A line of three such trees adorns the edge of a small park and twenty-odd people maniacally camp out underneath, soaking up some magic of promised renewal. He can smell its sweetness, its false promises.

The expatriate has five months left on his contract as he walks in the labyrinth of the back streets off the tidal river. Through the cracks and folds of soft clothes gently swaying on industrial balconies, he hears a cry.

A scream, rather, in Japanese, and – seemingly – to no one, for there is no reply nor follow-up. He waits a few moments to be sure it isn’t someone asking for help. We’ve all heard those unanswered murderous cries in psychology class and faced our species’ disgusting limitations. But the space is again still. So quiet that he can hear the movement of dust particles pushed by forces beyond their control.

Thank god it’s almost over. The feeling comes unbidden and he doesn’t know why. He had always dreamed of living in Japan for a few years, of the superior culture, of the deep wisdom and beautiful art, of the bizarre technologies, once futuristic, now stuck in nineties-era anticipation of a sure binary: a new optimistic century…or apocalypse.

He is draped in silence. The streets offer no exposure to the privacy of lives. Urbanity is restricted; people put on a face and then retreat to their homes. More than once he has wondered what goes on behind those quiet walls, those always-closed windows. When the rituals end, who is left…exposed?

The realization that he will never understand saddens him. Inferiority blends with isolation in shy glances toward windows revealing nothing. How long would it take?

Nearly home, the crazy old man with the urban equivalent of garden gnomes waves and bows - Konnichiwa. He nods his head in return; he is tired and confused by these customs, constantly afraid he is committing a faux pas. If he could only give it some time.

The old man’s gray home is adorned with many strange trinkets, its door often open, unlike the others. The man is friendly, long-limbed, and wild like his plants piled up at the edge of the street. Today, like many other days, he works on a broken car, a Datsun 510 with the foam of the front seat and many wires exposed. It will never run again, but he moves around pieces of the engine and cleans corners of the old leather, reminiscing of a time when he was sane and when his wife rode alongside him.

Like other days, the old man talks to him, tells him many anecdotes or observations about his life and his car, all in Japanese but with the inviting gestures of an Italian. The expat nods and smiles affectionately. He has already made it clear he doesn’t speak the local language. This is simple companionship; two lonely men in the street sharing a moment. He wishes he could invite the man back to their place for a whiskey but imagines this is wrong, either the wrong way to do things or that he will be confused and alarmed by the suggestion.

His wife reminds him that she doesn’t want to leave, just as he is aggressively marking off days on the family calendar in permanent marker. She works for a foreign company from home and plans her day around the restaurant they will try in the evening. Ramen, soba, yakitori, mizutaki, mentaiko. It is a solitary world here for her, but she seems happy.

Why can’t he feel the same? He is surrounded by people at work and yet feels so lonely. Some of them are expats. Koreans, Chinese, Americans, Australians. They all seem content. They, too, talk about Japanese food incessantly.

His local colleagues treat him with respect. They bow for each other, smile, exchange pleasantries, share accolades. But the always has a little worry. He doesn’t know why.

One of the bosses he liked was recently put on leave. They all went out on a Friday evening. The guy had talked about how he felt stressed, got a bit sad. On the Monday, he was missing. The Korean told them he had been put on leave, had a freaked out look on her face. Be careful, she said, never complain about the work. She speaks pretty good Japanese – I heard two of the managers discussing how they wish Daisuke would just resign or kill himself, make it easier for everyone. She was horrified but hid it behind the pungency of embedded bites from her bento.

Every month, she offers them vats of perfectly fermented homemade kimchi, and, each time, he wishes he had some cultural delicacy to share.

◆

He goes to Akasaka to get his haircut. For the first time in his life, he wears it longer and lightens the top. It feels like a way to play with some version of reality, to make it a dream. His hairdresser is from Fukuoka but used to live in New York City; he is an insider-outsider. His joyful, critical, creative, rational personality is comforting.

He tells the expat about Kyoto because this is where people go for Sakura:

Here’s a typical story for you. It will kind of give you a picture of the place. You know, we Japanese, we like to sometimes dress in Kimono and these wooden shoes when we go to Kyoto. It’s fun because we don’t do it all the time. So, when my wife and I are on the wooden shoes, we like the sound, we kind of clickety clack through the quiet streets. And the locals poke out from their windows and say something like ‘what a beautiful noise’ but what they mean is: shut the fuck up. Yeah, I think that all Japanese can be a little like this. In New York, people just tell you what they think, you know?

The man is from London, but he knows.

His hair looks exquisite. The hairdresser tips his cowboy hat as they bow in unison.

There is nowhere to go with such a beautiful coif. Instead, he goes home for his wife and child to admire. He returns to a son who is waiting near the door, begging him to go back out again, to play baseball. Without seeing the hairstyle, the wife calls out from the dining room table where she is working: Can you both put hats on? The sun is so strong today.

The child skips ahead on the edge of the street designated for pedestrians by green paint. They pass the young Nepalese women who hang around outside, escaping small rooms and looking for life to come to them.

The park is busy with baseball and young children who frolic in and around the small playground. The man and his child have become accustomed to the terrain – instead of grass, the sand of reclaimed land makes all the parks and football pitches of the area. The dull brown lowers the expectation upon arrival.

They find a spot away-enough from the others – young teens with a Wiffle bat playing some version of rounders, two girls practicing tricks on a football, and a father and daughter playing catch with mitts. The man and his child throw and catch, throw and catch, throw and catch. Throw and miss and laugh.

A mother calls out from a balcony across the street and the responding child argues her way to a few more minutes outside with friends.

A car eases by with a blaring horn atop the roof, hurtling out political slogans in anticipation of a vote. Nobody stops what they are doing and the voice made artificial with crackling divisions blends into the background.

Throw and catch, throw and catch. Throw and catch.

Eventually, they turn to go. He nods to the other dad with his daughter, wishing he could communicate. They could be friends. Or at least share a laugh.

As they cross the street, they spot the crazy old long-limbed man turning the corner, driving by slowly in his car, the same green Datsun 510. No fucking way. He gives them a honk and waves like they are old friends.

The world rocks forward like leaves do, like they hang on by a tiny pinpoint through storms – until they can’t. At that point, they fall, albeit gracefully, to the earth. They reincarnate as the fuel of caterpillars or cherry blossoms or the animal whose leather makes the baseball mitt.

The man whispers in his son’s ear and they run home.2

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⬩

3- Yuka

Déja vu. I’ve been here before, somewhere else. But here.

This moment feels like freedom! I know how silly it must seem to anyone else. Here I am at the konbini, just buying some snacks. This other woman here and the boy at the till must think I’m a crazy old lady.

The kind looking cashier takes my items and I hand him a 1000 yen bill on the little plastic money tray.

You see, since my son moved me here in May during Golden Week, I’ve wanted to come to here late at night. To escape. Just for a short while. I used to do it even when my husband was alive; I think it started when my first child was born.

All of it makes sense — people I know in Hokkaido are dead or really old. My brother can’t take care of me or even himself…my daughter moved to Tokyo a long time ago. I can spend more time with the grandchildren and Fukuoka is a lovely city. But do you ever do things that make sense and still make you sad? It’s better, of course, to be strong and bear it. When you know it’s right, what is the point of complaining?

“Obaa-san, are you ok?”

“Sorry, son, yes. I was just considering whether to eat here at the counter or bring these snacks home.”

“Please stay a while. It gets lonely in the store.”

“Ok! Will you join me? I will buy you a beer if you like.”

The young man laughs: “I cannot drink alcohol while I’m working, but thank you, obaa-san. I’ll bring my Coke over to the counter after this lady purchases her snacks.”

The counter seats are smooth beige plastic, swirling a little when you sit on them. In the darkness, the world beyond is masked.

⬩

My mind must have wandered in the imagined dark space outside the window. Somehow both the cashier and the other woman in the shop are now at the counter with me. He asks me if I speak English because the other woman does not speak Japanese.

I am delighted and switch to my second language, “I do! I lived in L.A. in my late teens and twenties. I was a ballet dancer.”

“English is my second language, too. I come from Geneva but live here. Over there —” Her hand motion is simply reflected back to us in the window, but we understand she is locally situated, “I was awake and saw this light from my balcony.”

“It’s always on. Isn’t that weird? It literally never goes off. It depresses me, even though it’s good for my job.”

“Quite convenient, really. I can tell you’re a poetic young man, but some things about modern life are brilliant. When I started my late night escapes back in the seventies, I had to coordinate with my sister. She never married, you see. She always had her own place…it was sort of our place. Anyway, she kept snacks around for this purpose and we would sit and just chat like we were teenagers again.”

“Funny, back in Switzerland, things are more like the seventies. I can never decide if I miss it or not.”

“Well, there is a balance. The bears are taking over Japan, because we simply haven’t given them enough space.”

“Oh—!”

“Yes, it’s true. Right, cashier? I’ve got a story about a bear in Hokkaido. Want to hear it?”

“Yes, obaa-san. We could use a good story!”

“Ok, so I used to visit the local konbini in Sapporo late, just like tonight. And one night, while I was approaching the familiar green and orange lights of 7-11, I saw something obscuring the sign. I very soon realized this was an Ussuri brown bear, a big one. I stayed still. Someone had told me to do this if I ever encountered one. We all knew they were around. Some of my friends even made peace with the idea of being eaten by one, which to me felt a lot like giving up, like maybe they just needed a little excitement in their life. Well, when I saw the bear, I certainly didn’t want to be eaten. He was hungry, though. It was early April and snow was still on the ground. You know how much we had last year. I imagine he couldn’t find his natural food, you know? And here he was, looking at me, in a way I thought was a snack. Instead, he turned toward the konbini, the same one I was heading toward, and he opened the door. Did you know bears can open doors? Pretty easily actually. Always lock your doors. Well, not in Kyushu, no bears on this island! And in Tokyo, you’re probably ok, too, as they won’t travel that far from the mountains, but you better still look your door because of the underwear snatchers. Have you heard of them? My, my.”

I can’t help myself from giggling sometimes even when I’m trying to develop a spooky tone. The immigrant woman looked as frightened as my grandkids when they had first heard the tale, so I felt like a little comic relief would be welcome. Now she’s more relieved and drinking her hot tea: “That is a little disturbing…”

“Ridiculous. Silly. Luckily that also doesn’t happen in Kyushu as far as I know. Although could be dangerous, I’ve read about those incels in America causing trouble. What was I saying? Right, so this bear, he opened the door. This is when I saw he was male and I was a little relieved because I knew that crazed mother instinct wouldn’t kick in if there were cubs waiting for food in the dark. This one was out for himself. Guess what he did after that? Guess where he went?”

“I don’t know…” Aoto is cringing, holding his collar and tightening up , “The cashier?”

The boy makes me laugh in a welcome way. “No! No. This isn’t some mirrored story about you or some metaphor for being a konbini cashier. Don’t worry, child.”

“Ok, I’ve got no idea then.”

“Well, this bear, it sat down in the aisle with all the chips and cookies and generally packaged snacks. It sat, and then it swooped its bear claws and grabbed. It ate and ate and ate until it ate itself to sleep. Right there. Finally the konbini boy — he was even younger than you — dared to move and ran out of the shop where he ran straight into me and screamed. He must’ve thought I was another bear. Well this woke up our snacking friend who roared and began destroying the shop, no doubt feeling trapped and afraid or frustrated and isolated. But we were too fascinated to run ourselves. We watched invisibly from the far window, observing him throw everything in the shop until the only things to throw were the appliances. And this was the problem: a bear doesn’t know how to stop himself. He kept going — cash register, coffee machine…and then he got to the refrigeration and began pulling this in a rocking motion until it came unhinged and he could grab the entire compartment. Only of course it fell directly on him. The weight was not enough to kill but the electricity from the broken wires ran through his body until he suddenly stopped. Completely.”

“Oh my — did you try to call for help?”

“It was too late. He was dead. We called, of course. They came and eventually took him away. Poor hungry bear. Out of his home. We wondered if we could have helped him.”

“No, no, Obaa-san. You would have been killed.”

“Maybe. Anyway, just after my son said I had to move down here to Kyushu. Which isn’t all that bad, I’ll give him that. But what gets me, besides the warmer weather and all, is that I’m no longer free. I love him and my grandkids. His wife, too, she’s lovely and treats me well. I don’t know…I am free but I’m not. Or I’m displaced I guess.”

“Sure, I understand. I’m from Tokyo. But I miss home. Sometimes my inner core, my energy, just feels confused. In dissonance with my surroundings. It’s a lot cheaper trying to be a writer down here. I guess the newness helps me write sometimes, too.”

“Trying to be? Aren’t you a writer or not a writer? What do you mean?”

“No, like, you know, a paid writer. Like, successful and stuff.”

“Do you have enough money?”

“I do, yes. I’m fine. I live with some roommates and living is cheap here.”

“So, why don’t you think you’re successful?”

“Well, I’m working here, right? Ha ha. It’s true, most writers in history haven’t been rich from their art. Anyway, I’m working on this novel that I write on my phone while I’m at work. This is a great job for me, really. I shouldn’t complain at all. Nights are pretty quiet. And if the CCTV were watching me, they would just see me texting like everyone else does. I do everything I’m supposed to, so I’ll never get in trouble. This way, I work about forty hours in the shop but about half of that is also writing time.”

“This is wonderful. I bet you get a lot of ideas from late night customers as well.”

“Ha, sometimes. You’re not too bad as inspiration goes.”

“Ok, well use my name then. I am Yuka. No need for formalities. What about you?”

“Aoto.”

“Éloïse.”

“Éloïse, tell us. Why are you here?”

“I’m just…I moved here with my family. My husband works at the university. I worked at a bank back in Switzerland. So, here I am with our child and trying to figure out what the hell I should be doing with my life.”

“Wow, I always thought the Europeans here were more…superficial? No, sorry, that’s not the right word. I don’t mean it as an insult. I’m just interested in you — you sound a lot like me even though I’m just a twenty-four year old Japanese struggling writer on my own.”

“You’re so young, Aoto. Plenty of time to figure it out. I know it sounds so silly, but I bought this tree. I think it’s called a Gajumaru? I stuck it on the balcony and I think it’s saved my life.”

“Can we see it, this tree? I mean, can we see it from here?”

Out from the automatic doors and under the early morning moon, the woman whom I dare not say also reminds me of myself points toward her tree across the water.

The three lost souls — for aren’t we all lost and found and lost again — turn our heads in slow Noh theater style toward the balcony across the water where there, in the soft light of the moon, the almond shaped leaves of the banyan tree reach up and out in a massive opening of hope toward some abstract notion of justice and good. We can let go of those threads we hold so close; let the earthquake come, let it unsettle the lives that we have carved too rigidly.

