine course.
The days began to warm.
Now the sea’s bounty all but leapt in the canoe.
It seemed the Aleut was forever catching the finest currents, practically sliding down a corridor entirely free of peril. In this manner he was able to safely navigate waters no such craft had mastered before.
They were proceeding south by southwest, awed children of a plenteous, generous sea. The going became easier by the day, the ocean heavier with cod.
Nights the Aleut drifted comfortably, but a lifetime of wariness made him wake off and on. He’d slowly rise to find Hero sitting quietly under the stars, and soon he’d see, pallid in moonlight, a large body neatly pleating the ocean’s surface. The shape would precede them a while, only to vanish without a ripple.
All this strangeness kept the Aleut’s heart in a whirl, though he took pains to maintain his poise.
To allay his fear he kept a flat black stone planted squarely between them. It was his oldest treasure; an oddity he’d taken off the body of a mauled Tlingit woman when he was a child. Who she was, and how she’d come by the stone, were mysteries far beyond him, for no such piece had ever been known to Aleut or Inuk.
The stone was smooth and had been worked perfectly round. Bright yellow specks were scattered about its dull black face.
Long ago someone had etched a quaint and clumsy rune on that flat black surface—it was the crude, universal symbol for sun:  a broad circle surrounded by several rays. When the stone was rubbed against a pelt it possessed the curious property of growing quite warm and bright in the rune’s grooves, while the surface remained cool and dull.
This stone, both friend and overlord, had always “spoken to him”. It caused him to become restless when it was time to move on, and allowed him to relax when a destination had been reached. In this way he’d come to the familiar islet and discovered the unconscious little man. Just so:  the stone, he was sure, was responsible for making him “feel bad” as he watched the stranger shiver, and “feel better” once he’d built him a life-saving fire from the small pile of tinder he’d found nearby.
By now, however, the Aleut was wholly disenchanted with his stone, and deeply regretted having done its mysterious bidding. Never before had he been so long from sight of land, and never before had he felt so very, very small. The unimagined immensity of the Pacific was really starting to get to him when, after all their while at sea, a gray, seductive haze broke the horizon. They had reached another chain of islands, an Asian chain, the dark and smoky Kurils. Here a cold current kept the climate cool and foggy, and the chill, along with the prevalence of otter and seal, made him feel almost at home.
But this place gave him the creeps; he was a stranger, a trespasser somewhere sacred. There was a looming quality to the island mountains that made him extraordinarily aware of his transience, his pettiness, his puniness. He grew more and more cautious, sure their progress was being monitored—he could have sworn he saw wraiths in the trees, and wolves padding warily in the brush. The big islands looked on breathlessly. All along the rocky cliffs, thousands of auks and puffins followed the canoe in dead silence, their heads turning simultaneously, their countless tiny eyes peering redly through the fog. As the weeks passed, the Aleut’s anxiety was manifested in tics and sighs, and he’d cringe each time the crimson sun sank behind those black volcanic summits. In his imagination the mountains would rise right out of the sea, as though to pluck him. But the islands, in all their dignity, would always refuse to acknowledge so meek a stranger, and return their eyes to sea. The Aleut would hang his head, and timidly paddle by.
Then for days and days he pulled his weary canoe west—through a strait parting two mighty islands not part of the chain, and thence across a sea that was a warm, enticing bath. Spring had come to the East Asian coastal waters, and the Ainu, alone and in groups, were venturing deeper in search of increasing bounty. The Aleut, absorbed in his thoughts of sweet climate and bitter fate, was unaware they’d been spotted.
This first meeting between strangers of different worlds was a brief and awkward one. A lone Ainu fisherman, seeing the Aleut come paddling out of the unknown, dropped his net and turned to stone. The Aleut, for his part, instinctively froze with his body turned half-away to make the leanest target possible. Their stares locked. Never had the Aleut seen a face so heavily bearded, and never hair so fair. The Ainu began banging on his bronze catch pail. Other fishers soon appeared from the north and south, effectively cutting off the canoe. The Aleut caressed his stone and looked to the sky. The wedge had vanished. He put down his head and paddled for all he was worth.
With the word out, uncountable fishing craft appeared out of the blue and broke into hot pursuit, their pilots determined to force the canoe ashore.
Suddenly they were in sight of land, and the sea was absolutely riddled with watercraft. A train of small boats cast off from the mainland, even as a posse of two-man coracle-like tubs began to surround the battered skin canoe, their inhabitants calling back and forth in astonishment at the sight of these dark, savage newcomers. But the pursuing little coastal men, banging excitedly on the sides of their boats, were not Ainu. They had very straight black hair, prominent cheekbones, and strangely slanted eyes. And their speech, oddly marvelous as it was, was a rapid series of coos, chirps, and barks. Their boats formed a tight semi-circle around the canoe, forcing the Aleut to approach the mainland. The little men banged their boats maniacally, with more joining in as the canoe neared shore.
A bit farther south was a natural harbor swarming with fishing vessels of every description. As the canoe was forced into this harbor, people along the rocky coast began banging whatever they could get their hands on, until the air was filled with their lunatic percussion.
Tiny brown men came running along a soft yellow cliff overlooking the harbor, gesturing wildly. The canoe was squeezed between a chain of tubs and the shore, and, as it slowed, the tempo and ferocity of the banging decreased accordingly. When the canoe came to a halt the banging and shouting stopped. Hero creaked to his feet. The first North American to set foot on Asian soil stepped out shakily.
There followed the profoundest silence imaginable.
A second later it was as if a dam had burst.
Hundreds of hysterical, yammering voices erupted from hundreds of hysterical, clinging men and women. Hero was spun around, jostled about, handed along. He stared into their astounded, pinched little faces, and the sun, pulsing between their heads as he was turned, repeatedly stabbed his eyes. There came an excited outburst and frantic splashing which could only have been the Aleut’s violent demise, and then Hero was somehow limping alongside a primitive fishing village, blindly following a narrow dirt path that hugged the yellow cliff’s base. The warm spring sun caught the dust as he shambled. He rounded a bend and stopped.
Half a dozen children stood in his way, too fascinated to run. A chatter and scuffle rose behind him. He looked back to see that he was now in the midst of a small crowd of these children, and that more were running up with cries of amazement.
A stone struck his shoulder. As Hero turned another glanced off his chest.
A moment later he was being pelted from all sides, and the giggles and gasps had become something wildly unreal. He dropped to his knees in a hail of hurled rocks, covered his head with his arms, and slithered up the path on his belly.
A new voice broke in; an older, authoritative voice.
The children scampered off squealing.
Hero, shaken to his feet, found himself face to face with a diminutive, shouting, incomprehensible old man. The old man threw his arm around Hero’s waist and, jabbering all the while, led him to a secondary path cut into the cliff’s face. This path sloped gently upward over the waves. Together they picked their way to a place maybe halfway up, where the cliff’s face was honeycombed with natural alcoves and dug-out caves. Most of these spaces were used as one-man shelters; a few, cut deeper in the earth, as family hives. Strange gabbing people slid out of these holes like worms, reaching, but the little old man, who was evidently a little old man of some stature, embraced his find possessively and shouted them back inside.
The path narrowed as they climbed.
At its summit spread the upscale end of the neighborhood. Hero was led to a hovel nestled amid dozens of similar hovels, all scattered around a dainty stream wending between patches of stunted vegetation.
The old man’s place was basically a one-room hut fashioned of earth and salvaged boat hulls, with a slender side-yard surrounded by dry, dusty hedges. But inside it was clean and tidy, with rice paper partitioning and, built into the far earthen wall, a miniature stone fireplace. The old man sat his guest in the exact center of the room. There he fed him scraps from his bowl, using long sticks to pluck out bits of fish and clumps of tiny, starchy white pellets.
He studied the brute closely, watched him chew, walked round and round him. He poked here. He pinched there.
And that night he lit a fire on his crushed-shell hearth.
Hero curled up on a mat where the gossip of flames could reach him. Nearby, at his delicate wicker table, the old man sat in semi-darkness, illuminated only from the waist down.
But his eyes were alive. They spat and darted as they reflected the fire’s light, and, when at last they’d begun to sputter, his scratchy little voice came pattering out of the dark, muttering something vile and oddly modulated, sometimes in a whisper, sometimes in a gathering snarl.
Hero feigned slumber, unable to ignore those paired ominous flashes. Still, the room was cozy, and the fire warm, and the play of light and shadow kicked sleep in his eyes.

In the morning he woke in the old man’s side-yard, his head pounding, a rusty iron clamp securely fastened around his neck. This clamp was attached to the outermost link of a crude three-foot chain, and the link at the other end to a long stake driven into eight inches of solid rock. The chain and stake, like the clamp, were hammered of local iron. The clamp was too tight for comfortable swallowing, the chain too short to make standing possible. Hero could, however, spread out on his chest and stretch an arm to a low row of hedges. By parting the tangled undergrowth he had a limited view of the fishing village below, and of the harbor beyond. As the days passed he was able to tweak himself a view-space discernible only from his peculiar vantage. He accomplished this by gently breaking small branches strategically, then guiding their interrupted growth with the utmost tenderness. It was his secret garden.
He had no memory—none whatsoever—of being staked here. Obviously the old man hadn’t set this up overnight. Hero’s mind prodded timidly…how many others had been chained to this spot, and why?
But over the subsequent weeks and months he went beyond caring. Each day was the same:  just after dawn the old man would storm into the tiny side-yard swinging his reed whip wildly. The lashings were savage and unremitting. The old man, except for his eyes, would be mute. Only his whip need speak. And the snap of his reed had but one message:  when you see this whip you go down, and you go down immediately.
The naked savage, scarred head to foot, learned to go prostrate on the moment. Even so, the old man couldn’t resist the temptation to indulge in the occasional good old, all-out thrashing. And after each session he would toss the prisoner a vile mess of dead fish and rotting leftovers.
Hero lived like this for many months, lost in a confused world of pain and anticipation. Perversely, he came to look forward to the bite of that whip, for, whether he flogged him in passion or just for sport, the old man was always sure to make it personal. It seemed their relationship might go on forever.
But one day there was a great commotion in the sleepy little fishing village. Hero parted the leaves and beheld a small train of oblong coaches at rest near the harbor. Large oxen yoked in pairs lolled between the carriages, immune to the clamor around them. There were dark shaggy horses and colorfully dressed Bactrian camels. The horses and camels were tethered in the rear, but were occasionally paraded around the carriages by little men wielding long painted bamboo poles. The whole affair was exotic and mesmerizing, eccentric and profane. Hero watched all day in amazement, infected by the hubbub, though he was totally mystified by the crowd’s fascination on the carriages’ far side.
And late that afternoon he saw the old man come walking out of that crowd, talking heatedly with another man. The stranger was shorter and broader than the old man, with long stringy hair and long stringy mustaches. He saw them climbing the path, saw them crawl inside a hole lashing furiously. They were lost from view for a minute, then popped up big as life. Hero glowed and curled up eagerly as they approached.
The old man and stranger came into the narrow side-yard still arguing. The old man grabbed Hero by the hair and twisted until he was facing the newcomer.
The stranger had oily, porous skin, and a round but grave countenance. His highly slanted eyes were bright and restless. He studied Hero’s mutilated face with keen interest before borrowing the old man’s reed. When Hero scraped at his feet he grunted and returned the reed.
The stranger pulled out something shiny and hefted it in his hand. He then raised his other hand while considering Hero, as though weighing him too. The old man’s eyes glinted, and for an instant his expression became grotesquely servile. The stranger and old man, facing, nodded curtly in unison. The stranger dropped the shiny thing onto the old man’s itching palm. The old man whipped Hero frantically before taking a small ax to the chain. A few hard blows split a link, the broken link was bent back by the tool’s shaft, and the prisoner was at last released.
The old man handed the stranger a short hempen rope. The stranger bowed deeply. He then tied an end of the rope through one of the remaining links and began dragging Hero along. Hero’s hands sought the old man, who kicked and cursed him all the way to the path. The three stumbled single-file to the bottom. The old man waved his arms and shouted hysterically, trotting behind until he ran out of breath. But he got in a final kick and, before he came to a gasping halt, managed to lash Hero once for old time’s sake, and to spit on him twice for luck.

There were five carriages; a long one in the center hitched to four oxen, and two smaller coaches in the front and rear with a pair of oxen on each. The carriages were old and battered, built of splitting wood slats and rusted iron braces. Various hides, spare wheels, and a hundred odds and ends were tied to the sides and roofs. Hero’s new master, using him as a ram, shoved him through the crowd to the long carriage. He hauled him up the single wood step and watched the crowd’s reaction. Children hid behind mothers, mothers hissed and jeered, men spat in that smashed, disgusting face.
Satisfied, Hero’s master twisted the rope tighter and dragged him through the hide flap that served as the carriage’s rear wall.
A strange ruckus began at their entrance.
Inside the carriage were bulky shapes and quirky movements, yet the immediate and overwhelming impression was one of unbelievable stench. Hero, instantly covered with flies, was kicked and shoved down a foot-wide aisle. The carriage’s walls were riddled with black flecks of old dried blood, the floor coated with standing *****, a variety of small carcasses, and some clinging, indefinable slime. But the living contents of this hell were so horrifying, and so unexpected, that Hero at once dropped to his knees. Observing this, master grabbed a whip off the wall and lashed him along the floor.
A number of bamboo cages lined either side of the carriage, each four feet high, four feet wide, and three feet deep. In the first cage to their left, a quadruple amputee dangled in a leather harness in a cloud of flies, jealously gnawing a chicken carcass balanced on his belly. The second cage held a man who had been burned over ninety per cent of his body, and the third a middle-aged woman with no eyes or tongue, her head shaved. The next cage housed a fully grown black leopard, its bright eyes fixed on the horrified newcomer. Then an empty cage, and finally a cage containing a demented man whose long yellow nails were busily raking a face deeply scarred and bleeding.
The first cage against the opposite wall held two girls rolling in their own excrement. Siamese twins unable to part, they had developed a unique method of locomotion, and now executed a three-quarters cartwheel in Hero’s direction, their mangled, severely bitten hands attempting to reach him through the bars. In the cage next to theirs a naked dwarf glowered menacingly, his eyes following coldly as Hero’s master shoved him down the narrow aisle, occasionally pausing to lash a cage. The hissing and howling increased as each prisoner beheld the new neighbor.
The third cage held an intensely sick adult Bornean sun bear, so confined it was entirely unable to move. Its hide was a patchwork of scraggly fur and grayish skin, glistening with odd eruptions. It rolled its sunken eyes in Hero’s direction, its muzzle twitching feebly.
The next cage contained a man who was frightfully diseased. Broad fungal patches covered his face and limbs, terminating in waxy folds that dangled like a rooster’s wattles. Welling sores spotted his chest and back. His eyes were bugged and sallow; his lower lip drooped below his chin. He barked wetly at Hero’s passing legs.
The second-to-last cage housed a rare, completely hairless Chinese albino, and the last cage a very tall, skeletal woman. The albino snapped at Hero while repeatedly banging his head against the cage. The woman hissed and coiled like a snake, her spine arching amazingly.
Master hauled Hero to the empty cage on his left, swung its door open with his foot, and forced him to his knees by pushing down with all his weight. He kicked and punched until Hero had been squeezed inside, then shut and secured the wide bamboo door.
Master inched his way back down the carriage, hammering the **** of his whip on each cage as he passed. There was a glimpse of daylight as he lifted the flap.
Once he’d departed, the carriage grew eerily silent.
Hero cautiously turned his head. Less than a foot away, the black leopard was frozen in place, one paw waving hypnotically in his face. The beast’s fangs were bared, its ears straight back, its eyes glistening. Hero turned ever so slowly, until he was looking into the eyes of the demented man in the final cage. The man cocked his head quizzically. A second later he was screaming his lungs out in a bizarre downward spiral.
At once the carriage erupted. The freaks shrieked and scrabbled, the leopard spun in place. Directly across the aisle, the albino hurled himself against the bars of his cage. He batted his face with his fists, threw back his head, and just howled and howled and howled. The snake woman curled even tighter, her long scrawny legs entwined behind her head.
Hero sat with breath held, absolutely silent, absolutely motionless. He very, very slowly closed his eyes.

Later that night the flap was flung high. The menagerie came alive as master, weirdly illuminated by moonlight, slowly made his way down the aisle carrying a skin sack oozing blood. He stopped at each cage to toss in a dying chicken and a handful of smelt.
When he reached Hero’s cage he looked down thoughtfully.
He extracted a quivering chicken and held it above the cage so that blood dripped on the brute’s deeply pleated forehead. Hero lowered his eyes. Master’s face darkened. He smashed the bird against the cage, over and over, a vein throbbing in his temple. Finally he hissed and displayed the limp chicken high over the albino’s head. The albino yelped and kicked, thrusting his hand up between the bars and jerking it back to lick away the blood rolling down his forearm.
Master eyed Hero coldly before pointedly dropping the chicken into the albino’s searching hands.
Master hissed again. He slowly made his way out.
Soon there was a commotion outside. The carriage rocked a bit before settling. Hero, turning in his cage to peek through a rift in the wood, saw horses being urged forward. He could hear men shouting. The carriage rocked again. He looked up and saw the gibbous moon suspended in mist. For just a second something wedge-shaped cut across its soft white face.
But then the oxen were grunting, the wheels had been freed, and the horses drawn abreast. Master’s lash spat left and right, and the show proceeded…west.

                                              MA­STER

She was very round and very small, with very short, very shaggy black hair. Her arms bore the scars of numerous bites from beast and man, and around her neck ran long wheals from a particularly savage owner. Hero, having spent the better part of the morning watching master storm in and out of a strange screaming house, now watched him drag the little round woman through the dirt. For a while he listened to the song of his master’s lash, waiting for the woman to break. But there was never a whimper.
It had been a difficult transaction for master, and an altogether difficult morning. For hours he’d paced up and down the main carriage, alternately murmuring affectionately into, and lashing at, each cage he visited. The sun bear, long dead and stuffed, had been taken outside for barter. It had soon been returned.
Master had lingered over Hero’s cage for a good while, staring critically. He’d begun shouting, and three of his men had burst in through the flap, unlatched the demented man’s cage, and dragged him out by the feet for trade, master personally stomping on his torn and groping hands.
And now master was kicking and shoving the little woman down the aisle as his men restrained her by the hair and throat. Upon master’s command these men stripped her naked and commenced pinching and slapping while making threatening faces and mocking noises. The freaks sat right up in their cages.
The woman looked as though she’d fainted:  her arms were lax, her eyes rolled up. Her whole face seemed to purse, and her body, head to toe, began to run blue. Her fingers quivered, arched, and clawed—the woman was self-asphyxiating. Master fairly leaped with delight while the cages rocked around him. He had the men slap her awake. Once she was fully conscious they stuffed her into the demented man’s old cage next to Hero’s.
Master then looked in eagerly, one to the other, his hands balled into fists. The woman buried her odd round face in her forearms as she squeezed herself into her cage’s deepest corner. Hero gazed indifferently and went back to his peephole.
Master exploded. He smacked and kicked the cages over and over, swore up and down, ran the shaft of his whip back and forth against the heavy bamboo bars. Eventually he calmed somewhat. He stared coldly at Hero, made a ***** smile, and spat right in his eyes. A tense minute passed. Master slowly made his way outside.
Hero automatically relaxed. Across the aisle the albino ****** his face between his cage’s bars to sniff the newcomer. The leopard, bobbing rhythmically, emitted a high-pitched squeal that gradually descended to a steadily throbbing growl.
Hero looked the stranger over. Once she’d lowered her hands he saw that her eyes were crossed, her jaw slack, her face as round as the full moon. He looked closer. There were scars all over her throat and arms:  plainly, the small round woman had been treated very badly. Hero instinctively slid a foot between the bars; the woman cried out and scrunched even deeper. Across the aisle the albino quickly extended an arm. Without knowing why, Hero turned on him. The albino flinched, his eyes tearing into Hero’s. A second later he was stamping his feet and grinning wildly. Hero went back to his peephole.
Next morning master and two of his men dismantled the bamboo walls separating Hero’s and the woman’s cages. They bound the frames with broad leather bands, making a single cage of the two.
A common door was fashioned and secured. Master used his broad blade to shear away Hero’s rags. The men hunched around the long cage expectantly.
The naked couple backed away. Master was instantly exasperated—he shouted, lashed furiously, stamped and screamed, jabbed a broken shaft between the bars with malevolent intent, whirled and hurled the shaft at nothing. The carriage’s inmates went out of their minds. At master’s bellowed command a man scurried outside, returning with a long rope of woven leather strands. Master opened the cage and, applying all his weight, pinned Hero and his new mate in an awkward embrace while his men tied them together.
Again master and his men bent over the long cage to watch.
When Hero realized his predicament he made a desperate attempt to reach his peephole.
The men, misreading his struggles, babbled and cheered, but master threw up his hands. He then, through gesture, ordered his men to drape a number of hides over the long cage. Once these hides were in place he very quietly bent to one knee and placed an ear against the cage. After a while he cursed and rose to his feet. He shook the cage and stormed out, whipping and kicking the howling inmates.
In the semi-darkness the man and woman quit fighting their bonds.
A muffled patter began on the hide-covered roof.
Rain, as always, had a calming effect on the carriage’s occupants, causing the freaks and beasts to slip, one by one, into lethargy or slumber. Under such a spell, the attainment of master’s goal was inevitable.
It was a coupling both innocent and vile, without passion or celebration. Occasionally the freaks would surface, register their excitement by shrieking, shaking their cages, or otherwise clamoring…but very quickly the air would stifle them, weighing their heads and confusing their impulses. The atmosphere grew heavier by the minute. And, when night rolled over the carriages, the rain came down in sheets.

Leaning ******* the woman’s cage, master slipped his gnarly hand between the bars and slowly rubbed her belly in a counter-clockwise motion, his sinister features soft in the candle’s light. And he told, in nonsensical cooing whispers, of a lovingly secure and impossibly prosperous future.
How large and promising that belly had become! And how wise was he, the cunning and aggressive master, in his far-reaching business decisions. He turned his affection to the motionless gaping brute; stroked the battlefield of its face, tossed in another lizard. Master rubbed his palms together. From now on it was extra lizards daily, for both the woman and her mate. He remarked, with only passing interest, his star player’s continuing indifference. They didn’t know each other, didn’t need each other.
There’d been months of shows on the road now, broken only recently by this sensible rejoining of the mates at conception.
Hero’s horrible disfigurement was unquestionably top draw; he was a guaranteed crowd pleaser at every stop. So now master looked him straight in the eyes and smiled. He held the reeking candle high. The carriage was absolutely silent. Master smiled again, rose to his feet, tiptoed away.
Hero watched him retreat until the flap had fallen. He returned to his peephole, saw master round the rear of the carriage and slowly crunch by. For a time he could see nothing but the half-shapes of junipers bathed in starlight. There was a tentative movement to his right and a large shape came to obstruct his view.
The horse stood for a minute in profile. It slowly brought its head to rest against the carriage, applying its eye to the peephole. Hero froze. The two remained fixed, eyeball to eyeball, while a breeze played odd tunes on the outer wall’s hanging paraphernalia. The horse’s big dark eye rolled nervously. A long moment passed. Slowly the horse backed off. It stood uncertainly for a while, staring at the peephole. Then it quietly moved away.

Master kicked the cages one by one, left hand and right, as he slowly made his way down the aisle. Into each cage he delivered a personalized warning in passing—a growl, a hiss, a bark—but he was quickly losing control. Animal electricity hopscotched the carriage, cage to cage, ceiling to floor, front to rear and back again. Master froze. Much more of this excitement, he feared, could seriously agitate the woman—with grave consequences for master.
She was splayed on her back, in labor’s throes, her ankles and wrists bound to the long cage. Hero had been removed to give her room, and now sat hunched atop the snake woman’s cage, two men holding him by the throat and legs.
Master gnashed and snarled, listening to the woman scream, watching her stupid round head bounce up and down and back and forth. He knew it! He’d been suckered, hoodwinked, scammed—ripped off like a common rube. The woman was too ******* to handle even something as natural as childbirth. Still…it was too late to second-guess himself—all these months he’d been patient—he’d been supportive and vigilant and now he would not be denied. He flogged one of the men to alleviate his tension.
The blue lady was very slowly, very dramatically arching her spine. Master wiped the sweat from his eyes. When the bars were pleating her big round belly, her shoulders began drumming on the straw-strewn floor.
Master screamed one very colorful expletive.
A razor silence came over the carriage. Not a body moved or breathed.
At last two men tiptoed around their purpling master and leaned into the cage. One obediently ****** a foot between the bars. He pushed ******* her right knee while using a hand to grip the left knee, spreading her legs wide. The other man drew a broad leather strap between her teeth. After lifting the woman’s head he pulled the strap behind her neck, knotted it to make a gag, and yanked a skin sack over her face. He looked up anxiously. Master licked his lips and nodded. The man made a fist and frantically punched the woman’s face until her muffled screams ceased. She moaned gently throughout her contractions.
Master genuflected, brought a spitting candle in tight, and took a deep breath. As he raised his hand the candle’s light bounced off his knife’s chipped and scored eleven-inch blade. Master swore and reached down carefully. He flicked his wrist twice and the menagerie went mad.

The child was a tremendous disappointment.
Master had eagerly anticipated an infant ******* and deformed; something embracing the best qualities of its parents. He had even designed a special cage that could be expanded by degrees as the spawn developed. There also remained the tantalizing option of a family display, though such an undertaking would require the eventual construction of a structure even larger than the cage its parents now shared. Master anguished over the logistics, knowing it would break his heart to have to cut one of his jewels’ throats just to make room for a growing child. Nights he would slowly pace the carriage with all the possessiveness of a jealous suitor, one hand maneuvering a sputtering candle, the other tenderly rapping his whip’s **** against each visited cage.
But the boy was a flawless specimen; a beautiful, undemanding baby. From the moment master angrily tossed the placenta he felt cheated, even betrayed. He grimaced as it peaceably took to its mother’s breast, despite the surrounding horrors. Master hated it, immediately and entirely. The ****** thing was so docile it was almost charming. He drew his knife and was just reaching down, when an overwhelming sense of dread shook him like a rat in the jaws of a mastiff. Sweat poured down his squat, pig-tailed nape. He knew he would live to regret it, but decided to not cut the child’s throat right away. It was the oddest feeling. His knife hand had trembled for the first time in his life, and he had found himself momentarily contemplating right and wrong at the outset of a perfectly simple and commonplace procedure. That was it, then. His business instincts were letting him know there was a good, albeit unknowable, reason to let the sweet baby live. Master left the carriage anxiously, muttering in his ambivalence.
The boy grew to embody his worst expectations. Not only was it a poorly oriented child, clinging to its father rather than its master almost from the moment of weaning, but it soon proved a lousy draw with the patrons. Those who paid to view the child dangling in its special cage inevitably departed unsatisfied, some vocalizing, strangely, an acute sense of shame. So once again master entered the carriage with his knife hand steady, and once again he exited trembling, his heart in his throat and his soul in a whirl. He whipped the dwarf savagely before leaving. What place conscience in the mind of a businessman?
Soon as the boy could walk, master put him to work fetching and feeding. But the brat was slothful in his chores, preferring to hang around his family’s cage while staring wistfully at his father. For their part, the parents were wholly disinterested. Master would fume while Hero gazed for hours out his peephole—even as the mother lolled, perpetually ill. Sometimes that accursed woman’s condition riled poor master to no end. She could teeter at death’s door for months at a time, her body changing hues to the fascination of customers, only to bounce back with a hardiness that was of interest to no one. But at the peak of her performances the blue lady could really hold a crowd. Master produced an entire outdoors extravaganza around her:  within concentric rings of raging torches his men would slowly strip her naked before wild audiences, then allow the dwarf and albino to take her while the leopard strained against a gaily festooned chain. Master circulated his crew through the crowds to encourage his patrons’ cult-like behavior of breath-holding and fainting. No getting around it:  the customers were crazy about her—village to village, master’s Bactrian vanguard’s colorful robes shouted her approaching fame. And Hero’s popularity continued to soar. Many were the nights when master, pacing the perimeter, wondered just what devilry could have produced the lovely boy.
Overall, Hero remained his master’s favorite conceit and hottest property. Part of the little brute’s appeal was, of course, his exoticness. And certainly the ugliness arising from his deformity was compelling…but there was a detachedness about him that fascinated every soul with a fistful of copper cash coins. Whether they ****** him, cudgeled him, or spat in his face, he remained unflappable, staring only at the aching sky. Though many would leave uneasy, master noted with deep satisfaction that they almost invariably returned.
The boy soon evinced an amazing affinity for animals. No matter how agitated an ox or horse became, the child could pacify it with one hand on a lowered brow. This was a source of endless fascination for the crew. Wagers were made. The boy was pitted against oxen whipped to a frenzy. But they would not harm him; they would rather go prostrate and take the lash. Master tried to work this knack into a viable act, but his patrons just weren’t buying. They wanted freaks.
When the lad was a mere five years old, master had him trained in the peripheral art of the pickpocket. The boy worked well alone, and had all the makings of a fine little flimflam artist. Master sighed, his chronic nightmares a thing of the past. As ever, his business instincts were guiding him well.
Then late one afternoon he found the boy squatting outside his parents’ cage. The boy had done the unthinkable:  he had deposited his day’s pickings at the feet of his father instead of bringing the ***** to master. Master flew into a rage and raised his whip to give the little traitor the lashing he deserved. But before he could deliver a single stroke his other hand shot to his chest and he staggered back against the albino’s cage. He blinked down at the boy, who regarded him steadily while scooping the plunder into a little pile.
From that day on the boy placed whatever he could get his hands on at his father’s feet. As time passed he became ever more adroit at thievery, growing into a youngster both admired and despised by master and his crew; admired because theft was a cinch for him, despised because they were all that much lighter in their possessions.
Now, for eleven long years the strange little train had bounced along, sometimes camping outside villages for months, occasionally pausing on connecting roads. The show traversed the heart of Manchuria, skirted the Gobi in the north, and so eventually crossed almost the entire width of Mongolia before proceeding north to the confluence of the rivers Yenisey and Ob’. Much silver and copper had come to master’s coffer, much fame to his name, but he now sat looking over a vast, unmapped Siberian wilderness. The mostly nomadic characters they’d been encountering spoke in tongues unfamiliar even to his personal valet-translator-accountant, and the tone of these nomads had been unmistakably hostile.
Master huddled surlily under a canopy of sopping hides. Night was falling hard during a merciless rain, the wind was picking up, and his supplies coach was bogged in a growing sea of mud. At that moment he accepted the whole end-of-the-line concept, and knew he wasn’t going anywhere but back. And when he got back he was going to shine! He jumped from the coach.
The earth took his weight for a heartbeat—and he was up to his chin in muck, splashing about on his hands and knees, sliding forward on his palms and toes. He did a belly flop into a rain-filled depression and churned to his feet with the devil in his eyes. Wallowing in mud and bile, master stomped to the supplies coach and kicked wildly at the stuck rear wheels.
Somewhere between kicks he lost it completely.
Master broke for his whip. One minute he was blindly lashing his men, the next he’d succumbed to a mindless ferocity. He thrashed about like a berserker; whipping the beasts, the coach, the very night. His men were scarcely able to move in all that mud, but their dread of his savagery kept them hopping. They gathered as one and shoved the coach recklessly; slipping, splashing, shouting. A minute later, three lay splayed underfoot, but the mired wheel had been freed.
Throughout all this the oxen had swayed nervously, while the horses softly tramped their hooves in place. Master had his men turn the oxen about until the rickety train was pointing dead east. He checked the hitches and personally applied the lash. The oxen didn’t budge. Master swore and wiped the rain from his eyes. He had the horses hitched ahead of the oxen, but they were even less obliging. Master flew into a spectacular rage. His men, fearing for their lives, ran liberally with the lash.
The swaying of oxen picked up until the entire train of carriages was rocking. Yet the oxen could not, would not be compelled, under any amount of prodding, to take an eastward step. Master looked around in exasperation.
The night had gone insane.
Horses were fighting hitches, oxen walking on fire.
Master cursed the rain and mud and lashed all the harder. His men, seeking to please, whipped maniacally until the horses and both lead oxen broke their hitches and bolted west. The men immediately embraced the rear oxen, but the hitches shattered and the beasts stormed off. The remaining horses blew it, kicking at everything and nothing.
Inside the long carriage all was chaos. The albino was neighing and screaming, the aged leopard spinning in its cage. Hero stared out his peephole, amazed at the blur of figures stumbling by in the rain.
A pair of clopping blows rattled the opposite wall. Three slats cracked. A tremendous impact, and a huge section collapsed. A thrashing, hysterical mare burst through the breach in a veil of rain.
The horse went mad, killing the albino and snake woman in a flurry of hooves. She fell ******* the near wall, crushing the cages. The leopard shot into the air like a rocket, slashed at the mare’s throat and vanished in the rain. The horse reared above the family cage. She was just coming down in a wheeling storm of hooves when something made her freeze. Her stare locked with Hero’s, and a second later her eyes were rolling in their sockets. The mare kicked crazily and came down ******* her left flank, smashing the long cage’s side. She whirled upright and leaped outside.
For a tense minute the family sat in the rubble, rain bombarding their eyes. Nothing in their years of captivity had prepared them for such a situation. But by the end of that minute the son had taken full command. He rolled onto his back, braced himself, and kicked his parents across the aisle, through the remnants of the opposing cage, and out of the carriage. They all fell about in the mud and rain. To the west, the mare stared back strangely as she splashed into the night. The boy wedged himself between his parents, threw his arms around them, and pushed with all his might. Their bodies found a common center of gravity. Fumbling drunkenly, the family staggered through the rain in the wake of the mare.

The boy was the natural leader.
Master’s innocent-looking little ex-student could quickly assess and exploit almost any situation. He did the foraging and the figuring, slept with one eye open and one fist ready. He got what he wanted by charm or by stealth, slipping off at nightfall, returning at daybreak with small slaughtered animals and chunks of dark peasant bread. He also pilfered any bauble or oddity he could get his paws on, to be placed reverently at his father’s mangled feet. Breadwinner and watchdog, he faithfully held the family together; a nuclear son. He sewed hardy feather-lined cloaks of reindeer hide, and turned a cache of marmot pelts into a kind of side-slung backpack. He was doting nurse during his mother’s episodes, and unbending apportioner of calories in lean times. Dauntless when it meant crossing mighty rivers, relentless when it came to finding mountain passes. But the endless marching, the unreliable diet, and the countless predators made the three wanderers lean, haggard moving targets. There were times when the little lamp of family was all but extinguished, and long stands in places that seemed absolutely impassable. Still, the boy would work things out. He would stoop to any level to feed Hero, and for a stranger to threaten his father was to summon a psychotic, unyielding monster. He was both spear and shield.
The toughest job of all was maintaining a tight unit, meaning he was forced to become a hard-nosed ******* whenever his father was ready to wander off, which always seemed to be whenever the mother was hurting most. She’d become a tremendous impediment to Hero’s compulsion, and therefore her son’s chief nemesis. It wasn’t a big-picture concern anyway; the writing was on the wall. The blue lady’s attacks were increasing spectacularly on the steppe; her world had always been an enclosure of some kind, and the great horizon was proving just too much. Perhaps these intense affairs served as links to Hero’s suppressed memories, for at the onset of each attack he’d turn and hike, and then only exhaustion could curb him. The boy would press his mother on, dragging, shoving, and smacking—he could be mean when necessary, and though circumstances had made him the nucleus, their worlds unquestionably revolved around Hero. Where he sat, they sat. When he rose, they did the same. In this manner they marched for years across the vast steppes, single-file—father, mother, and son, respectively—unmolested, lacking possessions, always following the sun. Long before they could be measured they had drifted into obscurity.
The woman’s end came quickly and dramatically, in a rocky little depression on a half-frozen field. One moment she was responsive to her son’s prompts, the next she was flat on her back, her eyelids fluttering. That night she leapt from fever to chill, from alertness to stupor. The boy, squatting beside their campfire, watched her face and hands run cadaver-blue to fish belly-pale and back again. While he was staring her eyes popped open and her hands came scrabbling. He sweated through the clawing embrace until he could bear it no longer. He oozed out and ran down to fetch his father.
When they got back Hero watched incuriously for a while. His mate’s face was scrunched up and her skin the color of sapphires. She wasn’t breathing.
His gaze became glassy, his eyes returned to the night. As he rose the boy immediately grabbed an arm. Neither moved for minutes. When the boy at last relinquished, his father casually stumbled off.
Strange things were going on in Hero’s world. Some days he would notice how animals regarded him oddly, in a manner that seemed almost personal. He found, for instance, that particular creatures were recognizable even over great distances. A number of times he would sit with one in a stare-down, waiting patiently, until the animal’s natural disposition caused it to bolt. Though the meaning of these encounters was way over his head, he would watch, and he would listen.
In time he noticed an increasing skittishness in some of these familiar creatures. Something had them spooked. He then observed a number of lean gray wolves moving in and out of the picture with an air of complete indifference:  these wolves weren’t hunting; they were loitering—lounging in the grass, lackadaisically padding to the rear, filing by slowly in the distance. Once in a while a lounger would raise its head, yawn cavernously, and drop back out of sight. So unobtrusive was their behavior that even Hero’s ever-vigilant son began to take them for granted. They paused where the family paused, and halted whenever the woman broke down. Perfectly camouflaged by the gray boulders and dire sky, they were completely forgotten in the drama of her passing.
There were other, far subtler events existing for Hero’s senses alone. He could perceive patterns in everything around him; in the manner vegetation gave way wherever his heart was leading, in the way so many animals appeared to be not merely mirroring, but making his course. And wind, rain, running water:  these phenomena had voices. Yet not for everybody. No one—not his mate, not his son, not another soul on the planet could hear this call, for they were all of a sort. They were static, they were temporal. Hero couldn’t have cared less about the lives of his family, or about the mundane goings-on in the encampments and small tribes they skirted. Such beings lived in a world that was defined by the moment. They shouted, they banged, they clamored.
But west—west was music.
For his boy, once again watching Hero shamble off, the moment of truth had arrived. He looked back down, at his mother’s death mask being remade by the dying light of their campfire. As the flames dwindled he could have sworn he saw shadows creep into the wells of her eyes, while others, crawling up around her jawline, drew her bluing lips like purse strings. He hopped to his feet and ran for another handful of tinder. When their little fire provided enough light he dropped to his knees and looked again.
She was sinking right before his eyes, every aspect of her expression in collapse. The boy watched clinically, fascinated. As the flames began to sputter he thought he could see large purple bruises spreading across her cheeks like the seeping limbs of overflowing pools. He bent closer.
From deep in the night came the longest, the leanest, the saddest wail he’d ever heard. He turned to see the starlit ghost of his father, facing away, staring at a low barren hill. Uncountable stars embroidered the spot. The boy made out a low shape moving along the hilltop, cutting off patches of stars as it passed.
The wolf howled again; a mournful, spiraling cry to nowhere and nothing. Hero’s head notched upward. He began to hike.
Halfway to his feet the boy stopped dead.
It took a minute to sense why he’d frozen in place, and a good while longer for his heart to quit pounding. He was aware of a nervous padding, and, once his vision had adjusted, of a lazy stream of eyes gleaming in the dying campfire’s light. The eyes bobbed around him, glared momentarily, returned to the ground.
A massive gasp, and his mother was tearing at his wrist. He watched her hyperventilating, saw her bulbous yellow eyes sinking in a wide violet pool. With a sizzle and pop the last tongue of flame was taken by the night.
Then her clammy hands were all over him, pulling and demanding, caressing and beseeching. He had to pry them off like leeches, had to place them clasped on her shuddering arched belly.
A silky snarl rose almost in his ear.
With a little squeal he sprang to his feet, even as something nearby jumped back in response.
The boy stood absolutely still while the panting thing padded nearer. They stood very close, smelling each other. He instinctively extended a hand, palm forward. But it was no good; his arm was shaking out of control. The snarl rose again, not so tentatively this time. His mother’s nails tore at his ankle.
The boy gently stepped away, only to find himself surrounded by the shifting silhouettes of half a dozen gray wolves. They approached in a calculated manner:  two from the left, one from the right, another from behind. He was being goaded away from his mother; he could hear her fists beating the ground, and a few seconds later the sounds of a nauseating assault and ravaging.
He shakily raised his other hand. Now both arms were extended, and their message was clearly one of defense rather than control. Two snapping wolves stepped aside, leaving him a gateway into the night. A cold wet nose bumped his wrist.
Screaming like a woman, he took off after his father just as fast as his feet would carry him.

                                                  BOY

Alon­g the great Kazakh Steppe a man could wander a lifetime and never meet another of his kind—especially if his kind happened to be Alaskan Inuk, and if he happened to be the teenaged patriarch of a two-man family going nowhere.
Here history is mostly mute.
Upon this continent-spanning steppe, unnamed communities were scattered and rebuilt, lives blown about by the wind. The only centers of humanity a traveler might encounter, far removed from the Silk Road at the very crack of the new millennium, were temporary encampments of civilization at its rudest—shifting holes of cutthroat commerce existing solely for the barter of silk and spices and hapless souls. Life here was revered far less than merchandise, and the longest-lived men were those who kept their distance.
Hero and his boy hiked over permafrost and tundra for years; their meandering course a drunken mapmaker’s scrawl. Chronological entries along this imaginary line would reveal that they’d stopped, sometimes for months at a time, when the father had grown too weak and disoriented to continue. Hero’s internal compass was long-sprung, and his weight had fallen considerably. He’d sit on his lonesome, scarecrow-scrawny, wistfully scrolling a 360-horizon while his boy scouted and scavenged. Then, for no apparent reason, he’d just up-and hike—sometimes northwest, sometimes along a tangential plane that always threatened to spiral. It was brutal:  winters were frigid, summers, by odd contrast, running steamy to baking. Season by season these marches lost their tenaciousness, and eventually their heart. Hero’s obsession was becoming his demise.
Now, to a hypothetical observer, the ratty pair of woolly camels materializing out of the rising August heat might have been mirages.
These beasts were novelties here, and pioneers, for they were way beyond their normal stomping grounds. They’d tramped for months with a mind-numbing monotonousness, a thousand miles and more; round the Urals to the south, and through the hard territory braced by the Volga and Voronezh, avoiding anything that even smelled of men. They’d been wild camels; ugly, ill-tempered, and unpredictable, until the boy tamed them by touch…but this new pattern was a literal change of pace…for weeks the frail little man and his dark teenaged son rose and fell with the animals’ rhythm, lulled by it, sick of it, dreaming of lands far removed from hoarfrost and peat moss. In this manner they were borne clear to present-day Belarus, whereupon the camels’ stupefying march began to quicken. Mile by mile they put on steam, until one day they reached a broad area distinguishable from its bracing terrain only by its many deep surface cracks. Here the camels’ behavior became erratic; they crouched at an angle while tramping, their long necks oscillating, their noses bobbing along the ground. Eventually they came upon a dingy pool nestled in a pebbly depression. The local brush surrounding this pool was situated like iron filings about a lodestone. The boy hauled back his camel’s neck and laid a hand on its brow. The brute slowed to a halt. The other camel imitated its partner, move for move. Simultaneously the animals dropped to their knees.
The boy jumped off, catching Hero as he fell. The camels stood watching stupidly as son maneuvered father, but after a while grew nervous and began tramping their hooves in time. They slowly stepped to the pool’s rim and knelt woozily, their noses poised just above the surface. Their whiskers danced on the pool’s face, their lids became heavy, their hindquarters quivered as they drank. Their nostrils, having fluttered in unison, remained agape. They appeared to be asleep.
The boy began filling skins.
The water was quite warm; he slurped a palmful and almost immediately felt intoxicated.
He flicked it off his fingers; the water was bad.
Three heads were now mirrored in the pool; the camels’ at ten o’clock and two o’clock, the boy’s at six. He watched their reflections continue to ripple, long after the pool had become still. His face, melting and firming, rapidly fluctuated between extremes of age, and between his own recognizable features and those of some…monstrosity. The effect was hypnotic. He felt his joints stiffen; his eyes became weak, his thoughts muddled…his face was irresistibly drawn to the pool’s surface, and for a moment he was in real peril of drowning. He ****** his head aside and creaked to his feet.
Where the camels had knelt were only the prints of their bellies and knees. In the distance they could be seen galloping all-out for the horizon, right back the way they’d come. The boy watched until they were swallowed by their dust, and when he turned around his father was long gone.
Now he knew it was all just a matter of time.
And sure enough, after eleven more days of feebly staggering along, Hero completely ran out of gas. The boy bundled him up in a shawl, like an old woman.
Sitting there, cradling an unresponsive man weighing less than eighty pounds, he couldn’t help but let his morbid fantasies run wild. He was now old enough to realize his father had at some time suffered severe head trauma, and honest enough to accept that the man was rapidly approaching a vegetative state. This understanding accompanied him like a shadow, and that night he questioned, for the very first time, his own convoluted rationale.
He was just beginning to sense that his will was not his own.
He built a semi-permanent camp west of the Desna and foraged in a tight spiral, always returning in a straight line. Some days he came back feeling uneasy, sensing another presence. Then it was every other day. It bugged him to no end. At last, when it became every day, he hauled his father to his feet and began a resolute march to the west.
Again he became anxious, and after only a dozen yards.
He turned slowly while hunching, certain something bulky had just dropped out of sight. Nothing looked suspicious, everything looked suspicious. He walked Hero some more, occasionally peering back over his shoulder. There was…something.
He whirled:  only masses of rock and high brush. Yet, when he really strained his eyes, he was sure, pretty sure, that he could make out a large crouching body continuous with the rocks. Heart in his throat, he began a slow steady creep, only to pause, positive the bulge, whatever it was, had shifted in response. The boy very gradually raised his arm until it was level with his eyes, faced the palm outward, and extended the arm parallel with the ground. He could almost feel some kind of current passing between his itching palm and…nothing. He walked over to Hero, stopped again. There’d been the subtlest sense of traction. The boy propped up his father in a cloud of flies and waited.
In a minute the bulge drew *****.
Out of the brush strolled a furry gray wild ***, her back inclined from countless weary miles; stretching her neck, pausing to nibble, taking her sweet time. Grungy as she was, she fit right in.
At the boy’s first casual step she immediately hit the dirt and remained flat on her belly, one big dark eye staring between her hooves. Another step, and her **** bunched up. The closer he got, the higher her rear end rose. When he was almost at arm’s length she sprang back and danced away, seeming to bound with delight. But not to the east, as she’d come.
To the northwest.
She backpedaled while the boy came on whistling and cooing, matching him step for step. But the moment he threw up his arms in resignation she spun round as though cued, dropped on her belly, and peered over her shoulder.
The boy was first to blink. This time he approached fractionally, keeping movements to a minimum. She rose just as carefully, sauntering northwest in reverse, and at the first sign of hesitation turned, dropped, and cautiously gazed back. The boy glared at that huge mocking **** and broke into a sprint. She easily danced out of reach, plopped down, and continued to stare.
He began hurling stones, with venom and with accuracy, until she’d scurried into the brush.
But on the way back to his father he could feel her tagging along.
Twenty feet behind she halted, looking bemused.
The boy nodded ironically. He walked Hero over, murmuring baby talk all the way, and firmly placed a palm on the animal’s muzzle once her breath grazed his fingers. She stroked his hand up and down with her whiskers, gave a kind of curtsy, and waited on her knees while he helped his father mount.
At Hero’s touch a shudder ran down her body. She stood up straight. Her eyes became set, her back absolutely stiff. She put down her head and began the long trek northwest, never once breaking stride.
It was an amazing march, an impossible feat. For a little over three days and almost four hundred miles she progressed like an automaton, driving herself without rest, without food or water.
After trotting alongside for an hour the boy climbed on and force-fed his father berries and smoked meat, his dark eyes constantly searching the countryside. Occasionally he’d see a run of red foxes to their left, watching intently, padding cautiously. Sooner or later they’d vanish, only to be replaced by a train of feline or equine pursuers. Packs approached and receded while, high overhead, flocks formed triangular patterns that continually broke up and reformed. There was a peculiar rhythmic quality to this ebb and flow that lulled his senses further. The boy shook his head to clear it, but his exhaustion was deeper than he’d supposed—even the brush appeared to be leaning northwest.
That first day he grew numb with the pace, and that night the relentless pounding of her hooves drew him into a miserable slumber. He wrapped his arms around his sleeping father and lay half atop. When he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer he tore strips from his skins, then looped his tied wrists round her neck, his ankles round her belly.
On the second day she was breathing hard, but her back was still high and she showed no signs of faltering. Her eyes remained focused on the ground dead ahead. She always sensed the best routes; finding mountain passes, fording wetlands.
But by the third day they could feel her ribs quaking against their legs. Her breath exploded as she marched, blood frothed and caked about her nostrils. Still she pushed herself on, her pace so steady it was almost metronomic.
On the fourth day her legs were gone. She veered and stumbled, shuddering every few paces. The boy hopped off for the umpteenth time and tried to bring her to graze, but she wouldn’t be turned. He ran behind her as she staggered along, unwilling, or unable, to rest.
At last a foreleg gave and she went down hard. Sobbing and snorting, she plowed her muzzle back and forth in the soil, the useless leg repeatedly pounding the ground. After a minute she raised her head and brayed at the sky, her neck muscles taut, her head slowly swinging side to side. Her cry went on and on.
With a tremendous effort she pushed herself upright and butted the boy aside. Every part of her body was shaking. From her depths a low moan grew to a steady bray, and finally to a wild, pulsing howl. She came to a rise, but was too weak to climb without sliding. Stamping in frustration, she managed a few feet, reared feebly, slid some more. The boy got behind her and applied his back; it took all he had to assist her almost to the top. With a desperate lunge she crashed on her belly.
Amazingly, she dragged herself on, her howl now a scream, her head whipping left and right. When she could pull herself no farther she ****** forth her neck to its very limit and, with a shudder that ran from the tip of her nose to the tuft on her tail, shoved her muzzle straight into the dirt and died.
The boy hauled off his father and fell back. The animal’s eyes were fixed upwards, seeming, even in death, to be straining for a glimpse of what lay just beyond the rise. The boy half-dragged Hero the last few yards. They collapsed at the top, and together looked over the cold Baltic Sea.

At water’s edge a haggard fisherman sat on his boat’s ravaged deck, blindly staring out to sea. His was a queer vessel; a family structure built more like an aft-cabined barge than like seacraft typical of that period. The fisherman’s boat, like his mind, had been abused beyond repair.
He’d lost much in his life. Time had taken his dreams, pox his face, hardship his back and shoulders. And, more recently, a brawling band of drunken Baltic pirates had ***** his wife and daughter before butchering them along with his two fine sons, while he sat helplessly bound to the mast. Finally, to further their delight, they’d set the boat aflame and sent it crackling against the sun; knowing he could hear their hoots and howls, knowing he would drift undead, accompanied only by this last unspeakable memory.
But a squall, without prelude, had doused the flames and blown his home ashore.
There he’d remained for a full long day, staring at nothing, his shattered life caught on the rocks. On the second day he’d worked himself free and commenced staggering about in his memories, gathering shards. It was a pathetic claim. He made a pile of all the old bedding and linen and usable cords, and set about sewing a sort of mementos sail. All that third day he had sewn, and on the fourth he had hoisted this sail and been moved to see it billowing in a northwest-blowing breeze. Again he just sat and gaped. And later that day he’d become aware of a commotion taking place on the long grade leading down to the water, where a writhing mass of seagulls was proceeding like a tremendous slow-motion snowball. He’d never seen anything like it. It wasn’t uncommon to find gulls in a group of many dozens or more, but there must have been two, maybe three thousand of the birds now swarming toward his boat. They were making an incredible racket. In the midst of this cloud could be seen a couple of slowly walking figures; as they neared he made out a small man accompanying a boy in his late teens, both dressed in odd skins. When they reached the rocks his eyes were drawn to the small man’s face. It was a foreign face, brutish and dark, with a deep cleft running from above the right temple to the jaw’s left side. Whatever instrument had felled this man had been devastating—everything in its path was smashed, and with permanence. The forehead was caved in. There was no bridge to the nose, the left cheek was completely collapsed, one side of the mouth was a mangled mess. The jaw itself had set improperly, so that it jutted to the side. The general impression, especially from a distance, was of some unforgettable circus freak’s countenance puckering at an angle. It was a face right out of a nightmare. But there was nothing frightening about the eyes. They were the eyes of a child.
Maybe half the gulls hopped screaming on the rocks. The rest circled overhead.
The boy considered the fisherman curiously before placing a foot on the charred deck. His gaze went around the boat, lingered on the makeshift sail, returned to the slumped figure. He passed a hand before the eyes. No response. He then leaned in close and placed his fingers on the man’s forehead. Immediately that bleak expression became fluid, brimming over with horror and heartbreak. Tears rolled down the fisherman’s cheeks as he gasped, shuddered, and backed up the scorched mast to his feet. Thus propped, he squinted at his visitors and was overcome by a wave of homesickness so strong he had to turn away. The feeling bewildered him, for this vessel, and this sea, were all the home he’d ever known. He clung to the mast while the boy helped his father board. Once he’d collected himself, the fisherman tore a heavy crossbeam from the toasted cabin. He and the boy used this as a lever, and together they shoved the boat off the rocks. The wind picked up nicely, and the little craft was swept across the water.
Exploding off the rocks, the gulls shot after the boat as if it were brimming with fish, the loudest and orneriest vying for favored positions directly overhead. The melee attracted additional gulls—they came shrieking in their hundreds from all sides, banking and calling in the oddest manner, until the mass grew so thick as to cast a permanent shadow on the boat. All day long the clamor continued, and all that night. The fisherman rolled with the rudder, listlessly, allowing the sea to control him. Eventually he let go, that the wind might bear them where it would. His sail ballooned but held firm, and the boat fairly zipped across a sea somehow smooth as glass, broken only by the vacillating ripples of bottleneck dolphins and migrating humpback whales. The three tiny sailors sat hunched together, motionless, all throughout the next day, until the black coast of Sweden loomed in the twilight.
As the boat neared land the cloud of gulls broke up, shot to shore, and landed in groups of a thousand and more; a dizzying, wildly uproarious reception committee.
The dung-covered boat slammed into the rocks, shattering the fisherman’s trance. He intuitively walked his **** up the mast and, swaying there, watched the boy draw his father over the side and lead him to a clearing at wood’s edge. There in the dusk he made out what appeared to be a hefty spotted runaway heifer hitched to a rickety wood wagon. He saw the cow gallop up to meet them, saw the boy look around warily, saw him help the little man into the wagon and climb in beside him. The animal immediately began picking through the woods, the large brass bell round her neck clanging forlornly.
The clarity of that bell made him realize just how quiet it had become. He craned his neck:  there wasn’t a gull in sight. He fell back against the shot mast and slid onto his tailbone with a clacking of teeth. His eyes were misting up. In the gathering dark a few sail fragments flew past and were ****** into the woods. The boat rocked and relaxed. After that there was only the sound of the receding bell’s sad, monotonous song being batted about by the wind.

The little cow strode through moonlit woods until she came to a path formed by the rutting of wheels over many years. She followed this broken, serpentine track throughout the night, and by morning was passing farms and, occasionally, crossing broader paths that might realistically be defined as roads. All day long she bore down that ragged track, until she came in late afternoon to a clearing near a village. Here many such tracks converged. And here the boy slipped away while she grazed.
Sometime after dark he returned with a load of straw, a couple of pilfered blankets, and a fat iron kettle. Crammed in this kettle were salt, tubers, cheese, a few loaves of rye, legumes, and a plump foot of lamb sausage. Most of this ***** he’d brought in tied to the bowed back of a huge, puffing, highly amenable black pig which, thus laden, now followed the boy’s every step like a fresh convert tracing the heels of the messiah. The boy built a fire under the stars, filled the kettle with creek water, and commenced simmering their dinner. While waiting, he couldn’t help but note an odd feature of the local flora:  plants, especially trees, all seemed inclined to a northwesterly disposition, though no amount of wind could account for it. He shooed the pig. But rather than run along, it backpedaled in a nervous circle, round and round in reverse, until it lost its balance and fell on its ****. There it remained, a yard behind the wagon. The boy fed his father and lined the wagon with straw. They settled in for the night. The boy must have nodded, might have dreamt, but while he was drifting he became aware of a stirring in the woods. He sat up, saw the pig’s eyes gleaming inches from his nose. And there were a number of animals, some wild, some strayed from farmsteads, arranged in a broad circle around the wagon, their eyes glinting with moonlight. Not a rustle, not a peep, was lifted from the woods.
In the morning he woke to find the pig still staring. The fidgeting heifer, impatient to roll, began her long day’s march while Hero and his boy were yet stretching and scratching, and the ******* pig, galloping heavily, fell in close behind. Each new day this routine was repeated. They banged past farms and small communities until the ruts intersected a broad rocky road wending halfway across the kingdom. The cow addressed this road with vigor. They picked up followers—a goat here, a couple of sheep there—which hurried after the wagon as best they could. The cow stomped on with resolve, mile after mile, day after day, her bell keeping steady time. That bell’s peal attracted foals, lambs, and kids into the wagon’s narrowing wake. Hares hopped between hooves and wheels, boars and blue foxes fell in and withdrew. White falcons, normally solo fliers, whirled into wedge shapes high overhead.
At night the entire train would camp on the road while the boy raided proximate farmsteads, always returning fully laden. And as soon as the fire died the colony grew, creature by creature, and the moment the sun broke the horizon the heifer came to life and moved on, but each day a bit more resolutely, as though straining to meet a deadline. The march took on a sense of real urgency. The cow pressed on with attitude, the clang of her bell more strident with each passing mile. Soon her followers numbered in the hundreds, as animals deserted their farms or crept out of the woods to tag along. Tillers and traders stood dumbfounded, amazed by the bizarre flow.
Once they’d crossed into Norway the frothing cow veered hard to the west. The pace really picked up; no longer were Hero and his boy afforded the luxury of a night’s sleep in one spot. Days blurred into a single variegated flow as the bashed and lopsided wagon continued building its entourage; the riders were surrounded dawn to dusk by a confused and confusing scurry. Word of the flow’s weirdness preceded it clear to the Norwegian coast, so that now plowmen and merchants, wearily gathering their goggling families, found themselves lined in anticipation along the king’s highway. Horsemen went pounding to and fro with news of the procession’s progress and particulars, children ran through the streets banging pots in imitation of the cow’s approaching bell. Livestock wheeled and stamped, fowl leaped and crashed.
The slobbering cow broke into a run.
Bystanders trotted behind, calling back and forth excitedly, while the wagon’s permanent following squealed and squawked between their heels. The cow made a hard turn onto a widening swath in the brush. This swath, seeming to strain against the soil, ran straight down to the crest of a low hill overlooking the Atlantic. On either side a crowd had been studying the phenomenon for some time, but now all eyes swung to the dark and disfigured man and his son, clinging to the disintegrating wagon behind the careening spotted cow.
The trailing people traded views as they ran. Most—at the very outset of the new millennium, with Christianity burgeoning throughout Europe—leaned to the miraculous. Others, just as superstitious but prone to a darker point of view, threw looks of horror at the deformed little man. Yet they ran no less eagerly.
The galloping crowd made for the seaside, where only one local event of any moment was brewing:  on the coast a Greenlander Viking was preparing his longship for the rough voyage home. Impetuous son of the great island’s first permanent European settler, he’d just been baptized in Olaf’s court, and was now eager to sail—but not as a warrior—as a missionary. While his spirit remained in a tug-o’-war between his father Erik’s will and that of gods old and new, his duty was clearly to his king. And Olaf had charged him with the Christianization of pagan Greenland.
Something on the wind now made this destined man turn his head. From behind the gentle hill to his rear came a kind of thunder. Heads popped up, followed by a confused explosion of voices, and seconds later a frantic bug-eyed heifer burst into view, dragging the wheel-less skeleton of a shattered wooden wagon. On the wagon’s splayed frame a man and teenaged boy clung for their lives as the spewing animal made a beeline for his ship.
The new missionary, still egocentric enough to assume his Maker might actually toss him a personal, surreptitiously rolled up his eyes. The sky yawned at his arrogance. At his side a smallish cowled man rose irritably, but the missionary sat him right back down. He then snorted, squared his shoulders, and signaled his men to halt their preparations.
Knowing it was expected, he gathered his hard Nordic pride and coolly made his way into the crowd.

The priest clung to port, gagging above the waves.
After a completely uneventful minute he leaned back and stared through tearing eyes at the distant backdrop of gathering mists. Weeks now…a man of his constitution had no business at sea.
Along, too, were a quirky little man and his fiercely devoted son.
Through his pantomime, the boy had been so persistent in begging their passage that refusal, under the circumstances, would have been unbecoming not only a man of God but a man of the world.
So there it was:  a priest who couldn’t hold his lunch, a witless eyesore who couldn’t sit still, and a surly teenaged protector who snarled at the first hard look. This crossing just had to be some kind of divine test—of mortal patience as well as moral values. Norsemen weren’t made for babysitting.
The mists condensed.
And the shifting shape became a hard familiar coast.
And the longship was mooring, and the crew were jostling and clambering, and the big missionary had booted off the haunted little freak and his hypersensitive son, and was condescendingly half-escorting, half-carrying, the green priest ashore.
And they were home.

Priest in tow, Leif quickly took up the Christianization of Greenland’s Western Settlement, as per Olaf’s command. The mangled little man and his son followed him around like dogs, slept outside his door and annoyed his visitors, ultimately proving far easier to adopt than to shake. Barely tolerable shadows…still, the lad was simply amazing with livestock…and though the youth’s useless father seemed time and again to be just begging for a whooping, his son’s presence bore some ineffable quality that always curbed the missionary’s hand. Several times he’d witnessed the father approached by settlers bent on abuse. Each time the boy had stepped in, and each time the troublemakers were mysteriously repelled. The missionary of course didn’t attribute any kind of celestial intervention to these episodes, and certainly the popular notion of devilry was a natural reaction to the pair’s outrageous exoticness, but…in the son’s company, and even under the sharp eyes of his fellow Norsemen, Leif more than once found himself oddly moved to protect the father. And so the deformed man and his boy day by day blent in—as village idiot and mystic guide. And when in time a ****** brought tales of an unvisited land to the west, it was only natural for the restless Greenlander to buy that ******’s boat and, before stalwart comrades, weary family, and whimsical God Almighty, reluctantly accept the eccentric father and son as sort of seagoing mascots.
Hero was from then on irrepressible. During preparations he would pipe and stammer in his half-mute way, brimming with a confounding anxiety that kept him underfoot and at odds with all. On frigid nights he perched on the westernmost rocks, moaning to the horizon in the strangest fashion while his son stood guard. He positively spooked the locals; they’d gossip, nervously and with bile, of an answering wind that came wailing off the sea like a banshee in labor. The whole island wanted rid of him. And when his champing beneficiary, still clinging to the notion of Christian charity, bundled him aboard with his son and a crew of thirty-five, not a single settler was sorry to see him go.
Almost from the moment they cast off everything went wrong, as all attempts to control the longship were met with some kind of unknowable countermanding force. Vikings were not renowned for passive resistance—they fought, squaresail and steering oar, leaning oarsman to oarsman, until the ship rocked on the waves like a bucking bronco. An erratic weather system pursued them, worsening dramatically at each minute variation in heading. The Norsemen doubled down, and when the clouds finally burst wide, the cowling sea went mad. Dervishes whirled about the hull, crisscrossing winds bedeviled the sail. Patches of kelp belonging to much warmer waters came heaving alongside, fouling the work of the oars, while far to the west a humongous fog bank formed, eradicating the navigable field. The lightning-streaked horizon was a throbbing gray slit.
The longship became locked in a slow westerly current.
Fatigued crewmen complained of headaches and hallucinations, and of a nasty, slightly metallic tang to the air. There were numerous walrus sightings; bobbing flippers and snouts amid drifting ice chunks that came prowling the North Sea like a circling pack of famished white wolves.
Worst of all was the boy’s father—instantly agitated by everything and nothing, prey to some primitive impulse that caused him to periodically incline his head, shudder to his feet, and loop his arms as though embracing the sky. Leif would watch him scrabbling at the prow like a cat at a tree, furs snapping in the wind. He’d watch the boy re-seat him for the hundredth time, and for the hundredth time be filled with an immense contempt. By now he’d acknowledged that it takes a special kind of strength to shoulder charity and tolerance. That brown little freak struck him as an enormous malformed barnacle, slowly working its way back up the prow. Trying so hard to go unnoticed, looking and listening so intently, though there was nothing to see other than the growing shelves of fog, and nothing to hear save the rising, almost hysterical voice of the wind.
Leif sniffed the air, his ******’s instincts nagging him. This was a foul current, and a fool's errand; he took a deep breath and tentatively ordered the longship brought about.
The ship kicked twice, as though an enormous submarine hand had seized and released the hull.
A whirl formed in the water, causing the keeling ship to sweep around like a clock’s second hand. All about them, those drift-ice ghosts cruised dangerously near.
But they’d been liberated from that accursed current. Leif fiercely urged on his rowers, and at last the ship broke free. They made a bead due north.
Night came and the temperature plummeted.
Small sheets of ice converged, drifting between the hunks. The Norsemen, instinctively huddling amidships, passed out one by one in a massive pile of fur and flesh. In the freezing silence the floes bumped and recoiled, bumped and gathered, bumped and bonded. The tiny ship, swallowed whole, was dragged along in a labyrinth of black sea and interlocking slabs of ice.

The Norsemen came to in a surly, foul-smelling heap, lost at sea. While they were still groggy a voice cried out that a darker patch was developing in the fog. The men all fell to port. Under the confusion of their voices could be heard a distant rumble.
At this Hero hauled himself up the high curved prow. A half-light began to penetrate the fog, barely illuminating the irregular faces of drifting ice. The missionary stormed forward and indicated by gestures that if the boy didn’t restrain his father he would have the man tied down.
The longship stopped dead in the water.
The men found themselves regarding a perpetually frozen coastline swathed in bluish veils of mist. Directly before them loomed an immense ice cliff hundreds of feet high. Rising beyond this cliff were endless snow fields, where lean violet shadows seemed to drag about of their own volition. And upon those bleak fields a thin howling wind prowled, kicking up brief white dervishes, leaving a strange zigzagging signature.
Even as they stared, a darker shadow high on the ice cliff’s glistening face began to widen, accompanied by a cracking sound that could be felt before it was heard. With the illusion of slow-motion, a stupendous chunk broke out of the cliff and came screaming toward the sea. It hit the water like a bomb. The thunder of its separation and the explosion of its impact took a moment to reach them. Then, out of a spewing crater of crests and spume, the new calf came lunging, tromping the sea so hard the longship, fully a mile to sea, was swept out and ****** back in like a cork. The floundering mountain of ice bobbed and lilted, generating huge waves which continued to rock the ship long after the monster had settled. In a while the roaring in their ears subsided and there remained only the swirling, nerve-wracking howl of the wind.
The missionary’s eyes swept left and right. Whatever this place was, it sure wasn’t the fair shoreline he’d been promised. Hero again scrambled up the prow, and Leif again yanked him down. This time he made good his threat; he had the little nuisance bound, though he was half-tempted to let him take his chances overboard.
From somewhere deep in the haze grew a soulful, otherworldly call. It went on and on, electrifying the air, bottoming out once the ship had merged with that previously fought westerly flow.
By now Leif’s nerves were shot. He ordered the oars raised.
The longship began to drift. Ship and ice were pulled due west.
The clouds fell far behind as the ship embarked upon an amazingly calm sea—so calm its entire visible surface was featureless except for the faint wakes provided by the ship and its hulking ice companions. To the east a huge fog bank appeared on the horizon, and a while later a smaller bank to the north. Then a very dense one to the south. In time these banks converged, imperceptibly becoming a single mass that closed about the ship, bit by bit creating a slowly heaving dome. Tiny beads of water appeared on beards and eyebrows; in a minute everything was soaked. The only sound was that of the dragging steering oar. The men were now sopping ghosts, speaking only with their eyes.
Directly ahead the fog began to dimple. The dimple became a hollow, the hollow a cave, and then ship and ice were being towed through a low, ever-extending tunnel in fog. The current increased its pull. Ship and drifting ice accelerated through the tunnel.
After a while the missionary quietly stepped forward. He stood with one hand on the prow’s neck, listening to the mist, so motionless he might have been a carved extension of the longship’s aggressive design. Not a man breathed. The tunnel’s dilating and contracting bore was producing an all but seamless series of oscillating, near-phonetic sounds. Leif almost tiptoed back. No god, pagan or Christian, could account for the strangeness of this situation.
They were borne on a course that grew more southerly, and the following day beheld an inhospitable shoreline glazed by dazzling white beaches. Their course held. Two days later they came upon a far pleasanter, thickly wooded coast. Here the current released its hold, and here the missionary untied Hero and personally placed him and his son in a tiny oak faering. He was just as sick of them as he was excited by this promising new land. Once the rowboat had been heaved over the side, he and another man stepped aboard and took up the oars. They began rowing with easy, powerful strokes.
When the boat kissed sand the missionary stood unsteadily.
The first European to set foot on North American soil now placed one hand on his crucifix, the other on his sword’s hilt, and awkwardly plunged his leg into the thigh-deep, ice-cold surf. Before he could take another step the boat lurched as Hero leapt headfirst into the water, followed an instant later by his son. The Greenlanders watched sourly as the two splashed their way into a mad dash for the waiting pines. Leif wished them both good riddance and turned to grin wryly at his fellow Norseman. He must have blacked out for a second, must have been blinded by a shaft of sun, for he found he was staring stupidly at a point midway between his companion and the longship. It felt like he’d been kicked between the eyes.
Everything was dissolving.
He studied the beach and pines closely, but saw nothing of the man or his boy. He turned back, disoriented. With what seemed a superhuman effort he took up his oars. He rowed out sluggishly, in a dream, and the fog rolled in to meet him.

The boy broke into the trees and embraced a trunk, fighting for breath. What happened next happened so fast and so unexpectedly he didn’t have a chance to react.
Three savages stepped from behind the pines and beat him to his knees. They twisted his arms behind his back and hauled him to his feet. He’d barely processed the impression of a wild painted face when something sharp struck him ******* the temple and tore down his cheek to the jaw. Two of the assailants manhandled him into an upright position and held him in place while the third brought his weapon down again and again and again.
All but dead, he watched a nightmare countenance shouting through a shot veil of blood, and behind that image a reeling crimson sun. He lay there gushing while the savages went through his rags. They propped him against a pine and shrieked with triumph, tore the hair and gory scalp from his skull, threw back their heads and screamed at the screaming sky. Tooth and nail, they ripped apart his face and throat and, certain he would die, split what bits of fur were left and let his carcass lie.

                                                HERO

The weeks stretched into months while he fought his way back into the light.
He progressed in stages; only half-conscious, stumbling along in a blood-red stupor punctuated by a slow strobe of frequent blackouts. Days loomed and decayed, nights pounced and were gone; the backlit, swirling gray cosmos collapsed and expanded on every missed beat of his pulse. A thousand times he broke down to die, and a thousand times he clawed to his feet, driven to pursue a tiny, ghost-like figure fluttering in his memory.
Everything conspired to check him.
A bay like an immense landlocked sea was skirted over months or years—it was all the same. Cold locked him in, Hunger drove him afield, that rude ***** Wind lashed him blind, wore him like a shoe, screamed for his skin while he worked his way west.
Somehow he ate, somehow he avoided being eaten; the instincts that had served him halfway around the planet were still vital beneath the abused exterior. His simple burrows became sturdy temporary shelters. He relearned the art of fire, and began to cook what he killed. He manufactured crude snares and weapons and, when his recuperation was complete, paid closer attention to the on-again, off-again trail he’d been following…forever.
Sometimes this trail would call to him like a lover. Other times he stood peering uncertainly, trying to recapture meanings and aims. Then the ground would turn spongy and the sky revolve, and once again he’d be lying all but dead in the woods, while from the face of the sun emerged a vile winged horror, its ugly pale head lashing side to side, its cruelly hooked beak dangling something that glistened in the wild pulsing light…then the fat moon, rising like gas against the icy black night…the feel of the wind:  the slashing of her nails, the chafing of her hem…the sound of things crunching and pausing and sniffing…then the sun, blazing anew. And again that thing, descending, its wide black wings beating slowly, metronomically—but none of that mattered any more. For his mind had quit him, had flown howling into ice and pine to roost with things surreal. In the day his madness might muddle and run, or spend the light stalking, cat-like, watching and waiting. But at night it came creeping from all sides. Sometimes it came in waves. It could gnaw like the devil, or wrap around him like a warm second skin. But none of that mattered either.
The only thing that mattered was the trail—whether it was lost for good, or for only a while. He’d been following it through his episodes, always north, wondering just who and where in the world he was, and trying to shake a ridiculous notion of being led on a wild goose chase.
The cold was unbelievable.
The deeper north he delved, the more confused he became. He grew starved for colors and scents, finding nonexistent patterns in the stark contrast of shadow and snow. He thought he could detect a kind of otherworldly design in the overwhelming number of dead ends he encountered, and, too, in the diabolically frustrating locations of natural obstacles. He seemed to be forever fighting the wind—a hulking, despondent snowman, he hiked face down and focused, while another aspect of his attention floated just behind, disembodied, watching his silent pursuers…leaving no tracks, blending perfectly with the environment in their clever winter coats…not predators, but creatures that normally should have been hightailing it away from him. By the time he could turn, they’d become nothing more menacing than snowdrifts. But they pursued him nevertheless.
And so his paranoia increased…had there ever really been a trail…and when did this miserably cold, miserably anemic crusade begin…his long-term memory was falling apart a chunk at a time. It just got colder and colder and colder until at last, one snippet of a day during one blur of a year, he found himself utterly lost, and clueless as to his history or objective. His mind was a blank, as colorless and featureless as the endless world of ice around him. He’d come this far solely to learn that the only trail he’d been following was his own—and now even that trail was succumbing to ice. On all sides there was nothing to see but an infinite field of glaring whiteness, and nothing to hear but the ululating wail of the tubular polar wind. It was the loneliest, the unholiest, the creepiest sound imaginable. But it wasn’t insanity that made him wheel. It was his self-preservation instinct.
And then he was somehow on his knees in the woods, facing a furious setting sun.
Whole seasons had passed from his memory like chalk from a board. His only recollections were those of a broken, haunted animal:  of being perilously sick, of fearing the unseen, of blindly struggling across a solid-white wilderness. That he’d survived such an ordeal meant nothing to him. And that he had in some indecipherable manner stumbled across the cold-as-stone trail did not fill him with amazement or with thankfulness—there simply wasn’t anything visual or emotional left to draw on. A significant part of his life had been whited out.
But now he could focus entirely on the trail. And before he knew it, the fuzzy area between fantasy and reality found a seam. He began to analyze and plan. He paid attention to hygiene, and kept a kind of running mental journal. Things were sorting out. Yet there were nights when the old sickness would resurface, reestablish its hold, and leave him sweating and uncertain under the stars. Then, paradoxically, his perception would become razor-keen. And so he would see, on a distant hilltop, a pair of scrawny silhouettes, one on four legs and one on two, slowly crossing the faintly pocked face of the setting moon. He would become strangely excited, and thereafter retain crystal-clear images of himself, as if seen from above, hurrying with adroitness through the silent, graveyard-like setting of black and blue night and white-frosted trees. Then the fuzzy area would broaden, and it would be the next morning, and he would be staring at the prints of man and elk in snow. And he would see how the elk’s prints doubled back, and how the man’s prints terminated where he had obviously mounted his guide. An unfathomable glow would bring tears to his eyes. But, even as he gathered himself, a fresh snowfall would wipe out the prints. And once again the world would plummet into white. And the wind would howl as the snow hammered his eyes. And he would ***** on.

A haggard animal sat shivering in a small grove of frozen pines, watching his campfire die. His eyes were fixed. Like the fire, he was running out of warmth, running out of fuel. There wasn’t a whole lot of tinder round his bones, and not much feeling left in his limbs. The slowly heaping downfall was burying him alive, but he was too numb to care.
It had taken him six long years to cross an entire continent, and during that time he’d known only cold and excruciating pain. The pain was leaving him now. The cold was making it right. His eyes glazed over.
Along a narrow plain to the west a herd of caribou filed dreamily through the snow, cutting across a panoramic backdrop of dazzling white mountains. The slow-motion parade was hypnotic. After a while it occurred to the drifting man, in a roundabout way, that he was dying, that he was nonchalantly freezing to death. Concurrent with this notion there rose in his chest a wonderful liquid warmth. His eyes slowly closed and, once shut, began to set fast.
He was jolted from within. It was as if he’d been kicked in the heart.
He ****** to his feet, pounded his fists on his thighs, felt nothing. The breath spurted from his mouth in small white clouds as he stumbled downhill after the slow caribou train. He swam through the snow, hallucinating, imagining that certain individuals in the herd were mocking him by slowing and accelerating, while others glanced back with expressions of contempt.
As he burst into their midst the animals stepped aside indifferently. A few galloped ahead to keep up the herd, but most simply sidestepped while he danced there, stamping his feet and smacking his hands. The herd grew thinner, until only the old and infirm were filing by. The man desperately embraced a hobbling female for warmth, but she cried out and kicked, triggering a panic reaction in the herd. Clinging for his life, the man was dragged along beside her as the herd stormed into a maze of flying ice and snow. His weight caused her to stagger sideways until they slammed against the flank of a sick male. The man instinctively threw an arm over the male and, thus draped between them, was borne across the drifted plain for upwards of a mile, his freezing feet alternately dangling above and dragging through the snow. The herd broke into a hard run, forcing him to assume a broken trot. Soon his legs were stinging. Sensation rushed through his body.
Now the herd, still picking up speed, began to contract, jamming him between his bearers. There was a quick jolt to his right and he was lifted clean off his feet, nearly straddling the bucking female. It had become an all-out stampede. Through hard-flung snow he saw the cause:  just ahead, the caribou had run head-on into a solid wall of galloping wood bison, and both frantic herds had blindly veered to the east; were in fact running side by side down a deep, ragged canyon—were pouring over the canyon’s lip like a cataract. He was approaching, at breakneck pace, that very place where the converged herds so abruptly swerved. The hanging man snarled as he was borne inevitably to the point of deflection.
There came a concussion at his left shoulder, followed by a blast of snow. In an instant the ailing male was tumbling head over heels to the east, ****** into the stampede’s plummeting mass by the fury of its descent. The man and female, rebounding from this impact, were shot to the west in a crazy jumble of flailing legs. The caribou lost her footing, flew nose-first into a snowbank, and came up running. Kicking off, the man used the last of his strength to heave himself astride. At first she fought to shake him, but the spell of the run was too strong. She and half a dozen others went pounding in the opposite direction of the stampede, quickly joined by a number of bison that had likewise splintered from their herd. The riding man could make out their huge hulking shapes thundering by in a blizzard of flying ice, could hear their heavy gasps and explosive grunts. One passed so close he felt its massive flank brush his leg. He peered to his right and saw a black, pig-like eye regarding him excitedly, moving up and down like a piston as the beast ran alongside.
The eye shifted, focusing on the gasping, completely obsessed female. The bull dropped its head and slammed into the caribou’s side, sending her and the man careening down a ***** to the west. The caribou brayed hysterically and her backside went down, but she managed, despite the weight of her rider, to return to all fours and frantically continue along the *****. Again the bull charged, crashing into her shoulder. The man and caribou were launched sideways into the white searing air.
He sat up carefully. The huffing bison was straddling him like a bully laying down the ground rules. Its big wiry beard came right up to brush his chin. The stench of its breath was stupefying.
The bull stamped and snorted, thrusting its stubby horns left and right as the man used his elbows and heels to back away. The bull followed, move for move. When the man collapsed under his own impetus the bull shoved him along with its snout, bellowing furiously. Clear down the ***** they lunged, shoving and lurching, until the man lay sprawled on his back; up to his chin in snow, completely helpless. The ton of a bull butted and kicked, but only glancingly:  those hooves could **** with a blow. At last the man, in one clean sequence, spun on his rear, dropped to his side, and went rolling down the ***** using his elbows for ******.
At the bottom ran a narrow fence of frosted saplings marking an ice cliff’s precipice. He lay face down in the snow, too done in to do anything but **** at an air pocket.
And there came a high-pitched crackling, a sound like the protracted gasp of embers in a dead fire. He turned just as those saplings began leaning to the west, their frozen skins cracking with the strain.
The bison bellowed menacingly.
The sprawled man looked back and saw it still standing with legs spread wide, silhouetted against the sky. In a moment it began huffing downhill, lurching side to side, surfing the snow between lunges.
It chased him through the genuflecting saplings straight into a frozen gully where, protected by a few feet of insurmountable verticality, he was able to slide on the ice between its stomping hooves, downhill out of reach, then downhill out of control—spinning just in time to glimpse a breathtaking vista:
Partly framed by the gully-straddling saplings was a vast crescent of jagged white mountains seemingly huddled round a small stretch of snow-draped pines. The little wood these mountains surrounded was isolated in a broad lake of solid ice. Hundreds of fissures radiated crazily throughout this packed ice field, appearing to issue from somewhere near the frozen wood’s center, which was completely obscured by a ring of rising mist. Above this thumbnail panorama the sun showered gold.
Then the gully dipped radically, and he was skidding headfirst, slamming back and forth against its slick white walls. This uncontrollable plunge had the positive effect of getting his blood flowing. Yet it tore him up. Had the gully concluded in a cul-de-sac, or had further progress required a single calorie of uphill effort, his struggle would certainly have ended here. He would have been too weak to move, and death would have been swift.
But there was a glacier—a great river of ice pouring slowly out of the clouds. The gully, terminating in a little scoop formation near the glacier’s base, spat him flailing onto its gnarly glass hide. He went head over heels, bits of skin and fur flying like chips from a band saw. Somehow he gained his footing, and then he was running against his will, tumbling and recovering and tumbling again.
He didn’t catch much of that crazy run. He half-glimpsed whirling walls of ice, felt a fickle surface underfoot, and broke through an assaultive mist that clung to his ankles and arms. He remembered having the ragged hides torn right off his body, and then being skinned alive. And he remembered reaching the glacier’s base and crawling like an animal; round its sweeping drifts, past its peaked moraines, all the way to a twisting frozen gorge.
And he followed this gorge down; ricocheting wall to wall, delirious, small plumes of thrashed snow marking his descent.
Through a freezing wood he fumbled. In a veil of mist he tumbled down a steep and verdant grade. As cold consumed his closing breath, he fell upon, near-blind, near death, a strange, enchanted glade.