Aoto gently places his hands on our shoulders: “Come back inside. The wind is coming in cold. I will warm some sake.”

⬩ fin⬩

⬩

2 - Aoto

I’ve calmed down now and it’s a normal, quiet night.

I keep reminding myself why it’s worth it, necessary even, as I tap bits and pieces of the next novel onto my phone. Can my clumsy thumbs hold the same insight as the piano fingers I use on the keyboard at home? I get into rhythms that move me toward the abyss, pulling me deeper toward the origins of language and thought. Some nights I’m reading Kafka or James or Tokarczuk or Murakami on the little screen instead. Their words haunt my present as if floating in a protective energy field — a beehive — one wrong move and they will sting.

All this is invisible to any customer or manager at the other end of the CCTV. The edgy tensions of life live freely in this digital vortex, like my own multi-dimensional doll house, trying out surreal speculations to arrive at truth.

Tonight this was all disrupted while characters seemed to burst out from my stories and into my stage. The theatre of the absurd offset the cadence of my synapses with something mundane but threatening. Usurpers who thought they were merely getting away with a small infringement on the law.

Early in my shift, two drunk travelers came in and stole a pack of donuts. Plain donuts, worth about 150 yen. I would have bought it for them if they were hungry. Instead, they disturbed the natural peace and order, so I had to call the police, who came swiftly and eventually arrested the travelers. Although they could easily have claimed they were about to purchase the donuts, they were without passports, which is against the law in Japan. An easy way to arrest foreigners that I’ve seen before.

Despite my sympathy, I was grateful when they were gone and near-silence, only the incessant hum of the lights and refrigeration, returned in the wake of uproar. I hadn’t really wanted to call the police as I knew it would interrupt my night’s freedom and progression. But I also knew the cameras would capture it and I could get in trouble. This job is important to me. I can’t be a student and writer without it.

Since then, routine has returned. The regulars have all come in for their hand-rolls and their ice creams and their chewing gum. I love watching the details of their movements around the shop, their hesitations or their drive toward their desires, their needs. I try to guess who will add an impulse buy or go back to to get a second beer.

Everything gleams under intense cool-white lighting, trying to trick my inner clock, but the quiet of the world and the dark out-of-doors remind me of the witching hour.

I keep my phone out on the cashier counter and charging. Flashes of language arrive as part of that story I’m telling about flight and roots. About coming here from Tokyo and our shared existential threats.

In the hour since anyone has come in, I’ve written seven hundred words on my phone. Most of it will be erased when I move it to the computer, but the essence will remain. Sheer fragments of life shaped into an offering.

There’s somebody now, a relaxed looking foreigner, a European, over in the snacks. She’s got her phone out to translate whatever she’s going to get. Some are like this, and others just grab and try. Her hesitation makes me hungry. I buy cold katsudon on my employer card and put it in the microwave. The cheap bento plastic crinkles as it revolves.

In sync with the ding, a much older woman walks in as well.

I check my phone but it’s only three o’clock, well early for the elderly walkers by the river.

She moves through the aisles like she inhabits them frequently, deftly picking up a bag of pepperoni-pizza-potato-chips, a packet of Meiji chocolate macadamia nuts, and a cold green tea. But it’s the first time I have seen her. Not one of the expected patrons on their way home from a late shift or to the 24-hour gym or escaping their families for a ten minute walk.

I watch her through the movement of my wooden chopsticks, using the thin plastic container cover to distort my curiosity.

The Happy Tree, as such it was translated on the website, comes wrapped in layers of cardboard and plastic, making it unrecognizable to us all. We release each twist of the banyan’s trunk from the bubble wrap and feel the oxygen rush out like a sigh of relief. We gingerly carry the pot to the balcony and ask each leaf if she enjoys her new home. They nod or shrug in the wind; democracy wins and she stays.

⬩

Fish jump from the river flowing by some ten meters away to catch a glimpse of her brilliance. Or is the tree watching them? It can be difficult to discern the origins of a gaze.

The wading fisherman, too, enters the three-way appreciation or knowingness. A suspension of movement or time creates this dynamic: fish — tree — fisherman, one that haunts the space within triangulation.

I am an outsider. Their peace is not my own.

Like the tiny crabs that hover on the edge of the stone wall at high tide, I retreat into my little home when seen.

⬩

From between the strips of blinds I open partway in the morning light, the many angles of rooftops and windows stare back at me like flattened shapes ready for a pencil to sketch. Each roof has unique tiling, flattened or wave-like patterns, and one holds a tarp and sandbags to ward off rain. Wires cross gingerly among the houses and flats. Why was it fun when the power went out as a kid — but not now? Perpendiculars are made from the blinds without the need for my hand’s right angles as art classes return to me, moments when I was lost in observation, in lines and textures and shading.

Scenes of my existence seem to transmit themselves like old fashioned television signals. The gray fuzz in-between scares me. Where did those moments go, those hours? I cannot recall the way they were filled. And now, when I try to remember days of my life as a child or teen or twenty-something, only brief slices of existence repeat back to me. The rest is gone.

⬩

The grocer comes to the door and bows with each bag he offers me. Bananas encased in bubble wrap and freezer compartments filled with dry ice feel like dystopia — a rich person’s way to access real food in a secret dark corner. He can see that I’ve been crying and pauses only a half second to wonder about this before returning to the systematic unboxing of goods to eat. He says something I understand to mean fragile as I am handed the bag with the eggs. I sign the delivery slip.

We bow again and he goes.

I have never been like this before. It is the wake of anxiety’s zenith. There is no other reason than that. An unraveling. The threads I held so tight out of fear have been released and so there is nothing left to hold me together even with so much beauty around.

⬩

A crane swoops dramatically into view as I water the tree diligently on the third day of her arrival. Less majestic but still beautiful in her stance, she searches in shallow waters for her breakfast of crabs and snails. The tree whispers to me: stay.

I wake at three o’clock, the witching hour. Moonlight squeezes through the blinds and dances on the branches of my Happy Tree. The monochrome view greets me from my perch. Brown water making random kerplunks against cement walls and rock with deep gray pavement surrounding, a dark sky, shades of gray mountain peaks reaching between the layers of abstractly geometric buildings, some perfect rectangular prisms and others with exaggerated roof angles. Patterns of stacked balconies and outdoor staircases in the shape of checkmarks flatten behind the triangular patterns over the small bridge. All is brown and gray and black, even in the light of day, save a few trees here and there or a a passing, rare colorful car. This ink painting has accompanied my moody observation like a scroll repeatedly unrolled as the blinds open.

And the konbini has always been there, though invisible. The convenience store’s white glow with neon blue lettering is more pronounced at this hour, always open, her presence feels like an alien being, something like myself. Both uncanny to the surroundings and not the other way around.

I find myself casting the inverse of a shadow — a soft glimmer — on the water’s edge while wearing German shoes, easily slipped on, that offer too much support. The foot is endangered to lose its strength, its arch.

I recognize that thing that I named as a strange entity but is it wrongly accused? Is it grief instead? It’s easier to understand a feeling for what is lost, how to tie my threads back together.

Outside, the mind is more tolerable. It lifts and spreads. I could be anywhere. The light beckons me to the end of the road and over the bridge.

The automatic doors open quietly and I cross the threshold.

➡️ Read Part 2

<-- Part 5

[Condensed for online publication — in this cut section, Cliff’s classes work like puzzles and he talks about why he and his girlfriend had decided not to have children, though it still pulls on him.]

Evenings were typically spent at home, researching or decompressing, or if when they could align: talking with his girlfriend. Occasionally a colleague would invite him to a relaxed home gathering, but mostly, everyone stuck to themselves.

However, on one unexpected evening, he found himself going to an Irish-Mexican fusion pub with Barney. They had exchanged a few words at lunch that led to the outing.

Although only October, it was getting cold in the evenings and they had even seen light snow. The pub was warm and reminded him of cocooning in spaces like this during grad school when the Buffalo winter was harsh. The college chef knew three people in the restaurant who were on their way out. They spoke like family to each other and then disappeared to their homes.

They sat at the bar. He imagined that Barney sat on that same stool when he came alone and so the comfort of a familiar space was created for him. It was also easier to talk without facing each other head on, but before they were able to say a word, the bartender came over.

“Hey Barney! How are ya? You brought a new friend, good for you.”

“You know things are always alright with me. Yep, this is Cliff from the college. He’s new, from Brooklyn.”

“I’m Elizabeth, named after the Cape.” She stuck out her hand and Cliff shook it.

“Sorry, that’s a type of cape?”

“Ha, no. It’s a land formation just south of Portland. My parents used to love taking us there. I grew up not so far from here.”

“Your mother was such a good friend to my Jean. Do you have any specials tonight, Elizabeth?”

“We’ve got lobster tacos and venison tacos. Both really good. Then the cod for the fish and chips is exceptionally fresh tonight. Sally brought it in earlier.”

“Let’s have one of each, I’m hungry. And a couple of Shipyards. Unless you’re a margarita guy, Cliff?” That made both of the locals laugh, and he considered that a margarita was either a city-boy drink or a feminine one. Either way, he went with it and snickered along with them as if he was in on the joke.

“Coming right up, Barney.” As Elizabeth turned to tell the kitchen our order and pour our beers, he felt a sudden and overwhelming sense of comfort like he hadn’t felt since childhood.

Barney’s large, old hands rest on the bar, “I shouldn’t have ordered for you. This is how chefs are. I get excited about the food,” then quieter, “I also like to order a little extra to help her out. It’s on me, though, don’t worry.”

“No, it sounds great and I’m happy to pay. I feel honored you’re showing me your special places, Barney.” And he meant it, but it also sounded twee and he wasn’t sure how to recover with grace and talk about normal things. Just then, a bunch of college students wandered in and grabbed a couple of tables behind them. A low male voice in the group queried without response: ‘So, margarita for everyone?’ before heading over to Elizabeth at the other end of the bar.

Barney chuckled, “So predictable…but bless them, trying new things all the time to eventually find their way.”

“Ha, yeah, that’s how I feel about them in the classroom. They’re actually a great group of kids.”

“I couldn’t agree more. That’s why I keep working here. Most colleges would just ask me to cut corners and save money, work on efficiency, that kind of thing. And I get it, I do. I mean, college is expensive! But food and drink — they’re a part of life, you know? It’s a part of their education, too, not just to be sustained to do other things but to learn about the food itself.”

“That’s impressive, Barney. And it shows in your work.”

“Thanks for saying that.”

Elizabeth came back with their order and there was less talking while they dove in. She lingered a little while to ask about Barney’s daughter and he recipricated by asking about hers, who was apparently home with a babysitter and loving her T-ball team.

Before she could leave to tend to a few new customers who had walked in, Barney snuck in:“Aren’t you going to ask her for her number? It gets lonely here in the winter.”

In embarrassment and without casting an eye in Elizabeth’s direction, directly in front of him, Cliff redirected, “I thought you loved the winter?” He hoped that somehow he couldn’t be seen if he didn’t look at her, like a child playing peekaboo.

“I enjoy my solitude. Plus I’ve got a few old friends, believe it or not.”

The man wasn’t sure about those supposed friends, but realized at this point, he had to address Elizabeth or it was going to get awkward. “I mean, I know where to find you, but maybe in case I need some local advice…”

“Ya just want to use me, eh?” she laughed and handed him the napkin that already had her number written on it.

The man smiled, unable to find any more words. They quickly finished up and left. On the cold walk home, he texted his girlfriend out of guilt and wondered if things could get back to the way they were when he returned.

To escape into a a world of ancient pines. To recall their use as the masts of ships, sailing into probable death preceded by adventure.

Torn by an inward battle of will and desire, Cliff ventured solo into the woods the following day. He wore an orange vest borrowed from Betty-the-barista who warned him about the hunters this time of year.

Once the road was no longer in view, he noticed a change in his breath. It came from deep in his belly, warming his entire body. He lacked the love in the exterior he was used to. It was as if it were being replaced by his own. Where had it been all that time? The trees seemed to bellow enigmatically — yes — and stand in solidarity with him, guarding him from the evils in his mind.

Challenges to his psyche came from nowhere, it seemed. He used to pin it on something or someone as the antagonist. Now he understood that only he could be the enemy to himself. The rest was a fabrication of reality. Others working out their own inner conflicts on him.

Now he saw — all this came from this space. This space within, connected deeply with all that was around him: the pines, the fresh air meeting in his lungs from the ocean and mountains, the nocturnal critters scurrying around.

He could name it now. It was love. Love was in the forest.

What sort of strange creature had he become here? Perhaps Maine had just got a hold of him. Perhaps the pines were intoxicating him, replacing culture with natural drugs that soothed him.

The movent of autumn’s winds should have told Cliff he was in for a change. Instead he was still focused on the past and future — both of which were life in Brooklyn. He had never walked through so many leaves at once. They weren’t blown nor matted down by cars and shoes and rain. The leaves held onto life — spreading dry shapes of resistance that crunched and broke like ancient pottery under his feet.

In Buffalo, he had tried to enjoy the surroundings to the city once or twice. Another classmate from the area brought him out for a hike once in that first October. They encountered snow and Cliff hadn’t been prepared. He was petrified. It wasn’t like the city where one could hop to interiors when desired.

In a flash, he heard an unmistakable gunshot. He had heard this when he lived on the edge of Crown Heights just after college. It had been a fortnightly occurrence. But here he recognized it as sport and possibly sustenance rather than gangs or drugs or the rage of the problems people faced.

Still, he was afraid. He displayed his orange vest like a peacock, making his chest as big as possible and attempted to announce his presence by voice as well: “Hello…”

Nothing.

“Hello!”

He heard laughter and decided to go back the way he had come.

The tall ship pines swayed and beckoned him to stay amongst them. He knew it was dangerous though, and so he scurried home.

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To be continued…

<-- Part 4

A few days later, the man from Brooklyn woke at two in the morning, which wasn’t unusual. But what terrified him was the feeling that something was hovering over him as if he were prey. There was an obscure blotch on the ceiling above him.

He grabbed his glasses off the nightstand with as little movement as possible, afraid that it would be mistaken for aggression and, hence, a defensive attack. The heavy night rain made the darkness completely enveloping. Even with glasses, all he could see was a blob and for a moment, he thought he was in the clear, that it was simply a darker splotch on the ceiling. Sight gave him bravery and he turned on the small bedside lamp while moving out of the way of the image. To his horror, there was a gigantic, hairy spider on the ceiling just over him. He screamed. Nobody, of course, was there. If the neighbors could hear him, they didn’t come to his rescue. It would have been too abstract of a sound for them to locate.