There is a pool.
And in this pool a man lay purged, his broken body half-submerged.
The stumbling man stopped. He knelt to weep, but lost his thread. One hand took a bicep, the other, the head. With a twist and pull the corpse emerged.
That visage…that face—misshapen mask, contorted, bleached; of life’s deposits fully leached. Essence dispatched—a void, sodden wretch.
He let it fall and the glass was breached. All a freak, all a stretch:  upon this act his grip detached.
And the bridge collapsed…one vagabond grasp…what were these feelings; recaptured and trashed…a span elapsed…who was this puckered mass…he hauled it by the waist and thighs…slid it in, watched the pool react:  purse and recover, expand, contract. The glass reformed, now silver-backed…a sudden mirror…the man leaned nearer…saw his reflection, just smashed, remade intact.
The pool grew still.
Within its depth a shadow stirred—visions gathered, some distinct, some obscure. What they meant, and who they were, was much too much to fathom. The glass became blurred.
He closed his eyes, let his heavy head fall, fell back on his haunches, felt the sweat seep and crawl. The air was a pall—as he struggled to rise, a nib crossed his wrist.
He opened his eyes.
Between his fingers the blades poked and crept. Round his knuckles they ventured, up his forearm they stepped:  they seemed to be triggered by prompts from the ground. He shook his head slowly and dully looked round.
There were jays grouped about him, their black eyes aglow. Red hens came running, their fat chicks in tow. Gophers engaged in a weird hide-and-seek. Bluebells and buttercups craned for a peek. Sparrows hopped past and, paying no heed, burst into flight. He watched them recede.
Westward they flew.
Bewildered, he slumped.
Bumped from behind, he jumped to his feet, flabbergasted to find an ancient gray moose near-eclipsing the sky, with grit in his snarl and fire in his eye.
The old moose took aim.
The man turned to flee and stumbled, then tumbled and fell on a palm and a knee.

But there lies a world (so the lullaby goes) where rivers ever run.
Poked from behind, pushed out of his mind, he staggered into sun.







Copyright 2020 by Ron Sanders.

Contact:  ronsandersartofprose(at)yahoo(dot)com

"It would be a statement of complete fatuity were I to claim I had approached the venture with no measure of trepidation."* - Myself, moments after writing this poem.

I claim very little.

I claim the cold of the night as regards my own warmth.

I claim the twinge in my right ankle for no one else would, surely.

I claim what little daylight I see and that sees me.

I claim the stagnation and degradation of my soul which I allowed to prosper deep within myself in all those hurtful years I spent convincing myself that you would eventually be capable of loving me as I did you.

I am.

I am aware.

I am a vigil for myself.

I engage the world for my own ends.

I sing a song that carries no one.

I breathe only when my lungs will suffer no further delay.

I am the concept of revulsion that stirs the body instinctively, like unnecessary skin.

I am the cold entity who never felt an embrace, whose face slips out of view of the light of the flickering bulb.

I wrong myself furiously.

I rarely forgive.

I choke on the water. I burn in the deep tissues.

I feel the idea of desire, and I smell the smoke, the herbs, and the mud.

I prepare a table for myself in the presence of my infirmities, and I cannot help but look at my self between my fevers of antique wakefulness.

And I wish to God this had a happy ending.

At the very end of the forest you will see
A lonesome silhouette standing in the sea
It seems gazing at the infinite horizon
While bathing under the vivid light of the moon

It was clearly a silhouette of a person
A maiden with a hair that was adored by dawn
And a body of an hour glass in the unknown
Sparkling as though diamond on a podium

But it is not what peaks my curiosity
It was the feeling that surged through me
Like seeing a very candid photography
Void with lies and ambiguity

But when I tried to reach out to the lady
She recoils from me instinctively
Now my thirst to know her identity
Burns in my throat painfully

an innate thirst
a compelling, life altering thirst
for

love

no not passion and lust

but

pure unadulterated love

to drink from that untainted spring
how my soul longs and dream
for the coming of that day
no longer left desolate with thirst
no longer questioning providence
no longer screaming at the sky

but

pure invigoration

a love so earnest
words fail in description
can, only, be felt and instinctively known

but instinct blurred by experience

I feel unleashed
like an animal
ready to sink my teeth
instinctively tearing your meat
& my eyes
focused only on the prize
exposed  b o n e s
and my nose runs with your blood
drowning my decency
cause
s e c r e t l y
the  frequency of your scream
clearly releases me
this sequence of release
greedily pleases me
i'm licking you clean
thinking how
eating never came so easily

Driving off on the side roads precarious and dense
with firs holy beneath the florid specter of roseate afternoon,
purified with rainfall on the montane bladed rocks
holding together cliff face edges of highways.
I'm present with my black coffee humming while
folk plays on the radio and my sweater from the
consignment shop is still captured in spellbinding redolence
from the girl of my dreams. Nearby, a hidden path boasts a cliff commanding flowing pacific waters pronounced with gold
among mountains obscured in shadow.
Companions cross the valleys reciting sutras and tracing fingers through this blessed land, treasuring the trees, firesmoke ascending from beyond assembling woods thick and overgrown.
Doe and rabbit bounding from rocky terraces alert and surviving instinctively while riverside cabin homes hide a while yet from the long driveways and cozy mailboxes hand-painted or made of wind-bent tin cans.  
I'm flourishing slowly and with periodical decay in this garden growing while I grow and life is beauty and spasm devils as am I, this I know.

We're matches momentarily lit in the weary hands of stars
to guide them in the darkness.
My hair will gray from death we jest
and I will live before I rest.

A CHILD FOR AMARANTH

by

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

For Bill Coulter

Copyright 2025 Tod Howard Hawks

PREAMBLE:

A CHILD FOR AMARANTH is a love story of many dimensions and a mystery/thriller with a worldwide, mystical, double-magic denouement that results in certainty of a newborn and Peace on Earth.

I hope you enjoy A CHILD FOR AMARANTH.



Chapter 1

Amaranth Anderson (née Christensen) was sitting in her chair at the kitchen table because she could feel another poem welling up inside her. So she picked up her pen, turned to the next empty page in her notebook, and began to record.

WE HAVE MINED OUR MOUNTAINS

We have mined our mountains,
we have fished our seas,
we have felled our forests,
we have gathered our grains,
but we have not yet embraced
the infinite energy of our souls,
which is love.

Amaranth had been writing poems since her early 20’s. Actually, as she had told so many people, she, in fact, had never “written” a poem, except for the one time when she was an Upper Middler at Andover and her English teacher, Mr. Fitts, who was a renowned poet, literary critic, translator of Greek plays, and at that time, judge of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition, assigned everyone in the class to write a poem that would be due the next day. That night she had tried to write a poem. The poem she wrote was awful. The next day, she handed in her poem. When Mr. Fitts handed back the poems several days later to her and her 11 classmates, she looked at the piece of paper. At the top of it was the number 50, a failing grade for sure, circled many times with red ink. And off to the right side in the margin, Mr Fitts had written: “Be yourself. If this is yourself, be someone else.” Amaranth had never forgotten that traumatic moment, and she never wrote another poem, that is, until she entered therapy in her early twenties.

Amaranth had gone to law school after graduating from Columbia College, Columbia University where she and Ty, the man who was to become her husband, had met their first year there and seemed as if, almost instantly, had fallen in love. Amaranth had hated law school, and midway through her first semester, had started having problems sleeping, problems that got so bad that by the end of the semester, she couldn’t sleep at all. So she dropped out, an act for which her father, an attorney himself, would never forgive her. Nonetheless, she returned to Sedona, Arizona, where she had grown up, and because her sleeplessness had not gotten any better, but, in fact, had gotten much worse, entered psychotherapy.

Over time, Amaranth came to realize in therapy that her father had been vicariously living his dreams through her, and that she had unconsciously become, and remained, the "good little girl" to get her father’s approval. The problem was that she was slowly dying inside. Chronic insomnia was the first overt sign that she needed to begin to live her own life, and therapy was the catalyst to that end. She learned, in time, that she had her own dreams, her own needs, her own desires, her own wishes to be fulfilled. In short, she had her own life to live. And that realization was when she became a poet.

Her own feelings, which had been buried for years, began to emerge. And Amaranth found that when she married her feelings with her intellect, a poem would well up inside her, and, quite literally, pop out of her. Her job as a poet was not to “write” a poem, but to “record” it, Her job was to get quickly a pen and her notebook and write down what was welling up in her. If she didn’t, the poem would begin dissipating. An unrecorded poem would evaporate virtually instantly. It would enter the ether, lost forever. That’s why she told everyone she never “wrote” a poem, except for that one Andover poem, but always tried to write it down when she felt a poem welling up in her. Mr. Fitts’s acerbic comment at the top of that piece of paper on which that Andover poem had been written proved to be both wise and prophetic. Poetry, she told other people, was like making love: If you had to force yourself to do it, stop. And that is the reason she always told people she never “wrote” another Andover poem, but always tried to “record” the poem as it eventually passed through her conscious mind.

After recording the poem, she put her pen on the notebook, got out of her chair, put on her light jacket, walked to the kitchen door, opened it, walked down the few stairs, then walked down the slight hill toward the creek that flowed behind her house. It was soon to be spring and she wanted to see if the crocuses had begun to crack the earth that had been hardened by the cold winter. When Amaranth saw the burgeoning crocuses, she said hello to them. They were her friends, her confidants. So spring was on its way, she thought. Pleased by that realization, Amaranth then turned around, walked back up the hill, and entered the house.

Ty and Amaranth had gotten married in Sedona. Both had once visited Boulder, Colorado and vacationed in the mountains for two weeks. As a result, they wound up going to a small town near Boulder called Niwot one evening to have dinner at a fine restaurant there. The next day, they returned to Niwot to look around. They both really liked Niwot, cozy and unpretentious as it was. They made another visit there, and after much deliberation, decided to buy a house in Niwot and make it their home. Ty had secured a position at Fairview High School in Boulder as a teacher of American history, which had been his major at Columbia. Both were 32 years old.

Both Ty and Amaranth wanted to have a family, but though they had tried innumerable times to get Amaranth pregnant, they had not succeeded. Ty eventually got tested to see if he had a low ***** count, but the test proved he didn’t. Amaranth, too, had gone to several doctors to see if it were she who had a problem, but the doctors could find nothing wrong with her. This dilemma perplexed both of them. And, in truth, Amaranth had begun to experience some low-level anxiety and depression over the situation.


Chapter 2

Ty got home about 5:30. He walked up behind Amaranth, who was standing in front of the kitchen sink, and gave her a kiss on her nape and a big hug.

“I love you, “ said Ty.

“I love you so much,” said Amaranth.

“I’m going to get on the computer to see if Trump still occupies the Oval Office,” said Ty. He was no fan of Trump.

“Good luck,” said Amaranth. She knew how Ty felt and how outspoken he had always been. But that didn’t bother her. She was actually proud of Ty for having the courage to speak his mind in all situations.

Amaranth finished preparing dinner and brought the food to the dining room table. She had prepared one of her favorite vegetarian meals. Both were vegetarians.

“He’s still there,” Ty said sardonically.

It had been a most difficult year for Ty, having Trump every day lying and cheating. He remembered vividly watching on live, worldwide TV the Charlottesville riots, watching and listening to the neo-Nazis and the white supremacists screaming terrible chants at Jews and blacks, as well as hearing that some crazy racist had run over with his vehicle and killed a nonviolent female protester who favored love over hate. And then there was Trump’s memo authorizing the Border Control to rip children, even babies, from the arms of their immigrant mothers. These grotesque incidents sent Ty to bed for almost two days, he was so emotionally wrought. And Trump’s impulsive and unilateral decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement angered Ty, too. Ty thought Trump was a liar, a cheat, a ******, and a crook. And to top it all off, Ty thought he was just flat-out dumb.

“Ty, I need to tell you something,” Amaranth said. “I’ve been having bouts of anxiety and depression and I think I need to see a therapist.”

Ty was silent for more than a moment. Then he said, “If that’s what you feel you need to do, do it. I’m behind you all the way. I love you dearly.”

“A friend of mine recommended a therapist in Boulder. I think I will call his office tomorrow,” said Amaranth.

“Sounds good to me,” said Ty.

That night Ty and Amaranth made passionate love, then fell asleep peacefully.


Chapter 3

“Hello, this is Amaranth Anderson calling,” said Amaranth. “I’d like to make an appointment to see Dr. Rosenstein about the possibility of becoming a therapy patient of his,” said Amaranth. “April 12th at 10:00 a.m.? That would be great. Thank you for your help.”

The following Friday, Amaranth went to meet her therapist.

“Dr. Rosenstein, it is a pleasure to meet you,” Amaranth said.

“And it is a pleasure to meet you as well,” replied Dr. Rosenstein. “How can I be of help to you?”

Amaranth began telling Dr. Rosenstein about her situation. She found she was not nervous telling Dr. Rosenstein everything about her situation. The more she told Dr. Rosenstein, the more she relaxed. She spoke for a long time, virtually the entire fifty minutes, the usual length of a therapy session.

“We have to stop now,” said Dr. Rosenstein. “I am not going to prescribe any medication for you at this time. I don’t think you need it right now. If you begin to feel worse, tell me. Please keep me apprised of how you’re doing. If your anxiety and depression begin to worsen, I will prescribe for you the appropriate medications. I’ll see you next Thursday at 10 o’clock. Is that OK?”

“Yes, it is,” said Amaranth. She got out of her chair and turned toward the door. “Thank you, Dr. Rosenstein.”

“You are most welcome,” replied Dr. Rosenstein.

Amaranth had called her best friend, Julie, the night before, asking her if she would like to have lunch today. Julie had said yes, so Amaranth got into her car and drove to Parkway Diner. When Amaranth opened the door at the entrance to the Parkway Diner, she saw Julie sitting in a booth to the right. Amaranth, even though she was not conscious of it, was very excited about her session with Dr. Rosenstein.

“How are you, Am?” asked Amaranth as she slid into the booth. Amaranth’s friends always called her Am.

“I’m fine. How are you doing after seeing a psychiatrist for an hour?” asked Julie.

“Fifty minutes, Julie. That’s a psychiatric hour,” said Amaranth. “Actually, I felt most comfortable talking with Dr. Rosenstein. I told him everything. I feel so much better than I did last night.”

The two ordered their meals and began eating them as they continued to talk.

“So Julie, how are your three little kids?” asked Amaranth.

“They’re doing fine. They can’t wait until it gets warm, really warm. You know they’re already training for the Olympics. You know how much they
love to swim,” said Julie.

“How are they doing in school?” asked Amaranth.

“Well, Henry can’t get enough books to read. You know he’s in fifth grade. I take him to the public library every week. He just finished Tom Sawyer. Now he wants to read Huckleberry Finn. And Jennifer has been taking piano lessons now for two years, and she’s only in third grade. Tommy likes to play outdoors. He’s in first grade, just getting started.”

“That’s wonderful, Julie. You know how much Ty and I want kids, don’t you?”

Julie did know how terribly much Ty and Amaranth wanted to have kids, especially Am. Julie felt uncomfortable to talk to Am about having kids for fear of making Am feel even worse about her predicament.

“Women have kids nowadays when they’re in their late thirties, Am,” said Julie. “Hang in there.”

After they finished eating, Amaranth and Julie continued to talk about all sorts of things, like the best movies showing at the theater complex in Boulder, about the best shows on cable TV, about what awful shape the world was in. They were best friends, so they could talk about anything, and did.

“See you, I hope soon,” said Julie. “Don’t hesitate to call if ever you need to,” Julie added.

There’s a Chinese proverb that goes like this: “One can do without people, but one has need of a friend.”


Chapter 4

Ty had already gotten out of bed, showered, got dressed, ate something for breakfast, and headed for Fairview High School where he had been teaching American history for ten years. Amaranth still lay in bed half asleep.

That voice, that sound. What was that about?

Amaranth lifted her head off her pillow, then sat on the edge of the bed. Nothing like that had ever happened to her before. The voice. It didn’t scare her, but it seemed as though it was almost real. She got out of bed and went into the bathroom. She took off her nightgown and took a shower. What was that about? The voice in her sleep, what was it trying to say to me? she thought. She brushed her teeth, combed her hair, then came back into the bedroom. It wasn’t Ty, that voice. But it was, in its own way, real. One sentence. That was all it was.

Amaranth brewed some coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. When it was ready, she poured a cup and took a sip. The voice had said to her: “The world is not safe now for your child.” That was it, that was all of it. She took another sip of coffee. The voice was not threatening, but it was sincere, earnest.

Finally, she got up from the table, put on her light jacket, then opened the
kitchen door, went down the few steps, and walked toward the crocuses and the creek. It was, indeed, a beautiful day. She sat down on the grass next to the burgeoning crocuses. She told the crocuses what had happened. Sharing, even with crocuses, made her feel better. As the sun rose higher in the sky, it got warmer. She could feel the sun’s warmth through her jacket. What a beautiful morning, she thought.

“I will have to tell Dr. Rosenstein about this,” Amaranth said, speaking to herself. She was half inclined to go back into the house and call him up to see if she might be able to see him that afternoon, but, no, she would wait until next Thursday, she decided.

She started to think about the world and all of its problems. Then she found herself centering her thoughts on the catastrophic climate change that the world’s leading scientists were speaking out about, warning the world that it had ten-to-twelve years to change its course or face annihilation. The rapid rise of Earth’s temperature, the much faster-than-expected melting of the ice caps, the alarming rise of sea levels around the world, the poor polar bears. And Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, his stupid claim that all of this was not true, but fake news. What awful things to have to think about, she thought. But the whole world had to think about all these awful things, and correct them, otherwise Earth, and all the living creations on it, would die.

Amaranth had to stop thinking about all these awful things herself. It was too much for her, so she said good-bye to the crocuses and the creek, stood up, walked up the hill, and went inside her love-filled home.


Chapter 5

Ty had already gotten out of bed, showered, got dressed, ate something for breakfast, and headed for Fairview High School.

Amaranth could not stop thinking about the voice.

What had happened while she was asleep? Amaranth asked herself. That voice, that sound. What was that about?

Amaranth got dressed and made her way into the kitchen. She looked out the window above the kitchen sink. It was another beautiful day, the sun shining on everything. The sunshine reflected off the water in the creek. She made some coffee, sat down in her kitchen chair, and took a sip.

The voice had said to her: “The world is not safe now for your child.” That was it, that was all of it. She took another sip of coffee. The voice was not threatening, but it was sincere, earnest, she thought.

Finally, she got up from the table to go see her friends again. She put on her light jacket, then opened the kitchen door, went down the few steps, and walked toward the crocuses and the creek. She sat down on the grass next to the burgeoning crocuses and talked to them. As the sun rose higher in the sky, it got warmer. She could feel the sun’s warmth through her jacket. What a beautiful morning, she thought.


Chapter 6

Ty Anderson grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee. He was valedictorian of his high school graduating class and a National Merit Scholar. And he was charming and very handsome.

Ty chose to attend Columbia over Yale for two reasons, simply: the Core Curriculum and New York City.

Columbia College’s Core Curriculum was a rigorous two-year course of studies that included great literature, philosophy, art history, music appreciation, language, frontiers of science, global core studies, and writing. Each student of the College was required to take the “Core,” as it was affectionately referred to, regardless of her or his major. It was a start, a magnificent beginning, to a life of continual learning.

New York City was the veritable capital of the world. Living in and exploring New York City for four years made each student a citizen of the world for life, even if one decided to reside somewhere else, as Amaranth and Ty had decided to do.

Ty majored in American history. Public high schools across the nation were infamous because the vast majority of them did an execrable job of teaching that subject. Ty knew this. He himself had to augment his studies of that subject. He read, for example, Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, and would frequently share incisive information with his classmates (and usually with the teacher as well) about the full scope of how the United States grew on the backs of slaves, how both the North and the South were complicit in this evil enterprise called slavery, how cotton became King Cotton, how cotton would be sent to Lowell, Massachusetts, the site where the Industrial Revolution began in the United States, and when processed, would be shipped from New York City to England. Both the entrepreneurs of the North and the slave owners of the South became incredibly rich. He would mention that the Constitution legalized slavery through the inclusion of the 3/5ths and the Fugitive Slave clauses in it, that Thomas Jefferson, our country’s third president, had owned over 600 slaves, that eight of our presidents had been slave owners, that the 4,000,000 slaves at the beginning of the Civil War had no legal rights, that they were whipped, or worse, if caught learning how to read or write, that a black man and a black woman who might fall in love could not legally be married, that a slave owner could take a thirteen-year-old girl and **** her with impunity, then sell her to another slave owner, if he wished. Ty came to admire the abolitionists who fervently advocated against slavery. William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Beecher Stowe — all became Ty’s heroes.

Ty learned how his nascent country grew westward through the genocide of indigenous peoples that most of his classmates called Indians, that President Andrew Jackson had signed the Indian Removal Act that resulted in “The Trail of Tears,” whereby the U.S. Army forced the indigenous peoples of southeastern United States to walk all the way to what is now Oklahoma, that General Sheridan had said, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” Ty read about Wounded Knee, the last massacre of indigenous people in 1890 by the U.S. Calvary. Ty learned that virtually every treaty signed between indigenous nations and the United States government, over time, had been broken by the United States government.

In his senior year at Columbia College, he was selected by Eric Foner, regarded as the preeminent professor of American history in the world, as one of a small group of American history majors to take Foner’s senior seminar “The Civil War and Reconstruction.”

That seminar was the apex of Ty’s college experience.



Chapter 7

Amaranth sat beside the crocuses. It was May now and the crocuses were fully grown. Amaranth talked to the crocuses:

“I think a lot about Earth and all its problems: climate change; nuclear proliferation; poverty; hunger — lack of food and potable water; homelessness; racial and religious discrimination; war and its atrocities; lack of good and affordable health care; political and corporate corruption; wealth inequality; illiteracy and lack of education; air pollution; plastic in the oceans; species becoming extinct.” She paused.

“I need someone to talk to. I wish the whole world was filled with beautiful crocuses. There would be no room for all these problems.”

Amaranth had always been this way, even when she was a child.

She thought of Patty from her elementary school days. All her classmates would make fun of Patty, but Amaranth didn’t. Patty was different from the other kids in the way she looked and in the way she acted. Every day at school, it seemed, Patty would begin to scratch her calves and not stop, and because she always wore long, white socks to school, blood would begin to seep through them, staining them red. The other kids would laugh at her. Amaranth wouldn’t.

In eighth grade of junior high, Amaranth had been elected president of student council, and in the winter, Roosevelt Junior High would put on the Snow Ball. The Snow Ball was held on the basketball court. All the boys stood together in one corner, all the girls were in another corner, and in the third corner stood Patty, alone, ostracized.

The music had not yet begun and Amaranth was appalled by seeing Patty standing alone in her own corner, so when the music did start to play, Amaranth, without thinking about it, began to walk away from her group diagonally across the basketball court toward Patty. Everyone was looking at Amaranth. When Amaranth reached Patty, she asked her if she would like to dance. Patty said she would, so Amaranth and Patty walked to the center of the basketball court and began to dance all by themselves. When the first song ended, Amaranth asked Patty if he would like to dance again, and Patty again said yes, so the two of them danced again while the rest of the class looked on. Amaranth was saying to her classmates, not with words but with dance and music, “You do not treat any human being the way you have always treated Patty!”

Patty was a friend of Amaranth’s for years thereafter.



Chapter 8

Ty, because he never liked Trump, would never juxtapose the title “President” with the name “Trump.”

“Trump is the most despicable human being I have ever encountered. He is a racist, a bigot, a liar, a cheat, a misogynist, a ******. And he is dumb as hell.”

Amaranth already knew how Ty felt about Trump, but would let him vent anyway. She thought it cathartic, and she held Trump in essentially the same esteem as Ty did, though she didn’t have a need to vocalize her feelings.

“You are a stupendous cook, Am, but I’ve told you that a million times,” said Ty, but Amaranth would not have minded if he said the same thing a million more times.

The soup they had just finished was Chickpea Noodle Soup. The salad had been strawberry, basil, and goat cheese with balsamic drizzle, and the entrée they were eating now was Halloumi tacos with pineapple salsa & aji verde.

Amaranth loved this time of day. She loved the ambiance of a real candle lit in the center of the dining room table that was always covered with a clean, white linen tablecloth.

“I remember Trump denigrating on worldwide TV Rosie O’Donnell during the first Republican debate. I knew instantly that whoever this guy was, he should have been immediately disqualified from holding any political office, at any level, anywhere in the United States. Then, again on worldwide TV, Trump mocked a disabled New York Times reporter. Ever since, whenever Trump appears on TV, I quickly press the mute button on the remote control and turn my face away from the TV screen. I cannot bear to look at, or hear the voice of this extremely sick human being.”

“What’s for dessert tonight, Am?” said Ty.

“Carrot cake,” said Amaranth.

“Oh, I love your carrot cake!” said Ty.



Chapter 9

“Hello, Dr. Rosenstein,” said Amaranth.

“Hello, Amaranth. How are things?

“Well, Dr. Rosenstein, things are basically OK. My anxiety and depression are not as bad as they were. I think seeing and talking with you made me feel more relaxed and more hopeful.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“But I want to tell you what has just happened to me,” said Amaranth.

“Tell me,” said Dr. Rosenstein.

“Well, several nights ago while I was asleep, I heard — I hope you don’t think I’m crazy — I heard a voice in my head. It was not a scary voice. In fact, as I think back on it, it was a kind voice, almost the voice of wisdom. The voice said one sentence to me: “The world is not safe now for your child.’ That was the sentence, nothing more. And I haven’t heard that voice again. What do you think?”

Dr. Rosenstein paused for a few moments before he responded.

“This is intriguing, Amaranth. You say the voice did not scare you. The voice spoke to you about your ‘child,’ right?, a child you hope to have. And you said the voice was kind and wise.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“To be honest, I don’t know what to make of it, except that the voice did not frighten you; on the contrary, it seems to have addressed you personally, almost empathically. What the voice meant when it warned you that the world is not safe now, well, that’s true. In fact, that’s true for everyone on Earth, don’t you think?”

“Yes I do, Dr. Rosenstein.”

Amaranth and Dr. Rosenstein continued their session, talking about her writing poetry, her friendship with Julie, and her deep love for Ty, among other things.

When it came time to leave Dr. Rosenstein’s office, she realized that, once again, she felt slightly better than she had before seeing him.

Amaranth smiled as she took the elevator to the main floor.


Chapter 10

“Let’s go to Steamboat Springs this weekend, Am,” ******* Ty. “That’s our favorite getaway place in the mountains.”

“That’s a great idea! We’ve been to Aspen — too glitzy, to Vail — too ordinary, to Telluride — too far. Steamboat Springs has been our favorite for quite some time. We can stay in that old hotel downtown, The Bristol, away from the stifling commercial areas. We can leave Friday afternoon, go biking Saturday morning, go tubing on the Yampa in the afternoon, then sit in the hot springs as long as we want. We can eat at Rootz. They have vegetarian dishes. Let me check the computer to see what’s going on Saturday evening.”

“Oh Ty, the Strings Music Festival is on Saturday evening. They’ll be playing Wagner, Grieg, and Beethoven. That sounds wonderful! We can eat breakfast Sunday at the Creekside Cafe and take our time coming home. It’s mid-June, a perfect time to spend some time in Steamboat!”

Amaranth scurried over to Ty to give him a big hug.

Amaranth and Ty, indeed, had a wonderful time in Steamboat Springs. They arrived there about 8:30 Friday evening, decided to eat breakfast at the Creekside Cafe Saturday morning, as well as on Sunday. Then they biked the many trails in and around Steamboat Springs, went tubing on the Yampa River in the afternoon, ate dinner at the Rootz, then enjoyed beautiful music at the Strings Music Festival.

They walked back to the Bristol Hotel, went upstairs to their room, and barely could contain themselves, ripping each other’s clothes off to make love. It had been a beautiful day in the Rocky Mountains.

Both Amaranth and Ty had fallen asleep soon after making love. But while Amaranth slept, that voice came to her again. This time it said: “Peace on Earth.” Again she was not frightened by it; rather, she felt a certain calmness as she remembered hearing it. The voice had a caring tone to it, a beneficent tone to it. Just that one spiritually beautiful phrase, “Peace on Earth,” but a notion mentioned only a few weeks during the Christmas holidays, then gone, she thought, for eleven months.

Amaranth didn’t tell Ty about the voice and the phrase it had spoken as they ate breakfast again at the Creekside Cafe. She thought it best to tell only Dr. Rosenstein if and until she and he could figure out its meaning.



Chapter 11

Amaranth sat in her chair at her table in the kitchen. The summer sun was shining brightly through the kitchen windows.

She picked up her pen and began to write in her notebook.


THE WORDS GIVE ME THEIR POETRY

The words give me their
poetry; their melodies play
in my heart; their musicality
rings in my ear. I reach for
nothing; they come to me
of their own volition,
making gifts of their inherent
grace. The place they dwell is
sacred; their provenance sacro-
sanct. I am but the blessed
receiver of their beauty.


Amaranth put her pen down and took a sip of coffee. She wanted to be a mother so much, but what could she do? She had gone to doctors who had checked her out, but they could not find anything wrong. She took another sip of coffee.

Amaranth got up from the table and went outside to say hello to the crocuses, which, by now, were full grown.

“You are beautiful today, but you are always beautiful."

“I remember when I was a little girl, we had a row of lilac bushes right out our front door, and for about two weeks in spring, they all would blossom and the fragrance in our front yard was absolutely heavenly.

Then, in two weeks, the perfume was gone.

“Perfume is a kind of beauty, but the beauty of all things comes to an end. The beauty of life is seemingly transient, but death can leave a reservoir of beautiful memories, and we can treasure them for the rest of our lives.

“Thank you for sharing your beauty with me,” Amaranth said to the crocuses.



Chapter 12

Ty was reading, again, Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck, by far, was Ty’s favorite author. He had read all of Steinbeck’s books. His overwhelming conclusion was that Steinbeck had had to have “felt” all his novels before he started writing them. Of course, as an American history major, Ty knew about the Great Depression thoroughly. The Dust Bowl, the soup lines, the staggering poverty, the pervasive unemployment, the New Deal, all the alphabet government agencies, Woody Guthrie.

Ty wondered how much better life was now in 2019 than it had been in the 1930s. It’s true that the Supreme Court had overturned the 1890 decision that affirmed the concept of “separate but equal” in Plessy v. Ferguson with the landmark case in 1954 of Brown v. Board of Education, but look where we are now, thought Ty. Trump, Ty felt, personified racism in America. He had given tacit permission to millions of Americans to evince again their racist proclivities. Ty never could forget what he had seen on worldwide TV that night in Charlottesville. Moreover, the next morning **** Trump told the world that there were “good people” on both sides the night before.



Chapter 13

“Hello, Dr. Rosenstein,” said Amaranth.

“Hello, Amaranth. How are you doing today?”

“I’m basically OK, but I have something I need to tell you about.”

They both sat down, and Amaranth began to speak.

“Well, Dr. Rosenstein, I had the voice again, but it had a different message. The voice said, “Peace on Earth.” That’s all the voice said.

“Well, Amaranth, at least the voice isn’t saying anything threatening to you. ‘Peace on Earth’ is about as unthreatening as it gets.”

“That’s true, but I wish I knew what was going on. I think it really helps me to see you and tell you what’s going on in my mind, even if the voice isn’t threatening. It keeps me from getting overwhelmed.”

“If it’s helpful for you to see me and share with me what’s going on, then I’m glad. I’m as perplexed as you are, but I don’t feel what’s going on with you and this voice you hear occasionally while you’re sleeping is anything to be terribly concerned about. Let’s just keep our composure, if we can, and see what happens.”

Amaranth and Dr. Rosenstein continued talking the rest of the session about the trip to Steamboat Springs and other things going on in her life. She even read him the poems she had recently written.

EVENING

It will get dark soon.
The white, yellow, and pink
houses will turn grey,
then black. The cacophony
of car horns will turn into
the chorus of locusts.
Summer’s night will lay
a sheet of tranquility over
a city harassed by exigent
matters that matter not.
Soporific silhouettes will
soften the cityscape,
allowing us to escape
the frazzle of the hot day,
exchanging the frenetic
for the peaceful, the welter
for a sense of well-being.
The susurrus of the evening
breeze blows the exhaust
of our polluted lives into
a distant day. Children play
in yards back and front and
laughter wafts through
neighborhoods like the sweet
smell of barbecue, not the
fetid odor of finance and
foreclosures. There is a
sense of closure to this day.
As the sun sets, our eyelids
close, and we pray for the
soft rain of forgiveness.


TELL ME TRULY WHO YOU ARE

Tell me truly who you are,
not from afar, but to my ear.
Do not fear: I shall not castigate,
excoriate. Dissemble not: No
equivocation, prevarication.
Tell me truly what’s in your heart.
Is terror there, or guilt? Rage ablaze
from needs unmet? Do unhealed hurts
leave you reeling in a maelstrom of
doubt? Open up your heart
and let your agonies fly out.
In gentle ways let us discuss
with worth of self. Let light
penetrate hate, mollify madness,
assuage pain. Let your forthcoming,
my love for your realness,
heal us both.


THERE ARE REASONS WHY

There are reasons why
some men are shy,
and women too,
when wearing silk,
lie on their beds
alone and cry.
No mother’s milk
to satisfy
the cruel thirst
for love and touch.
The rule first
is to beware,
when wearing silk,
of men who stare
or fingers touch;
this much we know.


WE EXPORT WHAT IS OF NO IMPORT

Arms reach out to us from
other continents and our own.
Would we need not be so
preoccupied by an arms race
that we might embrace these
children of different races with
love? I see faces laced with tears,
fraught with fears; I cannot
countenance the human hate
that abets, not abates, this terror.
Is it simply human error that we
are more concerned with pork
belly futures than the future
of children with inflated bellies in
distant and not-so-distant places?
Or do we mean to be mean? It
disgraces me that this misery
flourishes. We nourish our inflated
sense of self-importance; and we
export what is of no import.


“Thanks for sharing with me your poignant and powerful poems. I think your writing is a nice counterbalance to help you deal, even if unconsciously, with these cryptic messages you are receiving occasionally.”

“I’ll see you next Thursday. And thanks again for your help,” said Amaranth as she left the room.



Chapter 14

Ty wrote often on his Facebook page. He was terribly smart, articulate, and unabashed — outspoken, to the max, if you will. This evening, after dinner, he wrote:

“Is not the Mueller Report today’s equivalent of the Pentagon Papers stolen by Daniel Ellsberg and given first to The New York Times and then a few days later to The Washington Post, which decided to publish them.

“Both Ellsberg and Katharine Graham, who was publisher of the Washington Post at that time, are to me heroes for doing the right thing, knowing simultaneously that they both could have gone to prison for what they had done, but in the end, didn’t have to do.

“The Pentagon Papers, like the Mueller Report, divulged to the American people, and to the rest of the world, all the deceptions and lies told to them by their very own government.

“But what has happened to Mueller?

“Why have Mueller and **** Trump and all of his myrmidons not yet testified, in open session, before one or more of the powerful committees in the House on worldwide TV?

“Worldwide TV coverage would make all the difference in the world, as it had done during the Select Senate Committee investigation of Nixon’s Watergate scandal, in terms of how Americans would react, as they not only could hear, but also could see, the full, sordid story of all the illicit deeds perpetrated by this immoral, incompetent, and criminal human being who’s still in the Oval Office.

“And why hasn’t the Mueller Report, which is 448 pages long, been disseminated to the American people in its unredacted, complete form, along with all the underlying evidence?

“This is the United States of America, folks. A democracy, right?

“But I forgot. Our democracy is being taken for a long, long ride by Trump in the diametrically wrong direction, toward totalitarianism — fascism, if you like — not the democracy which we love.”



Chapter 15

Amaranth had grown up in Sedona, Arizona, one of the most beautiful spots on Earth. During her 8th-grade year, she had applied to Phillips Academy, otherwise known as Andover.

Andover was the oldest, and often considered the best, boarding school in America, having been founded in 1778, two years into our nation’s existence. George Washington had sent his nephew to Phillips Academy. Paul Revere designed and made the school’s seal. For a long time, Andover has provided the best secondary school education in the nation. It became, in time, America’s equivalent of Great Britain’s Eton College.

It is interesting to note that Humphrey Bogart had been a student at Andover, but had been kicked out, an act that did not seem to affect adversely his rise to stardom in Hollywood. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., who was a physician, poet, and polymath in the mid-nineteenth century had attended Phillips Academy and its library, where Amaranth had spent so much of her time studying, is named after him. George H. W. Bush and his son, George W. Bush, had graduated from Andover, then later, both were elected president of the United States. JFK’s son, John, who many had thought would eventually become president of the United States, but who tragically died so early in his life in an airplane accident, had attended Andover as well. In 2019, Andover, a high school, albeit a sui generis high school, had an endowment of 1.4 billion dollars.

Amaranth was editor of the Phillipian, the student newspaper, her senior year. Each school year was divided into trimesters, and each trimester each student was required to play a sport at the level of her/his prowess in that sport. There were 20 different sports played at Andover. Amaranth played soccer in the fall, swam in the winter, and played tennis in the spring.

In 2019, Andover enrolled 1,154 students from 44 states and 49 countries. Its admit rate was 13%. Its tuition was $53,900. Andover had a need-blind admissions policy, which meant that each applicant was assessed on her/his personal merits, not on her/his family’s wealth. Moreover, Andover has a need-based financial aid policy, which meant the school provided 100% of demonstrated financial aid to all of its students. 47% of Andover students received financial aid.

Andover offered 300 courses and 150 electives. The average number of students in any given class was 13. Andover offered study in eight foreign languages.

In each of her/his four years, an Andover student would take five or six courses. In the Junior year (9th grade), a student would take English, history, and would be placed, at the level shown by her/his performance on ability tests, courses in math, science (biology, chemistry, or physics), and a foreign language. In the Lower year (10th grade), a student would take English, history, math, another science course, introductory music, physical education, philosophy/religious studies, and language. In his Upper year (11th grade), a student would take English, history, math, another science course or an elective (e.g. theater/dance), and language. In the Senior year (12th grade), a student must take any remaining courses needed to meet diploma requirements.

Among the many courses Amaranth took at Andover, among the many subjects she studied, English was by far her favorite. Every student had to take English all four years.

Amaranth read and studied the following poets and their poems in her Junior year: Death of a Naturalist, in Poems: 1965–1975 by Heaney; Selected Poems by Brooks; From the Box Marked Some Are Missing by Pratt; Selected Poems by Stafford; Domestic Work by Trethewey; Songs of Innocence and of Experience by Blake; The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge; New and Selected Poems by Collins; The Yellow House on the Corner by Dove; Gilgamesh (translation) by Ferry; New and Selected Poems by Harjo; New and Selected Poems by Hass; The Iliad by Homer; The Odyssey by Homer; You and Yours by Nye; Twelve Moons by Oliver; and The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry.

Amaranth read and studied the following plays her Junior year: “Master Harold”…and the Boys by Fugard; A Raisin in the Sun by Hansberry; Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare; Our Town by Wilder; Julius Caesar by Shakespeare; Antigone by Sophocles; The Piano Lesson by Wilson; Much Ado About Nothing, Richard III, and The Comedy of Errors by Shakespeare.

Amaranth read and studied the following non-fiction books her Junior year: Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Boo; Black Ice by Cary; A Small Place by Kincaid; Citizen 16330 by Okubo; Night by Wiesel; and Black Boy by Wright.

Amaranth read and studied the following short stories her Junior year: Women Hollering Creek and Other Stories by Cisneros; The Summer Book by Jansson; and Leaving Home by Rochman and McCampbell.

Amaranth read and studied the following novels her Junior year: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Alexie; The Bookshop by Fitzgerald; A Lesson Before Dying by Gaines; The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Haddon; A Separate Peace by Knowles; Long Division by Loymon; They Came Like Swallows by Maxwell; Horseman, Pass By by McMurtry; In Revere, in Those Days by Merullo; The Hate U Give by Thomas; and American Born Chinese by Yang; This Boy’s Life by Wolff; What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Arimah; Collected Stories by O’Connor; Who’s Irish? by Jen; The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner by Sillitoe; I Am One of You Forever by Chappell; Silas Marner by Eliot; The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway; Annie John by Kincaid; The Bean Trees by Kingsolver; Rumors of Peace by Leffland; When the Emperor Was Divine by Otsuka; The Catcher in the Rye by Salinger; Persepolis by Satrapi; The Fall of Rome by Southgate; The Once and Future King by White; Salvage the Bones by Ward; Eathan Frome by Wharton; Jane Eyre by C. Brontë; A Month in the Country by Carr; A Lost Lady by Cather; Oliver Twist by Dickens; My Ántonia by Cather; The Go-Between by Hartley; A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway; Mister Pip by Jones; Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Márquez; So Long, See You Tomorrow by Maxwell; The Member of the Wedding by McCullers; Everything I Never Told You by Ng; Girl at War by Novič; My Name Is Asher Lev by Potok; All Quiet on the Western Front by Remarque; Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Rushdie; One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Solzhenitsyn; Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Stevenson; Montana 1948 by Watson; and Kitchen by Yoshimoto.

Amaranth read and studied the following poets and their poems in her Lower year: Selected Poems by Clampitt; An Ordinary Woman by Clifton; On These I Stand by Cullen; Motherlove by Dove; Selected and New Poems by Dunn; A Boy’s Will and North of Boston by Frost; A Shropshire Lad by Housman; New and Selected Poems by Justice; The Women of Plums by Kendrick; Rose by Lee; American Primitive by Oliver; The Best of It by Ryan; New and Selected Poems by Salter; New and Selected Poems by Smith; Selected Poems by Millay; Selected Poems by D. Thomas; Selected Poems by E. Thomas; Selected Poems by Williams; Call Me Ishmael Tonight: A Book of Ghazals by Ali; Selected Poems by Arnold; Selected Poems Beowulf by Auden; “My Last Duchess” and Other Poems by R. Browning; Thomas and Beulah Gluck, The Wild Iris by Dove; New and Selected Poems by Grennan; Donkey Gospel or What Narcissism Means to Me by Hoagland; Poems by Kelly; Ariel by Plath: In Memoriam or Selected Poems by Tennyson; Headwaters by Voigt; Collected Poems by Wilbur; Above the River by Wright; Outside History by Boland; Selected Poems by Hayden; What the Living Do by Howe; Selected Poems by Langston Hughes; Hoops or Holding Company by Jackson; Magic City by Komunyakaa; New and Selected Poems by Kumin; Hinge and Sign by McHugh; Selected Poems by O’Hara; Collected Poems by Roethke; Sonnets by Shakespeare; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translated by W. S. Merwin; and Prelude by Wordsworth.

Amaranth read and studied the following plays her Lower year: American Buffalo by Mamet; The Crucible by Miller; A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare; The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare; Joe Turner’s Come and Gone by Wilson; Richard II by Shakespeare; The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare; Othello by Shakespeare; The Glass Menagerie by Williams; Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom by Wilson; Six Degrees of Separation by Guare; Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2 by Shakespeare; and Macbeth by Shakespeare.

Amaranth read and studied the following non-fiction books her Lower year: Into the Wild by Krakauer; Dust Tracks on a Road by Hurston; and Essays by White.

Amaranth read and studied the following short stories her Lower year: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Alexie;  Drown by Díaz; The Thing Around Your Neck by Adichie; The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Kafka; Winesburg, Ohio by Anderson; The Things They Carried by O’Brien; and How To Breathe Underwater by Orringer; and The Secret Sharer by Conrad.

Amaranth read and studied the following novels her Lower year: Go Tell It on the Mountain by Baldwin; The Sweet Hereafter by Banks; Great Expectations by Dickens; All the Light We Cannot See by Doerr; The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Durrow; Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Hardy; Animal Dreams by Kingsolver; Black Swan Green by Mitchell; The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck; Cat’s Cradle by Vonnegut; The Picture of Dorian Gray by Wilde; My Antonia by Cather; The Awakening by Chopin; Silas Marner by Eliot; Grendel by Gardner; Exit West by Hamid; For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway; The Bluest Eye by Morrison; We the Animals by Torres; Sense and Sensibility by Austen; Ragtime by Doctorow; The Round House by Erdrich; Herland by Gilman; The Mayor of Casterbridge by Hardy; The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne; Their Eyes Were Watching God by Hurston; As I Lay Dying by Faulkner; Loving Day by Johnson; One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Kesey; The Woman Warrior by Kingston; The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by McCullers; Frankenstein by M. Shelley; and Maus by Spiegelman.

Amaranth read and studied the following poets and their poems in her Upper year: Final Harvest by Dickinson; The Hollow Men by Eliot; The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by Eliot; Selected Poems by Jeffers; The Complete Poems by D. H. Lawrence; For the Union Dead/Life Studies by Lowell; The Boys at Twilight by Maxwell; Time’s Fool by Maxwell; Collected Poems by Merrill; Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Neruda; Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991–95 by Rich; Selected Early Poems by Simic; Selected Late and New Poems by Simic; Native Guard by Trethewey; Selected Poems by Whitman; The Singing by C. K. Williams; The Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader by Baraka; Collected Poems by Bishop; Brutal Imagination by Eady; The Four Quartets by Eliot; The Art of the Lathe by Fairchild; Selected Poems by Herbert; Selected Poems by Hopkins; Odes by Keats; New and Selected Poems by Kinnell; Whitsun Weddings by Larkin; Collected Poems by Larkin; What Work Is by Levine; Flower & Hand by Merwin; The Shadow of Sirius by Merwin; Paradise Lost by Milton; Selected Poems by Moore; Collected Poems by Paz; Diving into the Wreck by Rich; Kyrie by Voigt; Divine Comedy by Dante; Selected Poems by Donne; Selected Poems by Fenton; The Angel of History by Forche; The Country Between Us by Forche; Collected Poems by Nemerov; Selected Poems by Phillips; Selected Poems by Pound; Blood Dazzler by Smith; The Gary Snyder Reader by Synder; Collected Poems by Stevens; and Selected Poems by Strand.

Amaranth read and studied the following plays her Upper year: Lysistrata by Aristophanes; Glengarry Glen Ross by Mamet; Equus by Shaffer; A Doll’s House by Ibsen; Twelfth Night by Shakespeare; As You Like It by Shakespeare; Seven Guitars by Wilson; A Man for All Seasons by Bolt; Death of a Salesman by Miller; Long Day’s Journey into Night by O’Neill; Henry V by Shakespeare; A Streetcar Named Desire by Williams; Fences by Wilson; Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Albee; Translations by Friel; Measure for Measure by Shakespeare; and The Tempest by Shakespeare.

Amaranth read and studied these non-fiction works her Upper year: Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Didion; Selected Essays by Emerson; A Long Way Gone by Beah; A Collection of Essays by Orwell; John McPhee Reader by McPhee; The Paradise of Bombs by Sanders; Selected Essays by Lawrence; Medusa and the Snail by Thomas; and Walden by Thoreau.

Amaranth read and studied the following short stories her Upper year: The Collected Stories by Cheever; In Our Time by Hemingway; The Nick Adams Stories by Hemingway; Interpreter of Maladies by Lahiri; In the Bedroom by Dubus; Selected Short Stories by Hawthorne; Dubliners by Joyce; Islands by McLeod; In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Mueenuddin; After the Quake by Murakami; and St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Russell.

Amaranth read and studied the following novels her Upper year: The Sense of an Ending by Barnes; Wuthering Heights by E. Bronte; Intruder in the Dust by Faulkner; The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald; All the Pretty Horses by McCarthy; Wise Blood by O’Connor; No One Is Coming to Save Us by Watts; Mrs Dalloway by Woolf; Things Fall Apart by Achebe; Pride and Prejudice by Austen; Little Bee by Cleave; Heart of Darkness by Conrad; Middlemarch by Eliot; The Unvanquished by Faulkner; Catch-22 by Heller; The Turn of the ***** by James; Benito Cereno by Melville; Song of Solomon by Morrison; The Wheel of Love by Oates; Anna Karenina by Tolstoy; Rabbit, Run by Updike; All the King’s Men by Warren; Native Son by Wright; Go Down, Moses by Faulkner; The Return of the Native by Hardy; The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway; Paradise by Morrison; Billy Budd, Sailor by Melville; The God of Small Things by Roy; Ceremony by Silko; and The Age of Innocence by Wharton.

Amaranth read and studied the following poets and their poems her Senior year: The Waste Land by Eliot; Omeros by Walcott; and Selected Poems by Yeats.

Amaranth read and studied the following plays in her Senior year:

Humble Boy by Jones; Hamlet by Shakespeare; King Lear by Shakespeare; and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Stoppard.

Amaranth read and studied the following non-fiction works her Senior year: Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Anzaldua; Book of Meditations (all volumes); Between the World and Me by Coates; Where I Was From by Didion; Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Douglass; Meditations from a Movable Chair by Dubus; and In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens by Walker.

Amaranth read and studied the following short stories her Senior year: Collected Fictions by Borges; and A Good Man Is Hard to Find by O’Connor.

Amaranth read and studied the following novels her Senior year: On the Road by Kerouac; Disgrace by Coetzee; Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky; Invisible Man by Ellison; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Joyce; Sula by Morrison; Austerlitz by Sebald; and To the Lighthouse by Woolf.

Andover had an arts museum on campus, the Addison Gallery of Arts. This art museum had one of the most important collections of American art. The museum contained works by John Singleton Copely, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, Maurice Prendergast, John Singer Sargent, John Henry Twachtman, James McNeill Whistler, Alexander Calder, Stuart Davis, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Hans Hofmann, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jackson *******, Charles Sheeler, John Sloan, Frank Stella (a graduate of Andover), Mark Bradford, and Kara Walker. Addison Gallery had 8,700 photographs by such luminaries as Lewis Baltz, Walker Evans (another Andover graduate), Robert Frank, and Eadweard Muybridge. The Addison Gallery had more than 20,000 works in all media — painting, sculpture, photography, drawings, prints, and decorative arts — from the 18th century to the present.

Also on the Andover campus was the Peabody Institute of Archaeology founded in 1901 by Robert S. Peabody, an Andover graduate, Class of 1857. It contained more than 600,000 artifacts, photographs, and documents. Peabody founded the eponymous institution “to introduce the students of Phillips Academy to the world of archaeology, to promote archaeological research, and to provide a place for students to gather.”

Amaranth received a world-class education at Andover, then matriculated to Columbia College, Columbia University where she received another.



Chapter 16

Amaranth sat down beside the beautiful crocuses.

“When I was a little girl, I loved to hike in and around Sedona. I loved walking among the red rocks, through the canyons, along the rivers and streams. One of my favorite hikes was Doe Mountain Trail.

The trail was a slow and gradual ascent up to the top of a mesa where you could see Mescal Mountain, Courthouse Butte, Fay Canyon, and Bear Mountain. Some days I would sit atop the mesa for several hours taking in all the beauty around me. I would see deer and rabbits. In time, I would feel I was a part of the red rocks and streams. I even felt I could talk to the deer and rabbits, if only they would stay with me for a while, which, of course, they didn’t. I had a backpack, and most often would bring a sandwich to eat, some green grapes, and always some water. I was alone often on top of the mesa, but at the same time, I was part of everything I saw and heard, so I never felt lonely. Often I would bring a book to read. I remember reading ‘Charlotte’s Web’ by E. B. White and ‘The Tale of Peter Rabbit’ by Beatrix Potter.”

Amaranth turned around a bit to look at the creek.

“This creek reminds me of the creeks and streams around Sedona. Sometimes I would take off my shoes and step into the creek. The water was ice-cold, of course, but I could feel the rushing water powering its way downstream. I wondered how the fish could keep from hitting the rocks in the creek. I felt, too, that the creek was alive, was having a wonderful time coursing through the red rocks. The creek I had my feet in was alive too.”

Amaranth turned back around toward the crocuses and sat quietly for a long time. She was thinking of her parents and how much they had loved each other. She had been, she thought, the recipient of their love, and, of course, she was. Now 32, Amaranth realized now that that love was still in her, and would always be. That love she had received as a child, that love was the source of all her sensibilities and intuition. It was also the source of her poetry and her deep caring of others and all things living, of Earth itself and all the living creations on it. No wonder she was so happy most of the time, and Ty — he was just a precious piece of her world of love. Bless him, she thought.

She stood up then and spoke to the crocuses.

“You enjoy your day, too,” she said and walked up the hill and went into her home.



Chapter 17

Ty was also a writer, but not of poetry. He wrote aphorisms. So when Amaranth saw sheets of paper with aphorisms on them lying on the computer desk, she knew they were his, so she picked them up, sat down on the blue sofa and read them.

We are more concerned with goods than goodness.

May we be a servant to all others and masters of ourselves.

If a man doesn’t keep his word, he soon finds out he has a
limited vocabulary.

Casinos abet gambling.

The mountain is deeper than it is high.

In the finite, we are relative. In infinity, we are relatives.

Repentagon.

If you are going to err, err on the side of generosity.

I knew a narrow-minded woman who did clerical work. She
stereotyped.

Evil” is the word “live’ twisted.

I open my heart so I may enter yours….

The poem is the sound, publication the echo. The sound is more important than the echo.

Are you shocked to find out that I am human and therefore imperfect, or are you embarrassed to realize you are the same…?

One cannot impose what’s right. One can only evoke it.

The Second Coming will be the coming to the realization
that each of us is sacred, that all things are divine.

The only thing our country really cycles well is pain.

Take the high road. There’s less traffic up there.

It is easier to find a publisher than to find your heart.

To save Earth, you have to planet.

Joy is hard for most people to enjoy.

“Intrinsic worth” is redundant. “Extrinsic worth” is oxymoronic.

Beliefs expressed anonymously are coward’s clothes.

I hate smoke because it will **** you. I hate smoke and mirrors because they will **** you, too.

“I’ve been around the writer’s block a few times,” the author remarked.

Out on a limbo…

Bigotry is one of the worst forms of mental illness.

We used just to waste human lives. Now we turn lives into human waste.

POPE FOR PRESIDENT: feed the poor, wash their feet, shelter them.

Labels are for ketchup bottles.

In our nation’s capital, we have more probes than probity.

An avalanche, a mountain’s revanche.

All people live downstream.

Gogh Van Lines

The John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe School of National, International and Personal Affairs

Edgar Allan Poet

The new global politician: 1) I have a new agenda — humanity. 2) I have a new platform — Earth.

Map of the world: caption: “Love it or leave it.”

Adobe abode

Gold Rush Hour

NRA or NEA?

Danger has anger in it, and tragedy rage.

The siren has become our national anthem.

Do not confuse your pain with your worth.

One man’s cult is another man’s culture.

Truce<>traduce

Ire<>irenic

Cosmos or cosmetics?

Anonymity vitiates worth.

There is still one more mega-merger to occur. It will be called “Humanity.”

First, do no harm.
Second, do no harm.
Third, do no harm.
Fourth,….

There is a support group. It is called “Humanity.”

Zen-zenith

Political unrest=societal insomnia

If we could change harm into harmony….

Perception or projection?

L ots
O f
V ital
E nergy

V oices
O f
T he
E arth

Statute of Lamentations

Pills are our pillows.

The problem with the USA, Mexicans say, is that it has a
borderline personality.

Fortune 500<>Misfortune 7,500,000,000

Several years before Rodney Dangerfield died, he was in the hospital. He got a card. The card said: “Get well sooner or later.”

People want what they want.

Might might, but will will.

Be all you can be: Be yourself.

All human beings are poets. Their poetry is whatever they’re doing when being true to themselves.

I was charged with distributing the peace.

We reserve the right to be of service to anyone.

An Archie Bunker mentality….

If you were truly my superior, you would sit beneath me.

All works are autobiographical.

Knowledge sees that all are different. Wisdom sees that all
are one.

Every time you are true to yourself, you have written a poem.

Taking a bathos….

If soon we don’t get it, it will get us.

Always be willing to criticize yourself first, and first to forgive yourself.

If a man speaks the truth, hear him.

MBAs are a three-piece pursuit.

Nothing is never lost in the giving.

The three most romantic places on Earth are above you, beside you, and beneath you.




Chapter 18

“Julie, it’s so good to see you again. How have you been and how is Ed doing at Google?” asked Amaranth.

“Oh, Am! It’s so good to see you again. Ed is doing fine. He just got a raise.”

Ed was Julie’s husband, a veritable computer guru. He had been at Google a little over a year. Amaranth and Julie were eating lunch at Thrive, one of the best vegetarian restaurants in Boulder.

“How are Timmy and Mary and Kristin doing?” asked Amaranth.

Julie and Ed had three children, Timmy, who was six, and Mary, who was three. Kristin was only 11 months old.

“They’re all doing well. Timmy and Mary are in a summer camp and having lots of fun and making new friends,” replied Julie.

Amaranth couldn’t help it. Julie was her dear friend, had been for several years. Yet hearing about her children made her feel both happy for Julie and more than a bit sad for herself, even though she felt guilty for feeling that way.

“I’m going to have the Inner Flame salad,” said Julie. That salad consisted of mixed greens, avocados, tomatoes, green and red onions, cucumber slices, bell peppers, cilantro, sunflower seeds, sprouted garbanzo beans, and chipotle lime dressing.

“I’m going to have a salad also,” said Amaranth. “I’m going to get the Pad Thai salad.” That salad consisted of spiralized zucchini, marinated broccoli and mushrooms, carrots, red bell peppers, purple cabbage, green onions, cilantro, sesame seeds, and kim chi.

“To drink, I’m going to get the Green Gaia smoothie,” said Julie.

“And I’m going to get the Tropical Sunshine smoothie,” said Amaranth.

“So, do you and Ed have any special plans for the rest of summer?” asked Amaranth.

“Well, we’re planning to drive to Minnesota to see my parents the first two weeks in August. We haven’t seen them in quite some time. Mom and Dad want to see Timmy, Mary, and Kristin really bad, plus being in St. Paul will be pleasant in early August,” said Julie. “What about you and Ty?”

“We spent a wonderful weekend in Steamboat Springs a few weeks ago. You know, we’re both kind of homebodies. So I think we’ll just hang out in Niwot,” said Amaranth.

“You know the experts are saying we on Earth have only about 10 years to correct the many mistakes we’ve made in regard to climate change, no thanks to Trump and the Republicans. Pulling out unilaterally and impulsively from the Paris Agreement was not just wrong, it was the height of stupidity,” said Amaranth.

“I know, Am,” said Julie. “It’s hard not to think about the imminent consequences of such an ignorant and dangerous decision.”

The waitress brought them their meals, and both Amaranth and Julie enjoyed them with gusto. Afterwards, the two of them talked about more pleasant topics.

“If I don’t see you again before you leave for Minnesota, have a wonderful time,” said Amaranth. “Say hello to Ed for me, please.”

The two paid their bills and walked outside. Boulder, even in July, can be pretty pleasant, even at midday.



Chapter 19

Amaranth had been in deep sleep when the voice had spoken to her for the third time. The voice had said, “Campaign for Earth.”

“‘Campaign for Earth.’” Now what does that mean?” Amaranth had asked herself. Of course, she didn’t know what it had meant, though again the voice had not been threatening. Indeed, if it had been anything, it had been more urgent in tone than anything else, but certainly not threatening. She would talk with Dr. Rosenstein about it. She now looked forward to seeing Dr. Rosenstein she realized. Yes, he was a psychiatrist, but now he was more like a wise friend to her, an ally, if you will.

It was early September now. Amaranth could feel the beginning of fall in the air. Fall was one of her favorite seasons. Fall comes earlier in the mountains, but while Niwot wasn’t in the mountains, it was the doorway to them nonetheless.

Amaranth had awakened earlier this morning, earlier than she normally did. Ty was still sound asleep, so Amaranth slowly and carefully got out of bed, put on her robe, and made her way to the kitchen. She could feel another poem welling up in her, so she poured herself a cup of coffee, sat down in her chair, took into her hand the pen that she now felt was part of her body, and began recording in her notebook:

I WRITE WHEN THE RIVER’S DOWN

I write when the river’s down,
when the ground’s as hard as
a banker’s disposition and as
cracked as an old woman’s face.
I write when the air is still
and the tired leaves of the
dying elm tree are a mosaic
against the bird-blue sky.
I write when the old bird dog,
Sam, is too tired to chase
rabbits, which is his habit
on temperate days. I write
when horses lie on burnt grass,
when the sun is always high
noon, when hope melts like
yellow butter near the kitchen
window. I write when there
are no cherry pies in the
oven, when heartache comes
like a dust storm in early
morning. I write when the
river’s down, and sadness
grows like cockle burs in
my heart.

Amaranth sat in her chair and reread her poem several times.
She liked this poem a lot. Finally, she got up from her chair, left the kitchen, and walked into the den where the computer was. She put her coffee cup on the computer desk, then sat in the chair in front of the computer. Ty had not yet awakened, so there was silence throughout the house. She looked at the computer screen. After a few minutes, she began to type on the keyboard.

“Peace on Earth,” she typed, then pressed Enter. Up came what seemed like hundreds of articles related to Peace on Earth. She started reading the first article, then the second one, then several more. All talked about Peace on Earth, but none mentioned any real plan on how to achieve it. She stopped reading any more articles. “Everybody talks about Peace on Earth, but nobody seems to have a viable plan on how to make it happen,” Amaranth said to herself. For over 3,400 years of recorded history, people had talked and written about Peace on Earth, and look where we are today. Earth, and all the people living on it right now, are farther from achieving it than at any time in the past. If the adverse effects of climate change don’t do us in, then a nuclear holocaust will. We are on the brink of extinction and nobody, but nobody, has a plan to save Earth and all the living creations on it. Yet,  8 billion people on Earth keep whistling and going about their daily lives. This is insanity!

“Good morning, my love,” said Ty who had awakened, then had come into the den. Ty walked over to where Amaranth was sitting and gave her a kiss on the nape.

“Why don’t we go out for breakfast this morning?” said Ty.

“OK,” said Amaranth. “Let’s go to the Walnut Cafe in Boulder. It’s on Walnut Street, just off 30th.

They each took a shower, got dressed, an, in just a few minutes, were ready to go. They got to the Walnut Cafe in quick order and went inside and grabbed a booth. Then they perused the menu.

A waitress came over bringing glasses of water.

“What would each of you like this morning?” asked the waitress.

Amaranth said, “I would like the vegetarian omelette please, with coffee.” Ty said he’d like the same.

The vegetarian omelette had in it cheddar cheese, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, and red peppers.

“We get two sides with the omelette, right?" asked Amaranth.

“Yes, that right,” said the waitress.

“Well, I would like the blueberry cornbread and the fresh fruit,” said Amaranth.

“And I would like the banana nut bread and breakfast potatoes, please,” said Ty.

Amaranth had not yet told Ty about the voice, but she did want to talk about Peace on Earth with him. She knew his feelings were like hers.

Amaranth started talking. “Before you came into the den this morning, I had typed in the phrase “Peace on Earth” to see if I could find mention of any plans to realize it. Everybody in the articles talked about Peace on Earth, but nobody spoke about any plan to achieve it,” said Amaranth.

“Well, the United Nations was formed after World War II and Peace on Earth was their ultimate goal, and they’ve had over 70 years to try to achieve it. I’m sure they’ve tried like hell to make it happen, but look at the shape the world is in now. In my opinion, Earth is farther away from universal peace in 2019 than it has been at any other time in over a century. The UN has tried, but you’d have to be blind not to see how unsuccessful their collective attempts have been. There are over 200 nations on Earth right now. How do you expect over 200 nations to come together permanently to achieve Peace on Earth? It’s just not going to happen. And the truth is that five nations — USA, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and France — the permanent members of the UN Security Council — Individually can thwart any proposal that might possibly effect peace, because all five of them have a veto power they can use unilaterally to undermine any plan of another country, and that’s what they do. It’s a rigged game, that’s what it is,” said Ty.

Ty took a sip of coffee.

“I have an idea,” said Amaranth. “Why don’t we drive up to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation? School just started, and I’m sure some of the schools need supplies, which we can bring them.”

“That’s a great idea!” said Ty. “We could drive up on Wednesday, the day that schools open, and give them our donations.”

“But I will have to find out what they need. I can do that this afternoon. We can buy tomorrow what they need. Great!” exclaimed Amaranth.

They drove back to Niwot feeling very happy and excited.



Chapter 20

Pine Ridge, SD, was a tiny town on the reservation. The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, on the other hand, was the second largest in the country. Its population was about 28,000. It was also the poorest place in America with many concomitant problems. Many families that lived on the reservation had no electricity, no telephones, no running water, no sewage systems. Life expectancy was 47. The adolescent suicide rate was four times greater than the national average. The infant mortality rate was five times greater. The rate of unemployment stood between 80% to 85%. The people of the Oglala Nation lived on the reservation, but clinical depression, rampant alcoholism, drug abuse, malnutrition, and diabetes pervaded it. The teenage suidide rate was five times greater than the national average.

Crazy Horse, who had been chief of the Oglala Sioux, was one of Ty’s heroes, because Crazy Horse was courageous in battle and generous in peace. After a successful buffalo hunt, for example, Crazy Horse would take only what he needed and give the rest of the buffalo to the poorest of his people. He was most kind to the elderly, to the children, and, of course, to the poor. A great leader, Crazy Horse was known to be unassuming, somewhat shy, and modest. He wore simple clothing and never wore face paint, He wore his hair down with only a single feather in it and a small, brown stone behind his ear. When he was younger, Crazy Horse had gone on a vision quest during which, it was said, he realized in himself a kind of invincibility that did not make him conceited or supercilious, but gave him an obdurate feeling that he would never be injured by a gun shot in battle. That prophetic notion turned out to be true. Crazy Horse was never injured by a bullet, but he died only when a military guard stabbed him in the back with a bayonet.

The Wounded Knee massacre occurred in 1890. It was to be the last slaughter of Native Americans by the U.S. military. It happened on December 29 of that year near the Wounded Knee Creek, about ten miles to the east of what is now the tiny town of Pine Ridge.

The U.S. 7th Cavalry rounded up around three hundred Oglala women, children, and mostly old men. One old man was doing what was called a Ghost Dance. The 7th Cavalry took the guns from the Oglala Sioux, but a few resisted. In any event, a shot was fired by someone, which prompted the 7th Calvary to train their four Hotchkiss mountain guns on essentially the defenseless 300 Oglala Sioux and mowed them down as they fell into a ditch.

The Wounded Knee Incident occurred in 1975. There was a 71 day standoff between members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and members of the FBI. A firefight occurred and several people on both sides were killed. But the only person tried and convicted was an Oglala Sioux named Leonard Peltier, and he was sentenced to two consecutive terms of life in prison in Leavenworth, KS.



Chapter 21

Amaranth and Ty took off about 7 am Wednesday morning for Pine Ridge. It was going to be about a five-and-a-half hour drive.

Amaranth had contacted two schools on the reservation. One was Our Lady of Lourdes Elementary School. The other was Lorman Day School (Wica Owayawa).

Our Lady of Lourdes Elementary School needed the following supplies: crayons, markers, glue sticks, school glue, staplers, staples, spiral bound notebooks, invisible tape with a dispenser, blunt children’s scissors, young adult scissors, electric pencil sharpeners, construction paper, Band-Aids, cotton swabs, bee sting relief pads, #2 pencils, and cotton *****.

Lorman Day School wanted books, specifically the following books: Nowere Boy; The Complete Summer I Turned Pretty Trilogy; The Lightning Thief; The Nebula Secret; P.S. I Still Love You; Warriors Box Set 1–6; Warriors Power of Three Box Set 1–6, Warriors Omen of the Stars Box Set 1–6; Willa of the Wood; Serafina and the Black Coat; To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before; and Always and Forever, Lara Jean.

Amaranth and Ty drove straight through Nebraska to Manderson, SD, about 20 miles from Pine Ridge. Thee only place nearer to Pine Ridge was the casino, which also provided lodging, but neither Amaranth not Ty liked casinos, so they would be staying at Super 8 in Manderson.

Both Amaranth and Ty were dead tired from the long drive, so they both hit the bed fast.



Chapter 22

In the morning, now considerably rested, Amaranth and Ty ate vegetarian sandwiches that she had made in Niwot. Both were eager to get to the two schools. Amaranth had told the administrator at Lorman Day School, Ms. Thatcher, that she had found all the books the teacher had requested on the Amazon website and that Amazon would be sending them to the school ℅ the teacher. They were looking forward to meeting the administrator at Lorman Day School and the principal, Sister Rae, at Our Lady of Lourdes Elementary School. They decided to see Sister Rae first.

“It is so kind of you to come here to give us these supplies we dearly need,” said Sister Rae. ”Most people wouldn’t do what the two of you are doing, but you know that already.”

“You’re most welcome. You know as well that most human beings would not do what you decided to do many years ago; devote your life to God and humanity,” said Amaranth.

Sister Rae gave Amaranth and Ty a tour of the school, introducing them to the teachers, saying hello to the students, and chatting with them briefly.

“It was so nice to meet you and your staff and chat with your students,” said Amaranth. “I hope we shall see you again.”

Amaranth and Ty then drove to Lorman Day School.

“Ms. Thatcher, it is so nice to meet you,” said Amaranth. “This my husband, Ty.”

“It is so generous of both of you to donate all the books listed on our website. Not many people would do that,” said Ms. Thatcher.

“Our pleasure,” said Ty.

“Let me show you around the school and introduce the two of you to our teachers,” said Ms. Thatcher.

Amaranth and Ty spent about a half hour with Ms. Thatcher, touring the school, meeting the teachers, and speaking with some of the students.

“Before we leave the reservation, we both want to visit the Wounded Knee cemetery and give our respects before we return home,” said Amaranth.

“That’s very thoughtful of you both,” replied Ms.Thatcher. “Thank you again for your generosity.”

Amaranth and Ty got into their car and headed toward the Wounded Knee cemetery. When they got there, they got out and walked up a small hill where the cemetery was.

They were silent for a long time. Finally, Ty spoke.

“Things in the world haven’t changed much, have they?” Ty asked rhetorically. “The Revolutionary War was the first one in our country. You know that Thomas Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, right? He also wound up owning over 600 slaves; eight of our presidents were slave owners. Then came the Mexican-American War that Lincoln voted against during his one term in Congress. Then the Civil War during which 650,000 to 700,000 American men were killed. Can you even fathom that? Then WW I, then WW II, then the Korean War, then the Vietnam War, then the War in Afghanistan that still is going on, then the two wars against Iraq, and then all the other “conflicts” our government keeps secret from us, like Yemen, for example.”

Ty couldn’t help himself.

“I’m sorry, Am. I have just learned too much about how the world really works. I’m sorry,” said Ty.



Chapter 23

“You know Columbia’s Homecoming is right around the corner,” said Ty. “I think we should go back to New York City, see the Homecoming game, see our old — well, not that old, yet — classmates, check out our old haunts, explore the city again, eat at fabulous vegetarian restaurants, have a hell of a great time. What do you think?”

“Wherever I’m with you, I have a great time! Columbia is where I met you, and I’m eternally grateful for that,“ exclaimed Amaranth.

“So even before we get back to New York City, we can start having fun right now planning our trip,” added Ty.

Amaranth gave Ty another big hug.



Chapter 24

Amaranth could feel another poem welling up in her, so she went into the kitchen, sat down in her chair, and picked up her pen off her notebook that lay on the kitchen table, and began to record.


IS THAT NOT A DOVE COMING THROUGH THE CLOUDS?

Is that not a dove coming through the clouds,
sweeping down to bless our crown with love,
gentle wings to caress our forehead, soft strokes
to remind us of our innate kindness, a blindness
no man has in his heart? Is that not a dove
coming through the clouds, its provenance
above the sun, though cool with the countenance
of caring, a daring feat of a celestial being?
Give thanks for this tender gift that reminds us
of our eternal tie to a sky that brushes different
facets of our face. Is that not a dove coming
through the clouds?


Amaranth put the pen back on her closed notebook.

She felt also that she wanted to make another lovely dinner for Ty and herself, so she picked back up her pen again, turned the page on which she had just written her poem, and on the new page, began to write a list of vegetables she would be turning into a delicious meal that afternoon.

Before she started writing, she brewed a *** of coffee, and when it was ready, poured herself a cup, returned to the table, and sat down on her chair.

She enjoyed taking time to think of all her possibilities, then slowly began writing down on the sheet the ones she had chosen to buy at King Soopers, her favorite grocery store in Boulder. Amaranth did not rush this process, because for her it was not only fun to do, but also, in a sense, was a somewhat spiritual endeavor.

Amaranth sipped her last bit of coffee, tore the list of vegetables from the legal pad, headed outside, got into her car, and started driving from Niwot to Boulder to shop in King Soopers. It was a beautiful day to be outside, this day that felt like the coming of fall.



Chapter 25

Amaranth had already started Mahler’s 2nd Symphony on the computer, lit the yellow candle at the center of the table covered, as always, with a clean, white linen tablecloth and was now ready to present what she thought would be a delectable dinner.

“Tonight, we have for a salad, smoked aubergine, red peppers, walnuts, and pomegranates,” said Amaranth, looking at Ty sitting at the table as she spoke. “For soup, we have chilled English pea soup with crab and Meyer lemon. For an entree, we have speedy ratatouille with goat cheese. For dessert, we have dark chocolate mousse with cardamom, candied ginger, and hazelnuts. Enjoy!”

The dinner was delicious.

“Wow!” exclaimed Ty. “Are you sure you don’t want to open up a vegetarian restaurant in Boulder?” remarked Ty.

“I happen to serve only one customer at a time, and you just happen to be that customer, for the rest of my life,” said Amaranth.

“That’s sweet, Am,” said Ty.

“I’m just about finished with W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk”, added Ty. “Du Bois and Frederick Douglass were both intellectuals. There were 4,000,000 black slaves in the Deep South when the Civil War began in 1861, and when Reconstruction ended in 1877 and the white supremacists replaced the federal troops with growing numbers of KKK members and Black Codes and Jim Crow and lynchings and various forms of voter suppression, blacks remained essentially hopeless and fearful and dirt-poor. Can you imagine how many more black lives continued to live in horror and servitude, how many more minds were wasted, how many more hearts remained broken, how many more souls remained darkened for decades? Du Bois and Douglass were just two out of 4,000,000 blacks who found some sunlight.”



Chapter 26

“I am so excited, Am!” said Ty. “I have just completed what I think are contingencies and plans about our trip to New York City and the Columbia Homecoming and I’d like to share them with you. Do you have time now?”

“Sure I do!” said Amaranth. The two sat down on the blue sofa in the living room.

“Well, first, we depart from DIA (Denver International Airport) Thursday, the 17th, on a Delta nonstop flight to New York City, leaving at 11:20 am and and arriving at JFK at 5:10 pm. I booked a room at International House for our entire stay. That night, we have reservations to eat at The Original Buddha Bodai Kosher Vegetarian Restaurant (5 Mott Street). Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Then we go back to the International House and flop into bed. I’m guessing we will be pretty tired by then.

“Then the next morning, we will walk down to Tom’s Restaurant, our old haunt, and have breakfast. Then I thought we could walk around campus, visit Hartley Hall, Butler Library, Lerner, and go see the new Manhattanville campus. I’ve already contacted Bill and Debbie Roach, and Herb Hochman and his girlfriend, Leni. They will be at the alumni reception to be held in the basketball gymnasium in Dodge Fitness Center.

“Saturday, of course, is Homecoming Day. We’ll have breakfast every morning at Tom’s, just as we used to do, if that’s OK with you. We’ll be playing Penn. We’ll be eating at Massawa, a vegetarian restaurant in Harlem, the oldest African eatery in New York City. Then I managed to get tickets to Hamilton, so that’s what we will be doing Saturday night.”

“How did you manage to get tickets to Hamilton on such short notice?” asked Amaranth.

“You forgot that I was head of NSOP (New Student Orientation Program) our senior year, and I got tapped by Nacom’s (Columbia’s oldest senior society) toward the end of our junior year, because that was when I was chosen to be head of NSOP. I’ve got connections,” said Ty, somewhat facetiously.

“Sunday afternoon, I thought we’d have a leisurely walk through Chinatown, if you like. Then I’ve made reservations to have dinner at Daniel (56th Street at Park Avenue) that evening. Then back to International House for more sleep.

“Monday, I thought we’d visit the Museum of Modern Art in the afternoon, eat at Le Bernardin — yes, I was able to make reservations there — then attend The New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center. The program that night is called ‘Stravinsky and Balanchine’ and will consist of three famous ballets: Allegro Brillante, La Source, and Firebird.

Amaranth couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“Then Tuesday, I thought it would be interesting to explore the American Museum of Natural History. That’s where Margaret Mead worked while she continued to teach at Columbia. You know she graduated from Barnard and got her PhD in anthropology at Columbia studying under the founder of that field, Professor Franz Boas. I have reservations for us to eat at Blue Hill, a highly rated vegetarian restaurant. I was also able to get tickets to To **** A Mockingbird, the hottest show on Broadway right now, so that’s where we’ll be going after dinner.

“Wednesday, I thought we’d visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, eat at Fournos Theophios, another highly rated vegetarian restaurant, then go back to Lincoln Center to listen to the New York Philharmonic. Jaap van Zweden will be conducting Mozart’s Symphony №40, Sibelius’s Symphony №2, and Beethoven’s 3rd symphony, Eroica.

“Thursday, we fly back to Niwot, via DIA.”

Amaranth just sat there, stunned. Then, finally, she gave Ty another big and long, long hug.


Chapter 27

Amaranth had been an English and comparative literature major at Columbia College. She had studied under Andrew Delbanco, who had been named by Time Magazine in 2001 as “America’s best social critic.”

Growing up, Amaranth had been a voracious reader. She had read Albert’s Impossible Toothache, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, AreYou My Mother? The Story of Babar, Barnyard Dance!, Bread and Jam for Frances, Charlotte’s Web, Chica, Chica, Boom, Boom, Corduroy, Dear Zoo, Doctor De Soto, Winnie the Pooh, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, and many others.

As Amaranth got older, she read Bone Crier’s Moon, Heart of Flames, Harley in the Sky, How To Speak Boy, Don’t Read the Comments, Hotel Dare, Lifeformed: Hearts and Minds, The Catcher in the Rye, A Wrinkle in Time, and many others.

At Andover, she had read a number of Dicken’s novels, including David Cooperfield, Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, The Pickwick Papers, Bleak House, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Other novels she had read were Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor Casterbridge, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, and Far from the Madding Crowd.

At Columbia, when majoring in English and comparative literature, Amaranth took many different courses and read hundreds of novels, plays, and poems, including, but not limited to, the following: Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, and virtually all of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets.

To begin with, Amaranth had to learn and study many literary devices: among others were ad hominem, anaphora, antimetabole, assonance, double entendre, portmanteau, synesthesia, aposiopesis, consonance, doopelgänger, hyperbaton, meiosis, parataxis, and synecdoche.

Amaranth read other prominent dramatists and authors of Renaissance literature, including Christopher Marlowe, a contemporary of Shakespeare, whose plays included Doctor Faustus, Edward II, Tamburlaine (part one and two), and The Jew of Malta; Edmund Spenser’s epic poem, The Fairie Queene; as well as English prose by John Lilly and Thomas Nashe.

Amaranth read many works by authors of the Romantic era: Victor Hugo’s novels Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame; his poetry collections Les Contemplations and La Légende des Siecles; and his plays Cromwell and Hernani. She read Alexandre Dumas’s novels The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, The Vicomte of Bragelonne, Ten Years Later, and The Man in the Iron Mask. She also read his play Henry III et sa cour.

Sturm und Drang, literally storm and stress in English, was a German movement in literature and music between the late 1760s and the early 1780s that favored immense emotion over the preceding rationalism of the Enlightenment. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, otherwise known simply as Goethe, and Friedrich von Schiller were the two most prominent figures of the movement. Amaranth read Goethe’s epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, Willhem Meister’s Journeyman Years, The Idyll of Hermann and Dorothea, his autobiography From My Life: Poetry and Truth, and Italian Journey. She also read his plays Iphigenia in Tauris, Egmont, Torquato Tasso, his verse dramas The Natural Daughter, Faust, Clavigo, and Der Burgergeneral. She also read his collection of poems West-Eastern Diwan.

Geothe and Schiller, it should be noted, were very close friends. These two were pivotal figures in the literary movement called Weimar Classicism. Amaranth read Schiller’s plays: The Robbers; Fiesco; Intrigue and Love; Don Carlos; The Wallenstein trilogy; Mary Stuart; The Maid of Orleans; The Bride of Messina; and William Tell.

Amaranth read authors of colonial America: William Bradford, John Winthrop, Cotton Mather, and Jonathan Edwards.

Amaranth read early African-American authors: Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, both former slaves.

Amaranth read examples of Bildungsroman novelists: Henry Fielding, James Joyce, and Kazuo Ishiguro,

Amaranth read the poems of the most famous Russian poet of the Romantic era, Alexander Pushkin. She also read Pushkin’s novel in verse Eugene Onegin.

Amaranth read the poems of these British literary luminaries of the 19th century: William Wordsworth; Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Percy Bysshe Shelley; John Keats; Lord Byron; Rudyard Kipling; Robert Browning; Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Matthew Arnold; Thomas Gray; and Robert Southey.

And Amaranth didn’t forget about the poetry of John Donne, who lived from 1572 to 1631. Nor did she forget about William Blake, who lived from 1757 to 1827, and had to wait almost two hundred years to be discovered and then revered as one of England’s most brilliant poets and artists.

Amaranth read many Victorian novelists, but because she had already read so many of Dicken’s novels at Andover, she skipped reading them at Columbia College. The same was true for Thomas Hardy’s novels. But she did read William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair; Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre; Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights; Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall; Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility; and George Eliot’s Middlemarch.

Amaranth read the plays of George Bernard Shaw: The Philanderer; Mrs. Warren’s Profession; Arms and the Man; Candida; The Man of Destiny; You Never Can Tell; and Captain Brassbound’s Conversion. She also read Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and his play The Importance of Being Earnest.

Amaranth read 19th century American novelists: Washington Irving; James Fenimore Cooper; Ralph Waldo Emerson; Herman Melville; Harriet Beecher Stowe; Henry David Thoreau; Mark Twain; and Henry James.