His body was tense and turned into a killing machine. Eat or be eaten. He felt like a caveman. All rational thought exited his brain as he searched for the nearest large shoes, belt, and liquid. Unfortunately, no cleaning products were nearby, but a bottle of water could be used to stun it if needed. He had no idea what he was dealing with.

On instinct, he used a belt to scare it down from its perch. This meant that it fell to his bed. He felt like screaming again but was determined to stay alert and finish the job. He wouldn’t be able to relax in his house until he did. He used the belt to usher it off and onto the floor. He then poured the water on top of it, which gave him the confidence to smash it with a shoe, not once, but four, maybe five times.

He held it down that last time until he was sure it was dead. A slow reveal showed exactly this. It was curled as if in an eight-legged fetal position. The man ran to grab his phone for purposes of identification and take a photo before throwing it into the toilet to be flushed.

⬩

Day came quickly and after a morning class, the man went to the dining hall for lunch. It was packed and he felt flustered, but he stayed because he was famished.

In a corner booth, he lingered over the comfort foods of lasagne and broccoli until most of the students had left for afternoon class or activities. He immersed himself in his phone, sending off texts to friends and his girlfriend, telling them how great the school was and sharing the photo of the spider for commiseration and possibly to remind himself the nightmare was real.

“Hey now, what have we got here?” Still wearing his chef hat, Barney had wandered over and sat in the empty chair adjacent to the man, “Apologies, I noticed a spider photograph as I came over to say hello and make sure the food is ok.”

“The food is wonderful, thanks so much.”

“You’re one of the new ones, right? I saw you at the lobster bake. Name’s Barney and I’ve been here forever, so I’m a fountain of knowledge. If you need anything, I mean.”

“Oh, thanks a lot. I’m Cliff. I’ve just moved from New York and could probably use some help.” He was laughing at himself but also felt this chef had a grandfather gravitas that he could use in his life.

“Well, for starters, you’ve got a spider. In your house, is it? Let me have a look.”

Cliff passed his phone over and watched Barney zoom in and out in inspection. “What is it? Is it dangerous?”

“No, no. Fishing spider. Harmless! I’m surprised it was in your house. Must’ve been lost, poor thing. Do you live near the water?”

“No, no, just a ten minute walk from here. I guess it was lost…and I killed it…”

“Don’t beat yourself up over it! Nature’s cycle and all.”

“I woke up to it on the ceiling over my head.”

“Ha! You must’ve been scared batty. I’d of done the same thing.”

⬩

The man was haunted by the image of the dead spider for weeks. At first, he thought it was the replay of the fear he had when he had woken up, but he then understood it to be his shame. The shame at killing an innocent creature.

During that time, Barney started to seek him out when he ate in the dining hall, especially for breakfast. There were barely any professors there in the morning. They had included all the meals in his contract, which apparently was typical for new hires they were worried might get isolated or malnourished.

For some reason he enjoyed talking with Barney more than his colleagues. They talked about normal things, like how they were feeling that day and what did the food taste like.

Barney had lived in the area for a long time. His wife was dead. They had a daughter who lived in California who came home each year at Christmas with her son. She was divorced and didn’t have the time or money to come more often than that, she said. Barney said he looked forward to Christmas more than any other time of year, but it hurt his soul every time they left again.

They talked about other things, too. One end-of-lunch conversation turned to moose hunting.

“I hunt one moose a year, as long as I can get a permit. They’re overpopulated here so it actually serves the eco-system, but all the hunters want to do it. I don’t really want to and I’m not a hunter, but I think it’s the right thing to do.”

“Isn’t that difficult?”

“Nah, the difficult part is after you shoot it. Not for the faint hearted, and you need help from others. As a chef, though, I feel like I need to do this. Like a ritual to understand what we are eating, who we are.”

“I can see that.”

“I get help from several Wabanaki Indians; they’re from the Penobscot tribe. The state reserves some permits for them, so if I don’t get one, I often go on one of their hunts. They give me enough meat for a couple of meals. I do the same when they help me, and I always give them the skin or other parts they want to use.”

“Wow, that’s great. I haven’t heard anyone else talk about the Native Americans here. Or seen or read anything either, I guess.”

“They formed the Wabanaki Alliance1 a couple of years ago if you want to learn more. Anyway, I don’t get involved in politics and stuff. I just know a couple of guys. Do you know the land here?”

“Not at all.”

“Let’s take a walk down by the river. Have you been over the bridge before?”

“Sure, that’s where most of the grocery stores and town and everything are.”

“No, I mean the swinging bridge2. Some college kids organized the whole redoing of it a few years ago. Before that it was a little precarious!” He let out a big belly laugh, “You wouldn’t want to fall into the Androscoggin.”

“No, I guess you wouldn’t. Sure, we can walk over that bridge.” He didn’t have anything on his social calendar. He liked to pretend he was busy. But really, without a family or hobbies besides reading related to work and the occasional bike ride, he had heaps of time for rumination or whatever. He needed the company.

“I’m off today at four. Meet me at the corner of campus by the art museum, alright?”

As they approached the bridge, it looked more like a pencil sketch in the practice of understanding perspective. The many lines of slabs of wood and supportive metal were mere threads that would dissipate as soon as they stepped off the ground and into the abyss. It was overcast and the river below was menacing. Rocks with sharp granite edges protruded near the banks like threatening guards.

But after a single step, the mood changed to unplaceable euphoria and the tactile quality was a floating sensation. Despite the slight movement of the bridge underfoot, the man relaxed into the scene as if someone had painted him there. His own movement created a rhythm in harmony with all: the river below, Barney’s plodding steps ahead, the bridge herself. He dared not stop despite a desire to look down. Though the rhythm could not be broken, he began trusting his footing and light grasp of the rails enough so that he could look first out at the horizon front, right upriver, and left down. Then, he summoned the strength to look down sharply over the edge, still in continuous motion. The water spoke back to his silent questions. It seemed to say: come closer, therein lies the answer. And he was not sure if it was menacing him toward self destruction or attempting to heal him with minerals of the earth.

The spell was broken the moment he reached the other side. Life was back to the new normal. They walked silently down to Maine Street3, then Barney said, “Why don’t you come by to try some moose if you’ve never had it? I live just fifteen minutes from here by foot.”

The meat tasted like the earth and the aromas of the forest. It was whole and it was rich, like nothing he had ever tasted before. Involuntarily, he closed his eyes as he chewed. He was unaware of the smoothness overtaking his face as his body at once become more grounded and seemed to lighten.

“This is real food. I don’t know what you guys eat in Brooklyn.4”

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To be continued…

<--Part 3

[Condensed for online publication — in this cut section, Cliff tries to call his girlfriend who is always busy and pretends to call his parents (who are likewise always busy) when his surveilling neighbors try to interact with him. Cliff realizes people are making him nervous and feels seen vs. the anonymity he used to feel in Brooklyn. He wonders how this job will compare to his last postdoc experience at NYU. Full chapter to follow in the novella ebook and paperback.]

On the morning of Commencement, he did the ritualistic things to get himself ready for the day. He made oatmeal, wore a blazer over his button-down shirt and jeans. He didn’t know what the unspoken dress code would be, but this seemed versatile enough. He thought back to high school and how he would have discussed such choices with his friend Pete who was now working for an insurance company in Oregon and busy with a first baby.

He put one foot in front of the other down the stones leading away from his door and the dirt road until arriving at the sidewalk. Without thinking, these legs carried him again to the coffee shop - a taste of home - and he ordered a flat white from yet another barista. This time, she looked more like a retiree.

“Morning Professor. Ready for the year?” she chuckled.

In an attempt to go along with the elusive humor contained in her greeting, the man replied, “Good morning. How did you know I am a professor?”

“Oh, those jacket things you guys wear give it away. You look like the rest of them. Are you new? I haven’t seen you before.”

“I am yes, how astute you are.” He felt solace in his recognizability in his role.

“Well, what’ll it be, Prof?”

“Flat white, please. You can call me Cliff.” Uncomfortable with town-gown distinctions, he offered his name as alternative. Additionally, he was becoming accustomed to the familiarity people created amongst each other here. He wasn’t sure that he liked it, but he didn’t want to swim against the tide.

“Ok, Clifford. I’m Betty. Take a seat if you like; there’s a newspaper over there.”

He welcomed the excuse not to have a conversation and followed the direction of her finger toward the counter at the window and perched himself up high with the local paper. He scanned the headlines: Local Schools Back in Session Tomorrow, Fire at Historic Church in Harpswell, Woman Dies in Domestic Dispute, What Lays in Store for Deer Season. None of it particularly interested him and he wasn’t sure if it was relevant to his life-on-campus.

As he turned the page, looking for a crossword puzzle, Betty turned up with his coffee, “Here ya go. You’re from away then, are ya?”

“That’s right. Thank you, looks delicious.”

He sat with his coffee a while, just gazing out at the streets before him. A few people were walking by and several stopped in to get coffee and carry on their way. Another came in wearing a professor-blazer and brought his espresso to sit by the window.

“Hey, are you working at the college? I’m Jake, History Department.”

“Thanks, hi, yes I am. I am working at the college. I’m Cliff.”

“Come with me. We don’t want to be late or the deans will complain. Plus, we can get a good seat in the sun. It’s cold this morning. Isn’t it Betty?”

“Ayuh, sure as heck is! You two run along and fetch that sun.”

Cliff left her a five dollar bill and thanked her. He realized anonymity was never going to work here. He had to learn how to embrace it.

“The locals are really friendly. It took me a while to get used to it. I was born and raised in Boston then did my PhD and postdoc in DC. This is a totally different world.”

“No kidding. I’m from New York City. It’s more like a parallel universe.”

“Ha, don’t let it freak you out! People are just more relaxed, familiar. They say the Maine woods inhabit you when you live here. They say if you stay long enough, you just might turn into a tree of some description.”

“How…poetic. I teach English. I actually don’t know anyone from the college yet. Thanks a lot for walking over with me.”

“Sure. You’ll see it’s a friendly bunch. Not as competitive with research and accolades as some of the bigger institutions. I think it’s because we don’t have a graduate program here. I guess also people feel like they’ve really made it once you get here. Why would you go anywhere else? Great students, decent salaries, especially for the cost of living, and all the facilities. Hey, you play squash?”

“I don’t. Is that big here?”

“Some rich parents just put in a new court cause their twin girls are first-years. How crazy is that? I play a little. It’ll be open for faculty when the team’s not using it.”

“Wow, amazing,” he meant it, but wanted to remind himself of the ephemeral nature of his status so he wouldn’t become too connected to anything, “I’m just on a temporary contract. Only here for a year.”

“Oh no, really? Well, see how it goes. If Celeste likes you, then you’re in. The department heads have a lot of sway here.”

“Thanks. Well, let’s see if I can get these next two papers published.” He rolled his eyes. They laughed together in commiseration of the painful world of academic publishing. It was one of the first times Cliff felt secure enough to joke about the impossibility he often felt, about the lack of confidence he had on his own success. He hadn’t yet recognized his imposter syndrome as just a general state-of-being in most academic settings. Everyone was faking it, and in faking it, they overdid the confidence. Everyone was freaked out by the loud voices of inverted secret fears.

“Hey, there are a few friends — I’ll introduce you.”

They had arrived inside the campus’ invisible gates without any hesitation at the threshold. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to have a friend, the man conceded to himself. His motivations had been more than the anonymity he was used to in Brooklyn. He also knew he had to get a ton of work done to figure out where he would be next year and if he could get a tenure track job. It was a constant movement in his mind: what could he do in this moment of free time to secure a future position? There was always something. Working on research or writing to publications; connecting and expanding his network for future potential jobs; applying for grants and other kinds of funding. Planning for teaching often happened in the last minute.

There were a handful of colleagues all from different departments who greeted them. They made introductions and talked about their summers. One had taken students to India. Another had stayed with her parents in Montana and worked on research every day at dawn for two hours before allowing herself into the landscape. Several had taken family vacations. One of which had spent the entire summer camping with his wife and children on Mount Desert Island.

“You guys have all been there, right? Oh maybe not you - Cliff - you’ve got to go. We did a ton of cycling and easy climbs. Twice we saw the sunrise from Cadillac Mountain. Occasionally we went into Bar Harbor for some seafood and ice cream. Oh yeah, I ran into Jenny from Geology and her wife while we were there. They came on a hike one day. The rock formations are just so cool there. Jenny taught June and Max about them, although I definitely learned a ton from it as well. Had no idea it was a volcano once upon a time! Such a great place. You guys, I’ve got no idea what I’m teaching this week, but it was so worth it.”

Something felt unsettling for Cliff despite the friendly nature of the anecdote. He recognized it as the relaxed nature of the other faculty and their ease at accepting him into their group.

His mind was blank and he discovered everybody was looking at him. One of the women spoke up as if repeating what she had just said, “So what department are you in?”

“Oh, sorry, just taking a lot in. English.”

“Me, too! That’s great. I remember Celeste sent us an email about you ages ago. You were at Buffalo for your PhD, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Cool, Janette Brown is a good friend of mine. Did you guys cross paths?”

“Oh wow, I did, yeah. I assisted her with a class once and we would occasionally grab coffee.” Cliff recalled the one faculty member who felt like a real, warm person at SUNY. His advisor had been brilliant and helped him complete his project to a high degree of satisfaction for both of them and the academic publisher who scooped it up. Others were similarly helpful and cordial in this way. But Janette was a person. She had been a little younger than most of the other staff, but it was more the way she talked about her work as part of a community rather than some abstract currency for power and prestige.

“Hey you guys, let’s grab seats toward the front. You know Larry likes us to be early.”

Cliff asked Jake who Larry was and he laughed. “The president! Hey, you really need someone to show you around a little.”

“Celeste said to meet at her office just after the lunch. But I realized I don’t even know where that is.”

“What, the lunch or her office?”

“Either.” He was trying to keep it lighthearted, humorous. But he felt like a fool and was grateful for his sunglasses hiding my inadequateness. Maybe he hadn’t done his homework, so to speak. He should have come up for some kind of orientation earlier. It just seemed so far…and what did he really need to know besides the courses he was teaching? But the effect of this lack of knowledge was building a faster heart rate.

Jake seemed to understand his brewing anxiety. “Hey man, don’t worry. It’s a quirky place but really friendly once you know a few people and places. Just stick with me and I’ll get you over to Celeste after lunch.”