Amaranth read the 20th century poems of W. B. Yeats, the famous Irish poet, and the novels of Virginia Woolf, one of the early members of the Bloomsbury Group: The Voyage Out; To the Lighthouse; Orlando: A Biography; The Waves; Flush: A Biography; and Between the Acts. Having been so moved by the beauty of Virginia Woolf’s writings, Amaranth had been deeply touched by her learning about the author’s personal life, her many battles with mental illness that culminated tragically in her suicide.

Amaranth also read the poems of 20th century British poets, W. H. Auden and Dylan Thomas.

Amaranth also read 20th century American novelists: Dashiell Hammett; Pearl Buck; Gertrude Stein; Aldous Huxley; Zora Neale Hurston; William Faulkner; Willa Cather; F. Scott Fitzgeralf; Earnest Hemingway; Sherwood Anderson; J. D. Salinger; Edith Wharton; Eudora Welty; John Dos Passos; Harper Lee; Kurt Vonnegut; Ralph Ellison; Jack London; Carson McCullers; John Updike; Thomas Pynchon; Philip Roth; Jack Kerouac; Joseph Heller; Richard Wright; Upton Sinclair; Theodore Dreiser; James Baldwin; Herman Wouk, Djuna Barnes; Sinclair Lewis; and Toni Morrison.

Amaranth also read 20th century American poets: Robert Frost; Carl Sandburg; Wallace Stevens; William Carlos Williams; Ezra Pound; e.e cummings; Marianne Moore; Langston Hughes; Rainer Maria Rilke; Guillaume Apollinaire; John Berryman; Frank O’Hara; James Merrill; John Ashbery; Gwendolyn Brooks; Robert Lowell; W. S. Merwin; Allen Ginsberg; Anne Sexton; and Sylvia Plath.

Amaranth was particularly moved by Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail.

By the time Amaranth received her BA from Columbia College, she had read and studied a lot of novels and poems and plays.



Chapter 28

Many people collected rocks, coins, or stamps. Amaranth collected words.

It began in 4th grade, Amaranth remembered. Among the many books she had been reading in grade school, she happened on a biography of Webster — not Daniel, but Noah Webster. In 1806, Noah Webster published the first dictionary of American English. For some unknown reason, reading about his life and his relentless pursuit of an intellectual goal — in this case, words — made an unconscious, indelible impression upon her.

During her first year at Andover — in public school called 9th grade, in prep-school talk, called “Junior” year — Amaranth’s English teacher was Dr. Gillingham, on whom she would have, in time, a crush. Dr. Gillingham was the first really learned person she had ever met. He had his PhD from Oxford, yet he was teaching 9th graders. He could, whenever the occasion merited it, quote from any of Shakespeare’s plays or sonnets. What was more, he gave everyone in his class a copy of the Harbrace Vocabulary Workbook, which, in short, contained the prefixes, suffixes, and roots of the Greek, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon languages that, over time, came to make up the vast majority of English words. Amaranth was transfixed by these processes. For example, if one took the English word anachronistic and knew what the prefix, suffix, and root were to that word, and knew what they meant, even if one had never seen that word before, which was the case for Amaranth, one could figure out what that word meant. “Amazing!” Amaranth thought. The most important part of the process was to recognize the root of the word. The root word of anachronistic was, of course, chron. If one had studied well, one would know that chron was derived from the Greek word chronos, which meant time. If one also knew that the prefix ana meant without, one could quite easily figure out the meaning of anachronistic, which means, quoting from Merriam-Webster, “a chronological misplacing of persons, events, objects, or customs in regard to each other.” Got it? Amaranth sure had, and that edification was indeed the foundation of, and the catalyst for, her incipient love affairs with words.

It should be underscored that Amaranth did not love etymology to be pedantic; rather, as a burgeoning poet, she always wanted to use not a pretentious word, but the "precise" word, as she called it, a process wherein a poet would unconsciously be imbued deeply in one’s mind the precise word among thousands of others, ready to be accessed effortlessly when a poet wanted to convey a specific feeling, insight, or emotion, let’s say, precisely.

Every new word Amaranth learned was exciting for her, even transcendent. Every new word would have its own heft, its own color, its own timbre, its qualities of lightness or heaviness. Amaranth never used a thesaurus. She didn’t need one. She had one in the deep recesses of her brain ready to use unconsciously and effortlessly whenever she felt a poem welling up inside of her.

Amaranth had written this epigram a number of years ago: “Poetry is like the ocean wind: It blows only for those sails that are open.” She also had come to believe that writing poetry was like making love. “If you have to try making love, stop.”



Chapter 29

Finally, Thursday, 17 October 2019, had arrived. The wait was over, and Amaranth and Ty could barely contain their synergistic excitement. That morning at 11:20 am MT, their nonstop Delta flight 1806 would take off from Denver’s DIA and would arrive at 5:10 pm ET at JFK airport in New York City.

“I can’t believe it!” shouted Amaranth. “We’re going to New York City for a week, a whole week!”

“And Columbia’s going to beat Penn and we are going to eat at some of the finest vegetarian restaurants in the world and we’re going to see Bill and Debbie and Herb and Leni and we’re going to see many of the most beautiful paintings and sculptures in the world and listen to some of the most beautiful music ever played live by one of the greatest orchestras in the world and watch some of the greatest ballet dancers in the world perform and walk around the city that is the capital of the world and make love in New York City as many times as we want!” an almost exhausted Ty exclaimed.

Both had to sit down on the blue sofa in the living room for a few minutes. Then they started loading the car with their pieces of luggage and finally began their drive to DIA. Once there, they got in line and went through the ritual that all Americans have to go through before they can board the plane.

“You take the window seat, Am. You like to look at the clouds and the land below,” said Ty. Amaranth had brought her copy of Toni Morrison’s book Song of Solomon with her and thought she’d read it for a while. Morrison had won the 1993 Nobel Prize in literature.

The plane took off smoothly, and before long, had ascended to its cruising altitude of 33,000 feet. Ty had asked Amaranth if she wanted a pillow, and she said she didn’t. But Ty did, so he asked a stewardess to bring him one, which she did, and within minutes, he had fallen asleep, his head lying softly on the pillow.

In due course, the plane landed without incident at JFK. By the time Amaranth and Ty had retrieved their luggage, it was approaching 6 pm. They hailed a cab and asked the driver, after giving him directions, to take them to International House, just several blocks from Columbia’s campus.

International House was founded in 1924. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and the Cleveland H. Dodge family paid for its construction. It had been designated a New York City landmark. To quote its brochure: “International House was the first global community of its kind, predating the United Nations by 21 years. For more than 96 years it has transformed the lives of more than 65,000 alumni, which include not only Nobel Prize winners, heads of state, award-winning authors, singers, actors, musicians, and CEOs, but teachers, doctors, small business owners, community leaders and volunteers throughout the world. We achieve our mission of preparing leaders of the global community by building core values of Respect, Empathy, and Moral Courage through a lived experience that consists of organic encounters and a series of unparalleled programs offered within our Morningside Heights facilities. I-House has welcomed bright young people from all over the world to live, learn, and grow together through a transformative experience that prepares them to join and lead the conversations that will change the world. I-House is home to approximately 700 resident members from more than 100 countries.”

The cab pulled up to the entrance of International House and Amaranth and Ty got out with their luggage, paid the driver, and thanked him. Then they went inside.

“Hi, I’m Ty Anderson and this is my wife, Amaranth. We have reservations for a room,” said Ty.

“Oh yes, Mr. Anderson. Please fill out this card for me, and here’s two keys to your room,” replied the clerk. Ty filled out the card and took the keys.

“Thank you so much,” said Ty, then he and Amaranth walked to the elevator, took it to the 7th floor, found their room, opened the door, and entered it.

“This is a nice room,” said Amaranth and lay on the double bed.

It was approaching 7:00 pm now, and understandably both Amaranth and Ty were beat. Ty lay down next to Amaranth. They had reservations for dinner at The Original Buddha Bodai Kosher Vegetarian Restaurant (5 Mott Street) at 8:00 pm.

“Let’s rest awhile, then we’ll take a cab to the restaurant,” said Ty.

About 7:20, they got up, used the bathroom, and changed into their more “formal” clothes for dinner. They then found their way out of the International House, walked up to Broadway, and hailed a cab that took them to The Original Buddha Bodai Kosher Vegetarian Restaurant. It was a few minutes before 8 when they arrived.



Chapter 30

“Good evening,” said the maitre d’.

“Good evening,” replied Ty. “We are the Anderson party, and we have reservations for dinner at 8,” replied Ty.

“Very good, sir,” said the maitre d’, who then escorted Amaranth and Ty to their table.

“Wow! I can’t believe we’re really here,” said Amaranth. Their waiter brought them two menus.

“Let’s have fun perusing the menus, Am. We’re in no hurry,” said Ty.

Amaranth and Ty did have fun perusing their menus.

“I’ve decided what I want. How about you?” said Amaranth.

“I’m ready, too,” said Ty.

Ty motioned to their waiter who immediately came to their table.

“You go first,” said Ty to Amaranth.

“OK, Ty. I’d like to order as an appetizer the fried crispy stuffed bread and barbecue vegetarian meat. For soup, I’d like the vegetarian chicken and corn soup. For my entrée, I’d like the shredded shiitake mushroom with broccoli. For dessert, I’d like the small mango pudding.”

Now it was Ty’s turn. “For an appetizer, I’d like the fried cumin vegetarian lamb. For soup, I’d like the pumpkin mushroom seafood soup. For my entrée, I’d like the vegetarian lobster in black bean sauce. For dessert, I’d like the tofu cheese cake.”

The waiter nodded his head, then left their table.

“This is a beautiful little restaurant,” said Amaranth.

“I bet the food is as good as the restaurant is beautiful,” replied Ty.

The two didn’t have to wait long before the waiter brought their appetizers, which they both enjoyed. The same was true for their soups, and then their entrées. Their desserts were delicious also. Amaranth and Ty were both pleasantly stuffed, and after a long day of travel and then a large meal, they were ready to sleep. So they returned to the International House, got to their room, and without hesitation, fell into bed and slept peacefully through the night.



Chapter 31

They awakened well rested. Friday was the day Ty had set aside for the two of them to revisit their alma mater, Columbia College. But first, they had to have breakfast at one of their old haunts, Tom’s Restaurant, made famous by Suzanne Vega, a Barnard student at the time, who had written and sung about the restaurant in her hit song that she called, surprisingly, “Tom’s Diner.” Notwithstanding, that song, even though it was a misnomer, helped launch her career.

Later, Tom’s Restaurant became even more famous, because it was used as the exterior shot of the restaurant where Seinfeld and his friends would gather to chat and eat on that famous TV series. Moreover, Tom’s Restaurant was located on the corner of Broadway and 112th Street, and if one looked eastward down 112th Street, one could see, just a block away, the incredibly beautiful Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

Amaranth and Ty made their way leisurely to Tom’s Restaurant, and when they got there, entered it for the first time in almost ten years. Their favorite booth in which they had sat and ate so many breakfasts happened to be free, so they grabbed it.

“Just like old times,” said Ty.

“Just like old times,” Amaranth echoed.

Their waitress came to their booth immediately and handed them both menus.

“Oh, thank you, but we don’t need them. We already know what we want,” said Ty.

“Fine. What would you like?” said the waitress.

Amaranth went first. “I’d like two eggs scrambled and pancakes, please,” said Amaranth. “And please, may I have the syrup on the side?”

“Of course,” said the waitress. “What would you like, sir?”

“I’d like two eggs sunny-side up with potatoes and two pieces of rye toast, please,” said Ty.

“Anything to drink?” asked the waitress.

“Each of us would like a cup of coffee, please,” said Ty.

Their breakfast orders came fast, and both Amaranth and Ty dug in. They were hungry and excited to walk back up Broadway to the 116th main entrance to the Columbia campus and begin to explore all the places they had shared a decade ago.



Chapter 32

Columbia College was founded in 1754 as King’s College. Alexander Hamilton and John Jay were students there. When the American Revolution began, Hamilton left school before graduating, first to serve under George Washington and later to hold a number of high posts in our nascent nation. He was one of the authors of The Federalist Papers. John Jay became the United States’ first chief justice of the Supreme Court. When the war was over, the Columbia trustees decided it would be prudent to change the name of the college from King’s College to Columbia College, which they did.

Columbia College moved several times up the island of Manhattan. When Columbia College moved to its present location, Morningside Heights, it changed its name to Columbia University. Its main entrance today is at 116th Street and Broadway. An earlier location had been in what is now midtown Manhattan; consequently, Columbia still owned the land underneath Rockefeller Plaza, but decided to sell it in the 1980s for $400,000,000.

Columbia University had won over 100 Nobel Prizes, more than any of the other Ivy universities. Its graduate school of journalism awarded the Pulitzer Prizes.

The 2019 admit rate for Columbia College, the traditional, coed, liberal arts school of Columbia University, was 5.1%, making it the second most selective school in the Ivy League. Columbia College admitted slightly more than 2,000 applicants out of slightly more than 42,000 worldwide. That’s about one out of twenty.

In 2019, Columbia College would celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Core Curriculum. Columbia College was the only school in the Ivy League that had the Core Curriculum, which every student had to take, regardless of her/his major. The “Core,” which was how virtually every student affectionately referred to it, was a rigorous two-year course of studies that include the following: Literature Humanities was a year-long study of great books that included Luke/John by unknown, Confessions by Augustine, The Divine Comedy by Dante, Essays by Michel de Montaigne, Macbeth by Shakespeare, Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, Paradise Lost by John Milton, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, The Iliad by Homer, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho by Anne Carson, The Odyssey by Homer, Genesis by unknown, Job by unknown, The Histories by Herodotus, Oresteia by Aeschylus, Antigone by Sophocles, The Clouds by Aristophanes, The Symposium by Plato, The Aeneid by Virgil, Metamorphoses by Ovid, Gilgamesh by unknown, Isaiah by Isaiah, Hymn to Demeter by unknown, Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, Lysistrata by Aristophanes, Bacchae by Euripides, Medea by Euripides, History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, The Decameron by Boccaccio, and King Lear by Shakespeare.

Contemporary Civilization was “a year-long study introducing students to a range of issues concerning the kinds of communities — political, social, moral, and religious — that human beings construct for themselves and the values that inform and define such communities.” Examples of books read and studied were The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals by Immanuel Kant, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft, Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville, On Liberty, Utilitarianism, and Other Essays by John Stuart Mill, On the Genealogy of Morality by Friedrick Nietzsche, The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois, Hind Swaraj by Gandhi, Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt, The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon, Republic by Plato, Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle, The City of God by Augustine, The Prince by Machiavelli, Leviathan by Hobbes, Second Treatise & Letter on Toleration by Locke, and Discourse on Inequality and The Social Contract by Rousseau.

Art Humanities was a semester-long “analytical study of a limited number of monuments and artists, and taught students how to look at, think about, and engage in critical discussion of the visual arts.”

Music Humanities was a semester-long study that “awakened in students an appreciation of music in the western world and helped them respond intelligently to a variety of musical idioms, and it engaged them in the debates about the character and purposes of music that had occupied composers and musical thinkers since the ancient times.”

Frontiers of Science had “integrated modern science into the Core Curriculum to challenge students to think about the world around them and the different ways in which science could help them answer questions about nature and themselves.”

The Science requirement was a study whose “objective was identical to that of its humanities and social science counterparts, namely to help students understand the civilization of their own day and to participate effectively in it. The science component was intended specifically to provide students with the opportunity to learn what kinds of questions were asked about nature, how hypotheses were tested against experimental or observational evidence, how results of tests were evaluated, and what knowledge has been accumulated about the workings of the natural world.”

The Global Core requirement “asked students to engage directly with the variety of civilizations and the diversity of traditions that, along with the west, had formed the world and continued to interact in it today. Courses in the Global Core typically explored the cultures of Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Middle East in an historical context.”

The Foreign Language requirement was “part of Columbia College’s mission to prepare students to be tomorrow’s conscientious and informed citizens. Knowledge of another’s language and literature was the most important way to begin to know a country and its people.”

Both Amaranth and Ty felt that taking the Columbia College’s Core Curriculum, which made one learned for life, and living in and exploring New York City, the veritable capital of the world, for four years made one a citizen of the world, regardless of where one chose to reside after graduating, even if that place was Niwot, Colorado.

In short, Amaranth and Ty both felt the synergistic combination of the Core Curriculum and New York City made for the best undergraduate experience to be found anywhere on Earth.



Chapter 33

When they left Tom’s Restaurant, Amaranth and Ty decided to walk down 112th Street to Riverside Drive, take a right, and walk north along side the lovely Riverside Park, which, in turn, ran along side the Hudson River. They wanted and needed to drop by the Columbia Alumni Office on W 113th Street to pick up special cards that would allow them to enter buildings such as Low Library, Butler Library, and Hartley Hall where Amaranth and Ty both lived their first year and fell in love.

It had turned fall in New York City, and the leaves of the trees in Riverside Park were a mosaic then of red and yellow and orange. They had often come as undergraduates to this park to walk and sit and chat, all the while enjoying the crisp feel of incipient fall, complemented by the Hudson River that flowed sinuously by them. Children were often at play in the park that time of year that enhanced the ambiance of the place.

Amaranth and Ty strolled hand in hand as they headed north on the sidewalk beside Riverside Park. When they got to 116th Street, they turned right and headed up the hill to Broadway and the main entrance to Columbia’s beautiful campus, They crossed Broadway and entered the campus on College Walk that used to have been 116th Street when Dwight D. Eisenhower was president of Columbia University, just before he was elected president of the United States, got the City in the early 1950s to close it off from traffic and turn that segment into a promenade through campus from Broadway to Amsterdam Avenue.

The famous architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White had designed in the 1890s the campus of Columbia University. It was said McKim wanted the new campus to be modeled after the Athenian agora, to be the new American Acropolis. As one walked a third of the way eastward up College Walk, one would walk into the center of the campus and would initially be overwhelmed by its splendor. To the left sat Low Memorial Library high on a hill. There were many steps to climb to reach the entrance of the Library. It was grand. While it was indeed originally used as a library, it was eventually transformed into the administrative center of the University, including the Office of the President of the University, among others. In the center of the library was a breathtaking, large marble room with statues all around it with a high, majestic dome atop it, where important social affairs would take place. In fact, Ty had given an introductory speech in that glorious space when he had been head of HSOP.

If one turned right on College Walk, one would see the rest of the main campus, which included Butler Library built in the 1930s. While Butler was the largest — indeed, the major — library on campus, there were, in fact, 20 other libraries on campus as well that contained collectively 12,000,000 books. These libraries had a free public digital repository for research, collections in more than 450 different languages, more than 1,500 databases including JSTOR, access to a Oculus Rift, more than 220 research guides for topics like African-American studies, Human Rights, and New York City history, as well as special collections, such as the Frank Lloyd Wright and Tennessee Williams archives. Moreover, Butler had free access to online tutorials like Lynda.com that a student could take home including a Raspberry Pi and Arduino, primary source collections that spanned more than 4,000 years of human thought, current magazines and periodicals, specialty software in chemistry, graphic design, and more, and nearly 50 expert staff ready to help students with research and scholarly projects.

Amaranth and Ty ambled over to Hartley Hall. They went inside, took the elevator to the 9th floor, got out, and went to suite #909 where they lived, studied, and laughed, often eating Chinese take-out food, listening to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, making love, and falling in love.

“It seems like only yesterday,” said Amaranth.

“This room, those memories, will be eternal,” replied Ty.

They stood in the hallway for quite some time, recalling other indelible memories and happenings. Finally, they took the elevator down to the main lobby of Hartley and took a seat on a sofa in the well-paneled lounge.

“This is where we spent so much time with Bill and Debbie and Herb and Leni,” said Ty.

“We shared so many stories, so many discussions, with them,” said Amaranth. “We discussed everything in the world, it seemed — thoughts, feelings, ideas, speculations. We argued sometimes about what Hegel really meant, and Spinoza,” said Amaranth. The two sat on that sofa in silence for a long time, awash in an endless stream of memories.

FInally, they left Hartley Hall and got some vegetarian food at the John Jay dining room and ate it. Then they continued their nostalgic walk around campus. Ty had wanted to revisit his “office” that he had had in Lerner, Columbia’s student union, when he was head of NSOP, so they did. Then they continued their tour, going by Alma Mater, the large sculpture in the middle of campus that Daniel Chester French had created, the same Daniel Chester French who had created the huge sculpture of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Amaranth and Ty wanted to visit Columbia’s new campus, just a few blocks north of the main campus. It was called the Manhattanville Campus. Both had graduated from Columbia College shortly after this massive project had gotten underway. Ty had emailed Columbia from Niwot as he was planning this trip and asked for information about the Manhattanville campus and had received a brochure about it that he did not fail to bring with him. Ty suggested that before they walked to it that he and Amaranth find a shady spot where they could sit while he read to Amaranth, and to himself, from the brochure.

“A century ago, Manhattanville was a bustling port and rail cargo hub developed into a local center for dairy products, automobile finishing, meatpacking and other light industries. But the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression signaled the end of strong manufacturing growth in Manhattanville. As industries died out, and the jobs they created disappeared, Manhattanville lost its promise as one of New York City’s manufacturing centers.

“Starting in 2003, Columbia began working with leaders of West Harlem to develop a long-term campus plan. Columbia engaged in New York City’s rigorous land use review process known as ULURP to rezone the project area to a mixed-use special district that would accommodate the construction of academic classrooms, as well as research and residential spaces, among other uses. In December, 2007, the New York City Council voted 35 to 3 in favor of the proposal.

“The Manhattanville campus designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill was the first such plan in the nation to win the Greene Building Council’s highest distinction for sustainability — the Leed-ND Platinum.”

“Interesting,” said Ty. “Now let’s go see it.”

Amaranth and Ty left the main campus via College Walk, turned right, and walked several blocks down Broadway to the Manhattanville campus. It was striking. The first building they saw was the Jerome L. Greene Science Center, which is home to the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. At the Greene Science Center, hundreds of the world’s leading researchers tackled the most exciting scientific research of our time: understanding how the brain works and gives rise to the interrelatedness of the mind and behavior. The Zuckerman Institute, lead by Nobel laureates, brings together a constellation of neuroscientists, engineers, statisticians, psychologists, and other scholars from across Columbia who collaborate on research, teaching, and public programming. Columbia’s scholars will transform human health and society, from effective treatments for disorders like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, depression and autism, to advances in fields as fundamental as computer science, economics, law, the arts, and social policy. The Greene Science Center is a nine-story, 450,000 square foot structure, the largest Columbia has ever built, and the biggest science building in New York City. Stairways pair floors, common spaces have communal facilities, and a quadrant system per floor that groups the labs of scientists with similar areas of inquiry that foster idea-sharing and problem-solving among fellow researchers. The Greene Science Center is a model of stable urban design. It sets a new standard for sustainable technology.

Amaranth and Ty moved on. The next new building was the Lenfest Center for the Arts. It provides a dynamic new space for Columbia’s School for the Arts. It hosts exhibitions, performances, screenings, symposia, readings and lectures that present new, global voices and perspectives. It also houses the Wallach Art Gallery.

The next new building Amaranth and Ty saw was the Forum. It is a multipurpose venue on the corner of 125th Street and Broadway and features a 430-seat auditorium. The new building boasts meeting rooms, faculty offices, and open gathering spaces.

The last new building Amaranth and Ty had to read about, because it had not yet been built. It was to be the new Columbia Business School, whose most famous graduate is Warren Buffett. It will be designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with FXFOWLE Architects. The new building will span 492,000 square feet and have an open space of approximately 42,000 square feet that will be called The Square.

Amaranth and Ty had enjoyed seeing and learning about the Manhattanville campus, but were tired.

“Let’s go back to International House and take a nap,” said Ty. Amaranth agreed, so off they went.

After their nap, they again changed into their evening wear and again took a cab, this time to a restaurant called Sola Lab.

“I have abridged and emended Shakespeare,” said Ty immediately after Amaranth and he had been seated at a table.

“What?” exclaimed Amaranth.

“I am not the gifted poet you are and Shakespeare was,” said Ty. “But I want to share this with you now anyway.”

Ty pulled from a pocket in his pants a piece of folded paper and unfolded it. “Except for one word, this is from Troilus and Cressida. This is from Shakespeare, but more importantly, this is from my heart.”

Ty began reading.

“I am mad/In Amaranth’s love/…Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice;/…her hand/In whose comparison all whites are ink,/…to whose soft seizure/The cygnet’s down is harsh’ ‘…I am gitty, expectations whirl me round./The imaginary relish is so sweet/That it enchants my senses./Even such a passion doth embrace my *****;/My heart beats thicker than a fev’rous pulse…’”

Tears began to flow from Amaranth’s eyes.

After a long, silent pause, they ate another wonderful meal.

When Amaranth and Ty returned to International House, they made mad, passionate love more than once, then fell peacefully to sleep, even as they continued to hold each other in embrace.



Chapter 34

Amaranth and Ty stood near the entrance of Dodge Fitness Center waiting for Bill and Debbie and Herb and Leni to show up. The gymnasium was crowded. In a short time, first Bill and Debbie showed up, then Herb and Leni.

“Wild Bill, God bless you! How in the hell are you?” cried Ty. Ty had always called Bill “Wild Bill.” They gave each other a hug. “Wild Bill,” by the way, was from Memphis, though Ty had never met Bill until they both came to Columbia College.

“And Debbie, how are you, and Herb and Leni, how are you?” asked Ty all around.

Amaranth jumped right in, saying hello to everyone, giving hugs to both Debbie and Leni.

It was wonderful for Amaranth and Ty to see their friends again. “Wild Bill” and Debbie lived in Chicago, on Elm Street, as it happened, that ran perpendicular to North Lake Shore Drive that bordered Lake Michigan. Bill and Debbie had bought a large apartment that “Wild Bill” had refurbished himself. “Wild Bill,” even as a kid, had enjoyed woodworking, and had always been gifted when it came to tools, all kinds of tools. He was now a practicing attorney specializing in health law. Debbie, who had gone to Barnard, was an interior director. Herb was now a practicing dermatologist with a Park Avenue practice. Leni Bergstrom held a high position with the Bloomberg Foundation. Herb and Leni lived together in the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

“Do you remember our trip to Sarah Lawrence, Ty?” laughed Herb.

Ty sure did remember that car trip to Sarah Lawrence. “And how you eventually gave those snooty Sarah Lawrence girls hell for behaving in such an untoward manner toward the two of us. But you were always unabashed, Ty, and, no doubt, you still are.” said Herb admiringly.

The four of them managed to find seats on the bleachers where they could sit and reminisce. And reminisce they did, for a long time. Oh, the memories, the laughter, the good times! A great education was so important to all of them, but friendships, these friendships that would last a lifetime were, in their own way, as important as their Columbia education.

A couple of hours went by in a second. Finally, as the crowd began to vacate the gymnasium, Amaranth and Ty and Bill and Debbie and Herb and Leni said their good-byes and left, too.

It had been a wonderful evening.



Chapter 35

Homecoming Day!

Ty had been a Columbia football fan ever since he arrived on campus. But the last time Columbia football had won even half of an Ivy League championship was in 1961 when Columbia had tied Harvard for it. But four years ago, thanks to some loud and assertive and influential alumni, Columbia had hired a new athletic director who, in turn, hired Al Bagnoli, who had had a remarkable career as head football coach for over two decades at Penn, the very team Bagnoli and his new incredibly talented squad was going to do battle with this afternoon at Baker Field.

After finishing breakfast at Tom’s, Amaranth and Ty headed up on the subway to Baker Field, which was located on the northern tip of Manhattan. Ty had purchased two of the best seats in Wein Stadium, at the 50-yard-line up high. Amaranth was not a great football fan, but because she knew how much Ty enjoyed Columbia football, she was a good sport.

This was Ivy League football — not Ohio State vs. Michigan, not Alabama vs. Mississippi, not USC vs. UCLA. Ivy football was not “big-time” college football, but it was nonetheless as competitive as hell. The Ivy League had been founded in 1954 as a new athletic conference for these exact reasons. The eight schools that constituted the Ivy League — Brown, Columbia, Cornell. Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale — saw the writing on the wall; that is to say, in 1954, college football games were beginning to be broadcast with greater frequency on national TV, which meant then, and for decades to come, the universities that could successfully entice, often with under-the-table offers of different kinds, the best high school football players across the land to come play football at their schools, and would stand to make millions and millions — now in the billions nationwide — never mind that most of their players they “recruited” were not very smart, and what was the worst, the universities didn’t care if their players got educated before or after they scored touchdowns. The eight Ivy League schools chose to forego “big-time” college football, because they wanted to give all their students, even athletes, the best education possible.

The game was exciting. Columbia jumped out to a 10-point lead. Then Penn countered with seven points of their own. In the second half, Columbia scored two more touchdowns, taking a 17 point lead into their locker room at halftime. In the third quarter, Penn scored another seven points, but so did Columbia. In the fourth quarter, with a sizable lead, Columbia only ran the ball, instead of ever passing it, to run down the clock, a strategy that worked, leaving Columbia a winner over Penn, 34 to 14. Ty was happy, and Amaranth was glad Ty was happy. After the game, they made it back to International House. After cleaning up a bit and putting on their evening wear, Amaranth and Ty took a cab to the Franchia Vegan Cafe, another superb vegetarian restaurant.

Amaranth told the waiter “For an appetizer, I would like the Franchia Vegan Shish Kebab,” said Amaranth said. That shish kebab was made of barbecued soy meat, with peppers and onions on sticks with teriyaki sauce. “Instead of having soup tonight, I would like to try your porridge of the day,” Amaranth said. The porridge was made of sweet corn, spinach, pumpkin, and black sesame. “For my salad, I would like the avocado asparagus salad. For my entrée, I would like the Thai basil soy chicken. I will skip dessert tonight,” said Amaranth.

Ty began to order. “For my appetizer, I would like the Manchurian cauliflower sticks,” said Ty. “Instead of soup, I would also like your porridge. For my salad, I would like your pumpkin noodles salad. And for my entrée, I would like your Mediterranean Bibimbap and Stone Bowl. I will skip dessert tonight as well,” said Ty.

Amaranth and Ty were once again in heaven. The victory over Penn that afternoon was sweet, but nothing compared to the dishes they were now devouring.

“I try my best at home,” said Amaranth. “But I cannot compete with these New York City vegetarian restaurants.”

“Your meals at home are the best in the world,” countered Ty. “We have to get to Richard Rodgers Theater now,”

Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, and Lorenz Hart, all had been schoolmates and musical collaborators at Columbia College almost ninety years ago. They had, in differing combinations, written the music and lyrics for the “Varsity Show,” an annual Columbia College tradition, even to this day.


Chapter 36

The Richard Rodgers Theater, obviously, was packed, but Ty, through his “connections,” was able to get the best seats in the house.

It was interesting to see how today’s theater-goers dressed to go see Broadway productions. Though the price one had to pay for a ticket to these Broadway blockbuster plays today was exorbitant, many of those who were able to pay showed up in the most casual clothing, even in jeans, no less.

Amaranth and Ty looked through the programs they were given as they entered the theater.

“Thank you for getting us tickets to see Hamilton, Ty,“ said Amaranth.

“But it would be a long time before Hamilton would make it to Niwot,” said Ty.

The musical was even better than advertised, thought both Amaranth and Ty.

As Amaranth and Ty were taking a cab home, Ty said, “Rodgers and Hammerstein were both musical geniuses. You knew they were both graduates of Columbia College, right Am?” Amaranth nodded. “They collaborated on so many great musicals: Oklahoma!; Carousel; State Fair; the great South Pacific; The King and I; Cinderella; Flower Drum Song; The Sound of Music."

As the cab approached International House, Ty remarked quietly, “Rodgers and Hammerstein. Jesus, what a legacy!”



Chapter 37

Amaranth and Ty had decided to sleep in Sunday morning. They were having a wonderful time on their trip to New York City, but both of them knew their days had been, and were going to continue to be, packed with activities, creating a daily schedule, while fun and exciting, that they were not used to. In short, they both were exhausted.

When they both woke up, it was almost 11 am. They took a shower together, which they liked to do sometimes, then got dressed, and finally headed to Tom’s.

After breakfast, they decided to head to Chinatown, which they did. This time, they decided to take the subway, the way they usually had traveled around New York City when they had been students. On Sundays, the subways, were, of course, usually less crowded.

As Amaranth sat on the subway, she remembered the powerful scene in Steinbeck’s epic novel, East of Eden, when Lee, Adam Trask’s Chinese servant, who was always stereotyped as dumb and complaisant, but, in fact, was extremely intelligent and wise, explained to Samuel and Adam the real meaning of the Hebrew word “timshel” that was found in the Bible in Genesis, but was often mistranslated in different versions of it. This profound scene was one of the watershed moments of the novel. In brief, Lee explained that the real meaning of the word was that there was always a chance of redemption, no matter how badly one had previously sinned.

The subway rattled on. Finally, it got to Chinatown.

The Chinatown Amaranth and Ty were going to visit was now one of nine Chinese communities in New York City, and when added to the other eight in greater New York City, had a population of close to 800,000, making these combined communities the largest outside of Asia.

The subway rattled on. Finally, it got to Chinatown.

Chinatown began when a man named Ah Ken showed up in New York City in the 1850s. It is told he opened a cigar store on Park Row and later operated a boarding house on Mott Street. In 1882 the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed. In 1900 the U.S. census reported that 7,028 Chinese males lived in New York City, but only 142 Chinese women, a huge gender gap. The Chinese Exclusion Act was finally repealed in 1943, but Manhattan’s Chinatown had remained essentially a bachelors’s community until 1965. The early days of Chinatown were controlled by “tongs” (associations), which were a mix of clans, landsmen, political, and crime syndicates that provided protection to people and businesses because of anti-Chinese sentiment. These associations eventually formed the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association. Street gangs popped up. Gangs like the “Ghost Shadows” and the “Flying Dragons” were fighting each other until the 1990s. Chinatown’s population increased dramatically after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was passed. Cantonese-speaking Chinese dominated Manhattan’s Chinatown. The huge influx of other Chinese (e.g. the Fuzhou) resulted in other neighborhoods springing up in other areas of greater New York City. The 2010 US Census showed a population of 47,844 in Manhattan’s Chinatown. Now population estimates range between 90,000 and 100,000. It continues to be a major tourist attraction, especially due to its many restaurants. Incipient gentrification is a growing threat to Manhattan’s Chinatown.

Amaranth and Ty started their walking tour at the Visitor’s Kiosk where they were able to pick informative brochures. They walked down Baxter Street, passing the Manhattan House of Detention (but still referred to as the “Tombs,” the original name of the first detention center that had been razed and replaced by a new facility) and the Manhattan Criminal Court Building. Then they came upon Columbus Park where they could see and hear Chinese residents playing cards (mahjong), singing traditional Chinese songs, playing their lutes, some groups practicing tai-chi. At the corner of Mosco and Mott Streets, they found the Church of the Transfiguration, originally a Lutheran church built in 1801, but now Roman Catholic. At 32 Mott Street, they saw the site of Quong Yuen Shing General Store that was, from 1891 to 2003, the longest continuously family-operated store in Chinatown. It had served not only as a place to buy goods, but also as a social center where denizens could come to talk, socialize, and help illiterate immigrants learn how to write and even offered them a bed to rent by the night in the back of the store. At 37 Mott Street, they came upon the Aji Ichiban Candy Store. Though the name of this store is Japanese, this store sells hundreds of kinds of Asian and Western and dried fruit, nuts, jerky, seafood — all things gummy. Amaranth and Ty sampled the preserved rose petal, a wasabi peanut, and the candied baby crab.

They continued on their walking tour, encountering the narrow Pell Street with 100-year-old tenement buildings made of bricks on both sides of it, as well as awnings and flags with Chinese writings on them. A hundred years before, Pell Street had been lined with brothels, gambling houses, gang hideouts, and ***** dens. They then came across the curved Doyer Street, named after Hendrik Doyer, an 18th century Dutch immigrant who had owned the land upon which the street sat. Doyer Street also had seen its share of violence. The two tongs gangs, the On Leong and the Hip Sing, had numerous shoot-outs, ambushes, and murders as they battled each other for dominance of Doyers Street and the criminal enterprises located on it. Doyer Street had come to be known as the “****** Angle.” But now, the most famous spot on that street was the Nom Wah Tea Parlor, Chinatown’s first, opened in 1920. Also on Doyer Street was the site of the former Chinese Opera House opened in 1893, but closed in 1901 because of the unchecked violence in the area. Amaranth and Ty then reached Chatham Square, which had been an open market before the burgeoning of Chinatown and later became run-down, an area of flophouses and tattoo parlors. They saw the Kimlau Memorial Arch named after Benjamin Ralph Kimlau who had served as an Allied pilot during World War II, but was killed in 1944 when his plane was shot down. Then came the statue of Lin Zexu who had been a politician in China during the 1830s and 40s and had fought to keep the ***** trade out of China. They saw the Shearith Israel Cemetery, the oldest cemetery in New York City, dating back to 1683. The Spanish and Portuguese Jews founded the Shearith Israel congregation, the only one in New York City for 200 years, lasting until 1825. At the corner of Bowery and Pell Street was the Edward Mooney House, a two-story red brick building that was the oldest townhouse in New York City, built in 1785.

When Amaranth and Ty came to the Bowery, they read it early on had been the main street of New York City, then known as New Amsterdam, but surrendered that distinction in time to Broadway. Once an entertainment center, it had become in the 1900s the “skid row” of the City where the down-and-out tried to survive among seedy hotels and soup kitchens. Finally, at 215 Centre Street was the Museum of Chinese in America. It was one of the most important national archives of Chinese history in America.

“I don’t think either of us took a walking tour of Chinatown when we were students. Is that right, Ty?” said Amaranth.

“I think you’re right, Am,” said Ty. “I remember reading Oscar Handlin’s The Uprooted as a student, a trenchant account of the Lower East Side where immigrant Jews who had entered the United States through Ellis Island and began to settle there. I remember wishing that that neighborhood had not undergone such a demographic change, so that I could have taken a walking tour through it to get a real feel of what they were up against. There is Ellis Island today, but only as a museum. The Statue of Liberty must feel lonely out there, thanks to Trump’s immigration policies, which, as you know, are anathema to me.”

“I know how you feel about Trump and all his other policies,” said Amaranth. “I feel the same way.”

Amaranth and Ty sat on a bench outside the Museum of Chinese in America, resting from their long but interesting and informative walking tour through Chinatown.

“Well, are you ready to go have dinner? We have reservations at Daniel tonight,” said Ty.

“Let’s go. I’m hungry,” replied Amaranth. They found a cab to take them to Daniel, and off they went.

Daniel was a new French restaurant located in the Upper East Side owned and operated by Daniel Boulud, New York City’s longest-reining four-star chef.

After they were seated, Amaranth began to order.

“For my first course, I would like the Mais (chilled corn veloute, avocados, sweet peppers, chive oil, and nasturtium flowers). For my second course, I would like the Couscous (douroum couscous fricassee, basquaise peppers, Thai basil salad). For my main course, I would like the Epinard (braised spinach, 1924 blue cheese cream, and St-Florentin potatoes). For my dessert, I would like the Cerise (thyme-scented Morello cherry pie and Timiz Chantilly). Thank you,” said Amaranth.

Ty ordered. “I would like for my first course the Haricot Plat (runner bean fricassee, fiddlehead ferns, spruce tips, buttermilk emulsion). For my second course, I would like the Oca (glazed oca, wild rose marmalade, radishes, yellow chicory). For my dessert, I would like the Sakanti (Balinese cacao, chocolate sable, gavotte, banana batak sorbet).”

“What an incredible meal!” cried Amaranth. Ty concurred.

“For my first course, I would like the Mais (chilled corn veloute, avocados, sweet peppers, chive oil, and nasturtium flowers). For my second course, I would like the Couscous (douroum couscous fricassee, basquaise peppers, Thai basil salad). For my main course, I would like the Epinard (braised spinach, 1924 blue cheese cream, and St-Florentin potatoes). For my dessert, I would like the Cerise (thyme-scented Morello cherry pie and Timiz Chantilly). Thank you,” said Amaranth.

Ty ordered. “I would like for my first course the Haricot Plat (runner bean fricassee, fiddlehead ferns, spruce tips, buttermilk emulsion). For my second course, I would like the Oca (glazed oca, wild rose marmalade, radishes, yellow chicory). For my dessert, I would like the Sakanti (Balinese cacao, chocolate sable, gavotte, banana batak sorbet).”

“What an incredible meal!” cried Amaranth. Ty concurred.

As they had spent almost half the day walking, Amaranth and Ty decided to call it a day and took a cab back to the International House where they immediately fell into bed in their room.

“Pleasant dreams,” whispered Amaranth. Ty leaned over and kissed her goodnight.



Chapter 38

Today was Monday, 28 October 2019.

After breakfast at Tom’s, Amaranth and Ty took a cab to the Museum of Modern Art and wound up spending virtually the entire afternoon there.

Their favorite paintings, among many others, were Toyin Ojih Odutola’s Projection Enclave, Rirkrit Tiravanija’s FEAR EATS THE SOUL, Sky Hopinka’s Anti-Objects, or Space Without Path or Boundary, Philipp Schaerer’s V22–02, from the Chicago series, Lisa Yuskavage’s Merlot, Kim Beom’s Untitled (Nose of a Pig Smells Accelerator), Lionel Maunz’s Obligation 1, Nicholas Nixon’s The Brown Sisters, Ibrahim El-Salahi’s The Group, Stephanie Syjuco’s Cargo Cults: Basket Woman, Tomma Abts’s Untitled (big circle), Andrea Büttner’s Piano Stool, Martin Barr’s Be Bold with Bananas, Lawrence ******’s Wir sind keine Enten auf dem Teich, wir sind Schiffe auf dem Meer from 25 years of FUN, Irma Boom’s Elements, Lyle Ashton Harris’s Untitled (triptych), Barbara Kasten’s Transposition 3, Bruce LaBruce’s Pierrot Lunaire, Tala Madani’s Wrong House, Ed Atkins’s Warm, Warm, Warm Spring Mouths, Tauba Auerbach’s Three Wire (SRS) from Type Specimen Portfolio 2013, Leonardo Finotti, Juan Sordo Madaleno’s Palmas 555, Mexico City, Mexico.

There were still, of course, the most famous paintings and sculptures of modern art at MoMa, which both Amaranth and Ty had seen when they were at Columbia. The works of Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Edward Hopper, Paul Klee, Ad Reinhardt (who had become close friends with both Robert Lax and Thomas Merton when all were students at Columbia College in the 1930s), Alexander Calder, Roy Lichtenstein, Willem de Kooning, Joan Miró, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jackson *******, Auguste Rodin, Mark Rothko, Frank Stella, and many others.

Moreover, it should not be forgotten that MoMA also had a world-renowned art photography collection. Ty, whom you might remember was an American history major at Columbia College, remembered well his spending a full afternoon more than a decade ago looking through MoMA’s art photography collection, especially those photographs taken by members of the famous group of American photographers chosen in the 1930s by the Farm Security Administration to spread out over parts of America that had been most seriously affected by the Great Depression. Ty’s three favorites of that group were Dorothea Lange (who had studied photography at Columbia), Gordon Parks, and Walker Evans (an Andover graduate). Lange’s iconic photograph entitled Migrant Mother had left an indelible impression on Ty, as it had done, and was still doing, to millions and millions of others around the world.

That evening, Amaranth and Ty had dinner at Le Bernardin, one of the world’s most famous restaurants. It served a variety of vegetarian dishes from which both Amaranth and Ty could construct, if you will, a vegetarian dinner.

Amaranth, as usual, began first. “I would like please the poached green asparagus, vegetable caviar, with white balsamic-herb seaweed vinaigrette; the warm artichoke panache, vegetable risotto, and barigoule emulsion; and the slowly cooked Mediterranean bouillabaisse, and anise-saffron infused broth.”

Ty was next. “I would like the black truffle tagliatelle; the cauliflower couscous, romanesco, okra, and seasonal vegetables in a Madras curry stew; the sauteed pea shoot-filled morels with green peppercorn sauce; and for dessert, the candied ginger parfait with roasted pineapple sorbet.”

“Excuse me, sir. I would also like the dessert,” added Amaranth.

They enjoyed their meals immensely, but had to make sure they had enough time to reach Lincoln Center to watch the New York City Ballet’s corps de ballet perform.

The New York City Ballet was founded in 1948 by the famous choreographers, George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. Tonight’s performance was going to be “Stravinsky & Balanchine: Allegro Brillante; La Source; and Firebird.”

Both Amaranth and Ty found the performances sensational. Only in New York City, and a small number of other major cities around the world, could one see such absolutely stellar performances.

“Well,” said Amaranth, “I’ll never forget this night — LeBernardin and the New York City Ballet in the same evening!”

“This is what I wanted to give you tonight, Am. The only greater thing I can give you always is my love, which I offer you every nanosecond of my life,” said Ty, who then kissed his wife on the cheek.



Chapter 39

It was Tuesday.

After another satisfying breakfast at Tom’s, Amaranth and Ty hailed a cab on Broadway and traveled to the American Museum of Natural History.

The Museum has had a storied history. Ty read to Amaranth from his brochure about the Museum: “Since its founding in 1869, the Museum has advanced its global mission to discover, interpret, and disseminate information about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe through a wide-ranging program of scientific research, education, and exhibition.

“The Museum is renowned for its exhibitions and scientific collections, which serve as a field guide to the entire planet and present a panorama of the world’s cultures.”

In 2019, the American Museum of Natural History was celebrating its 150th anniversary. Amaranth and Ty thought they would first tour the permanent exhibitions. Ty continued to read from his brochure: “The Hall of Biodiversity presents a vivid portrait of the beauty and abundance of life on Earth, highlighting both diversity and the factors that threaten it.

“Ecological biodiversity is illustrated by a 2,500 square foot walk-through diorama that depicts part of the Dzanga-Sangha rain forest, one of Earth’s most diverse ecosystems. Featuring more than 160 species of flora and fauna, the diorama uses video and sound to recreate the ecosystem at dawn, at an elephant clearing, and degraded by human intervention along a road.”

Amaranth and Ty slowly walked through the Hall of Diversity, looking at and reading about all the other exhibitions within it: the Spectrum of Life; the Siberian Tiger; the Dodo Bird; the Endangered Species; and the Protists.

There was, of course, a gargantuan amount of interesting and fascinating information to be gleaned from all the exhibitions, both permanent and special. Amaranth and Ty paced their walking and reading, so they would not be overwhelmed by the magnitude of what they were exploring and ingesting.

They walked through the rest of the permanent exhibitions: the Hall of North American Forests; the Irma and Paul Milstein Family Hall of Ocean Life; the Hall of Birds of the World; the Hall of New York City Birds; the Leonard C. Sanford Hall of North American Birds; the Hall of Reptiles and Amphibians; the Arthur Ross Hall of Meteorites; the Morgan Memorial Hall of Gems; the Harry Frank Guggenheim Hall of Minerals; the Paul and Irma Milstein Hall of Advanced Mammals; the Hall of Ornithischian Dinosaurs; the Hall of Primitive Mammals; the Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs; the Hall of Vertebrate Origins; the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Orientation Center; the Grand Gallery; the Northwest Coast Hall; the Hall of Central and South America; the Hall of African Peoples; the Gardner D. Stout Hall of Asian Peoples; the Hall of Eastern Woodlands; the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Hall of Human Origins; the Margaret Mead Hall of Pacific Peoples; the Hall of Plains Indians; the Hall of South American Peoples; the Bernard Family Hall of North American Mammals; the Akeley Hall of African Mammals; the Hall of Asian Mammals; the Hall of Primates; the Hall of Small Primates; the Rose Center for Earth and Space; the Hayden Planetarium; the Harriet and Robert Heilbrunn Cosmic Pathway; the Scales of the Universe; the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Hall of the Universe; the David S. and Ruth L. Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth; the Hayden Big Bang Theater; the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall; the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda; and the Discovery Room.

“That was a long, long, but most interesting tour we just completed,” said Amaranth. “How about us taking a break, maybe getting a soda?”

“You bet,” said Ty.

After their break, they went to view the special exhibits. They included “Oceans: Our Blue Planet;” “T. rex: The Ultimate Predator;”

“Unseen Oceans;” and “Dark Universe.’

“I liked ‘Unseen Oceans’ the best,” said Amaranth. “You could spend two lifetimes absorbing all that’s in this museum.”

“Maybe three,” added Ty.



Chapter 40

When Amaranth and Ty got back to the International House, they lay down to rest, understandably, for a while. Ty had brought along Frederick Douglass’s autobiography to read and Amaranth had brought Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. They enjoyed their books for an hour or so. But again, they had to get ready to go eat at the Blue Hill, 75 Washington Place, so they would arrive at the Shubert Theatre on time to see the Broadway smash hit, To **** A Mocking Bird.

When the two were seated at Blue Hill, the waiter took their orders.

“I would like the Castelfranco Radicchio (Blue Hill farm yogurt, cherries, and preserved ramps) please,” said Amaranth, “and I would like the Montauk Skate (cucumbers and dill), and I would like the Summer Vegetable Lasagna (fava beans, summer squash, and farmer’s cheese).”

And Ty said, “I would like the Snap Peas (rhubarb, strawberries, and curry), and I would like the Sprouted Row 7 Barley (chanterelles, apricots, and a pullet egg), and I would like the Blue Hill Farm Chicken (celtuce, blueberries, and horseradish). Thank you.”

Again, as one would imagine, the food was wonderful.

Amaranth and Ty took a cab to the Shubert Theatre and got there with time to spare. Both had heard that this play was, in a number of ways, different from the movie, but had nonetheless received rave reviews. And both of them had seen the movie a number of times. It was, in fact, one of Amaranth’s all-time favorites. Indeed, when she was a teenager in Sedona, she had had a crush on Gregory Peck, not only because he was so handsome, but also because he projected a kindness, an empathy, that she really felt emanated from his own center as a human being, not just as an actor. The two went in to watch the play.

When they came out, Amaranth said, “ I really liked the play. I liked the subtle and not-so-subtle changes made. Jeff Daniels, about whom I had my doubts, pulled it off. The actress who played Calpurnia deserves to win a Tony Award, as does Daniels. Whoever wrote the screenplay took a lot of chances, but in the end, the play was effective, at once at times caustic, at other times evocative and electric.”

“This play, the movie, the book, all are about racism, which is the legacy of slavery, the brutal, ugly, immoral, death-dealing slavery that began to ravage North America some 400 years ago. The triangle of trade, the Atlantic Slave Trade, is what first made the thirteen colonies prosperous, both in the North and in the South. And then, after 1776, slavery made the United States of America, over time, into the new, roaring, economic engine of the world. Our nation was built on the backs of black slaves, 4,000,000 by 1861, and despite the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865 that ‘legally’ abolished slavery in our ‘democracy,’ our nation morphed into a pernicious, evil, racist country. Racism today pervades every county, every town and city, every state in our so-called democracy. If Martin Luther King, Jr. had not been murdered by a single rifle shot to the head on April 4th, 1968 on a Lorraine Motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee, you could ask him if I’m not right, but you can’t, because he’s dead. So you can ask instead Trump, the humanist that he is, if I’m not right,” concluded Ty, obviously heated.

Amaranth knew well where Ty was coming from, and why. Ty had never been able to brook even an iota of racism, and undaunted as he had always been, would never hesitate a moment to tell you emphatically how he felt and in what he believed. This singular attribute of his was perhaps the overriding reason why she respected him so, and loved him so much.



Chapter 41

Amaranth had felt a poem welling up inside of her. She could tell what was welling up inside of her was unusually intense, even bellicose perhaps. And perhaps it was welling up in part because of what Ty had to say, and the way he said it, last night after the play. Regardless, what was happening now felt markedly different to her, but Amaranth had always trusted, respected, what welled up inside of her because this silent and sacred process had always proven, in a spiritual way, to be her truth. It had always come intuitively, never forced.

She awakened while Ty was still asleep. She carefully got out of bed so as not to wake Ty up. She picked up her purse and pulled the notebook and her pen she always carried with her. Then she went over to the desk and sat down, putting her notebook on the desktop and opening it up to a clear page. Then she began recording what was beginning to come out of her.

THOSE WHO RULE

We shall keep the poor poor.
We shall be on them like
a master’s whip on the backs
of slaves; but they will not
know us: we are too far, and
too close. We shall use the
patois of patriotism to patronize
them. We shall hide behind our
flags while we hold only one pole.
We shall have the poor fight our
wars for us, and die for us; and
before they die, they will **** for
us, we hope, enough. In peace,
we shall piecemeal them and serve
them meals made of toxins and tallow.
For their labor, we shall pay them
slave wages; and all that we give
we shall take back, and more, by
monumental scandals that subside
like day’s sun at eventide. We shall
be clever, as ever, circumspect and
surreptitious at all times. We shall
keep them deluded with the verisimilitude
of hope, but undermine always its
being. We shall infuse their lives
with fear and hate, playing one
race against another, one religion
against a brother’s. Disaffection is
our key; but we must modulate our
efforts deftly, so the poor remain
frightened and angered, but always
blind and deaf and divided. And if,
perchance, one foments, we shall
seize the moment and drop his head
into his hands, even as he speaks.
This internecine brew we pour, there-
fore, into the poor to keep them drunk
with enmity and incapacitation. Ah,
eternal anticipation! Bottoms up,
old chaps. We, those who rule,
shall have them always in our laps.
We are, as it were, their salvation.


Amaranth had never before written a poem like this one. She lay her pen diagonally across her poem, got up from the desk, and quietly, so quietly, got back into bed to lie beside her Ty.

Amaranth lay beside Ty until he awoke, and then the two made love. What a beautiful way to start a new day.



Chapter 42

“Tomorrow, we go home, back to Niwot,” said Ty. “ You would think one might be sad to leave all that we have seen and eaten and heard in this incomparable metropolis, but I’m not. We will take all that we have experienced and enjoyed here back home with us, not in our suitcases, but in our hearts and minds.”

Amaranth sat on the edge of the bed, listening.

“There are many that live here who think they have a monopoly on success, but they don’t, because success is not the clothes one wears, not the car one drives, not the house one lives in, not the job one has, not the title one holds, not the money one makes. Success is being and becoming. Success is always being true to yourself,” concluded Ty.

“Today, our penultimate day, we travel to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The museum, as you know, is gigantic. I remember once I simply walked through the entire museum, walking but never stopping, to see how long it would take. It took me three hours. Therefore, I respectfully suggest we go only to the Impressionist wing. I know we both love the Impressionists. Is that OK with you, Am?”

Amaranth nodded in the affirmative.

“Great,” said Ty. “Let’s go have breakfast at Tom’s, then we’ll go to the Met.”

After finishing breakfast, Amaranth and Ty took a cab to the museum. When they got there, they headed directly to the Impressionist wing.

Ty had been standing in front of Renoir’s “Still Life with Peaches” for about a half hour. He was transfixed, mesmerized. Amaranth, who had been roaming around the wing, came over to Ty.

“Am, I think this is the most beautiful painting I have ever seen,” said Ty.

“I think it is gorgeous, yes,” said Amaranth.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges, Haute-Vienne, France on 25 February 1841. He was inspired by the works of Pissarro and Manet. With Sisley, Pissarro, and Monet and several other artists, Renoir mounted the first Impressionist exhibition in April, 1874. Subsequently, he traveled around Europe to see the works of other famous painters, including Delacroix and Velazquez. He also met the famous composer, Wagner. Renoir’s most famous paintings included Bal du Moulin de la Galette, Le Déjeuner des canotiers, Les Grandes Baigneuses, La Loge, Bal a Bougival, Madame Georges Charpentier et Ses Enfants, Jeunes Filles au Piano, La Parisienne, Les Parapluies, and Les Deux Soeurs.

“I have two favorites,” said Amaranth. “They are van Gogh and one of yours, Renoir.”

Vincent van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 in Groot-Zundert, Holland. He created more than 2,000 artworks during his life — landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and self-portraits. He didn’t start painting until 1881. The vast majority of his paintings were done in the last two years of his life. He suffered psychotic episodes such as delusions and hallucinations throughout his life and sought help several times by being admitted to different psychiatric hospitals. His mental illness, ineluctably and unconsciously, imbued his paintings with extraordinary qualities that made them unique. He was extremely close to his brother, Theo, who had tried to help Vincent sell his paintings. Only one painting was sold during his lifetime. Today, each of his paintings is worth millions and millions of dollars. On 29 July 1890, Vincent committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest.

“Vincent van Gogh is the artistic equivalent of the poetic William Blake and Emily Dickinson in that all three were never recognized in their lifetimes as the geniuses they were,” said Amaranth.

Other artists represented through their paintings and sculptures in the Impressionist wing were Degas, Monet, Bonnard, Vuillard, Derain, Cassatt, Whistler, Weir, Pissarro, Morisot, Seurat, Harper, Metcalf, Matisse, Sargent, Vonnoh, Twachtman, Sisley, Rodin, Bracquemond, Bastien-Lepage, Hassam, Cézanne, Robinson, Manet, Cuvelier, Caillebotte, Delacroix, Inness, Balthus, Toulouse-Lautrec, van Rysselberhge, Rosso, Courbet, Yong, Tian, Bazille, Gauguin, and others.

Amaranth and Ty went directly to Fournos Theophilos, a highly rated Greek vegetarian restaurant, because again they didn’t want to be late arriving at Lincoln Center where they would be listening to the New York Philharmonic.

Amaranth began. “For an appetizer, I would like please to get the Tzatziki (Greek yogurt, cucumbers, dill, garlic, and Greek olive oil, served with pita bread). I would like the soup of the day. For a salad, I would like the Greek salad (pleated filo crust, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, onions, Greek feta cheese, whole wheat rusks, Greek extra ****** olive oil, and red wine vinegar). For my entree, I would like the traditional Mediterranean pie (pleated filo crust, tomatoes, olives, and cheese). And for dessert, I’m going to have to have your baklava.”

Ty said, “I’m going to have the Fava (yellow split pea spread from Santorini, Greece served with pita bread). I too will have the soup of the day. For my salad, I would like your baby kale salad (mandarans, almonds, with carrot turmeric vinaigrette). For my entree, I would like your traditional cheese and spinach pie (pleated filo crust, spinach, sweet leeks, dill and parsley mixed with sheep and goat’s mizithra, and feta cheese). And for dessert, I would like your Mosaic (a fridge cake with buttery, creamy chocolate, crunchy cookies, and a hint of aromatic brandy).

“I have not had Greek food often, but tonight’s dinner was tasty, wonderful,” said Amaranth.

“I’m glad you liked it, Am,” said Ty. “This was your last New York City vegetarian dinner, at least for a while.”

Amaranth and Ty rushed over to Lincoln Center and found their seats in David Geffen Hall.

Tonight’s program would be Mozart’s Symphony №40, Sibelius’s Second Symphony, and Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony, the “Eroica.” Jaap van Zweden, conducting.

Amaranth and Ty knew all three symphonies, and liked each one.

“Am, did you ever see the movie Amadeus?” Ty asked.

“Yes, I did,” replied Amaranth. She and Ty, she thought, were among the luckiest people in the world to be able to hear in person these objects of virtu played by one the best symphony orchestras on Earth.

“Miloš Forman, who was the director for Amadeus, won an Oscar for the job he did. He was teaching at Columbia’s School of the Arts at that time. Amadeus also won an Oscar as Best Picture. Forman also directed One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and won another Oscar for that job well done,” added Ty.

Wolfgang Amadeas Mozart was born on 27 January 1756 in Salzburg, then part of the Holy Roman Empire. A child prodigy, Mozart wrote his first symphony when he was eight years old. He traveled extensively when he was young through Europe with his sister, Nannerl, and their father  performed before European nobility. Later, only Mozart and his father toured. He met Haydn and Beethoven. Eventually, he settled in Vienna. Mozart experienced financial difficulties throughout his adult life. As well, he composed over 600 works during his life, including symphonies, concertos, operas, sonatas, and choral music. Mozart was only 35 when he died on 5 December 1791.

Jean Sibelius was born on 8 December 1865 in Hämeenlinna in the Grand Duchy of Finland. Initially he had dreamed of becoming a violin virtuoso, but ultimately became a composer instead. Sibelius unfortunately was both an epicure and a heavy drinker, which caused him financial stress from time to time. He is best known for his seven symphonies and his nationalistic tone poem, Finlandia. Sibelius was 91 when died on 20 September 1957.

Ludwig van Beethoven was baptised on 17 December 1770 in Bonn, the capital of the Electorate of Cologne. When he was 21, he moved to Vienna and studied composition under Haydn. By 1811, Beethoven was virtually completely deaf. Nevertheless, he kept composing great works. Beethoven composed nine symphonies, five piano concertos, one violin concerto, 32 piano sonatas, 16 string quartets, two masses, and an opera, Fidelio. He is considered to be one of the greatest composers of all time. Beethoven was 56 when he died in Vienna on 26 March 1827.

“Why can’t our world be as beautiful and uplifting as the three symphonies we listened to tonight?” asked Amaranth.

Ty had no answer.



Chapter 43

Back to Niwot.

It was Thursday, 24 October 2019, and it was time to go home. Their flight was scheduled to leave at 11:20 am and they knew, of course, they had to be at the airport at least a couple of hours before takeoff, so they had set the alarm for an early rise time in order to give them time to eat breakfast at Tom’s and still have plenty of time to get to JFK.

They took a cab to JFK, went through the protracted “shake-down,” sat for awhile, then finally boarded their non-stop Delta flight to DIA. Ty had finished reading Frederick Douglass’s autobiography and had started reading a biography of William Lloyd Garrison, the famous abolitionist who had founded and edited the newspaper, The Liberator.

Amaranth, in turn, had a bit more to read of Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. Both got pillows before take-off. They were on their way.

This time, they both fell asleep during the flight home, which was probably a good thing in that both of them had expended a lot of energy during their week in New York City, plus their sleep made the trip seem a lot faster than it actually was. They landed at DIA a little after 5:00 pm Denver time.

“It feels both good and strange at the same time being in Colorado rather than frenetic New York City,” said Ty as he drove Amaranth and himself back to Niwot. “But, bottom line, it will be good to get home,” he added.

Ty pulled into their driveway, unloaded the suitcases from the trunk of the car, and carried them into the house. Amaranth followed.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to hit the sack,” said Ty.

“Thank you for a most wonderful week in New York City, Ty. I will never forget it,” said Amaranth.

“Thank you, Am, for being my wife and making each day of mine a vacation par excellence,” said Ty.

The two hugged and kissed, then went to bed, happy to be in their home once again.


Chapter 44

Amaranth sat in her chair at the kitchen table sipping tea. Morning sunlight poured through the kitchen windows.

Society is like the individual, Amaranth thought. What it does not like, it neglects, ignores. The individual represses, society oppresses. Helicopters hover, but do not help. Urban renewal is a societal lobotomy.

We need a new technology, she thought, an emotional technology. Before we bus our children from one part of town to another, we must first crisscross out hearts and souls, know every street and alley of our feelings, every suburb and ghetto of our guts. Before we integrate our races, we must integrate our emotions. The boundaries that divide us are not on maps, but in our minds and hearts.

Old technologies have built institutions into which society dumps its misfits and misgivings. Prisons, jails, reform schools, mental hospitals, institutes for the mentally *******, nursing homes for the aged. Confined, compartmentalized, compact, concealed.

These institutions are society’s pockets of unconsciousness. They are there not just to treat and rehabilitate our people with problems, but to keep them away from us and us away from them. Institutions we place at the peripheries of our existence help us to feel safe, to differentiate artificially ourselves from others, to substantiate falsely are own physical, mental, and moral well-being, as if to say ipso facto, we on the outside are better off than those on the inside.

Rather than work through our own conflicts and anxieties, we use vicariously these people and places to cleanse ourselves of our own aberrations. It is as if we hide — nay, exorcise — those painful parts of ourselves: the criminal, the insane, the crippled, the blind and deaf, the socially disgraced parts of all of us, by placing these afflicted souls into institutions , then forgetting them, as we forget the humanness we share with them. Symbolically we sacrifice them to societal gods of rectitude and propriety to allay our self-doubts, to atone for our guilts.

Our concern is perfunctory: we simply pay our taxes and give to the United Way, making the sick and disturbed mercenary soldiers to fight emotional wars for us in distant places. As we put people into brutal buildings, our feelings turn to steel and stone. When we banish them to institutional oblivion, we abdicate our own humanness, failing to touch the parts of us that make us real.

Amaranth took another sip of tea, then got up from her chair and went to the bedroom to lie down.



Chapter 45

Amaranth met Julie at the Parkway Cafe in Boulder for breakfast.

“Julie, it’s so good to see you,” said Amaranth.

“And it’s so good to see you, too. How was your trip to New York City?” asked Julie.

“Frankly, it was spectacular, I’m pleased to say. It was a whirlwind week of nostalgia, sightseeing, cultural experiences, and some of the best vegetarian meals served in the world. We had a great time, Ty and I,” replied Amaranth.

“That’s great,” said Julie.

“And how are you and Ed doing?” asked Amaranth.

“We took the Peak to Peak Highway to see all the colors of the trees changing. It never gets boring to see such beauty,” said Julie.

The two ordered their meals and continued to chat as they were eating.

“You remember the Robertsons? They just got divorced two weeks ago. What a shame,” said Julie.

Amaranth took a bite of avocado, then asked “They have two children, don’t they?”

“That’s right, Am. And pity the children. You know the kids are going to have a hard time with this, even if they’re not conscious of it, right? said Julie.

“You’re right, Julie. Children of any age, even through their teenage years, will necessarily have to struggle with a situation like that — their parents split, maybe one or both of them remarried. It will take an emotional toll on the kids, anyway you slice it,” said Amaranth.

It was, indeed, wonderful to see Julie again. Julie had been her best friend since she and Ty had moved to Colorado. Amaranth again remembered that Chinese proverb: “One can do without people, but one has need of a friend.”

The two continued talking for more than a half hour. Finally, they got up from the booth and paid their bills.

“Give Ed my best,” said Amaranth.

“And you do the same for me with Ty,” responded Julie.



Chapter 46

October soon became November, and November meant Thanksgiving. And after Thanksgiving came Christmas.

Amaranth and Ty had two annual rituals. The first was to visit the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Fort Collins on Thanksgiving Day. The second was to visit the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo on the evening of Christmas Eve.

Every year on Thanksgiving Day, for as long as they had lived in Niwot, they drove there and brought with them a slice of pumpkin pie for each person in that facility. Amaranth would find out how many people were going to be in the facility on Thanksgiving Day, then cook enough pumpkin pies so everyone would get a slice. She and Ty loved not only the handing out of these slices of pie to every person who wanted one, but also, and more importantly, taking all the time needed to chat with any and all the people who wanted to chat with them for a bit. Not every person there would not want to talk with them and, of course, Amaranth and Ty would not bother anyone who did not want to participate in the chatting. But there were always many who really wanted to talk with them. These people did not have many visitors throughout the year, so those who were receptive to chatting and visiting really enjoyed it when Amaranth and Ty came to see them. Of course, the pumpkin pie was nice, too.

The other ritual was similar to the first. On Christmas Eve day, they would travel to Pueblo, but this time bring with them homemade Christmas cookies that Amaranth had baked, along with a sufficient number of gallons of Christmas punch. Again, both Amaranth and Ty would hand out the cookies on paper plates with paper napkins and pour the punch into paper cups and hand those out, too. Again, anyone who did not want to participate would not be bothered. But again, there were so many people who did want to chat and visit with Amaranth and Ty that they might wind up spending a couple of hours doing this.

The people whom they greeted on each of these two holidays were basically the people whom society had forgotten, and moreover, never wanted to remember. They were outcasts, ostracized for life. That’s why these two visits meant so much to these people, and also meant so much to Amaranth and Ty. These visits made the holidays so special to Amaranth and Ty, better than a big Thanksgiving dinner, better than a lot of presents under a Christmas tree.

Thanksgiving was coming soon, so Amaranth had to get busy finding out how many people would be spending Thanksgiving Day at the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Fort Logan, then baking enough pumpkin pies to offer a slice to everyone who wanted one.

This was a joyous time of year for both Amaranth and Ty. Both felt blessed this time of year, and for good reasons.



Chapter 47

The voice had not spoken to her during her sleep for a long time. But last night, it did.

“Earth and all its living creations will face the most dangerous times in the near future. Don’t be frightened. I will help you save Earth.”

Amaranth sat on the blue sofa in the living room for a long time. She wasn’t frightened, but saving Earth? What was the voice trying to tell her? What the hell did it mean? She couldn’t wait to see Dr. Rosenstein and tell him about this. Fortunately, she was scheduled to see the doctor in two days. That gave her some solace.

Two days didn’t come fast enough for Amaranth.

“Dr. Rosenstein, it’s so nice to see you. I have something very important to tell you,” said Amaranth.

She sat down in the chair and instantly began to tell him what the voice had said.

“Well, Amaranth, first tell me how you are doing after this incredible experience,” said Dr. Rosenstein.

“I think I’m OK, but what a shock, hearing that I was going to help save Earth,” said Amaranth.

“I am not surprised by your reaction. I would feel the same way as you if that had happened to me,” said Dr. Rosenstein.

“The voice said, ‘Don’t be frightened.’ Well I’m not exactly frightened — the voice’s tone was the same as it’s always been, calm, almost soothing, but what a message, gigantic and enigmatic at the same time,” said Amaranth.

“Well, of course, Amaranth, I have no idea what all of this means, but let me assure you, I will be here to help you deal with this, if that’s what you wish,” said Dr. Rosenstein.

“Oh yes, Dr. Rosenstein, I would appreciate your help. Just having someone like you to tell about what’s happening to me, even if neither of us knows what it means, would be most helpful to me. Thank you so much,” said Amaranth.

“And let me add, Amaranth, that if you find yourself getting emotionally wrought over this, you should know that I would be more than willing to prescribe a sedative that would help you get through this,” said Dr. Rosenstein.

“Thank you, doctor. That’s very reassuring, but right now I don’t think I need anything like that. I’ll tell you if and when I feel differently. By the way, you should know that you are the only person who knows about the voice besides me. Not even Ty knows, yet,” said Amaranth.

Amaranth felt somewhat relieved after sharing with Dr. Rosenstein about what the voice had said. The doctor, Amaranth thought, was very good at what he did, helping people help themselves. Amaranth did share with the doctor the highlights of the New York City week, which took up essentially the rest of her session.

“Thank you, again, Dr. Rosenstein. I’ll see you next week,” said Amaranth, and then left his office.



Chapter 48

It was soon to be Thanksgiving Day. Amaranth had called the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Fort Logan and had spoken the the head nurse who had been her official contact for all these past years. She had found out that 46 of the people at the Institute would be there on Thanksgiving Day, so, by dividing 46 by 6 — the latter being the number of slices a pumpkin pie could be cut into — meant she would have to bake 8 pies. So Amaranth began to make and bake the first one.

She already had made the first pie shell, so she began to mix the sugar, cinnamon, salt, ginger, and cloves in a small bowl. Then she beat the eggs in a large bowl. Then she stirred in the pumpkin and sugar-spiced mixture into the large bowl, along with what was in the small bowl, and then stirred and poured everything in the large bowl into the pie shell. Then she put the unbaked pie into the oven, which she had preheated to 425 degrees F, let the pie bake for 15 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 350 degrees F and let it bake for 40 to 50 minutes or until she could insert a knife into the center of the pie and be able to pull it out clean.

Amaranth loved to do this — bake pumpkin pies for people who probably hadn’t tasted a bite of pumpkin pie for at least a year. It would take her quite a while to make all eight of the pumpkin pies she needed, but every pie she made was a labor of love.



Chapter 49

Today was Thanksgiving Day.

Ty helped Amaranth carefully load the eight pumpkin pies into the car. Then they headed out for Fort Logan. It was about 45 miles from Niwot, about a one-hour drive. Amaranth put a CD of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, one of her favorites, into the slot in the dashboard. It was a bright, sunny day, if a bit cool.

“This should be a most pleasant afternoon for us, Am,” said Ty, who was driving.

“It always has been,” replied Amaranth.

Beethoven’s 7th Symphony had concluded some time ago as Amaranth and Ty pulled up in front of the entrance to the Colorado Mental Health Institute. They got out of the car and walked up to the front door and opened it, went inside, and almost immediately encountered the head nurse whose first name was Carolyn.

“Carolyn, it’s so nice to see you again. It’s been exactly a year ago since Ty and I had the pleasure of your company,” said Amaranth. Ty said hello as well.

“It is so nice that you two do this every year, every Thanksgiving. It means so much to the people who have to stay here on Thanksgiving Day, because they either have no family or friends to invite them to their homes. They’re stuck here, forgotten, often, it’s sad to say, on purpose,” declared Carolyn.

“I know,” declared Amaranth.

“Let me get some aids to help you bring the pies in your car into the day room,” said Carolyn.

“Thank you,” said Amaranth.

Several aids brought the pies from the car into the day room and placed them on a long table. They also brought in the grocery sack that had in it the paper plates, plastic forks, and paper napkins Amaranth and Ty would be needing.

“Thanks for your help,” Amaranth said to the aids.

Amaranth began cutting each pie into six pieces. As she was doing so, a middle-aged woman came up to her and said, “You’re Amaranth, aren’t you? I remember you from last year. I’m Bernadette,” the woman said.

“It’s so nice of you to remember me, Bernadette,” said Amaranth. “I’ll soon have a piece of pumpkin pie to give you.”

Amaranth finished cutting all the pies into six pieces.

“We have pieces of pumpkin pie to give you, if you’d like one,” said Amaranth to the small crowd forming in front of the table. “If you will just form a line, it will be easier for us to give each of you a piece.”

People began to form a line. Amaranth put a piece of pie on a plate, then handed it to Ty, who added a fork and a napkin.

Amaranth and Ty always introduced themselves by their first names to everyone in line who came to get a piece of pie.

“Hi, I’m Amaranth, and this is my husband, Ty,” she would say.

Most, but not all, would give Amaranth and Ty their first names, but one could tell, even without words, the people loved to get their pieces of pumpkin pie, and no doubt, deep in their hearts, appreciated more than they could express, this wife and husband who had remembered them on this Thanksgiving Day.

After most of the people had finished their pieces of pumpkin pie, a number of them came up to Amaranth and Ty, giving them their first names and thanking them for what they had done. Some of them even wanted to talk to them, chat with them, and, of course, Amaranth and Ty obliged. Both these people, as well as Amaranth and Ty, enjoyed this social ******* immensely. Those who didn’t want this kind of interaction, or, in fact, simply couldn’t interact at all, Amaranth and Ty did not bother.

Amaranth and Ty stayed in that large room as long as any of the people wanted to talk. They were never in a rush to leave. This, after all, was their Thanksgiving Day, too, and this was how they had wished to celebrate it for a number of years now.

“I have to be honest with you, Am,” said Ty as he pulled out of the parking lot.

“About what?” Amaranth asked quizziically.

“I put aside one piece of your pumpkin pie for myself and then ate it,” confessed Ty. “It was delicious!”

“Oh Ty!” said Amaranth, laughingly.

They got back home safely.



Chapter 50

Snow covered the ground. It had been falling for quite some time. The crocuses were now sleeping.

Amaranth stood at the back door in the kitchen, looking through its windows.

Winter was a time for slumber, she thought. It was a time to enter her heart with the brown bear to keep her warm.

When she was a child, she used to crawl into bed when she got cold and snuggle up under the blankets making, she thought now, almost a second womb where she could be safe and warm. She thought, too, of the baby she never had had, never was capable of having. She tried never to think about that hole in her otherwise joyous life, but sometimes she couldn’t help it. This was one of those times.

Winter was a metaphor for this cold emptiness she sometimes felt, like right now. She imagined having a baby, nursing her baby, keeping her baby warm with soft pieces of cloth wrapped around the baby. She would sing lullabies to her baby as she carried it in her arms through the different rooms of her home. In fact, Amaranth began singing a lullaby she had written and memorized.

A LULLABY FOR MY BABY

Tell me why, oh butterfly,
do you fly so high?
Tell me why, oh butterfly,
high up in blue sky?

Tell me, pretty butterfly,
with your wings of gold,
are you as kind and gentle
as I’m always told?

Tell me, golden butterfly,
will you come to me
and light upon my shoulder
to keep me company?

And when night falls, my butterfly,
please let your golden wings
illuminate the darkness
until the bluebird sings.

Amaranth kept stroking her baby’s forehead with her gentle fingertips. She would lie down on her bed with her baby, softly singing her songs until her baby fell asleep. And she would lie there with her baby on her chest, sometimes it felt like forever, but Amaranth didn’t mind at all. She was with her baby, and that was all that mattered. She was enveloped in love….

When Amaranth felt this way, she would begin to cry, sometimes for a long time. Ty was not at home, so she knew he would not suddenly come into the kitchen. If she cried for too long a time, she would go to the bedroom, pull the blankets down, get into bed, then pull the blankets up around her, just as she had done when she had been a child. Eventually, she would fall asleep.

The snow kept falling.



Chapter 51

Amaranth and Ty always celebrated Christmas, but in a different way.

While growing up in Sedona, she had once come across an ad in the Phoenix Republic a few weeks before Christmas. The ad, which had been placed in the newspaper by an Episcopal church, read “Whose birthday is this anyway?” Amaranth never forgot that ad and the message it had so trenchantly conveyed.

Neither Amaranth nor Ty had ever belonged to an organized religion, but had always celebrated what they felt was the simple but profound message of Jesus, which was love. They never had had a Christmas tree, either real or plastic, in their home--real, because that would have meant killing a live tree; plastic, because the world was full of plastic, including the oceans. They were vehemently opposed to the commercialization of Christmas. Amaranth had felt for a long time that the weeks preceding Christmas should be spiritual, not commercial, that this time should be spent in relative silence, and if not in prayer, at least in deep introspection. Then, in mid-January, when it was usually very cold, often gloomy, and always, it seemed, a time when most people experienced an emotional letdown after the frenetic holidays, then have a day when one could give and receive presents, commercial gifts, to one another, thus elevating everyone’s mood. But, of course, this scenario had never come to pass, but it never kept Amaranth and Ty from following their own desires.

This coming Christmas was just a few days away, and on Christmas Eve Day, Amaranth and Ty would be taking Christmas cookies and red punch to the people who spent their lives in the other Colorado Mental Health Institute, this one in Pueblo, more than four times larger than the one in Fort Logan, about 160 miles from Niwot, and about a 2 ½ hour drive.

Of course, Amaranth was happy again to be in the kitchen doing one of the things she most enjoyed doing, making Christmas cookies specifically for this occasion. She had already phoned and spoken to her contact at the hospital whose name was Bev, and confirmed the number of people who would be there on the evening of Christmas Eve Day.

Amaranth began by getting a large bowl for her blender and whisking together 2 cups of flour, 1 ¼ tsp of baking powder, ¼ tsp of salt. Then she added about 14 tbs of unsalted butter at room temperature. Next, she added ¾ of a cup of sugar at medium speed and let mix for one minute total. Then Amaranth got a small bowl and one room-temperature egg that she mixed with ½ tsp of vanilla extract, then added the egg mixture to the large bowl and let it mix for about thirty seconds. Then Amaranth turned the speed of the blender to low and slowly added the flour mixture and let it mix for about one minute. Then Amaranth got a piece of plastic wrap and scraped the dough onto it, then folded it up, making a one-inch flat disc, which she then put into the fridge for at least two hours. When the dough was chilled, Amaranth got out a small bowl of flour, a rolling pin, a flat, metal spatula, and two parchment-lined baking sheets. Then she floured her counter and unwrapped her dough. She floured the dough on both sides and also the rolling pin. She then began to roll out the dough, starting from the center. When the dough got to about the thickness of a pencil, Amaranth stopped rolling. Then she started cutting the cookies, putting each one at a time on one of the baking sheets. Once she had filled both baking sheets, she put each of the sheets, one on one rack, one on the other, into the oven set at 375 degrees. After about five minutes, Amaranth rotated the sheets from front to back and top to bottom and let the cookies bake for five-to-six minutes more. Then she transferred the cookies to a wire sheet to let them cool.

To make the icing, Amaranth got out another bowl and put four cups of powdered sugar, two large egg whites, and two tbs of lemon juice. She then whisked that mixture on medium speed until it became glossy and a bit stiff. She added a number of different colorings to her icing, as well as different sparkles. Amaranth had fun decorating her Christmas cookies.

To make enough cookies to be able to put two to three of them on each paper plate for a hundred or more people took her a long time, but she didn’t mind. After all, while making all these cookies, she had listened to a variety of her most favorite pieces of music: Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata; Barber’s Adagio for Strings; Vivaldi’s Four Seasons; and many others.



Chapter 52

It wasn’t Le Bernardin or Daniel, but it was her kitchen.

Amaranth was going to prepare Pinto Posole.

Posole was a Mexican stew that typically featured shredded pork, dried chilis, hominy, and cumin. Of course, Amaranth was going to use pinto beans in lieu of pork. Lots of fiber and protein, she thought. Hominy was a variety of dried corn (maize) kernels that had been treated with an alkali, such as lye, to improve digestibility. She was going to use three guajillo chilis to create a spicy, but-not-too spicy, stew. She would cook the stew with the chilis, then discard them.

Other ingredients would include 2 tbs of extra ****** olive oil, one large, finely chopped white onion, four cloves of pressed or minced garlic, one cup of tomato paste, one tbs of ground cumin, one bay leaf, three cans of rinsed and drained pinto beans, one can of rinsed and drained hominy, four cups of vegetable broth, two cups of water, ½ teaspoon of fine sea salt, ¼ cup of chopped cilantro, one halved lime, slices of avocado, shredded green cabbage, and chopped radishes.

Amaranth first cut off the stem ends of the chilis and flicked them to remove as many seeds as possible. She then rinsed them and patted them dry. She then put a Dutch oven over medium heat. Next, she toasted the chilis in a dry pan, pressing them flat with her spatula for a few seconds until fragrant, then flipping them over and pressing them again for a few more seconds, then putting them aside for the time being. In the same Dutch oven, she warmed the olive oil until it shimmered. She then added slowly the chopped onions and a pinch of the sea salt and cooked the onions until they became translucent. Next, she added the garlic and cumin while stirring for about one minute. Then she added the tomato paste, which she stirred for another minute or so.