“Great, thanks so much.” They took a seat with the others in the second and third rows facing the museum steps with a podium all set up. They were there even before anybody had taken their seats on stage, but this was preferred. He did feel a bit like a fool, Jake metaphorically holding his hand and all. Plus it made him wonder just how expendable he was. He wasn’t really a part of the department, just someone competent enough to deliver a few courses independently. He started to think he should have gone for a worse institution but a sure tenure-track job. The name, the reputation had led him on and he had accepted something that wasn’t really viable.

Commencement passed without event. The purpose seemed to be to inspire students to learn but also to make them feel safe and ready for the year ahead. In that vein, it was a rather flat ceremony and the focus was mainly on getting over to the lobster lunch.

Together they waited in long lines leading to plastic tables covered in vats of corn on the cob and red, steaming lobsters piled high. There were also baked potatoes and a couple of protein alternatives: chicken and veggie burgers. He had only eaten lobster a couple of times in restaurants and it had been at least somewhat prepared for him. He thought of it as a delicacy; seeing it piled high for the grabbing changed it completely. Lobster was no longer an indulgence but a locally farmed staple. It was an initiation into this place, this culture.

In line, they all continued chatting about our summers and the other professors were kind to include him and ask if he had a partner, what courses he would teach, where his accommodation was, and other typical introductory questions in between their catch-ups.

They were then just a couple people away from the plates. He could see many students seated and eating, dutifully wearing their white plastic lobster bibs. There were still piles of lobster despite the fact that most of the 1600 students had ran ahead in eager adolescent hunger.

A noise suddenly made Cliff’s turn my head. There was a group of about ten young people with red painted faces wielding fishing nets. They were running straight at them, screaming unintelligible words. People turned toward them in shock until the tension was broke as they stopped near the tables and unveiled a long poster stating: Save the lobsters!

The people who I imagined were students began chanting that phrase: Save the lobsters! Save the lobsters! Then — Shame on you! Shame on you!

Security swiftly arrived and attempted to escort them away.

“Don’t touch us! We are exercising our right to protest!”

“Sure, you can protest. But just do it over there, ok?” The leader of the small security team pointed across the field.

“But that won’t make our point clear.”

“Well, Barney worked pretty damn hard on this meal and I think it’s shitty of you to try to mess it up.”

Cliff whispered to Jake, “Who’s Barney?”

“Oh, he’s the dining hall guy. I mean the head chef I guess? Super nice old guy. Been here forever. There he is, serving the lobsters.” The man identified as Barney was trying to look tough with his arms akimbo and chest puffed out, but there was a visible sadness in the way his eyelids closed halfway.

“Are lobsters endangered?”

“No, I mean, I don’t think so? But some people think it’s inhumane to cook them from live into boiling water. I really have no idea. David Foster Wallace wrote this whole essay on it and still didn’t really come to a conclusion1. It’s one of Maine’s biggest traditions.”

“Ok, yeah, I had heard about some of that. Maybe they have a point…”

“I’m still going to eat one once this little fuckers move on. Gotta love their spirit, though,” Jake laughed.

“Ha, ok me, too.”

Eventually the guards got the students to stand about thirty meters away with their sign in silence. They looked lonely, probably hungry. Later, I saw all except two give up and go get veggie burgers and sit with some friends who had lobster shells on their plates.

Cliff’s lobster was delicious. The best he’d ever had. He went over to the man identified as Barney afterwards to thank him.

“Don’t worry about it. The students have changed over the years. I admire them for standing up for what they want, but the problem is they don’t really understand what they’re talking about. This time at least.”

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Part 5 -->

To be continued…

Dear Matterhorn Readers,

To go along with my current serialized novella, The Man from Brooklyn, you might want to check out this post about Maine or its later podcast version I recorded.

Hope you are enjoying your summer!

<-- Part 2

The morning light broke into the the bedroom like a sharp cut marking the next scene in a film. For a moment, he experienced that sensation when you don’t know where you are. His arm reached for his distant girlfriend and the absence made him open his eyes fully to take in the mise-en-scene.

His mind was trapped in Brooklyn. Everything here felt wrong.

The furniture was made of simple oak frames and cheap upholstery. Everything was brown. He expected such in provided accommodations but the reality of the blandness and staleness had a stronger effect on him than he would have imagined. He had a small shipment of items — four boxes — that would arrive later that week. He hoped they would fill the space.

Yesterday’s long journey had not achieved the effect he had hoped for, that is: allowing him the transitionary time to reflect on his move and accept the change as good.

The short outing with Hank truly did feel cinematic. Thinking back to the memory of it, he could only witness as an uninvolved observer. It was so natural, without any layers of society between the human interactions. And yet, this seemed to make it foreign to him. What the hell was wrong with him?

Cliff silently got up and opened a window. The screens guarded him from the many insects he imagined inhabiting the woods behind the little house. Before properly exploring what was available to him there, he unpacked his suitcase. He had only brought the clothes he would need for a week or so along with the first couple of books he would be teaching on his three syllabi. In addition, he had packed some good coffee his girlfriend had given him and a photo of his parents.

It didn’t take long to accomplish the task. His footsteps echoed through the bare room as he moved into the small hallway. There were three more doors besides the entry, which he tried in turn like a game show of chance. Before opening, he guessed aloud what he would be greeted with.

“You must be the…bathroom!” he opened the door, “Correct! A hundred dollars in the bank.”

He left the door open and proceeded to the next with a dramatic pause on the doorknob, “And you, my friend, are the kitchen!” he opened the door instead to the living room. It was small with only a two-seater sofa, but had a fireplace and two large bookshelves. Three books rested on the bottom shelf of one of them and he went over to investigate.

A large crimson volume of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poetry held up Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of Seven Gables and Henry David Thoreau’s The Maine Woods. Then on a high shelf, he noticed there were two more resting in a small pile on their sides — The Book of Embraces by Eduardo Galeano and Stephen King’s Pet Sematary.

He let the books rest in their places and moved on to the final door, the kitchen. It was fully equipped with equipment from the 1960s. To match, small petaled flower designs had been intermittently placed among the uniform beige tiles.

Then what? He didn’t know what to do with himself. The rest of his stuff wouldn’t arrive until Saturday at the earliest. Staying in that space just felt empty and strange. It was supposed to be his new home. He reminded himself it was temporary. Just an academic year.

And what would he do after that?

He had thought that earning a PhD would be the start of something more secure. A life of contentment and intellectual discoveries. He had his degree, his girlfriend, his home in Brooklyn.

But the last few years had been choppy start-and-stops. Two post-docs that paid terribly but at least they were in the city. Two years at the community college he had enjoyed but had to borrow from his parents to make his half of the rent. He was now thirty-six and completely unsettled.

He reminded himself that these strange feelings may have been due to his new abode and the questions that went with it. Surely, returning to Brooklyn in June, he would have memories from this year and a new tenure-track job to look forward to. Although deep down he knew he should already be looking for said job — polishing his CV, reaching out to the right people, publishing a paper. It simply wasn’t on his radar. He sank into the armchair in unnamable despair.

The walls and windows surrounding him suddenly felt like a trap, like some kind of Kafkaesque setting ready to throw him into a parable of tragic self discovery. Instead, he pulled himself together and threw his wallet and phone in his pockets to go out and discover where the hell he was.

Orienting oneself takes time and the discoveries we learn along the way are mainly internal. He wanted to just allow his feet to carry him into unknown territory, but this wasn’t the city. Without a destination, he may be walking for miles only to reach a turnaround point. With this in mind, he looked up the way to campus. After all, this would be his commute. It would be good to check it out and memorize it. In knowing his way, he could allow his mind to wander.

Celeste, the head of department who had hired him, had offered to show him around campus on Monday. That tour, he imagined, would focus on internal spaces, like his new office and classrooms. Maybe parts of the library and service centers. Now, he wanted to focus on the paths and the buildings themselves.

The walk to Concord College, which he timed, took only seventeen minutes. It took him first down the hill from the cul-de-sac to another quiet street before arriving at Maine Street once again. It felt strange that the streets were so empty, so wide. The surrounding woods felt vast, as if they must go on forever. He imagined the moose and bears looking in at him from the distance though he knew they would have lived much farther away. It just felt…wild.

As Cliff walked closer to campus, the sky turned and it appeared as if rain were imminent. Still, he wanted to place himself in this space, to understand what awaited him the following week. The spitting precipitation was cold on his neck but had the positive effect of emptying the common outdoor spaces.

He could see it there before him — brick buildings that were both plain and grand in appearance. They were not overly ornate, but the bricks held gravitas and there were several white columned buildings at the edge. These guards hummed like giant harps as the light rain whipped over and around their fluted shafts.

He felt like Kafka’s man from the countryside standing before the law1: did he dare to enter? The buildings were foreboding but perhaps only because of the grayness in the atmosphere and the emptiness of the pathways. In fact, each path was free of obstruction or threshold, allowing anyone to enter and inhabit the quadrangle in the middle of a vast network of dormitories, lecture halls, offices, libraries, and dining rooms.

Still, he hesitated on the edge…

[Condensed for online publication — in this section, Cliff wanders around campus thinking of the space between him and his girlfriend, meets a barista-student who has signed up for his class after reading his research on Patricia Highsmith film adaptations (and has surprisingly good coffee), and opts to purchase a practical hybrid over a trendy single speed bike in town. Full chapter to follow in the novella ebook and paperback.]

⬩

Back at home, he felt more satisfied with at least a little food in his kitchen and a way to get around more easily. He changed into sweat pants and made a sandwich. There was some preparation to be done for the courses he would start teaching later the next week.

Just as he took out his laptop at the kitchen table, the doorbell rang. It was too early for his small shipment to arrive.

At the door was a diminutive older couple. They stood side by side and the woman held a small package out with her arms.

“Hello!” said the man in a thick Maine accent, “Welcome to our neighborhood!”

“Hello…” what was this? “Do you live nearby? Are you with the college?”

“No, no. We just noticed somebody had moved in. We saw your light on! We wanted to introduce ourselves. I’m Lucas and this is my wife, Marge —”

“Hello! I made you a blueberry pie.”

“Why, thank you. Nice to meet you. I’m Cliff.” It was awkward. He just wanted them to go away even though they were kind. They just stood there and he understood finally what he was expected to say, “Would you like to come in?”

“Oh, that would be lovely! Thank you,” Marge spoke like a bird. She was still holding the pie. “If you show me the kitchen, I’ll cut each of us a slice.”

There was no way to get out of it. He made a short calculation that fifteen minutes wouldn’t change the shape of his work output and actually he was pretty hungry. “Oh, are we disturbing your work?” Marge called out from the kitchen.

“No, no. I mean, I’ll have to do some later, but it would be lovely to have pie with you.”

“So, you’re working at the college then?” Lucas settled into the arm chair as if he were smoking a pipe.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Well this place is owned by them, so we see different professors each year or semester. It’s a nice spot. Close to campus but away from the students.”

“It is a nice spot. I like the woods around us.”

“Oh yes. That changes everything. I mean, most places in Maine are near the woods,” this made him guffaw.

Marge came out with two plates. “You sit, I’ll go get the last one.” He jumped at a chance to put the pressure off. From the kitchen — to elongate his absence — he called: “Shall I bring you some tea as well, or water?”

“Water is fine! Thanks a lot, son.”

Through a meandering conversation, Cliff learned that the couple volunteered at the school. Occasionally they helped in the library or served as martials for the cross country meets. During the Jan term, they hosted students for dinner from various sport teams.

“It keeps us young. We love being around the college.”

“I can see that. I guess that’s part of why I like teaching.”

“But you are young!”

“Ha, sure, but thirty-somethings can be quite cynical these days, you know.”

Marge and Lucas looked at each other knowingly, before proclaiming, “Well, we’ll be going. We know you have work to do.”

“Ok, thanks, yes I guess I should get back to it. So nice to meet you both. Thank you for the wonderful pie!”

“I hope you like it here. The woods are a part of us. You’ll see. They will become a part of you, too, if you let them.”

⬩

After the couple left, Cliff boiled water and returned to his perch in the kitchen. The visitation had made him feel uneasy until halfway through the pie when tart skins of the tiny, wild blueberries crackled on his tongue and felt like kindness. At that moment, he had looked up to find Marge smiling at him. How much of his life was spent seeking solitude? In a book, on the anonymous streets of New York, at a busy concert? He left this rumination and settled in to map and plot out the twists of the mind he would lead his students on that semester.

But just as quickly as his body shifted to working mode, something strange happened. The window, which was open, began to rattle. Not a lot, just enough to make the man take notice. This part wasn’t very strange. The wind did things like this all the time and it had been raining, so.

But then a leaf blew against the screen. And another. In accelerating pace, harbingers of autumn piled up on the screen near his working place until they completely covered the window.

There must be a real storm coming.

He closed the window and moved his things into the living room.

This similar window wasn’t covered with any leaves despite facing the same direction. Before sitting down in the armchair, he cracked it for some fresh air. The rattling started again. And in the same manner, the leaves began to arrive on the screen. He closed the window, but still they continued.

The man threw on his shoes and ran around the the back of the house. All the leaves were back on the ground. It must’ve been a small wind tunnel.

Just as quickly, he returned to the front of the house but paused at the door. He felt eyes on the back of his head and turned around to find them. He could see three homes from his steps, all in the abstract cul-de-sac. The dirt road around a small oasis of trees led to each driveway. Just through the foliage, he could make out the faces of Marge and Lucas peering in his direction from inside. They waved. As they did so, the bushes standing between them seemed to sway in a similar motion. He remembered what Marge had said upon leaving: The woods are a part of us. Was she orchestrating this performance of foliage and branch? Or was she, too, controlled by the movements of the wind and the non-human creatures inhabiting the cul-de-sac?

Disorientation can do strange things to the mind, he told himself. I probably just need a rest.

After what felt like many minutes, but was just a mere moment, he politely waved back before turning into his home and locking the door. The windows were back to normal. It was a small but ordinary home that greeted him. He avoided drawing the front blinds for fear it was too obvious he was hiding. Instead, he opted to position himself so that he would be hidden from view.

As he sat, his mind moved in too many ways to prepare for his courses. The comfort of the large chair allowed him to close his eyes.

Perhaps it was the overwhelming foreignness that had infiltrated his mind. He craved the buildings and sidewalks, the sure-footedness and guaranteed street life. He yearned for anonymity amongst the masses, each moving invisibly to their own tunes.

Part 4 -->

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To be continued…

<-- Part 1

He waited to board the train at Penn Station with little awareness of his destination. The interviews had all been conducted online. In just over six hours, he was about to arrive for the first time, and the feeling was similar to childhood experiences like camp, like he had been sent out of the city with a big bag of clothes and books for a new adventure.