Amaranth then added the toasted chili peppers, the bay leaf, the hominy, the pinto beans, the vegetable broth, and the water into the Dutch oven and raised the heat to medium-high. She brought the mixture to a simmer, then gradually reduced the heat as necessary, stirring all the while, and cooked it for 25 minutes.

As always, Amaranth enjoyed preparing the dining room for dinner, spreading the clean, white linen tablecloth over the dining room table, placing the long, slender, yellow candle at its center, lighting it, setting the table, choosing Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto №2 to listen to as Ty and she ate.

Her timing was impeccable. As soon as Amaranth had completed these delightful tasks, she heard Ty opening the back door and coming through the kitchen.

“I smell something delicious,” said Ty as he entered the dining room and gave Amaranth a hug and a kiss.

“It’s for you, and for me. It’s for us,” said Amaranth.



Chapter 53

It was now Christmas Eve Day.

Both Amaranth and Ty were looking forward to the drive to Pueblo this afternoon. They had plenty of time to get there. They would be in no rush. They would listen to beautiful music in the car. They would enjoy the solitude of the day. They would appreciate fully the spirit of their mission, the smiles on the faces of many people, most of whom they had met many times before, some for the first time. If the Christmas cookies and punch were sweet, so would be the exchanges they would have with their friends at Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo.

Both Amaranth and Ty had been meliorists for as long as they could remember. Amaranth remembered going into the not-so-affluent parts of Phoenix when she was a teenager and being with the homeless, sharing meals, and conversation, with them at soup kitchens, bringing them clothing and other supplies essential to survival, but which they simply didn’t have. Ty, from Knoxville, Tennessee, had said he was sorry he had missed the Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968). He was sorry he never had a chance to meet Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to thank him for what he and thousands of others had been doing, first throughout the Deep South, then up into the North, to Chicago and Cicero, for example, which he found just as racist, if not more so, than Montgomery and Selma.

“If you have the courage to right a societal wrong without violence, and tens of thousands — if not many, many more — are inspired to join you in this moral quest, and if you and your followers find increasing success in your collective efforts to ameliorate these unconscionable, immoral, deleterious conditions, and you sufficiently threaten the illuminati’s grip that chokes the freedoms of all others — if your threat is real, if it is viable — then they will **** you. This fight between right and wrong, this struggle between good and evil, is a moral election, if you will, and the invisible, dark forces will always cast the deciding vote: assassination,” Ty concluded.

Amaranth and Ty kept driving toward Pueblo, but in silence for quite some time. Finally, Amaranth put Bach’s “Air on the G String” into the slot on the dashboard. The music was soothing. ”

“We’re here,” said Amaranth.

The routine was the same every year. Amaranth found Bev, her contact, and Bev got help from some staff carrying in the many boxes of homemade Christmas cookies and gallons of red Christmas punch.

Again, Amaranth laid out the paper plates on a long table in the day room and put three cookies on each plate. Ty again put a paper napkin on every paper plate and poured red Christmas punch into a long line of paper cups. A line of people began to form, which got longer with every minute. Both Amaranth and Ty began to recognize and remember the first names of many of their friends. Thus began the joy for Amaranth and Ty, the gift of kindness, of love.

It took quite a long time for all of those in line to get their cookies and punch, but once they did and ate and drank their treats, the people did what they had done for so many years now, flock toward Amaranth and Ty, began to say hello, tell Amaranth and Ty their first names, many of which Amaranth and Ty remembered from meeting them so many years on Christmas Eve evening, and chatted with their friends, sometimes singly, other times in small groups. When one is enveloped in joy, as Amaranth and Ty were, there is no time, just joy, and more joy.

This was the real Christmas, and everyone in that big day room soaked it up.

Finally, it was time to leave. Amaranth and Ty thanked Bev and her staff for helping out, and said good-bye just once, then walked out to the car.

“What a wonderful time I had!” exclaimed Amaranth.

“There’s nothing plastic about being with real friends,” added Ty.



Chapter 54

It was New Year’s Day, 2020.

“Ty, I have a great idea!” Amaranth said excitedly.

“What’s that?” asked Ty.

“To celebrate the new year, I want to make a chapbook of my poems to give away to my friends, Amaranth responded.

“That’s a great idea, Am. You have a cardboard full of notebooks that are full of poems you’ve written since I met you, and even before. They will make a beautiful chapbook and a beautiful gift,” said Ty.

It was true. Amaranth did have a cardboard box full of notebooks that were full of all the poems she had ever written, and every one of those notebooks had at one time welled up inside her and she had “recorded” it. All those poems were precious, sacred. She had never tried to get any of them published. Getting published was not her goal. When she would feel a poem welling up inside her, she “recorded” it immediately. That was what gave her an immense feeling of satisfaction. In fact, she remembered writing once the adage: “The poem is the prize. The poem is the sound, publication but an echo.” It was easier to find a publisher, she thought, than to find your heart.

Amaranth had kept the cardboard box in the closet of the bedroom, so she went into the bedroom, opened the closet, and dragged the cardboard box into the kitchen. She sat in her chair at the kitchen table with the box beside her, picked up one of the notebooks, and slowly began to read her poems.

Amaranth knew it would take a long time for her both to read all of her poems and to select the ones she wanted to put in her chapbook. But to her, it would be like seeing old friends, a joy to meet each one again.



Chapter 55

It was bitterly cold outside, but it was toasty in the kitchen.

Amaranth had read through several of her notebooks and had selected a number of her poems to include in her chapbook.

Here were a few of them.

SILVER SPOONS

Some people love their silver spoons,
China closets in velvet rooms,
hand-rubbed walnut round pearls of glass,
antique notions to preserve the past,
while others
love their silver moons,
orange sunsets, October’s tune
of bluebirds sighing through sunburnt skies,
green fields soft where lovers lie.


IN THE EARLIEST OF MORNINGS

In the earliest of mornings
when the Earth gives birth
to the orange, yellow sun,
when the stars begin to
disappear in deference to
the golden god, when the
moon lingers in the sky in
awe of what’s unfolding,
when the bluebirds and
blackbirds and robins
swirl in jubilation, colorful
creations we call wild flowers
in mountain meadows begin
their diurnal ritual of stretching
their stems and showing their
colors reflected in the placid
pond nearby — green and brown wild
ginger, blue and purple basil
mountain-mint, yellow-sweet
clover, red and orange beech
drops and pinesap, pink goat’s
rue, white fringed orchids, a
panoply of iridescence and
irenic scope that pleases the
raccoon and the deer, the
elk and the antelope, in the
earliest of mornings of this
burgeoning day.


WOUNDED KNEE, YOU ARE TO ME

Wounded Knee, you are to me
a sacred spot. A cavalry,
a Calvary, we ought not
forget the thousand screams,
the streams of blood that
flooded prairie grass.
Babi Yar, you’re not so far
from Wounded Knee. I’d
have to be without eyes
or ears not to hear or see
the enormity: the mangled
bodies, the twisted forms,
that speak, that wreak
of evil and of seeing and
not saying no. My Lai,
our lie, women and children
dying, lying on our lies,
covering culpability, a quilt
of carnage, but where is guilt?
Cambodia, your killing fields
now flower with blood and
bones of beings fleeing tyranny,
thousands falling near you
and me as we sip our tea
and munch on sweetcakes of
propriety. El Playón, los
paisanos pobres know no
place but death. No dearth
of death squads here, no
fear of duplicity, my
country’s complicity in
these atrocities — my country
’tis of thee, sweet land of
liberty — El Salvador no está
aqui, porque, like Wounded Knee,
the savior is you and me.


NIGHT INSIGHT

Had I but an endless eve,
if darkness were my friend
and sleep my enemy,
I might have stayed awake a while
and found the answer true.
But summer sunsets silent fall.
I heard it not at all.
and my soft bed
like a siren called.
I could not think it through.


Chapter 56

“Happy New Year! Dr. Rosenstein,” said Amaranth.

“And Happy New Year to you, Amaranth,” replied Dr. Rosenstein.

“I have some good news to tell you. I am now selecting poems I have written over the years for the chapbook I shall be making,” said Amaranth.

“That’s wonderful,” said Dr. Rosenstein.

“I’d like to share with you several of my poems I have selected to be part of my chapbook, but first I would like to tell you how Ty and I spent Christmas Eve evening. Is that OK with you?” asked Amaranth.

“Of course it is,” said Dr. Rosenstein.

Amaranth had told Dr. Rosenstein about how Ty and she had spent Thanksgiving Day in a previous session, and frankly, he had told Amaranth how pleased and proud he was of hearing about what he considered to be a most munificent act, a most “magnanimous gesture” as he had put it, of Amaranth and Ty.

Dr. Rosenstein was obviously deeply empathic with what Amaranth had shared with him, probably because he had been trained to be a psychiatrist at the famous Menninger Foundation, then located in Topeka, Kansas, and had spent a number of years in the early 1970s as an in-house psychiatrist after completing his training at Menninger’s, as it was often simply referred to. Moreover, he later was made head of the Topeka State Hospital, so he knew intimately what Amaranth had previously shared with him. The doctor had gotten to know Dr. Karl Menninger, affectionately called only “Dr. Karl” by virtually everyone, during those years and held him in the highest regard. He had read all the books Dr. Karl had written in his lifetime: The Human Mind; Man Against Himself; Love Against Hate; The Vital Balance; The Crime of Punishment; Whatever Became of Sin?

Dr. Rosenstein had never been a fan of Ronald Reagen, probably because Reagen had cut drastically the funding for mental health services nationwide in the early 1980s, resulting in the closing of many mental hospitals, as well as community-based day hospitals across the country, making those who had been in them homeless and forsaken.

Dr. Rosenstein didn’t just not like Reagen, he held great antipathy toward him. Reagen had swelled the number of human beings who came to live on the sidewalks of our cities, under bridges, beneath bushes, wherever they could find some semblance of safety, in short, a societal tragedy we live with to this day.

“On Christmas Eve day, Ty and I drove to Pueblo to be with our friends, most of whom, as you already know, had spent many years of their lives there at the Colorado Mental Health Institute. I had baked many Christmas cookies and Ty had bought a large number of gallons of red Christmas punch, which we handed out to all of our friends. The best part of the evening was, and always has been, the opportunity to interact with those who wanted to, to introduce themselves, to say hello, to chat with us, whatever. Ty and I felt there was absolutely no time limit, real or imagined, imposed upon us that would cut short the time we could stay there, and I think our friends could sense the same, so we were in no rush quickly to say a perfunctory “hello and good-bye” and then leave. There was joy all around,” said Amaranth.

“Well, to be honest with you, Amaranth, I wish I could have been with you and Ty. I know I would have had a wonderful time, as you and Ty, and all your friends, did. Thanks to both of you for doing what you did. I know it meant a lot to those there whom the world has forgotten, and to you and Ty, and to me as well, “ said Dr. Rosenstein. “Now share with me some of your poems.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO SUFFER?

What does it mean to suffer?
Is it better to buffer ourselves
from turmoil, or does the oil
of hate and hurt serve some purpose?
Are we animals in some circus,
parading like some elephants inelegantly,
passing through some wire hoops?
We tire, we droop.
Are we poor men in soup lines,
hoping for salvation,
fed with propitiation?
Our faces show no elation:
They grow ashen.
Shall we cash in the bonds
our mothers never gave us?
Love’s dearth has thus enslaved us.
Just put us in our graves and
let us live in Mother Earth.


AND IF OUR CRYINGS BE HEARD

The way we cry, and
if our cryings be heard,
the way they are attended to,
will set the walk. The way we
are treated as toddlers, the way
punishment is meted out,
will further the course. Kind-
nesses, magnanimity of spirit,
love — all will determine not only
the paths we are led down, but
also the paths we shall set for
ourselves and travel ourselves —
pathos, bathos, ethos — until
death deals an end to our
earthly peregrinations. These
spoors — the lives, the lanes,
the passages we shall be
spooring — will tell us and
others about who we are
and were, and if we were
befriended ever by others,
and by ourselves.


THE IBEX

I see ibicies on alpine slopes,
large curved horns coming almost
full circle. I descry mountain
hawks on the wing that descry
more than I. Bears I don’t
see, for they are lost in their
own sleep, not on slopes, but
in slumber. The number of deer
is in actuality many, but I
have not earned the right to
discern more than a few.
Vision is a funny thing: we
tend to infer from the many
we can see reality, but this
is illusory. Our sight we feel
can be enhanced by glasses,
microscopic or telescopic,
but sight is not insight; seeing
is not knowing. The intellect
sees that all are different,
wisdom that all are one. The
ibex knows the mountain is
deeper than it is high.


CHRYSANTHEMUMS

Speak in tears when you lie
next to me and your heart is
troubled so. Let sorrow pour
from your eyes and wet the
sheets. Meet your heart and
greet it openly, though it be
filled with sadness. Let your
body shake against mine, as
I know what it is to hurt.
Let empathy soak up your
sorrow. Let your catharsis
become chrysanthemums.

“Those are powerful and evocative poems, Amaranth. Thank you for sharing them with me,” said Dr. Rosenstein.

“You are welcome, Dr. Rosenstein. “I shall give you one of my chapbooks when I finish making them,” said Amaranth.

As she drove back to Niwot, Amaranth thought more about Dr. Rosenstein. Not only was he skillful as a therapist, but also he was a kind, sensitive human being. The latter notion, she thought, was as important, perhaps even more important, than the former.



Chapter 57

Amaranth was sitting in her chair at the kitchen table sipping coffee.

It was now late January. This had been an unusually cold winter, not conducive to taking even a short walk outside. The crocuses were smart. They knew when to take cover and stay there.

Amaranth could feel again something welling up inside of her, but it was not a poem this time. It was something similar to a poem, but different. She instinctively reached for her notebook in her purse, and as she was doing so, she slowly began to feel what was welling up. It was some kind of remembrance of a man at the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo with whom she had had a longer than usual conversation. She remembered the man’s name. His name was Randolph.

Amaranth opened her notebook and began writing.



RANDOLPH

Randolph would sit in the east wing, the men’s wing, each night. He would sit in the same chair, the one beside the broken lamp, the one upholstered with hard foam rubber, covered with red plastic leather on an aluminum frame. The seat of the chair had a big tear in it,which had been taped over with some kind of wide, translucent tape. But, in truth, you usually could not see the tear, because Randolph sat there each night.

Slight of build, in his mid-thirties, he sat there in almost total silence, rarely speaking if not spoken to, or unless he wanted to *** a smoke off of you, which he usually wanted to do. He sat there with a rather pleasant smile on his face, for he was, in fact, a kind man. His eyes, though, were tired, very tired, a mixture of watery red and grey. His hair, though he combed it every morning in the men’s john, looked flat and depressed, probably because he spent a good deal of the day lying in bed. And he would sit there each night, sometimes a king upon his throne, sometimes a fetus ensconced in its womb, listening to scratchy melodies over the intercom, sometimes dreaming of the chocolate cake his mother never brought him Sunday afternoons.

“Got a smoke?” he would say.

“No, I don’t smoke,” I would say. “Maybe Arthur’s got some tobacco.”

The truth is that Randolph knew every night that I didn’t have a smoke, that I didn’t smoke, and that Arthur, his roommate, did have tobacco, had tobacco every night. But this litany of question and response, though ostensibly meaningless due to pre-knowledge and repetition, was important nonetheless. It was his way, our way, of communicating, of breaking the cold isolation that surrounded each of us, of reaching out and touching another human being.

“Oh yeah, Arthur,” Randolph would say, and he would get out of his plastic seat and go find Arthur, as he did each night. He would bring back the tobacco and a piece of paper, spread the brown tobacco evenly on the white paper, and then carefully, cautiously, roll this blend of brown and white into a near-perfect cigarette. Then he would light it against the lighter in the wall. And the smoke would curl over his yellow-stained finger and thumb, as it had been doing over the past ten years, and Randolph would stand silently on the grey linoleum floor and gaze through the large plate-glass window, seeing both the reflection of his own image and the darkness of winter’s night.

At ten o’clock, when they started to turn out the lights, Randolph would ask for one last cigarette, complete the ritual, and say, “Maybe I should go down to the hardware store tomorrow and see if I can get a job. I got to get a job. I just can’t keep staying here day after day. I’ll go crazy.”

And he would get up out of his torn chair, smile at me quietly, and without saying a word, tell me good night. Then he would turn and walk down the pale yellow concrete-block corridor, turn into his room, and as he had done so many nights before, would lie down on his bed and close his eyes.


Amaranth put her pen down on the kitchen table, took another sip of coffee, then looked out of the frosted windows for a long time at winter’s inhospitality.

Chapter 58

Amaranth and Ty were sitting on the blue sofa in the living room. They were listening to Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.

“Am, did I ever tell you about the strange conversation I had many years ago one evening at the West End?” asked Ty. West End, which was sold after both had graduated from Columbia College, had been the drinking equivalent of Tom’s Restaurant. It had been the place where many Columbia students went if they wanted to have a beer and to chat. Columbia folklore had it that the West End was where Kerouac and Ginsberg and friends met to hold forth.

“You and I have shared many stories, but I don’t off-hand remember your telling me one took place at the West End. But please, go ahead,” said Amaranth.

“Well, it occurred one spring evening in our sophomore year. I wanted to get out of Butler Library, enjoy for a bit the pleasant spring evening, and I was in the mood to drink a beer. So I walked across Broadway, then walked down to the West End.

“I decided to sit at the counter. Next to me was a fellow I did not know. I ordered a beer and began drinking it. After a few minutes, the guy sitting next to me said hello and introduced himself. His first name was Don, I remember. He was a Columbia graduate student studying for his PhD in psychology. A nice guy. I think he told me he had gotten his BA from Princeton. I think he said he was from Kittery Point, Maine.

“So we started chatting while we were enjoying our beers. At some point, he began to talk about Piaget, the Swiss psychologist famous for his work on childhood development. He talked quite some time about Piaget’s theory of cognitive development and epistemological views. I remember his saying that a child was ‘animistic,’ that the child thought the sun and moon followed him when he walked, that dreams were made of wind and came through the window when he slept.

“I remember taking several minutes thinking about what he had shared with me about Piaget and his theories. Then I said to Don that I thought Piaget had missed the mark, that his clinical observations were unknowing, that his words, while descriptive, did not explain. I said the child does not think, he knows. Dreams are fanciful and fleeting, made of whimsy of the wind. The child is at one with the universe, I said. He is at the center. The child is wisdom. He feels, he knows. The child is a poet and a priest, and he knows.

“Just as I was finishing my riposte, I heard some rumbling from directly behind Don and me. There were three guys sitting at a small round table also drinking beers. I had seen them when I had first come in. I remember I was wearing that night a round-necked, dark green sweater under a sports coat. Also, I had on a white shirt, the collar of which rose a half inch or so above the sweater. I had heard what I thought was some kind of muted laughter coming from that table just as I was finishing my remarks to Don, so I swiveled around and looked directly at these three guys. As I stared at them in silence for a few moments, they seemed to get a bit nervous. I think they mistook my shirt and sweater for clerical garb. Finally, one of them said to me, “Man, are you a priest? You sure look like a priest.”

“At that point, I reached back to the counter, grabbed my beer, took a swig, and then turned around again, facing these three guys again. I paused a few moments, then said to them slowly, “Every man’s a priest.” The three of them laughed, kind of nervously.

“It’s true, though. Every man’s a child, every child’s a poet, every poet’s a priest.”




Chapter 59

“Julie, give me a hug!” said Amaranth. The two had met in Boulder at Le Peep for breakfast.

“How are you, Ed, and the kids getting along?”

“They are all fine. How are you and Ty doing? I hope well.” replied Julie. “You know Valentine’s Day is the day after tomorrow. Do you think spring will ever get here?”

“The sooner, the better,” replied Amaranth.

Ed’s full name was Edward Borgoman. He was a computer guru and had just received a promotion. He worked for Google in Boulder.

“Please offer Ed my congratulations on his promotion, will you?” said Amaranth.

“Of course I will,” said Julie. “It’s been a rough winter, hasn’t it? The good news is that Ed and I get up to Aspen almost every weekend to ski, usually finding new snow every time we go. How is your chapbook of poems coming along, Am?”

“I’ve just about finished my selection of poems that will be part of my chapbook,” said Amaranth. “I’ve decided on the title I’ll be giving it. Its title will be I WRITE WHEN THE RIVER’S DOWN. Actually, I brought with me a few poems that will be in the chapbook, and I’d like to share them with you, if you like.”

“You know I would love to hear your poems,” said Julie. “You write so beautifully.”

“Thank you, Julie. I appreciate that,” said Amaranth.

Amaranth reached into her purse and pulled out the poems she wished to read to Julie.

ANGELS AND ARCHANGELS

We wonder where love comes from,
where it flies, through clouds and skies,
ferns and forests, where will it lie?
Curtains of sadness cloud our view,
grey hues we hope will turn to blue
and brightness. Angels and archangels
light on our hearts, evoking the lotion of
love that spreads through our beings,
bringing blue hope to our spirits,
elevating our souls to zeniths of well-being
and sweet tones that assuage our many
hurts. Angels and archangels, beneficent
intercessors, ******* our sorrows,
peeling away the anguish that visits us in the
middle of morning or night, sweet music
that atones for our transgressions, a
progression of expiation that leaves us
higher than the clouds, closer to God.


THERE WILL COME A TIME

There will come a time
when time doesn’t matter,
when all minutes and
millennia are but moments
when I look into your eyes.
There will come a time
when clinging things
will fall like desiccated
leaves, leaving us with
but one another. There
will come a time when
the external becomes eternal,
when holding you is to
embrace the universe.
There will come a time
when to be will no longer
be infinitive, but infinity,
and you and I are one.


ARE WE ALL NOT IDIOMS

Are we all not idioms,
peculiar to ourselves
in construct and meaning?
Are not all of us
syntactical anomalies?
Do we not all have ellipses,
lacunae, egregious gaps
in our beings? Lack of
parallel construction in
our lives, dangling like
participles, a pronoun
without its antecedent?
Are not our lives run-
on sentences handed
up by unconscious wishes
and unmet needs? Too
bad we could not be
more declarative and
less rhetorical or
imperative.


THE BEGINNING OF GOOD-BYE

We sense it because it comes inexorably;
this is the beginning of good-bye.
Her eyes avert his, a touch with no
feeling, a caress more cautious than
caring, a kiss when lips do not meet;
this is the beginning of good-bye.
A perfunctory placement of the hand,
a conversation moribund, sipping
scotch and sodas in silence, a call that
never comes, memories that have grown opaque;
this the beginning of good-bye.


“Wow!” exclaimed Julie. “These poems that you’ve just shared with me are incredible! Have you ever submitted them to The New Yorker?”

“No, I never have,” said Amaranth. “They just come to me from time to time, and I write what’s welling up inside of me. That’s my satisfaction.”

“But think of all the people who love poetry. Think of how much pleasure they would derive from reading your poems, if they had a chance to, Am,” implored Julie.

“It took 200 years for William Blake to be discovered. And Emily Dickinson wrote 1,800 poems during her lifetime, most all of which she wrote in her bedroom in Amherst, and it was only until the 1950s that an academic got his hands on her original poems and published them that way. Then Emily Dickinson was universally declared a great poet. Maybe someday my chapbook will be discovered, but the most important thing about poetry, about writing poetry, is always to be true to yourself. That’s true not only about poetry, but even more so about living your life,” said Amaranth.

Julie nodded in agreement.



Chapter 60

Amaranth thought about one of Simon and Garfunkel’s famous songs, April Come She Will. That was a beautiful song, she thought, but they had left out all the other months, especially the month of March, her favorite month, because that was the month, usually around the last week of it, when the crocuses began to appear, even if there were still snow on the ground.

Amaranth loved crocuses in general, but the crocuses in her back yard were her friends, her confidants. She loved to sit on the grass beside them and talk to them when they first appeared, and for many other times long thereafter. She was looking forward to the last week of March when she could begin anew her special friendship with them. That wait would seem like a long time to Amaranth, but it was only a little over two weeks away.

If that day in early March had been a day in the last week of that same month, Amaranth would have gone out the kitchen door, walked down the few steps, then down the gently sloping hill toward the burgeoning crocuses a short distance from the sinuous creek and sat down. Then she would have told the story to the crocuses about her Uncle Peter, who was her mother’s younger brother.

Amaranth would have told the crocuses about what Uncle Peter had done almost 30 years ago, in 1992, when he set out alone to travel around the USA meeting with and talking to the hungry, the homeless, and the hopeless — the millions of forgotten Americans — throughout our nation. In particular, she would speak of one of the many trenchant, personal experiences he had had during his long journey, this one having taken place in Houston, Texas.

Amaranth would start talking about how Uncle Peter was driving back to his cheap motel in his rental car, having spent most of that day visiting different shelters and soup kitchens. But when he drove on the bridge over Prescott Avenue, he saw to his left, down below, a veritable sea of black men spread over a two-block stretch of that boulevard. There must have been several hundred of them, all black, swarming down below. Uncle Peter kept driving for a while, but little by little began to slow down, until he finally came to a stop. Uncle Peter, Amaranth remembered him telling her, had to turn around and go back to speak with some of those human beings. And that’s exactly what he did. When he got back to Prescott Avenue, he parked his car and got out. He saw across the boulevard a large group of men standing up on a landing. As he began to cross the boulevard, he was met with a fuselage of vituperation, an endless stream of obscenities emanating from the mouth of one man standing on the other side of the boulevard. Frankly, Uncle Peter had told Amaranth that he had never heard such hatred verbalized in his life. But Uncle Peter kept walking across the boulevard as these verbal bullets kept whizzing by his ears. Uncle Peter had told her that miraculously he was unfazed by this onslaught of rage, probably because, Amaranth thought, he had such deep empathy for all those who were still oppressed, which, of course, amounted to billions all over Earth.

When Uncle Peter reached the other side of the boulevard, he then walked up the steps to the landing where this group of men was still standing and talking to each other. A number of them turned toward him as he approached the group. Uncle Peter, as he had always done, stuck out his arm to shake hands with anyone who wanted to do that in return, and at the same time, introduced himself. First one, then others, began to shake hands with him, and some even told him their first names. Eventually he moved toward this huge man at the center of the group. He was about 6’4” and weighed somewhere between 260 to 280 pounds. Again, Uncle Peter stuck out his arm to shake this man’s hand, and as he did, he introduced himself. This giant of a man shook Uncle Peter’s hand and said, “I’m Rambo. I’m the sheriff of this community.”

Rambo and Uncle Peter began talking to each other. Uncle Peter told Rambo what he had been doing for months then, traveling across the nation, stopping to talk to and with people who were victims of the same kind of gross inequities Rambo and the members of his community were facing, and had been facing for a long time. In turn, Rambo told Uncle Peter that he had been stabbed, shot, but not yet killed, living on the streets for a terribly long time. Uncle Peter could tell why Rambo was the de facto sheriff of this community, not only because of his gargantuan size, but also because of his intelligence. In fact, Uncle Peter asked Rambo for a big favor. Tomorrow, he told Rambo, he, Uncle Peter, was going to make a televised address — the local NBC News affiliate in Houston was going to be filming it — and Uncle Peter asked Rambo if he would join him in this address. He told Rambo that he could do a better job than he himself could do. Rambo would bring to the attention of thousands of viewers the ugly, atrocious reality of being homeless and hungry in the fourth largest city in the nation. As Uncle Peter was asking Rambo to join him, the two men were still in a handshake, and as he was asking Rambo to join him, Uncle Peter could feel Rambo’s hand, which had to be almost twice the size of his, begin to shake. This man, Rambo, if he had wanted to, said Uncle Peter, could have, with one hand and in one motion, flung Uncle Peter two blocks down the boulevard in the air. Instead, Rambo’s hand was shaking in his. Uncle Peter pleaded with Rambo, but sadly, to no avail. Uncle Peter thanked Rambo for what he was doing for his brothers, then took his leave by walking back down the steps to the sidewalk. Uncle Peter had told Amaranth the great anguish he had felt after Rambo’s decision to decline his offer.

Nonetheless, Uncle Peter began to walk down the sidewalk, saying hello to everyone on it and talking to those who wanted to talk to him, but never bothering those who he could tell were not wanting to interact with him in any way. He did, however, talk for as long as that individual wanted to talk. Every story Uncle Peter heard was, in a word, tragic. After all, everyone to whom he spoke was black, and most of them carried with them the legacies of slavery, which, in the broadest sense, was the unending, pervasive scourge of racism in general, and in particular, all its malevolent effects, such as hunger and homelessness and hopelessness.

It took Uncle Peter an hour to reach the end of his two-block walk down one side of the boulevard, at which point he crossed the boulevard and began taking another one hour, two-block walk back to his parked rental car, again always stopping when individuals indicated a wish to talk to him, and always talking to them for as long as they wished.

Finally, he reached his rental car, and as he was beginning to open the driver’s door, he saw across the boulevard the man who, two hours earlier, had incessantly, viciously, verbally assualted him. Their eyes met for an instant. Then the man across the boulevard slowly lifted one of his arms into the air and waved at Uncle Peter. Uncle Peter, in a near state of shock because of this totally unexpected benevolent act, waved back. Then the man across the boulevard cried out “God Bless You.” Uncle Peter cried back “God Bless You.”

Uncle Peter had told Amaranth that that moment was the high point of his spiritual life. Obviously, Amaranth would never forget that moment either.



Chapter 61

It was the first day of the last week of March, 2020.

It was Wednesday, the 25th.

Amaranth was so excited she couldn’t help herself. She put on her winter coat, opened the kitchen door, walked down the few steps, then quickly walked to the very place where she hoped so much that she would see her dear friends, the crocuses, bravely forcing themselves through the snow that still covered the ground. She knew the exact spot to go to. She had been performing the same ritual for 10 years, and her heart was pounding.

It did not take her long to get to the exact spot. She was absolutely certain she was looking down on the exact spot. But there was no sign of the crocuses. There was no sign of the crocuses pushing through the snow. She was disheartened. Amaranth even looked beyond the exact spot to look for the crocuses, but the simple truth was that the crocuses had not yet appeared. She was so disappointed that she stood in the same place without moving for several minutes. Where are my dear friends? she said to herself. She couldn’t help looking back, year by year, over the past decade. Yes, this was indeed, almost to the day, when she would see the tips of the crocuses pushing through the snow. She was sure of it.

Finally, Amaranth came to terms with the reality of this cardinal day and slowly began to walk back up the hill. OK, tomorrow would be the day. Tomorrow, that’s it. I’ll see my friends tomorrow, she thought.

When she entered the kitchen, Amaranth slowly took off her winter coat and hung it on the stand and then walked over to her chair and sat down. She felt a poem welling up inside of her, so she reached for her purse, which was sitting on the kitchen table, opened it, and pulled out her notebook, opened it, and placed it on top of the table and began to record.

THE WAY THAT WINTER COMES AT ME

The way that winter comes at me,
as if a stranger from a side street
cold and dark accosting me. I turn
my collar up. He hollers “You there!”
Faster I walk, fear chilling me,
a lamp post but a grey ghost in the fog.
This ****, winter, mugs me. He hits me,
stabs me in the side with knives
of ice, slices at my heart, the home
of hope. Supine, frost forming on
my brow, I pray to boughs of willow
trees;  pines will sing my elegy. My my mind drifts
like snowdrifts: A mitten lost…
fingers, nose, toes frostbitten…
a lake of isolation…a sleigh with no
horse…a blizzard of insanity.
My blood thaws the frozen ground,
then freezes.


Amaranth put her pen on her poem, closed her notebook and put it in her purse, and with purse in hand, got up from her chair and walked slowly to the bedroom where she lay down on the bed.

She felt cold, even after pulling up the sheet, blanket, and bedspread over her.

Amaranth lay on the bed for several hours. Finally, she got up and went into the leaving room to turn on the evening news. She rarely watched TV, but did so occasionally, mostly getting her news off the Internet. She sat on the blue sofa. By this time, Ty was back at home.

Amaranth and Ty both hated to watch and listen to the political news emanating from Washington, D.C. Politics to both was a game, an ugly, essentially corrupt game. What they appreciated were stories not about politics, but about leadership, but features about the latter were hard to come by.

As they watched and listened, somewhat inattentively, they began to hear an unusual report from Sydney, Australia. It seemed as though people were reporting that leaves on their trees had begun, almost instantly, first to turn brown and then fall off the tree limbs to the ground. What was this about, they both asked each other? No specialists interviewed in Sydney seemed to have any answer either. Well, this news, as peculiar as it was, was no worse than what they usually heard every day from the Oval Office.



Chapter 62

Each ensuing morning for the rest of the last week of March, Amaranth was anxious to put on her winter coat, open the kitchen door, walk down a few steps, then down the sloping hill to the exact spot where the crocuses, she hoped, would be appearing. But each of those mornings proved again and again to be a major disappointment to her. The crocuses, her dear friends, the harbingers of spring, had not yet appeared. Over these days, Amaranth, who at first had been devastated, slowly became inured to the fact that her crocuses, for some inexplicable reason, remained buried in the earth. The snow on the ground, however, had melted by the end of the week.

On Thursday, 26 March, Amaranth intuitively didn’t wait for the evening TV news. She went straight to her computer and accessed her favorite news site, refdesk.com. What she read startled her. There were a flurry of reports coming in from all different places in the world that were virtually the same as the one from Sydney, Australia yesterday — from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; from Cape Town, South Africa; from Jakarta, Indonesia; from Buenos Aires, Argentina; from Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo; from Lima, Peru; from Santiago de Chile, Chile; and from many other smaller cities.

Friday morning, Amaranth could not wait to find out what else had happened in the world. It did not take her long to find out. It turned out that now cities in the northern hemisphere, those closest to the equator, were experiencing the same phenomenon: Bogota, Colombia; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Singapore; Medan, Indonesia; Cali, Colombia; and again, many other smaller cities.

All major media outlets around the world — TV networks and cable news channels, major newspapers, social media of all types — were beginning to cover and comment on this spreading, climatic enigma, but nobody in the world could yet come up with an explanation, let alone a solution, for it.

Saturday morning, more bad news. Everywhere around the world, in both the north and south hemispheres, there were more and more reports of the same kind coming in. What was worse, there were new reports from farmers from around the world who had planted seeds in their fields that by now should have germinated, but hadn’t. Indeed, other new reports from throughout the world said collectively that all living plants on Earth were beginning to die. What had started just a few days ago as an issue that people had thought was a mere curiosity, and nothing more than that, was now becoming exponentially a worldwide crisis-in-the-making. And no one on Earth yet had been able to figure out why this was happening or what to do about it.

Sunday morning: The whole world was now ablaze with terrifying reports of gigantic forest fires burning millions and millions of acres around the world, whole cities having to be evacuated. There were worldwide reports of unprecedented storms all over the world that were flooding countless cities inland and areas on the coasts of all continents.

The entire world was now a horror story of untold magnitude that had become real.



Chapter 63

Sunday evening, Amaranth could not fall asleep, so she carefully got out of bed, put on her robe, and went into the living room and sat down on the blue sofa. She sat there in the darkness, in the silence, for a long time. Then she heard the voice. The voice said, “Amaranth, I need to talk with you. I need to talk with you now.”

Amaranth had not heard the voice for months. Now it seemed to her as if the voice actually wanted to speak with her. She again was not alarmed, so she said to the voice, “OK, I will speak with you. What should I call you.?

“Call me Spirit,” replied the voice.

“OK,” replied Amaranth.

“Amaranth, you will need to write down every word I will be saying. Do you understand?” said the voice.

“Yes,” said Amaranth. “First, I will need to get my notebook. It’s in the bedroom. I’ll be right back.”

Amaranth came back with her notebook, turned on the lamp sitting on the end table, and sat back down on the blue sofa.

“I’m ready,” said Amaranth.

The voice said to her, “Earth is dying now. It has been mistreated for a long time. It has been abused. It has not been loved. I think you can help save it.
Now, you can begin to write down everything I say to you.”

The voice began to speak.

“I have been asked to give this message to the entire world.

“Earth is dying now, but all of us on Earth can save it.”

“There is one land, one sky, one sea, one people. The boundaries that divide us are not on maps, but in our minds and hearts. Earth is as impoverished as her poorest Citizen of Earth, as healthy as her sickest, as educated as her most ignorant. If we pollute the headwaters of the Mississippi, then ineluctably we shall pollute the Indian Ocean. If we continue to pollute our air, the current 800,000,000 Citizens of Earth, along with all other living creations on Earth, will die. The imminent threats of nuclear holocaust and catastrophic climate change we need urgently to prevent. This is the truth of Spiritual Ecology.

“If we can wage war, why can we not wage peace? Nations are anachronistic; therefore, there will be none. There will be no longer  borders. There will be only Earth and Citizens of Earth. Each Citizen of Earth will devote a sizable number of years of her/his life to the betterment of humankind and Earth. All weapons — from handguns to hydrogen bombs — will be rendered inoperative. All jails and prisons will be closed, replaced by Love Centers.  Automation and other technological advances will enhance the opportunity of all Citizens of Earth to realize exponentially their potential, both personally and professionally. There will be no money. The needs of all Citizens of Earth will be met equally. The only things Citizens of Earth will own are the right to be treated well by every other Citizen of Earth and the responsibility to treat all other Citizens of Earth, and Earth itself, well. All Citizens of Earth will be free to travel anywhere, at any time, on Earth. All Citizens of Earth will do no harm to Earth or other Citizens of Earth. All Citizens of Earth will be afforded the same resources to live a full, safe and satisfying life, including the best education, health care, housing, food, and other necessities throughout Earth.

“The only way to change anything for the good, for good, is through love. Love is what every living thing on Earth needs. Love Centers are for those Citizens of Earth who were not loved enough, or at all, especially at their earliest of ages. Concomitantly, they act out their pain hurtfully, sometimes lethally, often against other Citizens of Earth. Citizens of Earth who are emotionally ill will be separated from those who are not. Jails and prisons only abet this deleterious situation. Some Citizens of Earth in pain may need to be constrained in Love Centers humanely while they recover, through being loved, so they do not hurt themselves or others. In some extreme cases, Citizens of Earth may be in so much pain that they remain violent for a long time. Thus, they may need to be constrained for the rest of their lives, but always loved, never punished. In time, Citizens of Earth, when loved enough, will only have love to give, and the need for Love Centers will commensurately decline.

“The first vote of all Citizens of Earth will be to ratify the CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH. Majority rules. All Citizens of Earth will have access to Internet voting. All Citizens of Earth will have their own personal computer ID codes. All Citizens of Earth will have to be at least 18 years old to vote. Citizens of Earth will be encouraged to bring before the General Assembly all ideas and recommendations, as well as any concerns or complaints, all of which will be considered and responded to promptly. Citizens of Earth’s ideas and recommendations will be formed into proposals drafted by members of the General Assembly. Citizens of Earth will vote on these proposals the last two weeks of every month. Members of the General Assembly will be facilitators who will work with millions of volunteers. Citizens of Earth will be Earth's government. There will be no president of Earth.

“Wealth is not worth. The mansuetude of loving, and of being loved, is worth. When love is your currency, all else is counterfeit. Citizens of Earth will be able to go about creating their own happiness that is built on love-based personal relationships and professional activities. No longer will human beings be able to profit from another’s pain and misery. With love at
the center of being and living, there will be no more wars, no more dictators, no more corruption. Finally, there will be only Peace on Earth forever.

“Earth does not have to die."

“That’s all, Amaranth. You and your husband, Ty, will decide the best way to disseminate this critical message. Bless you,” the voice said.

Amaranth had written down every word. She was, she felt, in a transcendent zone. It was the middle of the night, but she was wide awake — no, something much more than that. She felt more fully alive than she had ever felt before, almost a feeling of pure joy.

She knew now she would have to tell Ty about the voice, about the long “relationship" she had had with it. Only Dr. Rosenstein had known about the voice. Ty would understand. He always did. And Ty would help her find the right way to proceed.

“Spirit” — she liked that name — had known what was coming. All Spirit’s comments to her while she slept foreshadowed this incredible message she had just written down. There was no explanation for what had happened with Spirit. And Amaranth realized there didn’t need to be one.



Chapter 64

It was now very early, Monday, 30 March.

Amaranth had stayed up all night. Now she needed to speak with Ty.

She waited until 5 a.m., then woke up Ty.

“Ty, wake up. Ty, wake up. I need to speak with you,” exhorted Amaranth.

Ty was not used to waking up at 5 a.m. Amaranth had brewed some coffee and brought him a cup. Ty was understandably groggy as he lifted himself up on one elbow.

“What’s the matter, Am? What’s wrong?” said Ty.

“Ty, I need to talk with you. I need to talk with you now,” said Amaranth. “It’s urgent.”

Ty slowly moved to the side of the bed where he could sit on it. Amaranth handed him the cup of coffee.

Amaranth began by telling Ty about the whole history of her experiences with the voice, how and when it had begun, each of the brief phrases the voice had said to her while she was asleep, and finally, about last night. Then, after Ty was fully awake, she read the message Spirit had dictated to her.

Ty, while completely surprised, remained calm while Amaranth told him everything that had happened between Spirit and her. Ty knew what had been happening around the world, but when Amaranth had quoted Spirit as saying, “Earth is now dying,” he became instantly alarmed.

“What are we going to do, Ty?” asked Amaranth. “What should we do?”

Ty remained silent for several minutes. Then he took a sip of coffee.

“You know Ed Borgoman, Julie’s husband, right?” Ty asked rhetorically.

“Of course,” replied Amaranth.