Train travel makes him feel connected to the Earth and it is part of the reason he hadn’t applied to positions outside of urban centers, except for this one. He reasoned that he would still be able to get home by rail and that it really wasn’t that far away. They told him Portland is also a nice little city and were surprised he hadn’t already come up to visit. People outside of New York always are.

All the travelers - young and old, rich and poor - were anxiously awaiting the changing of the station board, which always seemed to be at the last minute, creating frantic dashes for the escalators leading them down into the carriages. Despite the recent change from the iconic and viscerally satisfying big board that cued passengers to pay attention with familiar sounds of flipping numbers to silent digital screens, the anxiety effect was the same. Surely, he thought, they know where these trains will go. Is it a way of leveling? A sort of fight-to-the-finish mentality?

He imagined it had been somewhat like this forever, even when Melville and Wharton had boarded their trains for their sanctuaries in Massachusetts. He was heading even farther north.

As the digital sign changed once again, he saw the train that would lead him first to Boston, then up past Portland to his temporary home. Like the others, he walked with conviction and jostled for position in the line toward the escalator. He noticed the ticket check just before and attempted to hold his flat white in one hand while digging in his computer bag for the ticket. The still-required printed paper was visible just behind a notebook. A slight angle of movement to reach it in turn spilled the remainder of his coffee that he had carried with him and savored on the metro from Brooklyn. Shit, that was the last good coffee he’d have for a while. He began considering the economics of buying an Italian espresso machine and importing roasted beans from his favorite baristas in Cobble Hill.

He stowed his luggage like the others and found a window seat in second class, which he soon found would be facing backwards the entire journey and threaten to empty his stomach. The woman across from him was already working on her computer. She wore a tailored dress and had hung her blazer up on the little hook by the window, further obfuscating his view. He had no blazer, only his old green sweater paired with jeans. She looked down at his New Balance 574 trainers and slightly altered her heels to ensure they wouldn’t make contact. He apologized for being there and plugged himself into a podcast about early twentieth century cinema, closing his eyes.

The face that came into view in his mind was Jenna’s, her crying eyes hiding behind those long bangs she used as a shield against the world. He had given her the option to come with him, but he knew she wouldn’t. Getting a new job in advertising would be almost impossible in Maine, especially for just a year, and she had moved to Brooklyn for a reason.

“I can’t…I mean, I want to stay together though,” it sounded like a question, as if she thought he was trying to break up with her. He couldn’t imagine the opposite scenario.

“Of course. You know this is only temporary anyway. It’s not like we want to get married anytime soon, right?” As soon he said it, he realized he may have made a mistake, but she didn’t call him out on it. They only talked about marriage in vague terms.

“Ok, yes. It’s not so far anyway. When will you be home next?”

“Well, I’m not sure. Christmas I guess. Maybe a weekend before? I think I’ll be pretty busy.”

“That’s fine, I get it. Maybe I can come see you, next month?”

“Let’s see after I get there. Ok? I would love that. I just don’t know what it’ll be like.”

It was weird to admit to myself that he didn’t want her to visit, not then at least. He knew he’d be busy with work and although the original job application and acceptance had been strategic for his career, he was craving the solitude. When had he ever really had that before? He had been a student forever, and even in postgraduate courses, one was more or less at the whim of one’s superiors and department. In the city, life was exciting, but there were constantly people around him. Even in the retreat to home each day, it had first been his family in their ‘cozy’ flat, then his girlfriend in their ‘charming’ one. He welcomed their evenings together — meals, television, Scrabble matches, YouTube videos, whatever came to them at the end of their days. But those occasional times alone, when the others were away for a night or two, gave him a taste of something else. He didn’t quite know what it was at first. He didn’t do anything unusual on those occasions, maybe read a book or watch a film, but there was a new feeling that he couldn’t name.

On the train he felt that lightness again despite the anxiety about his new, albeit temporary, life in a strange setting. Looking out the window as the urbanity turned into suburbs, fields, and river crossings, that feeling began to take shape. Maybe it was freedom? Maybe it was finally knowing himself. What if he were to find that only to have it taken away again at the end of the year?

⬩

Eventually the train arrived in Boston and it was time to disembark to catch the next one to Brunswick at a different station. He had to take the subway to get there. It didn’t seem like a great connection or system, reflective of the American economy’s focus on gasoline consumption. However, he also wondered on his second trip back, after knowing his new local neighbors, if it were instead a purposeful inconvenience to keep more people from coming up to Maine.

Luckily, he wasn’t carrying too much with him, but it all felt quite cumbersome. He wasn’t sure why he had decided to take the train. He could have flown to Portland, then taken a bus or taxi. Flying was such a pain though, at least from New York. Even for domestic flights, he would have to get there a couple hours early, maybe three to be sure. It didn’t save much time in the end and there was a lot more waiting in lines that way. There would also inevitably be those first few minutes seated, looking out the window and hoping the plane wouldn’t crash. Even though he knew flying was statistically safer than taking a train, it felt less sure. It had felt that way more after 9/11. His anger at his lack of rational thought at these moments was worse than the anxiety of a crash itself. He often wondered why his brain moved into these strange, unnecessary spaces.

The train, despite its inferior quality to European varieties, also felt luxurious. Hours and hours looking out a window…it reminded him of when they would rent a car to visit his grandmother in Virginia. As an only child, he didn’t have siblings in the back to annoy him nor entertain him. Instead, he gazed out at the scenes passing by him like some kind of film of the American east coast. They often took slower roads. His dad said that sitting in slow highway traffic wasn’t worth it when you could take the same time continuously moving by new places on the side roads. They also found many detours this way, such as a visit to Amish country, barbecue restaurants, and strip malls with clearance sales.

The workday Bostonians around him were dressed more casually then those in New York. There were Polo shirts and J. Crew dresses, all made from the timeless colors of New England attire. Other men had baggy jeans with oversized t-shirts and baseball caps. Many of the women wore plain khaki shorts and sleeveless tops. There was the occasional hipster-type mixed in, so he didn’t stand out as an outsider.

The second train wasn’t busy at all. He had chosen to travel on a Wednesday, hoping for this effect and also wanting to take a few extra days to settle in before commencement on Monday. The staff accommodations were only made available from a few days before, since they had been used for the summer music programs at the college.

He settled into his next seat by the window, facing forward this time, and allowed himself to passively take in the North Shore of Massachusetts followed by a blip of New Hampshire and then the wondrous beauty of Maine’s coast that seemed to inhabit even the inland sections they covered. Salt water moved under and between land masses, bridges, and towns. If he let his eyes water, the scene became an impressionist painting.

He did nothing except this. His mind was free of any obligations or deadlines or anticipations.

⬩

As the arrived at the last stop in Brunswick, many college students and several military personnel got off and either found the families waiting to pick them up or trekked down Maine Street and over the bridge to campus in Topsham.

Instead of a large backpack like the students, however, he had a suitcase and wanted to arrive at his abode without seeing anyone from the interview committee who might recognize him. Though they had been friendly, he needed time to understand how he fit into this place.

It had been a long journey and was getting dark. A late August cool breeze, much cooler than it would have been in Brooklyn, rushed in at him as he attempted to find and hail a taxi. When this didn’t work, he jumped onto one of his phone apps and was surprised they still worked all the way up here.

The new-looking black Prius arrived just two minutes later. The driver was a heavy-set forty-or-so-year-old man with a full beard and a flannel top.

“Hello there! You’re going over to Stowe Lane in Topsham?” His tongue held onto each syllable as if the language came from deep within, from the earth and from experience.

“That’s right,” was the foreign man’s reply in an accent that fell much lighter, dancing at the surface of his mouth. He put his big Samsonite in the trunk and started to get into the backseat.

“You live here? Work at the college?”

The man felt exposed; his obvious stereotypes unbeknownst to himself: “Yes, well, I just started.”

“Oh! Welcome then. What was your name?”

“Cliff.”

“I’m Hank. Have you been here before?”

“No, oddly. It’s just an adjunct position, temporary, so my interviews were over the phone and computer. This is my first time in Maine.” Saying it out loud made him realize just how insignificant this position might be. Why had he bothered to abandon his Brooklyn life? But everyone knew the academia game was tough. This was a great school and he hoped it would lead him toward a tenure position. The question was where. He was at the mercy of so many other factors. When had he really been in control?

After a long pause, the driver turned his entire torso toward him at a light, just before the bridge from Brunswick to Topsham. “Your first time in Maine? You don’t say…” Thankfully, he returned facing forward quickly and simultaneously, asked, “So did you eat on the train? You know all the shops here close up early. I’ve driven a lot of you city types - mostly Massholes1 mind you - who don’t have a clue about all that.” He laughed warmly, inviting Cliff into his local observation.

“I didn’t know. I can just call for takeout I guess.”

“Ha, all the college kids are coming back. Good luck! You can, but it’ll take ages to get your food from the few places that deliver. They might not even make it. Look — this brewery is fantastic. They’ve got burgers and stuff. You dig it?”

“Um, ok.” The man was now on the back foot. He expected to be dropped off and then anticipated asking the driver if he could pick him up again later. However, the driver quickly parked in a spot and unbuckled his seatbelt. “You’re coming, too?”

“Is that alright? I’ve got a long night of driving ahead of me. We can sit at the bar. I know a guy.”

There wasn’t a choice not to go along with it. Anyway, he was hungry. What else was he going to do?

They moved past the queue waiting to be seated and hopped onto bar stools. “Ayuh2, nice. They’ve got pumpkin beer on tap again. You want one, bub3?” the driver could see the foreigner’s surprise at his choice of drinking alcohol. “Don’t worry, I’m not drinking. You go ahead, choose one of these local brews. It’s on me.”

“No I couldn’t. Thank you so much for your kindness. But sure, I’ll order a beer.”

He looked around the busy room and saw he didn’t completely stand out. There were others who dressed like Brooklyn people mixed with polo shirts of various colors and striped tops or dresses on the women.

After the men demolished their burgers, Hank ordered dessert with two forks. “Look, it’s like a date!” he let out a belly laugh that captured the enthusiasm of the bartender and the woman sitting to his left. Eventually, Cliff joined in with a chuckle as well. His head felt lighter after the food.

“Ok, I’ll help you out. That does look pretty fucking good.”

Hank wouldn’t let him touch the bill. In fact, it never arrived, “I already put it on my tab. Relax and just accept it. This is what people do around here.” He put his big bear paw on the man’s shoulder as they walked out and into the cold August night. Cliff felt small and inexperienced with life despite his academic degrees and his thirty-five years.

⬩

As he listened to Hank’s Prius make its way down the driveway, Cliff couldn’t remember the last time he had had such an authentic interaction with a stranger. A bunch of strangers, actually. The whole bar area had been alive and ripe for conversation.

For the brief moment in the drive onward toward his new home, he searched in himself why he had felt slightly emasculated when Hank had paid for their meal. He also knew Hank could have just picked up a sandwich and continued working. Why had he started to attach so much worth with money and the way he spent his time and the power it gave you? The man was just…nice. A good meal and the company with it were more important than those few bucks he was going to make.

All Cliff had known of this little house was the address before arriving. Hank’s car idled nearby as he searched for the keys that were finally found in the correct secret flower pot. He waved good-bye like a child heading off to school as he turned the knob slowly in anticipation of his new home.

Part 3 -->

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To be continued…

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Something new happened to me in Maine. I don’t know if it’s the place itself or my moment in time. It’s space-time I guess. Anyway, here I am. And my inner world, my consciousness that I had taken for granted began to merge with the natural world and the metaphysical world. At first, it felt like my soul was being taken away. Like an invisible alien ship hovering over me, pulling pieces of me in pulsating rhythmic waves up into their laboratory.

Eventually, I realized, nothing was being taken from me. In allowing my inner voice to move out and into the world around me, paradoxically in silence, I was merging with the Earth, with the Universe. It had more to give back to me than I had given from deep within myself. We were all becoming One, part of the big Oneness like Zen Buddhists, Thoreau, Arendt, and Heidegger alike talk about in different ways. Although they all have words or representations to explain the phenomenon, it was only in manifestation that I truly understood.

I was becoming-native. In the most denotative use of the word, stripped of its semiotic significance, if you will. Trying to, anyway; I still have a long way to go. Because I get that language matters and this is a loaded word. If you humor me, and just think of it at its core please: natural, connected with something in a natural way, born in or innate.

Because of all this, I decided to stay. I could have brought my new understandings anywhere, but it just felt good to be in the place where I had discovered it and where a few other people seemed to understand it as well. I guess. There just wasn’t as much in the way.

It sounds stupid. That’s why most of my life stays trapped in my head. But you’re here, so let me just continue a little bit more and if you’re interested you can read the rest of this story to see how I got here.

Don’t be surprised at the strangeness of my tale! I’ve written my story as fiction because that’s the only way it will make sense. I can weave pieces of facts into this free ellipsis and create new ones side-by-side. I can make reality born in biological sensory information and astrophysical fact, but include or jump to reality that exists only in the mind, the imaginary. All this can still be truth, lead to truth. And to achieve this end, I’ve had to change the perspective to third person. From outside of myself like some abstract energy or an invisible animal by my side, maybe more like an ever-present plant with sensory powers and a nervous system, in this way, I can see what happened. Why I left that enviable life in Brooklyn forever.

To be continued…

Part 2 -->

Author chat

This novella is still in its early stages and I’ll be filling in or chopping up (as needed) to bring you these pieces this summer. I plan to pair it with two others in nascent form as a kind of triptych when all is done.

While growing up outside of Boston, my family used to go to Maine for its beaches, ski mountains, hiking trails, and lakes. I spent four years there as a college student, the first week of which was spent camping and mountain biking at Acadia National Park as orientation. By the end of the second week, my cross country coach had dropped us blindfolded in the woods with walkie-talkies (and seniors who knew exactly where we were — no stress), taken us to run on Popham Beach (famous for the film Message in a Bottle), and sent us on speed training runs by the wild, rocky coast. I was enamored by her great Pines whose strength seemed to represent her resilience and commitment to wildness.

Have you experienced Maine’s magic? Thank you for reading!

Eventually his face began to resemble the wooden Buddha head on his window, the space his gaze moved toward every morning when he practiced for the big event.

Every day, he spent a little longer in there, becoming more depleted and insecure. It was like his prison. Willingly, he was becoming a destabilized recluse. I used to place slices of ham and cheese with bread on a plate and gently knock to say it was waiting outside the door. A grumbling thank you came through the door, but it never opened until I was far clear of the room.

I didn’t want to spy on him though I was worried. He did still leave the house daily and on these occasions, I used to enter the room to have a look around. But, nothing. Or nothing I could see anyway.