“Ed is a technological and computer guru,” said Ty. “I bet if you asked him, he would help you videotape your reading of this compelling message, then help you get that video on as many social media sites around the world as possible.”

“Spirit believes that every Citizen of Earth should vote on CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH. Obviously, that would be a Herculean task."

More silence.

“I have an idea!” cried out Amaranth. “There are thousands of NGOs — non-governmental organizations — around the world. Some are worldwide, some are national, some regional, others are local. Why couldn’t we build a worldwide network of them to facilitate a worldwide vote on CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH? All 800,000,000 of us are facing a worldwide crisis! Why would anyone not want to help prevent the end of life for all living creations on Earth? Spirit speaks of all Citizens of Earth needing Internet access. Many companies are making and selling smartphones to people all over the world. This is a worldwide emergency! Why wouldn’t all these companies be more than willing to donate smartphones to those people who now don’t have one, either because they are destitute and/or live in remote areas? There would be incredible worldwide pressure on them to do the right thing.”

“I have another idea, Am. To make all this happen, we will need a command center, a nerve center, to coordinate and orchestrate all these intricate interactions. I know Peter King. He was, and still is, president of Columbia University. I worked closely with him when I was head of NSOP (New Students Orientation Program) when I was a senior at the College. Virtually everyone on Earth now knows about this catastrophic disaster facing all of Earth that is getting worse by the moment, and if allowed to go unabated, will end all life on it.

“Why wouldn’t Peter King, and the university he runs, become integral parts of the fight? If we cannot win this worldwide battle, then Columbia University will be become a graveyard like every other institution on Earth, and Peter King will very likely die there.

“I will give him a call this morning, tell him everything I know, and ask him for his help,” said Ty.



Chapter 65

Ty called Peter King a few minutes after 9 am Eastern Time and reached him. TY reintroduced himself. King remembered him clearly. Ty told King he would send him an email with an attachment about the worldwide warning and proposals contained therein. Finally, Ty asked King personally for his help, and for the help of the University as a whole.

Amaranth was able to reach Ed Borgoman at work. She explained to him, as succinctly as she could, the help she hoped he would be able to give her. Ed said, yes, he could help her and could take off work tomorrow to shoot the video. Ed told Amaranth that he could get permission from the head librarian of the Boulder Public Library to use their lectern to shoot Amaranth’s video. Because he knew how to get a video on a social media site, Ed told Amaranth that he would indeed contact every social media site in the world and try to get her video uploaded on each. He added, moreover, the perspicacious comment that even the most authoritarian nations in the world would quite possibly be amenable to amending their present draconian policies of censorship, knowing full well that what was facing all the world was therefore threatening inescapably their own country. He also said he would like to help her and Ty with anything else. Amaranth thanked Ed profusely.

Tuesday morning, 31 March, Amaranth met Ed at the downtown Boulder Public Library. The videotaping went smoothly. Ed told Amaranth that he would begin immediately trying to get her video on as many social media sites in the world as possible.

Ty, meanwhile, was waiting for President King to get back to him, but didn’t, for good reasons, expect to hear from him today.

That night, neither Amaranth or Ty slept well, nor did most of the people on Earth, Amaranth thought. Wednesday morning, 1 April, help could not come soon enough.

Sure enough, shortly after 7 am Boulder time, the phone rang. Ty answered it. It was King calling. He told Ty that he had had yesterday an all-day emergency meeting with the Board of Trustees. In short, King told Ty that there was unanimous consensus from the Board that King, and virtually every other member of his administration, as well as all faculty, would immediately assume both the explicit and implicit responsibilities of making the worldwide vote on CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH happen as soon as logistically possible. Ty thanked him profusely and asked him to pass on to everyone else his immense gratitude.

It was a propitious beginning for both Amaranth and Ty.



Chapter 66

The next several days were understandably difficult for Amaranth and Ty to get through. Amaranth didn’t want to bug Ed and Ty certainly didn’t want to bother King. Both knew they had to wait to hear from both of these magnanimous men.

Ty had been able to take a temporary leave from teaching. Amaranth kept checking perforce on the crocuses, but there had been no signs, not surprisingly, of any growth whatsoever. It was a tough time, a terrible time, for the whole world.

Friday morning, 3 April, Amaranth got a call from Ed. Ed told her that he had been able to get her video on almost every social media site in the world.

“What great news, Ed!” exclaimed Amaranth. “I don’t know how to thank you enough.”

“Look, Am, the existence of all life on Earth is in the balance. Julie and I will help you and Ty in any way we can,” said Ed.

Then there was the weekend. Two long days.

Monday morning, 6 April, the phone rang again a few minutes after 7 am Boulder time. It was King calling again. He wanted to give Ty an update. He, and so many members of his administration and faculty, had been working assiduously on this Earth-saving project. King told Ty that the largest NGOs, those that were worldwide, had all been contacted, and all had agreed to take a leading role in organizing the efforts of all the other NGOs around the world.

King explained how the worldwide NGOs would first contact the national NGOs, that, in turn, would contact the regional NGOs, that finally would contact everyone of the local NGOs, which would then make sure that every one of the 8,000,000,000 people on Earth would have access to a smartphone and receive their own secure ID code to use during the one week of voting on CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH. King said that virtually all the authoritarian nations — there were over 50 of them — especially the largest ones, had conceded to allow all their people to participate with impunity in this worldwide endeavor to save Earth. Furthermore, King told Ty that all the manufacturers of smartphones — there were over 50 of them worldwide — had agreed to cooperate collectively in donating the necessary number of smartphones that would be needed worldwide. King also pointed out that there were a sufficient number of satellites already in space around Earth to handle what would be a tremendous amount of communicative traffic during the one week of voting. Finally, King stated that it would take three weeks to prepare and complete logistically and successfully everything that needed to be done, which meant that voting could begin on Monday, 27 April, and conclude on Sunday, 3 May. The worldwide results of the voting would be available the following day, Monday, 4 May.

Ty, having heard all of this information, didn’t know what to say to President King, other than expressing again his limitless, unending gratitude both to King, and concomitantly, to the millions of those who were essentially the volunteers from all over the world who were going to make possible this prodigious effort to save Earth.



Chapter 67

Monday, 4 May, at once was so close, and so very far away.

Amaranth and Ty spent those three weeks essentially numb. They had done everything they could humanly do to help save Earth. Now was this interminable wait.

They tried everything. They took long drives into the mountains. They both tried reading books, but found they couldn’t concentrate. They even went to several movies in Boulder, which they usually never did.

Meanwhile, Earth was trying to hang on. Conditions around the world continued to be unimaginably awful. Millions of human beings had lost their lives. Whole cities either had been burnt to the ground or had been flooded into oblivion. Virtually all plant life on Earth was dying, or had already died. Many, many people all over the world had committed suicide because they knew what was happening. Life on Earth had become, in a word, unbearable.

At last, voting around the world on CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH began on Monday, 27 April. Reports worldwide was that voting turnout around the world had been massive. To Amaranth and Ty and billions of others, that one week of worldwide voting seemed like a century. But what had seemed like forever finally came to an end on Sunday, 3 May.

The results of the voting, as King had said, were announced the following day, Monday, 4 May. The Citizens of Earth had approved CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH with 68% of them voting for it.

There were celebrations around the world of all sizes, both huge, such as those in New York City and even in Moscow and Beijing, and tiny, such as those in millions of villages. These celebrations went on for days.

Earth had never seen anything like it.

And Earth, where life of all kinds had found itself on the edge of extinction, miraculously was finding its own way to celebrate. The enormous fires and floods that had killed millions, and threatened even more, were slowly abating. And several days after the results of the worldwide voting had been announced, leaves that had first turned brown and then had fallen to the ground were slowly being replaced by new, little leaves. And the seeds that had been planted in millions of fields around the world that had never begun to grow were now germinating.

Amaranth and Ty, along with Julie and Ed, had joined the celebration in Boulder. Of course, there had never been anything like this before, and probably would never be again. The four of them stayed for as long as they could stand up.

When Amaranth and Ty did say good-bye to Julie and Ed, after hugging both of them, they drove to Niwot in a great hurry, rushed into their home, then literally ran into their bedroom where they managed to strip each other of their clothing in a matter of seconds, then jumped into bed and began to make passionate love that did not end for hours.



Chapter 68

Both Amaranth and Ty slept late into the morning. This new day was Tuesday, 5 May. It was, indeed, a beautiful day.

Amaranth cooked a leisurely, sumptuous breakfast for Ty and herself. Later, when she was washing the dishes, Amaranth suddenly screamed, “The crocuses!”

Instantly, she opened the kitchen door, flew down the stairs, then ran to the exact spot where the crocuses lived. She looked down and screamed again.

“My dear crocuses, you are still alive!” she cried.

Amaranth immediately bent down and kissed each of the crocuses on their tips. Then she sat down beside them, as she had wanted to do for way too long a time, and began talking to them, as was her eternal wont.

Amaranth had a lot to tell them. She told them the whole story with all the details, with all the twists and turns, with all the ups and downs. And finally, she told them about Earth’s victory, and the celebrations around the world that seemingly never wanted to end.

What a joyous time Amaranth was having!



Chapter 69

This day, Ty went back to Fairview High School in Boulder to teach American history.

Amaranth sat on the blue sofa in the living room listening to Beethoven’s immortal Ninth Symphony. As she sat there, she slowly came to the realization that she had not yet had her period. She was usually extremely regular, which meant to her that she should have had it either on Saturday or Sunday. She sat there on the blue sofa thinking about this for quite a while. Finally, she got up and went to the phone. She had decided to call Julie.

“Julie, this is Am,” she said. “I’m calling you for a special reason. I missed my period this month, and I was wondering if I might be able to see your obstetrician and ask him to check me out, and I was hoping you might be able to go with me.”

Julie said yes to both.

“I think an obstetrician can tell you two weeks after the day you missed having your period if you are pregnant. Am I right?” asked Amaranth.

Julie told her she was right.

“Oh my god, Julie! Do you think I might be pregnant?” Amaranth was in disbelief.

Julie told Amaranth to calm down. Yes, there was a possibility that she was pregnant, but only an obstetrician could say for sure, and only after he had taken a blood sample from her.

Amaranth’s heart was pounding.

Julie’s obstetrician was Dr. Pedarsky. She gave Amaranth his office phone number.

“I’ll call his office right now. Let’s see, two weeks from today will be Wednesday, 20 May. Will that date work for you?” she asked Julie.

“Yes, it will,” Julie said.

“I’ll call you right back to let you know if I can get an appointment for that day,” said Amaranth, her heart still pounding.

Amaranth immediately called Dr. Pedarsky’s office.

“This is Amaranth Anderson calling. I am a friend of Julie Borgoman, who is a patient of Dr. Pedarsky and has recommended him to me. I’m calling to see if it would be possible to make an appointment to see Dr. Pedarsky sometime on Wednesday, May 20th. I have missed my period for the first time since I began menstruating, and I feel strongly I should see a doctor.”

There was a short pause, then the nurse said Dr. Pedarsky could see her at 2:30 on the 20th.

“That would be wonderful,” said Amaranth, almost shouting.

After thanking the nurse for her help, she quickly called Julie back.

“I got an appointment with Dr. Pedarsky on Wednesday, May 20th, at 2:30. I am so excited,” exclaimed Amaranth.

Julie told Amaranth that she was pleased to hear this good news, but also told Amaranth to settle down. Amaranth told Julie that she understood and appreciated what she was telling her, but could not find a way to tell Julie that she would not be able to calm down for quite a while. Amaranth thanked Julie for all her help, then hung up.

Amaranth went back to the blue sofa and sat down. Her heart was still pounding, and would continue to pound for a long time this day.

Chapter 70

Another impossible, long wait, Amaranth thought.

She would spend most of her days going out to sit down and talk to the crocuses. There were so many things to tell them, and she was so, so happy to see them again.

Finally, Wednesday, 20 May, arrived. Amaranth was so excited. She couldn’t help it. About 1:30, she left Niwot to pick up Julie in Boulder.

“I am so excited Julie! I can’t help it,” said Amaranth.

“I understand, Am,” said Julie.

They got to Dr. Pedarsky’s office a little bit before 2:30.

"I’m Amaranth Anderson, and I have a 2:30 appointment to see Dr. Pedarsky. This is my friend, Julie Borgoman. She is also a patient of Dr. Pedarsky."

The nurse recognized Julie and said hello, then asked the two of them to have a seat.

“Dr. Pedarsky will be out shortly to see you,” said the nurse. Amaranth and Julie took a seat.

Within a few minutes, Dr. Pedarsky came around the corner. He knew Julie and that Ms. Anderson was her friend and his new patient.

“Ms. Anderson, I’m Dr. Pedarsky. It is a pleasure to meet you. Won’t the two of you come with me?” said the doctor.

Amaranth and Julie got up and followed Dr. Pedarsky down the hallway and into an examining room.

Dr. Pedarsky spoke to Amaranth.

“It’s my understanding that you recently missed having your period, and that this was the first time you could ever remember having that happen to you. Am I right?” asked Dr. Pedarsky.

“Yes, that’s right, Dr. Pedarsky,” said Amaranth.

“And you’re concerned, aren’t you?” asked Dr. Pedarsky.

“Yes I am,” said Amaranth.

“I’ll have my nurse take a blood sample from you. We have our own lab here, so it will be about a half hour before we have the results,” said Dr. Pedarsky.

That half hour was the longest half hour of Amaranth’s life.

Dr. Pedarsky came back into the room and walked over to Amaranth. He paused a second. Then he looked directly at Amaranth and said, “Amaranth, you are going to have a baby. You’re pregnant.”

Amaranth almost fainted. “Are you sure, Doctor?” asked Amaranth.

“I am certain,” said Dr. Pedarsky.

Amaranth started crying. Her body began to shake.

“I can’t believe it! This is the best news I have ever received!” cried Amaranth. Julie got up and went over, first to squeeze her hand, then to hold it.

“Thank you, Dr. Pedarsky! Thank you so much!” cried Amaranth.

Dr. Pedarsky said, “I don’t think I’m the correct man for you to thank,” chuckling a bit after saying that.

Amaranth was so overwhelmed with joy. She took Julie by the hand and wisked her and herself out of the examining room, down the hallway, down the stairs to the entrance and flung the door open and essentially ran to her car, dragging Julie behind her. Then she sped Julie home, hugged her so tightly and thanked her for all her help, then sped to Niwot, almost hitting the edge of the garage because she was driving so fast. She leaped out of the car, ran to the back door, swung it wide open, ran through the kitchen into the living room where she saw Ty standing and kept running until she leaped into his open arms.

“Ty!,” she screamed. “We’re going to have a baby! I’m pregnant!”

Ty kissed this woman he had loved from the moment he had first seen her. And then he held her in his arms it seemed like forever.

It is not a matter of 'you' or 'me'.
When using your heart to truly see
The difference in things and worlds that we dream
Obscuring our true vision of reality.

Solitary thoughts linger on the solitude
Breathing in the essence your presence shifts tides, waxes moons
Reaching out I'm blinded by black light, a dark veil, a celestial hood
Shifting tides
Waxing moons.

Harp strings make hearts sing a melody reciprocating love and light
No hint of betrayal, from mountain tops we hail true love's plight
I become nothing more than a breathy wind in a sail, the sweet laughter of a child; sacred and wild
Whatever is suffered in cruelty, in lust, this gravitational pull was always a losing fight.

The theory of 'you' and 'me' is a false accusation
Our spectrum of existence can't survive without the love we ride on; our own manifestation
When your heart reaches out, mine instinctively does too
To mirror you
There is nothing more holy, nothing more true
Foreheads together, contoured ethereal bodies of limbo floatation
Loving without limitation.
It is 'We' who translate the most ancient of creations
And 'We' who move forward through the fire of temptation.

The honeybee creeps forward out of necessity to the flower

The *** opens up a box of gemstones

I am looking at the flower

I sit in park and a man walks up to me, instinctively sensing that I need someone, something.  What I want is not what I need.

Nature spreads her view in and of time through perception & stillness

"on grace anatomy a father once said that his daughter always insisted on climbing the highest trees and jump head first of the bridge, and that its his job to catch her."

those words pulled my tight my heart strings into a knot
mom was my safety net, always there, ready to catch me
understanding that i cannot help but to climb the highest and tallest
i cannot help but to head the call of my soul and wander
not lost but hungry for experience and to live
no not achievements
and always knowing instinctively when the wind of change approach
running to meet it open sails never afraid of leaving the harbour
believing that i'm not made for the harbour

after God called my safety net home
i struggled to find my footing, momentarily lost
by the grace and hand of God i found my feet again

Storm

Clouds arrive like villains in smiles,
Their threat proudly displayed upon their menacing faces.
The winds are rolling, freshly born.
Waves get restless.
They know a violent cascade is looming.
The impending chaos is tangible.
The cosmos hold their breath.
Time stands still.
Fear,
Both inciting it
And cowering in it,
Is dominant here.
Lightning flashes a glimpse of what's to come.
Thunder speaks the words we instinctively know.
Calm resonates the precipice of disaster.
A vibration tethered for too long,
Shakes a warning to run.
Hesitation.
It's too late.
The eye is focused.
I am the storm.
I am here.

She is profoundly devoid of the human hunger for contact
Abhorring the inertia social interaction requires
Superficial chit chat just to keep a job down drains her soul
All exclaim her people artistry skill
She instinctively absorbs the form of others and their texture pervade her being
She doesn’t understand how she sees their blueprint, but she reads them, rights them and they are inexplicably drawn to her
She spends hours alone seemingly with nothing to do and finds the need of others to be with her an anomaly
Yet, give her a book, a film, anything that doesn’t need a human contribution, and she’ll cry you a river
She knows she’s searching, she knows she’s meant to be doing something
But her own texture eludes her and as she grows older her sadness deepens

its been a while since we talked last, what a shame.

you dont realize what id give to go back to those days, to those ways that never failed to put a smile on my face.

so its safe to say that i miss you along with all those little things you do.

we rushed this...

we never thought it through.

and now we ARE through.

...i remember the day you told me you loved me.

tears filled your eyes and the question "why?" flowed from your lips like butterflies and became the entire focus of my mind.


but for that simple 3 letter question i could find no answer.

instinctively i wrapped my arms around you and told you that i'd never let go.

but it seems that the weight of your distrust became too much for me to hold.

and i pleaded for you not to believe those lies that you've been told.

still you didn't listen. and now you became that last piece of me that i am missing.

and these words will go unread because they will go unspoken.

they say you cant fix whats not broken.

but in my case you cant break what already is.

Was that a knock on the bedroomj door
in fact two he was sure.
A chill ran through his body instantly
sitting up in bed instinctively.
Not a believer in spirits or any god.
thinking he was a silly old sod.

Staring at his own white painted door
he placed bare feet on floor.
Putting dressing gown on feeling cold
moving forward rather bold.
In the dim light did the handle turn
the stomach acid began to burn.

This was daft for the first time afraid
wishing in his bed he had stayed.
With a deep breath ****** open the door
in the dark a shadow he saw.
It vanished with no sound being heard
then noises in the kitchen stirred.

Turning every light on he could reach
there came a high pitched screech.
Yet still nothing was at all visible to him
now the mood was getting grim.
As he stood shocked in the well lit room
in the roof space came a boom.

At this point he could take no more
and ran out the front door.
The night was warm as he looked inside
a figure stared out he cried.
It was himself a dark shadow came behind
then he was gone phasing his mind.

Shouting out he awoke shaking in bed
staring at the door was he dead?
Soon it was obvious he was definately not
as up in his bed he shot.
On the painted door there was a knock
frozen in a state of shock.

What will happen next?

The Foureyed Poet.

TLDR

Posted up on a bar stool, I noticed the instant he walked in.
Blue eyes beckoning. I was listening. Hard.

Liquidly courageous, delightfully obscure and entertaining,
I bewitched him in conversation.
Filled his empty pint with my pitcher of Yuengling.
Stealing and donning his sweaty hat.
He had just finished art school.
I was studying journalism.

He kept finding reasons to touch me.
Blocking me from human traffic.
Keeping me close and safe physically.
At one point, some drunken, oblivious, d-bag tried to holler.
He moved between, cockblocking.
Unwavering in eye contact and speech with me.
I can’t remember what we talked about, only how it felt.

He got my number, and we stayed until the bar closed.
And as all the carbon contents poured into the back alley,
he grabbed my hand.
I remember the sweat and energy on his slender fingers.
He was pushing past palpable trepidation.
And in the midst of a hundred swarming,
he yanked my hand toward him and kissed me.
People started cheering.
It was perfect.

Except, I freaked.
Froze. Stopped breathing.
Pulled away as far as his hand would allow.
He reeled me back in for another try.
When I brushed his lips, the panic devoured.
So I pulled away harder, breaking free from his fingers.
Fleeing, scurrying through a sea of drunken bodies.
I shimmied like a silver lure dangling in his face.
Then shot him the-****-down. Twice.
Instinctively.

He never called me. But pocket-dialed me the next day.
Left an unintended voicemail. Heard him bemoaning, *I felt SO stupid…
Called him back a few minutes later. Didn’t leave a message.
I could have called again. I didn’t. Ever.

I thought about him every day for months,
inspiring one of my better poems of that era:
A Roller Coaster Ride Ending in Derailment.
Years later, I friended him on MySpace, sent a generic message.
He didn’t recognize me. And I never said anything.
Like a ******* coward.

How is it possible to excitedly charge in a cardinal direction,
only to smack abruptly into:
I-gotta-get-the-****-outta-here-NOWWWW?!

I’ve had a little time, say 14 years,
to reflect on what made me me run,
and I think it was this:
as soon as he was facing me,
with unadulterated adoration,
all I could feel was terrified and ugly.
It was so good. Far too good for me.

I was afraid. Afraid he would eventually see.
That I was hideous. He wouldn’t want the real me.
I didn’t think I could live up to the look in his eyes.
When he saw I was only a spunky, confident model on the cover,
and an insecure shitshow amidst contents inside, he would leave.
A fragile little girl so afraid she is unlovable, unworthy, ugly.
When he saw how uncomfortable I could be in my own skin,
he would let go.
I didn’t like me, so why the **** should he?
I ran from connection that night, after tilling it for hours.
Hauling *** with windows down,
I slammed the brakes and careened. End scene.
He reeked of bliss and impending heartbreak.
So I abandoned him before he could leave.

I’m frightened of anyone who truly stirs me.
It makes me feel big, scary feelings. They straitjacket hug me.
Skewing all my outward signals. I come off standoffish.
Pushing away the very thing I want and need.
I’m not good at expressing intense feelings in real time.
Except in ink. And bed.

I get locked up inside. Feels like I’m gonna die.
A fight-or-flight ignition by erroneous head triggers.
I project my unlovable feelings onto others,
in the face of blatant evidence to the contrary.

I’ve done LTRs, just not with the required equipment.
I know the gears are sabotaged out the gate,
but I go for it anyway. It’s safe (or so it seems). And empty.
I crave intimacy, but I’m terrified of showing up entirely.
In front of someone with eyes that can see.
I quickly sense who is capable of meeting me,
and thoroughly **** it up for myself,
by not feeling free. Not authentic. Not open. Hiding.
Editing. Hot fish, cold fish. Rotating masks. Blockades. Running.
Constantly scanning the environment for signs of rejection,
that I’m not enough, indeed. To validate my own self-worthlessness.
I wanna be right.
I’ve only done long terms where I can remain alone, bored and/or dead.
No real intimacy. No full disclosure. No BAMF duo status.
No seeing to the back of each other’s skulls.
No blasting through the cosmos.

I freeze and evade in the face of what I crave.
Shunning delicious plates I’ve just ordered and ravenously drooled over.
I have more examples, but this is the most concise and blatant...

Except, this one time:

I told my gut to shut the **** up,
while I cosigned utter inner *******.
Denied the eyes of my own soul,
as it floated into my periphery.
It took all of my focus just to breathe.

He didn’t turn around,
just looked over his shoulder.
At me. Up, then down.
And drifted away.
Electrocuting my cosmic antennae.
Leaving me reeling. Still tingling.

I almost called your name,
but doubt surrounded fear mountain.
Plus, I thought I was jus straight trippin, err, trollin.
Going crazy. Weaving my own alteration atop reality.
Pretty pro @ that yuh know...

We push and pull and run and chase,
because it feels safer pursuing what’s out of reach.
Until it turns around.
Or looks over its shoulder...

With eyes that can see.

I'm a dulled edge,
getting dressed, put on your shoes
and sit on the couch, waiting
for the love of your life to come
walking in through the door, singing.
but she doesnt come,
fate stood you up.
no smiling face to greet you,
no reason to get up, to bathe,
to leave the house,  to cook,
to get angry, to feel anything.
the nights are long and full
of drinking with whoever can pass a
bottle. beer. wine. pouring *****
in the wine. blowing half your check
at the bar one night,  and the
other half the next.
and I keep thinking 'where's she at?'
today I woke up early,
took out the trash,  smoked a cigarette
watched the sun rise for a while,
turned on the radio, they were
playing Rachmaninoff, turned the
radio back off.
let the cat chew on my beard for
a while.
I've done just about everything,
what else is there?
so I drive to the store. grabbed
a little basket and put in
soap, two apples, an onion,
buy the wrong kind of cornmeal.
some kale and mushrooms.
instinctively buy some things the
last one liked (I'm terrified I'll never
be able to break that habit).
drive home put down the bags.
start taking out the contents and
looking at them,
placing them methodically on the
table crowded with paper and
***** dishes and crumpled
beer cans
and I stare at the sink
full of the same
and then I look at the
floor covered in garbage
and finally to the kale in
my hand.
"my god," I said to the kale "this
is how suicides happen."
I put it down, smoke
another cigarette and watch
the tree growing in the
courtyard. it'll be here after I'm
dead, one of the ugly stains
left in my wake.

Up on a feathered duvet a man conceding defeat
To the Sunday that had just begun
Reeking of last night’s sweat, smoke and self-deceit
Threads of reality so rapidly un-spun

All that he promised himself to accomplish this day
All that stuff to be tossed in the bin
Procrastination rearranges plans or lets them decay
And all because of his love for gin

Amnesia of last night’s antics plants the seeds of guilt
Shame shall be his shadow today
Enter a recurring thought... a sword driven to its hilt
Piercing pain added to his dismay

Rusted cogs of cognition screeched slowly into action
"A cure" he grumbled "A cure"
Wearily off the bed searching for medicinal satisfaction
To make last night less obscure

The stark bright light of the bathroom fried his vision
But as his senses normalized
He stared in the mirror shocked, BANG! In a collision
Mouth agape and paralyzed

Finger painted on his forehead, with what must be blood
G    U    I    L    T   Y
From down stairs somewhere
A woman's laugh
Mocking
Fear took its grip quick

A sword driven to its hilt



Part 2 of 6
a sword driven to its hilt

Arctic chills froze his spine
Pick axes hacked his mind
Tongue pickled in brine
Suffocated and confined
Heart beat pounding
Breathing short and quick
Terror was abounding
Throat swallowing a brick

Staring at his reflection . . . G U I L T Y
Unable move any limb
Even for his protection
Return of memory grim . . . a sword driven to its hilt

Back to the bed room to search for his phone
To make contact with the real world
From down stairs came that exact same laugh
Every hair on his body tightly curled
The phone was nowhere to be found upstairs
Again that tormenting laughter
He called out "Who is it?" but only silence replied
Then that laugh again soon after
"WHO ARE YOU?!" he demanded to know
Arming himself with a cricket bat
Tentatively descending the sweeping staircase
Noticing the post on the door mat
The newspaper informed him it was Monday
Confused, frightened he ran outside
A burnt pile of his clothes lay in front of his door
He yelled but only the laughter replied

Then through the dining room bay-window
Sitting at the table as if a patient guest
A gruesome wide eyed greying corpse of a man  
A sword driven in his head and out his breast

In the dead man’s hand a glowing phone
The source of the tormenting laugh
Not thinking, our man rushed in to take it
The phone flashed "maintenance staff"

Every sense heightened
Sickened and frightened
Feeling he was being observed
Part of a wicked game
Driving him insane
But so far he had been preserved
As he answered the phone
He knew he was not alone
"Hello sir... I hope I haven't disturbed"
------------------------------------------------------­-----------

part 3 of 6

Saturday Night

The late afternoon sun draped its golden satin light
To the house-staff, Giles (our man) seemed uptight
The butler Zamira dutifully stirring his drink right

The sun dipped behind the poplar trees standing straight
He orders "A Churchill  martini" trying not to sound irate
Giles watched her stirring, stirring as in a hypnotic state

Zamira presented a chilled, frosted Riedel martini glass to him
brimming to the top with Gilpins Westmorland extra dry gin
The sun slowly sank behind trees as the drink loosened his limbs
"You may both leave, till Tuesday" He said to Zamira and her twin
Liliana (the cook) and the butler were often dismissed at his whim
They sped off in their green MG, off to the Slaughtered lamb inn

Giles raised his glass to the bobbing full hunters moon
Waiting was now over, the others would be here soon
First a pinch of Peruvian sniffed from a little silver spoon

This day had been prepared in detail for nearly a year
One final act of courage and tenacity he must engineer
All hushed except the sound of large cars drawing near

Four black Jaguars and a white refrigerated van

Crunched over the gravel drive towards (our man)

Giles Bradshaw-Behran stood still.

It had began.

---------------------------------------------------------­--

Part 4 of 6

three years earlier

The Gallows and Noose

"This, THIS! I'm so tired of all THIS!"
Blurted Giles as Zamira dressed his wrists
Pathetic! (She thought) A dismal attempt
Then left the room concealing contempt
Giles just stared at the

drip

drip

drip

dripping of the morphine
Candle light danced on the walls
The demons sank back into the shadows
Giles returned to the womb
Basking in weightless warmth
Comfortably apathetic
Numb

The drudgery of the next day unfurled
As Giles accepted defeat around noon
Something had to be done about life
That something had better happen soon
  
He brunched in his office
and so began his search
All that day
and night
that week
That month

Deeper into the cavernous "dark web"
seeking any answer to end his despair
but every search became a cul-de-sac
No doors opened for this millionaire
No doors would open
All remained firmly locked
Sitting in his office chair
Feverishly typing as he rocked
He rocked as he typed
He swivelled as he clicked
Searching for something
That he was less able to predict

But that something found him
And sent him an invitation
Explaining that they had been watching
Seeing his frustration
Understanding his world view
May he could understand theirs
But before he were to be accepted
He must climb down the seven stairs
He
      Must
                Climb
                           Down
                                     The
                                           Seven
                                                      Stairs
Dis­tant from the blinding light
Cast yourself from the hallows
Embrace darkness embrace night
Take the Noose and the Gallows.

The mouse pointer hovered
over options "Yes" and "No"
His heart beat quickened
But then came the red glow
of two laser beams from directly behind
circling the yes option
From past the windows' opened blind
"Yes" and the two red dots disappeared
The wheels were put in motion
His future was now commandeered
A force that seemed greater than him
Changed the rules and took control
Embers deep inside of him flickered
Re-igniting the coals of his dark soul

The seven steps awaited him...
What ever could they be?


-----------------------------------------------------------­


part 5 of 6

The Seven Steps of The Thuggee

Giles sat statue still in his office
Unsure whether or not he should move
Like a hunted deer in the woods
Waiting for chances of survival to improve

And yet though he were vulnerable
Life coursed through every artery and vein
The lost keystone of his arched spirit
The panacea for tedious boredom and pain

DING! ****! The doorbell rang
"Zamira, who is it? Can you please see?"
Footsteps approached the front entrance
Giles felt instinctively "fight or flee"

He sat with silence looming over him
For what seemed like an eternity
"****** ancient bell!" he shouted
"This whole house repels modernity!"

Down stairs
At the entrance
The Cuban butler stared out into the night
Looking for a sign
Looking for who...
Who had left the parcel she now clutched tight

No one
Nothing
But for the song of a lonely nightingale
She hurried
To the office
Where she found her employer looking pale

Zamira explained what had happened
And handed him the black wrapped box
"Would you like me to open it Sir?"
"No! I would like... a chartreuse on the rocks"

She left to attend to his request

For the attention of Mr. G. Bradshaw-Behram
Soon after the two laser beams were on the wrapping
Inside the box was a detailed program
A history of the Thuggee cult and a Thuggee king

The Thuggee King called BEHRAM!
Behram, BEHRAM! His late mother’s family name
A Thuggee cult King relative?
With over 900 hundred murders to that man’s claim

900 strangled victims
To please Goddess Kali
Every drop of blood for her
So humanity can be free

Zamira returned with his drink
Giles had never needed one so much
The following weeks more instruction came

Weeks just turned to months
Months quickly turned to years
Six of the secret steps complete
So many grotesque souvenirs

All leading to this moment
On his lawn under the hunters moon
The waiting was now over
The others would be here very soon
First a pinch of Peruvian
Sniffed from his pretty little silver spoon
Adjusting his cummerbund
That soon would erase two souls fortune

Four black Jaguars and a refrigerated van
Crunched over the gravel drive to our man
Giles stood still and smiled, for it had began

Each of the six women and the six men
Were concealed with hoods and veils
But Giles' face was not hidden from them
Now that he controls the final inhales

Deep in the candle light of the wine cellar
Which had been prepared with plastic sheets and tape
A skirt of dismembered arms on an altar
A grim garland of forty eight human skulls, mouths agape

But fifty skulls are required
According to the ancient text
Two more to soon be provided
Giles planned to do that next

"Bring the two travellers to me" demanded Giles
"Let me send them on their final way"
Eight of the group left and within minutes returned
With four bound, hooded for him to slay.

Giles felt suddenly unable to function
"This was not meant to be!"
"The others witnessed the abduction, Sir"
"They...will not please Kali"

"Stand those women over there
Tie them back to back
Make sure your knots are fixed
Offer them no slack!"

The silk cummerbund slid
Effortlessly off his waist
Weighted near the middle
To offer death less haste
The first of the male offerings
Only kicked for 30 seconds
the world stopped moving when
the other felt the silk band

The back to back females started spinning
Their hoods removed and ******* gone
Giles did not look up to see who he knew
Focused solely on continuing strangulation

This time the Thuggee's had another view
Zamira and Liliana in a blurring spin
Black of space and ocean of deep blue
Zamira angered, Liliana peaceful grin

All but their arms becoming one
Morphing seamlessly into each other
The (previously twin) sisters had become
The universe's all powerful mother

          K A L I...


Final part

Nothing escapes the all-consuming march of time!

As KALI consumed time and space
Her dimensions grew and grew
Her skin darkened to deep space black
From unfathomable ocean blue
Rivers of obsidian flowed as her wild hair
Untamed, magnificent, streaming
Three blood red eyes past, present, future
Decided who needed redeeming
Four arms, three of which were grasping
A sword, a spear, a bowl
The fourth grabbed a Thuggee's head
Sword decapitated the soul
A crimson red snake of a tongue lashed
Out for every drop of blood
Then the sword slashed every throat there
Her tongue lapped up the flood
KALI'S gaze finally cast upon terrified Giles
Evaporating his body with fire
His conscience was that remained in that dimension
His conscience changed KALI'S desire
Frightful fury morphed in to motherly compassion
Her skin back from black to blue
Spewing out rearranged history, time and space
No other being could construe
But a mother must teach her children lessons
So she left Giles not without guilt
A ****** message painted on his forehead
And a sword driven to its hilt

*THE END!

You phone me at quarter-to-eleven,
Telling me that you belong in heaven,
But you are only intoxicated,
And now that I've been inocculated,
With this long, never-ending depression,
I know how to accept your confession.

But don't you try to find reasons to go,
Because I will instinctively follow,
So let me collect your tears in my palm,
And soothe your forehead 'til you're coldly calm,
So that you forget about ****** blades,
And let this frightening fear slowly fade.

Drop the lesson taught,
Consider the objective sought,
By the values almost burnt;
Only the ordinary is yearned;
Curiosity now deemed a crime,
Is pursued you shall serve time.
Master the lost skill of thought,
Things should be earned and not bought,
Dormant survival sealed in it’s grave,
Three days; resurrection; makes you a slave.
Intuition smothered with testaments of old.
Soon your spirit withers; dead and cold.
Life has no meaning unless given, no sense; impractical, instinctively driven,
Repeat a pointless existence; death is the only fact.

Out of sync with time falling backwards

Pieces of me fragment towards home.

Time effortlessly cascades over existence

Like water over small pebble stones,

On shallow banks of lost hope.

Shards of dignity escape me

Breaking apart my very essence.

I wait silently in sleepless grandeur

Re-living moments of memory

The sun in all its warmth and glory

Basks upon your perfection,

Yet it's nothing more than recollection

Jaded time worn frames of thought

Instinctively played by design.

I look to sepia polaroid's of dying hope

A realisation of futility

Sparks the world to collapse in on itself

My heart, a beautiful glass construct lies at centre,

Memories, emotion, time merge into one

Compressing all that remains into a single shining pearl

A light so intense it burns endlessly

In hopeless desire to find you again.

Capture the essence of the moment and enliven in some kind of miracle;
Some higher altitude beyond outer space.
Inside something that only dreams can make sense of, breathe the sparkles of dust
that create atoms into matter.
Use yourself as an instrument and deliver some kind of meaning that tells some magical story
to your brother, sister, or some complete stranger.
Connect us all together.
Brighten up some sad face that has nothing to look forward to.
Bring joy to those children who need someone to look up to, and be an example.
Know yourself inside and out, and dance inside your imagination.
Fight the demons you can't conquer in reality.
Ignore whatever stigma people think they can define you with
Show the world what you are truly made of.
And be instinctively yourself, a person with charm and elegance, and control.
Applude yourself, even when you know you have accomplished something so epic and trivial.
Be what you naturally would; as money were no object.
Glorify in the person, you come face to face to challenge.
And bring yourself to understand it is not about you anymore.
Because everyone has a story to tell, and you are telling it.
Understand this and you have stepped into my soul

she shattered his fantasy, perhaps his illusions
not knowing how to leave well enough alone
she's had enough of emotional contusions
he wanted fantasy in flesh and bone

how to love, how to share, how to heal
they needed that from each other
instinctively understanding the real from
love they had shared with another

now they circle, slightly wary, but down inside
they are the same, craving, two souls needing
wanting, desiring, love doesn't die
two lovers, blood pumping, hearts beating

life gets messy, tangled, but still it moves on
another day, a new night, love stands, it is strong

I wish I knew.
I wish I knew what was coming.
I can’t see the future.

Here’s something else:
Cats are enabled with an evolutionary trait called "tapetum lucidum,” also known as eyeshine.
It reflects light inside their corneas, and allows them to see in the dark.
But, if I also had tapetum, would I want to see what the dark holds?
Would I want to see what lies in the dark?
Would I want to see the future, if I could?

Instinctively, I think I would.
But the Romantic inside of me would regret the choice.
I’m regretting it now.
But some perverse way would persuade me otherwise, to look forward, so as to foresee mistakes I don’t have to make.

I don’t want to make any mistakes.
But I don’t want to cheat.
I’m a paradox, and I’m broken.
But I’m not a cheater.

I know the rules, and however much I don’t enjoy it, I will play by them.

The odd word sometimes slips out
I mean nothing by it
It's just human instinct
I say what I mean in the passions of such clout
Offended?
Then sorry
Or am I?
Get a grip woman,
It's just a word that instinctively rolled from my mouth
Well if you don't like this then see me when drunk
I'll tear you to pieces
I'll shatter your dreams
And leave this room dirtier than that of a skunk
Spraying the kerbside with thoughts of a madman
Speaking such truths
Littering the graves of such inbuilt angst
Whilst wittering away and dancing the can-can
Dont try and stop me as this is my food
Living on this tribal urge
The surrounding men have given up their surge
So sorry for being so rude.

Dear Violet,

This isn’t what you want from me, and we both **** well know that, so
I’m sorry.

For making you the true victim of unrequited love, because altruism comes at a high price, something we both know too well, and this kind of behavior simply won’t do. For once in my life, I must try and put these feelings behind me. Because I cannot express, what I cannot understand, especially towards you, Violet, considering your own sense of confusion. This was a world I never expected to find myself in with you. I’ve sat through dozens of your accounts of exactly what I’m becoming, and I’m well aware of what becomes of them. You’re a rare Violet rose weathering a storm, and all I can do is offer you shelter. But in no way shall I pick you, for if that were to ever happen, I’m afraid you’d instinctively wither away and die between my fingers, and I couldn’t stand to let that happen. I wouldn’t put you through that. But the heart is an animal solely restrained by the rib cage, unbound by the mind, and my bones are rather weak. My ribs would be worth breaking. My heart would, could be yours for the taking. But I need to make do, for this is the exact thing I just swore I simply wouldn’t do.

The sun sends us life as a
coherent cohesive beam, unfiltered.

Our science has shown us that
all it takes to rationalize this
is a prism, the rainbows'
gatekeeper, after whose interference
we can see the dichotomy of
each ribbon of color, naked
and categorized like society.

A prism isn't necessary to see
that life is beautiful, any
more than society or our
minds are necessary for us to
instinctively know that light
loses something as it meets
the prism.

The light was too beautiful for
us to comprehend, so we broke
it down to build up walls.

We used the walls to build rooms,
and our minds to bar the doors
and windows.  Society took care
of the rest.

The real breakthrough takes place
when we take all that we
learned and use it to tear
back down that prison
of the light.