When Mortimer told me he wanted to take a year off after college and asked if he could live at home again, just for the year, of course I said yes. I imagined we would have a lot of good times together like when he was little and I was on maternity leave. Now retired and widowed, I could devote any time to him. I thought we could take day trips or walk in the local park. I knew he would want to see friends as well or do things on his own, as would I, but the prospect of all this time together was a dream.

It hasn’t been like that. He’s been here three months and I barely see him though he’s almost always at home.

Another month later, he was changing. Something a little crazed, even sinister, had creeped into that regard he carried around with him in between long sessions in the room. I hoped it was the storm before the calm, the superlative point on a trajectory of his life.

You can’t control your children but you can see them. Or at least you think you can.

I was getting close to calling a doctor, or the police…someone. Because I didn’t know this young man anymore. You see all these things about young people online and what happens to them. Then I remembered that he purposefully left the wifi router far from that room and I knew from experience that this meant it was a dead zone. His phone was always left in his bedroom or the kitchen, charging, and on sleep mode so that nothing could come through, not even a distant vibration would disturb whatever was silently occurring in that room.

⬩

We named him Mortimer after a trip to Normandy while I was a few months pregnant. Those beautiful abbey ruins of the village Mortemer entranced our souls and we wanted our son to have this nostalgic energy, to create a persona from a mystical title as if he were a poem. His father was a poet at heart even though he spent his days trading at the bank. He died before publishing anything and we - Mortimer and I - always felt like there were many pieces of him that had remained closed to us. Maybe if he had just made it to retirement, he would have created the time and space for this way of seeing.

My son’s name also means dead water or still water, thought to refer to a pond. Some days I think that kind of stillness is something to be desired and other times I worry we doomed him to a life of closing himself off from change, of silently drowning in the watery abyss.

His absence as he dwelled in that room was palpable. I felt it much more than when he was away at school. It was as if he has closed the poetry off from me, a punishment for his stagnant name or our lack of dynamic upbringing or the absence of his father. Was it? Had I done enough for him? Do I now? We never stop parenting; even in death we hold auras over our children that impact their realities.

All day long, every day, I worried until I could witness him emerge. His passing presence was not enough but it was a relief all the same. We would exchange brief words and I would reach out for his hand.

My courage was dwindling, though, and I was afraid even to call for help, afraid of pushing him away further. As the days went on and on, another month, two, I felt myself sinking into a deep hole, clinging to a tiny rope of optimism that frayed more and more in his absence. I drank varieties of herbal teas as I moved between nooks in the small house for hours, passing the time with reading or puzzles, then took tiny sips of calvados in the evening, allowing the accumulated effect to subdue me, watching television with the volume turned low, listening for his return if he were still out or awakening if he had plodded to bed.

⬩

Then one day, he emerged from the room at a strange time of morning, a time I could usually immerse myself with something in the house, knowing he would not stir.

‘I’ve finished!’

At first, I thought he was joking, stooping to a new low I didn’t know existed in that human who had grown inside me: mocking my very care and concern. He emerged during mid-morning sunlight, leaving the door ajar and unguarded, as if he were a spiritual entity visiting my secret hell.

My jaw tightened, as it had throughout the many days during this period, and a silent scream moved in threads through my spine, fraying the last of my rope, and eventually emerging through spread fingers I hid behind a cushion. The look on my face must have been bewildered, perplexed, but also feigning happiness, wanting to mirror his visage to make him feel validated. To save him.

‘I know, it’s great, isn’t I? I feel so much better.’ He laughed mildly as if I were in on the joke, ‘Sorry Mum, but I’ve got to get some fresh air. This is brilliant! I’ll tell you all about it a bit later, ok?’

A promise. But one I dared not hold onto, conditioned for disappointment. I resisted the temptation to enter the room with the assurance of the flower’s slow opening, whatever it could be.

I could not keep myself from dozing, though, and some kind of release, even an awkward and restless one, allowed me to sleep straight through the night after lunch. At dawn, I awoke as usual and peaked into his room to find him there, peacefully resting, unaware of my omnipresence.

⬩

It was nearly noon by the time he woke up that day, and I was perched where I normally was in those days, hoping and anxiously anticipating. His steps moved quickly down the stairs with a lightness I hadn’t heard for years.

A few steps from my kitchen stool, he faced me: ‘It had to be written,’ he said as he pivoted toward the baguette waiting on the counter and ripped off a large morsel, adorning it with thick butter as if it were cheese.

I wanted to understand but was afraid of pushing him away again. My desperation told me to ask: ‘What’s that, Mortimer?’

‘A book, a long prose poem. About…I’m not sure, it’s too hard to explain in words, paradoxically.’

I let a beat or two create space for his accomplishment, then hesitantly persisted: ‘Was it worth it?’

‘Yes! Of course,’ he looked at me side eyed, playfully, ‘It was all the ideas that have been brewing for these years at school, away from home, dissonance…grief…freedom…and I’ve written it now. It is alive as a separate being from me.’

He wanted my approval or pride, or perhaps just a common joy. I hugged him. I showed him these feelings all mixed together on my face. A replacement of words seemed petty and small. ‘Will it be published?’ I asked after a few moments like this.

‘Maybe, yes, I mean I’ll probably send it to a few agents then self publish if that doesn’t work, I guess.’ He looked out the window then back at me, ‘Oh, Mum, it doesn’t really matter, does it? It won’t make money. The point is just to create, to do. Because when I write is when I see clearest, when I think. It helps me to see the world around. Chaos to order - not that I’m obsessed with order, but it’s like figuring out a little puzzle of the universe, in metonymy.’

This time my pause was not theatrical for effect, but involuntarily purposeful for understanding: ‘Ok, yes, I get it. I will happily read it.’ I couldn’t resist though; there was also pain in my bones underneath that relief: ‘But you haven’t really been living much these past few months…sorry but it’s true…and I miss you…I miss you living your life…’

‘I get you, Mum. Sorry about that, really.’ He kissed my forehead and hugged me. ‘You know, it’s something I had to do. It’s made me feel really satisfied, happy even, yes. And now I can take a break from it, maybe return in shorter chunks, I don’t know yet. Where do you want to go? Let’s drive somewhere in the car and just have a long chat about nothing like we used to. Let’s look at the shapes of the trees and stuff ourselves with seafood by the shore. We can go to that place Dad always took us to.’

‘I’d love that. I’ll drive, get your coat.’

In which six people are stuck in a gondola near the Matterhorn…

Ten more minutes passed in silence. The tension was quietly building within Lorenzo, the man who was hugging the corner of the gondola. His brow furled more and more until the wrinkled skin protruded from under his helmet. He was slightly intimidated by the stature of the two men he was seated next to and disappointed by the lack of defense from the three passive people sitting across from him.

Lorenzo thought back to the year before when he, an ambulance driver, had responded to hundreds of calls related to Covid. Some of them had been dead when they arrived at their homes. This was not a new experience for him, but the constancy of it drove him mad, desensitizing him to death and looking at those he considered old people — just a decade or so older than himself — as corpses even as they sat breathing, occasionally waving, on their isolated balconies as they drove up and down the streets arriving frequently at the hospital. There, as the world saw on the news, bodies — alive and dead — began piling up in the parking lot whilst waiting for beds, rooms, doctors, or undertakers.

Day after day this happened. Lorenzo willed himself to believe it was some kind of parallel world, a nightmare he had entered to teach himself a lesson. He knew he had faults, sins, and he vowed to clear his conscience when he returned to the real world.

Part of that return, he had recently decided, would be a return to the mountains that he rarely made time for anymore. He lived only forty minutes from Cervinia. They advertised that even the Swiss side where lifts began in Zermatt would require face masks on enclosed lifts despite the more relaxed approach of their neighbors. This was to show a kind of solidarity with the Italians and to celebrate the opening of the border, displayed so beautifully on the ridge where one could ski freely between Switzerland and Italy.

These humans were so quick to forget. Or probably, he thought, they had never experienced anything as traumatic as he had during the pandemic. Why couldn’t they try to empathize? Why did they feel the need to impose their superior views? He understood what it was like to feel cold, but they were skiing after all. It was normal to allow the elements to merge with our bodies in unusual ways. It healed him.

⬩

Ingrid’s phone was vibrating in her pocket. She weighed the option to take it out, though it would chill her fingers that were now curled in a ball around a disposable hand warmer inside her mitten that would be used up within the hour. Surely, there was no reason to make contact with her loved ones. Surely, any morbid thoughts were just overreaction. Her mind focused on her children. She was grateful they weren’t old enough to be seated beside her.

It had been another ten or fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty. Nobody checked. Nobody wanted to know. Their faces were calmed by mountain air and the trust they had in the Swiss engineers to keep them safe.

The French woman laughed a little at something inside her head, then quickly apologized. They were all stuck. Stuck in space and time, considering the person they were at the capture of that moment.

To avoid facing this internal reality, the Dutchman in the middle started singing a song in baritone that they all knew, a German song they played at the ski resorts. Ingrid was reminded of her sister, wondering where she was at that moment. Wondering if her children would stay close as they aged. The Frenchman picked his head up and smiled. He, an alto, began singing in harmony and the others, except for the Italian, made small dance-like movements to the rhythm.

As the song faded out, five skiers had found some sustenance, some hope. Ingrid secretly tried to look at the man who had not participated, to see if he had relaxed. Instead he caught her eye with a glare: she was no longer safe from his wrath.

Unexpectedly, a dense fog encircled the sestet of skiers. With blindness came stillness; the wind had departed, at least momentarily. Time was the repetition of their lines, stanzas developing variations on themes.

Quiet, contemplative visages looked out at the emptiness, wondering how long they would remain in this crucible. Each weaved between distractions in their mind and the focus on the uncomfortable present.

And then, the small man stood up and scared them all.

The smallest line exploded, as if all his life were contained in that caesura. The other side of the pause was ferocious: “Open the window…or I’ll…!” He held up his arms, trying to look big like one does in an animal attack. The trio on the other side tried to look elsewhere, attempted to become smaller and recede into the fog, to dissipate beyond the walls of the gondola. Nobody was attacking, but the Dutchmen looked shocked, the coolness gone.

Their defense came a moment after this second caesura, now their lines began with a laugh, in unison for strength, in humor for hope that he would just sit down and retreat into himself.

It had been nearly an hour at this point. The man had been silently brewing.

Nobody wanted the doors to fly open. Those gondola doors were the thing they trusted completely, so high up from the ice and the rocks, so vulnerable to the elements. Closed, they could keep their warmth, and closed, they did not risk a fall.

But the man did not find humor in the scene. The mocking ignorance was a stronger force than the desire for life itself, the thing that had made him ask for the window open in the first place.

They were eyeing each other up for a physical battle. In such a small battlefield, it would be the quickest to discover how to unload the other that would win. Strategies of an old fashioned duel. If you listened carefully, you could hear the less boisterous Dutchman whisper, “Fuck…” and the Frenchman whisper, “Mon dieu…” while they and the two women looked desperately for grips to hold onto.

Lorenzo darted forward, straight for the side with the doors. We are all goners, thought the entire up-mountain side in unison. They tried to make peace with who they were and how they had lived in that second or two before the climax. They hugged themselves, seeking a kind ending, a painless one.

But Lorenzo didn’t pull on the plastic doors nor did he make physical contact with either of the tall men. Instead, he went for the tiny windows, opening them as far as they could go, leaning unaware into the loquacious Dutchman who was stunned into passive observance like his companion. The small man had taken his helmet and mask off and was sticking his face out of the tiny crevice, breathing in the Matterhorn’s icy oxygen exhalations. They edged over to allow him space, to allow him to stay in the position that made him feel safe. That allowed him not to face the others with his embarrassment and his sadness.

One by one, each passenger took off their face mask completely. Nobody was acting in defiance of the mountain’s creed of protection, nor would they on their next ride up the mountain. Their action instead was that of a Greek chorus who had done its job correctly. They looked around at each other with naked countenances reflecting back the same relief in their arms, now loosened from grips.

And the gondola moved.

⬩

Everyone stayed in position, silently, until they reached their destination a few minutes away. The continuous discomfort made the coda to this ride feel like hours though it paled in comparison to the time they had been frozen in air, in a parallel world unique to all the others around the mountain.

They let Lorenzo out first then followed dutifully, each grabbing a set of skis and proceeding to mechanically click them onto their boots in syncopated rhythm.

But the ambulance driver didn’t put his skis on. Didn’t race to escape embarrassment or persecution. Instead, he had dropped his skis and ran on the plastic toes of boots to collapse in a soft pile of snow nearby. He was moving with his exasperated breath, heaving like a hibernating bear. The French and Ingrid turned away and looked at each other briefly with melancholic expressions of sympathy and kindness before the couple skied off to the easiest trail to the side. Ingrid stayed a bit longer, adjusting her boots. Shamefully, she admitted, this was out of curiosity. Maybe empathy as well. She futilely wanted to understand where the man’s torment came from.

The Dutch were about to head off in the opposite direction when the quieter one nudged his companion to look at the spectacle in the snow, now with audible cries that rose above the wind’s howls to those paying attention. Ingrid braced herself for an encounter with the dark side of humanity. Imagined laughter filled her ears. She closed her eyes in shame for them all.

And yet, she had underestimated those around her, now allowed to breathe freely, rooted to the ground without the existential fear of hypothermia or falling. Because when she opened her eyes, something unexpected greeted her. This one dressed in blue had taken off his skis, had gone over to the struggling man, had pulled him out from the snow.

There they were before her: embracing.

Ingrid left, letting gravity take her over the edge on the piste that would eventually lead home. No more skiing today. To her chagrin, the realization of her passivity washed over her, deepening with every turn.

How she wished Ralph had joined her after lunch. He would have taken her mind off of danger. That latent tension she always carried with her was made serenely invisible in the company of the right people or her own joyful motions through space and time.

But of course somebody had to ski with the kids. It would have been better to stay as well, to all ski as a family. Ralph was being generous — take more time to yourself, he said. There was that constant internal debate of how to spend time ever since the first child had arrived. Sitting still was desirable only when it was an opposing force to paralysis. Paradoxically, the build-up of waiting for that time made an entrapment of her freedom. It made her crazy and skiing made her mind clear.

So, Ralph was right. The other thing that had happened, though, after the first child arrived, was that her adolescent anxiety and fears that had long been put to rest reappeared like brown bears after a long winter of hibernation and hunger. It was unclear to her why this had occurred. Was she afraid for her children or herself? Was she just tired…or mentally imbalanced?

A large gust made Ingrid’s arches tense invisibly within the hard plastic boots. She was grateful for the weight of the load.

Ingrid tried to free her mind by thinking about the next run down and gazing whimsically at the Matterhorn to the left. The five strangers sitting around her appeared nonplussed by the lift’s unusual movement. It was the same approach she now took on airplanes during turbulence: look around to see if she were the only one freaking out about it in a move toward rationality. The other passengers typically looked calm, even enjoying their time on the flight. She often dissembled the same visage, especially if her children were around. The pretending always helped and so she did it now.

Her chin moved back to perpendicular with the ground to remind herself of the destination. To the left was that mountain face to which millions took pilgrimages. It had become a thing beyond itself, crystalized through photographs and paintings, via stories of climbers’ deaths and victories. The iconic peak of the Matterhorn had a special way of jumping into your thoughts and jaggedly reminding you: this greatness is much larger than you. Its beauty was in its impenetrable rise above human life, above trees and walking paths, climbing abstractly into oblivion. Her gaze moved around to other parts of the landscape. Several mountain goats camouflaged with the rock suddenly popped out from the scene as they moved toward something. Escaping an ominous invisible tsunami of bad weather or predators. Ingrid forgot about her fear while watching them survive, leaping over deep crevices and looking back for the young following closely, obediently.

Suddenly the contraption lurched to a halt, something she knew from many years’ experience often happened on windy days. She continued to look at the goats. They puttered around on the cliffs, far from the pistes. There were no skiers in sight and, looking down, Ingrid noticed their gondola had stopped at one of the high points in the ride. After so many years on chairlifts of different varieties, she rarely bothered to notice the height and didn’t allow herself to think much about it. Instead, the awe of the sublime erased this potential for fear. You had to trust the equipment.

This drop, however, was unusually far. It was certainly not possible to evacuate via jumping, an image of hope which she often recalled from an experience waiting for over forty minutes on a frigid metal chairlift in the eighties and witnessing older teenagers or twenty-somethings eventually popping off their perches and landing gracefully on the soft snow just a couple of meters below as she remained trapped with her sister, singing songs to kill time and wondering at one point if she could coach the younger sibling to follow in a leap of faith.

There was no such luck this time. But, she reminded herself, the gondola could keep them warm for hours. She looked around at whom she was stuck with. Three men across from her, one of them petite and the others of Nordic heights. Next to her was a couple in their fifties or so.

The details of each person’s face was difficult to discern as it was 2022 and everyone wore a face mask, although some wore them under their noses and loose, just enough to comply for the lifty. She noted that this could be the scenario quite often on a ski lift, however, with cold days bringing different kinds of face masks and related protection. Beyond the eyes and cheekbones, Ingrid judged them by their choice of attire, attempting to create a little story about each one. The tall men wore bright Arc’teryx coats, each with mirrored goggles. They held large day packs, likely containing avalanche airbags for their off-piste adventures. Their skis hanging outside in the attached plastic box and bending in the wind were wide and garishly decorated. The older little man wore functional clothing that appeared to be at least two, if not three, decades old. He had wrapped a burgundy scarf around his neck that was dutifully tied and folded into his jacket. It wielded a visible emblem of a bull on hind legs and Torino FC. His mask was secure but his eyes exposed his discomfort.

The wind hurled again and the gondola swung. Ingrid was nervous her skis would fall out — they would be lost forever in this remote spot. The tiny windows were cracked open as they often were and the vortex entered their cabin in a swirl. She was unsure if it helped or hindered the swinging of the lift, but it certainly was becoming cold. How long had it been? Maybe ten minutes so far, longer than normal.

Just then, one of the tall men said something in what sounded like Dutch to his friend or brother, then turned to everyone else, “It’s cold! I’ll close the window.” He stood up, swaying the cabin even more, though he could have reached the window from his seated position, and closed both of them, turning back to the others like a hero awaiting his thanks. He sat back down and the couple responded: “Merci! Merci beaucoup,” establishing their Frenchness while Ingrid smiled a nod of thanks from under her mask.

But the small man was silent. His cold stare rested toward the floor a moment, then two, and on the third long beat, he raised his eyes to the Dutchmen beside him and spat out: “How can you be so stupid? There’s a virus around!”

His Italian accent was greeted first by the same silence he had created, then laughter: “It’s fucking cold! Sorry man, but my wimpy Dutch fingers cannot take this Swiss weather.” It was an attempt both at humor and at winning over the other inhabitants of the closed-in space. He tried to make eye contact with the rest of them but avoided the masked man.

The two tiny windows remained closed.

The couple started speaking in French about their late lunch plans. “J’ai trop faim. J’espère qu’on va continuer bientôt…”

“Moi aussi, j’ai hâte de manger la pollenta avec gorgonzola. Mais si on reste trop long, on peut pas aller à la côte italienne malheureusement.”

Ingrid piped up, mostly to establish they shared a language: “J’ai quelques biscuits dans mon sac…au cas où…”

“Merci! C’est gentil.1”

She checked to make sure the snacks she had packed for the kids were still there. Of course they were; it was just something to do other than focus on the problem at hand.

“Look, the mountain train is also stopped,” declared the other Dutchman. “Must be a massive power outage.”

The visible part of his face showed boyish bewilderment turn to concern. They sat humbly huddled together like paratroopers awaiting their leaps into unknown arctic terrain.

Part two (end):

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Thank you for your patience, wonderful readers, while I have recently experienced an exceptionally busy time with work. The long pause arrived unexpectedly and my last post’s title - “Disappearance” - was completely accidental. Ha!

It is good to be back! I had to get this out before Northern Hemisphere ski season is over. This is (just) the second time I’ve written a piece with the Matterhorn explicitly as setting; the first time here, which gave this publication its title. One day, I’ll get to Zermatt Unplugged (at the Matterhorn), which is this weekend if anyone’s feeling spontaneous.

My craft has continued through the weeds. I have several writing threads I’m working on although they are tangled. The difficulty has been in finishing anything off or synthesizing the bits when my head is feeling drained, warped even. Perhaps leaving them in notebook and Scrivener purgatory is just part of the process.

In any case, it’s officially spring in Beckenham, not only by nature of the vernal equinox’s passing but also by the pathetic fallacy of the freshly arrived sun. I had no idea about the broody grayness of London’s winter, which is lovely for a month or two…

I’ll share two superb Substack posts from this period of absence: the release of a marvelous book I had a chance to preview in full and a writeup of my latest novel by two brilliant fiction-writing-friends — & .

Be well and thank you for reading!

FORD KNOWS

Lamb Cover Reveal!

I’m very excited to present the book cover for Lamb: A novel in snapshots designed by the talented David Wojciechowski of David Wojo Designs…

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a year ago · 70 likes · 98 comments · Mr. Troy Ford

Persona Non Propria

finding the lit: vol. 7

Welcome to a very special edition of finding the lit…

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a year ago · 32 likes · 8 comments · Clancy Steadwell

⬩

You are frightened. An empty mirror gazes back at you in the first moments of dawn. You have this realization that something has taken over. Taken over it all — your movements are not your own or they are disassociated from your mind.

You have become invisible. Something your childhood self wished as a superpower in cape or wand form for the benefit of secrecy and spying. But superpowers can be turned on and off; it was really because you had nowhere to go that was your own private space. Now, that would be enough. When they were here, you each had your little caves in the house. Unspoken rules dictated how close or when one of the others could enter. And now —

You can still feel your full weight; sublimation is impossible. There, on the bed, is the outline of where you slept. Your bare feet feel the cold floor below.

To be doubly sure, you hop quickly into the shower even before the water becomes warm. Your body tenses in response to the temperature it was exposed to then slowly melts as the warmth comes through. You blindly examine your elbows and shoulders and clavicles as you wash them. All the strange undulations suddenly became extremely important as if you are making a sculpture of your body out of water hollowed out.

You can’t remember why you are alone in the house until you are completely dried off. They went away for a few days, to give me space. The memory returns to you. It seemed to happen so suddenly, perplexingly.

⬩

Merge the self with the wool that covers our bodies over time, weaved by those who care for us.

Through empty space you find your face with your hands. Cupping your soft cheeks, still moist, you then move into the normal routine of your morning.

Out of habit, makeup disguises the obscured undulations accumulating years. Creams and certain colors placed here and there create a distraction from the lines leading nowhere. They place a corset on your soul. You thought things would be different.

A shadowy double echoes your movements. You reach toward the glass, searching for this substance that follows you, shrouds you. The cloak of death or some manifestation of nostalgia? You dive into your life’s work with this always behind you.

Love tries to find its way into your heart.

⬩

Life’s brutal measures are just that. They are chilling reminders of our lives’ lost to society’s strange markers of time and success.

On the same day you realize that what has been bothering you for the last few years, increasing in severity as a foggy mass that looms behind you in any reflective element, is a new state of invisibility, you ironically decided that what you actually desire is to disappear. You must have caused this transformation from within.

You clench your teeth harder once you know what it is, but only notice about the teeth when you ask your mouth to breathe deeply.

You don’t want to die. You’re perfectly aware that going away is a kind of euphemism for death. But in your case, you feel that disappearance could achieve a kind of consciousness you have sought after…so long…

⬩

You wake in the middle of the night to drastic rain and thunder and lightening for this temperate place, this in-between climate that rarely threatens heat or cold or storms or snow.

You miss the extremes. The exhausting constancy of sort-of-cool and sort-of-wet are too numbing for your persona. You live in poetry. You release yourself to the plays of language, whipping from one line to the next. You are that ghostly snake moving at unearthly speed among the pages on the shelves, yielding a tongue that strikes the keys to type your consciousness into being.

In the blackness of two o’clock, you look out the window and whisper to yourself:

I crave a lion’s heart. I crave a monster.

You can feel your jaw clenching subconsciously, carrying around the tension of the day to come.

⬩

The thing follows. You bleed into the day and hope for its swift ending. Again and again. You’re not afraid of not mattering but of not enjoying life — of being burnt in incessant mundanity so that the other stuff doesn’t happen or happens only superficially.

You are terrified of this. Two years already spent wishing away the days. Since they left. Good-bye. It is a vivid memory and a euphemism all at once. They are gone from this world. Why can’t you conjure other memories so sharply? Why can’t they live joyously in your mind? Instead, they wave and run off, again and again. And again. The incessant replayed departure has depleted your body of all color. Grief forms constant incertitude. You approach it with interest and curiosity but still have that fear somewhere in your spine. It crawls out at unpredictable moments like a snake that lives alongside your vertebrae, an evil parasite born from your mistakes. Striking similarities of your skeletal movements as you twist and writhe through unclarity make doppelgängers of spine and snake.

If you could just be —

⬩

Write out the stories in your mind.

Arrive at the distance of oblivion.

Seek solace in love.

I wasn’t sure if this was a full fledged story or a word sketch, so I’ll leave that up to you. What was your superpower as a kid and how has that thought shifted over time?

Here is a wonderfully moving song that somehow connects with this fiction for me:

And some related literature:

⬩“On Disappearing,” a poem by Major Jackson
⬩Wikipedia page on Invisibility in Fiction, but shockingly leaves out Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man

Thank you for reading!

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It was after a few weeks in South East London that she began to have the desire for this kind of color in her daily life. That’s what it had been. The days were gray, over and over again, and the promise of some bright protrusions, available at any time, that could move through the cold, humid air penetrating her bones seemed like a way to ward off the onset of seasonal affective disorder or at least the English blues.

She watched the lithe Vietnamese man working with dextrous fingers. He barely had to look at what he was doing. The cleaning and moulding and clipping were second nature to him now. Like her lessons about the German language. These actions enveloped the client, the student, in welcome comfort rather than harsh dissonance. They were unlike the kind she recalled from her English lessons in kindergarten and beyond: tense confrontations with failure and incertitude; uncomfortable passivity from fear.

But she had proven them wrong. People complimented her on her English now. It was her porthole between her inner self and the beyond. This Vietnamese man and this German woman could meet in the middle with English and with a knowingness that only outsiders have.

However, they were silent now. While he worked. He was getting the extensions glued on and smiled when he made the perfect adjustment.

“Is this the right length?”

“Oh…maybe a little shorter?”

He paused to examine them: “But this looks good. This is the fashion here,” then didn’t wait for an answer, “What color again?”

She pointed to the neon green bottle that reminded her of childhood bracelets and scrunchies. Something about its vibrancy in contrast with the weather felt like a release, or rather a defiance. She was sick of feeling invisible. She was scared of being swallowed up by the fog.

Her eyes closed in full trust of the body artist as her mind drifted to try to make sense of this new ebb and flow of days, of time’s movement toward the end. Her commute was not long, but was unpredictable. A short walk followed by taking the train two stops to a different part of the area still culturally identified as South East London was often elongated by transport delays or inclement weather, which didn’t actually alter the time but altered her perception of time.

Next to her, a woman was just sitting down in the middle of recounting an encounter with nature to a friend on the phone. The open speaker-mode blared through the salon, echoing off the white walls and mirrors: “So I couldn’t believe it, Morna. I was walking home after drinks with Jess and I nearly kicked this thing in the driveway just before my building. I looked closer and realized it was a hedgehog!1 Cutest thing.”

The digitally mediated response came back even louder, “Oh, I love that! Was it alive? Did you take a photo?”

“I sort of gave it a little kick to see and it curled up into a tiny ball.”

“That’s how they protect themselves.”

“Oh shit, I didn’t mean to hurt it…I was just hoping it would move around a little so I could take a video,” then, with realization of her audience, “And I didn’t want anyone to run it over. Anyway, yeah, it was fine I think.”

“Hey, do you have a babysitter’s number? I had just found this girl, Irish, really talkative and loved the kids. Was supposed to come last night and I couldn’t get a hold of her. Turns out she’s had a breakdown and gone back to Ireland.”

“Woah! What if she had been with the kids and freaked out?”

“I didn’t think of that…”

“Um, I’ve got one, yeah, I’ll send you a text. They’re waiting for me to choose a color. I gotta go.”

“Ok, hun. See you tonight.”

“Ciao.” As she hung up, the woman peered over at Lotta’s nails with curiosity. She lingered there a moment, then inhaled to reveal her judgement: “Those talons are peng.”2

Lotta nodded silently without any local color to respond with.

The plastic palettes painted in hundreds of colors moved clumsily between her hands with clicking and clacking until she found the perfect shade of iridescent crimson. She pointed at it and stated too loudly and with too much enunciation, “This one,” as if the young woman across from her couldn’t understand. The technician played her role by responding with a nod and lowering her head to work, no doubt hiding a smirk.

⬩

Lotta’s flat was near the big park. She imagined the many animals that must live there, hiding when humans were near. It was nothing like the German forest, but surely wildlife of some kind persevered.

After the nail salon’s fumes, she was in need of this fresh air, despite the grayness of the day and the mist that arrived on her from all directions making an umbrella useless. At least it wasn’t windy and stormy — yet. The walk was manageable, knowing she would simply end up a little wet.

She roamed the kilometers of trails all weaving around and through one another. It had the effect of continuously circling the old mansion on the hill without actually retracing any steps in succession.

There were still a few people around at first whom she encountered around the bends in the paths, but they seemed to disappear as if she were oil in water and her ripples gently nudged everyone out from the exterior limits.

⬩

Eventually, the moisture in the air had saturated her semi-permeable hooded shell. Her weariness struck suddenly. Without enough inner sustenance or warmth, she stopped in the mansion’s basement pub for something to get her home.

The bartender’s joviality welcomed her: “Hiya luv! What can I get ya?”

“Cider, please.”

“Full pint?”

“Yes please.”

“Lovely.”

As he poured from the ancient tap, Lotta looked around the small enclave. An old woman sat in a corner with a pot of tea, staring off into space. Two young men sat in another corner drinking pints and talking over a diagram and notes. The bartender served her with a smile then returned to his phone on the other end, which was waiting for him with its cosmic glow. He tapped happily at the keys, communicating with somebody, somewhere.

The cider was tart and cloudy. Its tiny bubbles made her aware of her insides as the cold mind-bending drink entered her throat, esophagus, stomach. Peace was here, in just being…without interacting and without a time to be somewhere else. The wooden beams of the old mansion echoed the compartmentalization of her brain. Before entering the cave-like basement that no doubt had once housed servants, a large pantry, or perhaps the estate’s animals, she had read the small plaque overlooking the undulating fields with the grand, sparse trees inhabited by fluorescent foreign parakeets that squawked at squirrels incessantly in attempted full takeover.

The sign informed her that this public park had been the Cator Estate, a golf course, and pieces of its land and buildings had other functions, such as a sanatorium and orphanage. It held pieces of history but created a larger elliptical gap with its conclusion:

She sat at the bar wondering who she had become.

⬩

Evening had already approached and Lotta felt like taking the train to a different place, to walk around and inhabit it, to see if this little space was any different. From nature to urbanity, this was the magic of the area.

If she had been fully honest with herself, and this had been true for a fleeting moment seated within the interior of the mansion basement, she would have understood that it was the going home that frightened her, not because home was ugly or untidy but because it reminded her of her strangeness. The apartment walls echoed her mind’s shortcomings back to her.

She walked almost compulsively toward the closest station, Ravensbourne, which was either a short walk through the dark, wooded paths or slightly longer down a dirt road by the tennis courts. She chose the road. Rather than make her feel safe, the streetlights created a target on her back. Without housing around and the tennis club closed due to rain, she wondered if anyone would hear her if she screamed.

The station lights beamed from a distance, compelling her to run the last hundred meters or so to the entrance. Both platforms were empty, and so Lotta thought she must have just missed a train. Signs pointed toward the exits and offered no further information about the desolation: the park she had just inhabited or the Greenwich Meridian Line route4. The station manager had already gone home but an announcement came on that the next train toward London Blackfriars was approaching.

The coaches were all lit up as usual, but Lotta couldn’t see anybody on as it passed by and then eventually faded in speed to a stop. Perhaps they were slumped in their seats out of view, she reasoned. The button that would allow her entry lit up and beeped at her, daring her to reach out over the gap. It was just a train, she reasoned. The cold plastic opened her porthole. Stepping up, something was pulling her back, as if the wind were gripping her torso. The tension contorted her into a strange shape and her foot slipped off, landing her knee and hands on the edge of the train. The doors were closing so she pulled herself in as a crumple on the dirty floor.

She rested there a moment, unsure what had just happened, but felt that it would be safer to stand up, then find a seat. Her nails were all intact as was everything else.

The world glanced in at her in the cold, damp evening of England’s winter evenings. It was an unwelcome setting of grayness where day and night are nearly identical in temperature and color.

The other seats were empty even on closer inspection, but she felt a presence within them. Perhaps it was just the stuffiness of the train carriage, but intangible, invisible ghosts seemed to occupy the spaces around her.

She got up to circulate a little and see if it was just that spot, to find other faces. The long abyss lay before her.

Suddenly, without warning, the train stopped. No announcement nor deceleration were evident. Once again, she found herself on the train floor but quickly bounced up to get to the door. There was no way she would stay in this uncanny carriage anymore.

Just in time, she hit the button, and fell and onto the dark platform.

Disoriented, she moved to exit the station. Her instincts told her to move away from the abandoned line, as if it were a parallel universe she had stumbled into. She felt some force like a rip tide and knew it was futile to swim against it. At the shores of the Baltic Sea, her father had taught her to swim diagonal toward the shore in this instance. With this attempt at wisdom, she moved on a dark sidewalk between abandoned cars and empty apartment buildings. The silence was startling; only the wind that whipped light but frigid rain on her face was audible. The stinging reminded her that she was alive and awake in some strange place.

This diagonal moved her toward large, looming gates adjacent to a tiny gatekeeper’s home and an open pedestrian path. Inside seemed safer than outside, so Lotta went in.

The path was partially blinded by the weather but dim lights every twenty meters or so led her up a gradual hill. An innate compass told her this direction was still better than outside-the-gate, so she continued. Upward. Shielding her face with her arm. She heard another train in the distance, which gave her hope that this universe was still occupied with others finding their way around the mazes of their own minds.

The hill leveled off and a brightly lit drive in front of a mansion greeted her. Suddenly, she recognized it — the other side of the mansion she had recently inhabited. Her instincts had moved her in the direction of home, just down the other side of the hill. The old stone home’s windows were all dark, but it was impossible to see around to the other side where a cave-like entrance led to the pub. She though if she could just get there…it was irrational, but maybe this was still where her body was…

In the light, something stopped her movement. A tiny thing was waddling along and suddenly curled up into a ball. A hedgehog — unfortunately frozen right under a spotlight as if waiting as prey or in danger of succumbing to the brutal weather. She approached slowly and squatted down, considering how she could help him find shelter. His quills5 softly heaved with its breath.

Something was moving nearby. Lotta’s eyes darted around to discover a large fox just a couple of meters behind her. Then another came out from the dark bushes, and a third jumped from nearby. They were slowly circling the lit area where the hedgehog was still curled in a ball. Three foxes, moving as if they were antagonists in a children’s fable, threatened Lotta’s reality until a new, more dominant animal approached and took over the space with its severe white stripe. The fierce badger first ran in a single circle to chase the foxes away in an organized line. They retreated down the hill in search of easier prey.

Then the badger stopped. He faced Lotta and rose up onto two legs, his tiny but vicious claws and teeth out. Perhaps he was much smaller than she, but he was unafraid of attack, desperate for sustenance or power. She cowered for a moment until she remembered what she had discovered in those moments at the bar before heading out on this strange circular journey.

In an instant, her gloves were off and her neon green talons glowed menacingly under the spotlight at the badger. He moved down to his four legs slowly, glared directly into her eyes, and left in the opposite direction toward the pond.

Lotta reached out gently toward the hedgehog with the tip of her nail, using a stroking pattern she hoped would somehow signal to the animal that danger had left. He uncurled himself slowly. His tiny little nose sniffed the air for predators. Satisfied, the sympathetic face moved toward Lotta in thanks. Then quickly, like the others, he ran off, seeking his tiny shelter that the foxes and badgers, the winds and car tires, could not reach.

A single quill was left shining in the light. It was the color of wild rice — creamy white on one end, then fading between black and coffee-brown. Lotta reached down to pick it up. Surprised at its sharpness, she held it up to take a closer look before impulsively piercing it through her undecorated ear.

She was a guardian spirit incarnate: I am the empress of South East London.6

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1

My son and I have been working on this book: Mr. Hedgehog and his Nocturnal Friends. Don’t ask me why the Olympics sticker is on our draft cover!

Marie Thibaut is a new interpreter for the French government in Vienna. Despite strange locals and diplomats alike, she is enamored by the promise of the utopian city. But Marie’s life is complicated when she attempts to be someone important and encounters strange historical crossroads. She enters the Viennese spy world and becomes disoriented in cultural exchanges and uncanny experiences.

Will Marie’s mind succumb to phobias, layered meanings, and isolation or will she persevere and find the right allies with whom she may do good in the world? Marie tells this tale as a long letter to her employer, Grégoire Lefebvre, and his wife Julie in an attempt to clear her name in the hours before mysterious Josef arrives at her door…at the threshold where she believes one of them will die.

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An Interpreter in Vienna is a response to Graham Greene's The Third Man and a psychological thriller, fully serialized on The Matterhorn. Thank you for joining me.

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An Interpreter in Vienna

Table of Contents

✍🏽 Author’s Foreword

An Interpreter in Vienna

Introduction (start of Marie’s letter)

Part I: Xenophobia

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6

Part II: Scopophobia

Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14

Part III: Acrophobia

Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18

Part IV: Agoraphobia

Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23

Part V: Claustrophobia

Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29

Epilogue

un (Wien)
deux (Bretagne)

Related podcast series —

investigations on layering fiction
⬩Collective Experiences
⬩Visual Art
⬩Espionage
⬩Sports
⬩Adaptation
⬩Doppelgängers
⬩Clothing
⬩Vienna
⬩’The Apartment Ellipsis’

epistolary literature and art
⬩The art of Letters
⬩Frankenstein
⬩The White Tiger
⬩Between the World and Me
⬩Still Life with a Plate of Onions
⬩As Always, Julia
⬩Il Postino
⬩Atonement

“Same Walk, Different Shoes” is a community writing project that Ben Wakeman organized as a practical exercise in empathy. The premise is simple. A group of writers anonymously contribute a personal story of an experience that changed their life. Each participating writer is randomly assigned one of these story prompts to turn into a short story. The story you are about to read is one from this collection. You can find all the stories from the participating writers at Catch & Release. Enjoy the walk with us.

Read the Collection

Into Me I See

Imagine a colorful, multi-textured world of nature, crayons, and music as your window to another land, the land your parents moved to before you were born, carrying kaleidoscopic pieces of home with them. The sounds of Cantonese1 and celebrations of Chinese New Year danced with the suburban yard I inhabited and the imaginative world I created at the kitchen table while my mom cooked sweet and sour pork or steamed fish with ginger. On dumpling nights, the table became our sculpting table. I learned how to make the dough, fill each section with just enough pork and scallion mixture, and pinch the ends together. My mom would correct me kindly if I did it wrong. Most of this happened in a comfortable silence with dissonant American radio music playing in the background. When I knew the words, I sang along to my mother’s delight. She gazed at me with pride and awe.

When my dad came home from work, tired, he would grab a beer from the fridge and say, “I’m hungry. What’s for dinner?” before asking us how we were. Then, before an answer, he would go on with some kind of short anecdote from his day, “That idiot at work asked me why China was taking so much of our business.” We knew he erupted into the house like this because the love was ever-present and sometimes, despite his age and position as the bread winner, he just needed to be listened to. Now that I’m grown up, I know we still feel like children a lot of the time.

“Is that a problem? Aren’t they?”

“Yeah, but he asked it personally. He thinks I’m Chinese. And then, Frank was there, too, and well he is Chinese as you know. So, Frank says that he’s working for an American company, so what’s the big deal.”

“Right, makes sense.” My face was ping-ponging between them, trying to understand.

“But then, then!  Then…he says to both of us that maybe we are spies and going to share the patents we’re working on with them. Frank has refugee status. What the hell? It’s crazy.”2

“Who is this guy? Is he your boss?”

“No, but he was speaking loudly so others could hear. He laughed at the end and said I take things too seriously. Do I? I don’t always understand American jokes. Frank said to just leave it.”

“Who knows? Just keep your head down, I guess. The dumplings and rice are ready. Why don’t you two sit down and I’ll finish the bok choy while you get started.” She cooked the greens and garlic in the wok with a deft flick of the wrist synchronized with the beats of Cantopop coming from a tape player.

Despite these frequent episodes, my father said he loved his job and it paid for our house so that was enough. In fact, I knew he had a lot of friends at work, too. Even the “idiot” liked him, respected his opinion. He came to our house for dinner once. They just had no idea what it was like.

Each of my parents was struggling in their own way: my mom in isolation in the house and my dad in constant invisible conflicts at work. But they were optimistic and pretended everything was fine. My mother said she loved being able to live how she wanted without constant flows of people meddling with her – in her invisibility she was free, she said.

My mom only spoke Cantonese. Well, that’s not true. She had told me she knew some English, but she was too shy to speak it in public. “I have standards!” she said. So instead, she was usually silent when we left the house. I spoke for her, through her, and I think this made us even closer. We shared the same voice.

I must have known it couldn’t last forever, though.

One day, my mom told me she would have to go away for several months, and it was like all the walls of the fort I had built that morning under our Eastern red-cedar tree enclave had blown apart. My protection was gone, that warmth I knew I would always come home to after a day at school of going through the motions the teachers asked us to complete. After a hug and a snack, I would run back into our yard to play. I gathered pinecones and sticks to make designs under the tree in the fort my parents had helped me create. I climbed the branches and jumped like a squirrel. I felt free and happy. There weren’t many other kids in the neighborhood, so I enjoyed this time by myself after what felt like a long school day. Breathing freely within the constraints of our little diasporic oasis.

Mom spoke to me in Cantonese as she always did: “Agnes, I’ve got to go be with Grandma in Hong Kong. She’s sick. It’s too much for her amah3; she really needs family.”

“What about Aunt Jane? Can’t she help?”

“Sweetie, Aunt Jane just had a baby. Really, she could use some help as well. I want to go, want to help. But I’ll miss you! Come here.” She hid her tears behind our hug. “You are a strong girl. Daddy will come home from work a bit earlier and get you at after-school. I’ve already spoken to the principal about it. Ok?”

I nodded silently. There was no other choice.

⬩

My life had been a linear, enveloping cloud until that point. I had been at peace because I hadn’t stopped to consider who I was. I guess that’s a part of growing up. The fish realizes it’s in water. But the role models in front of me confused me. My parents, the ones who had kept me safely in a shell had allowed me to drown in my mother tongue, blissfully unaware of its existence. It was just the way we were.

Going to school all day was one thing, but interacting in the chaotic after school activities was another. There were groups of friends who either split off to play particular games when we went outside or corralled around a particular table when we did arts and crafts. The helpers weren’t really teachers. They just let us get on with it unless there was a problem. Then, they’d blow a whistle.

I tended to go off and do something by myself. It was easier. Occasionally the helpers would organize kickball or read a story. At these times, we were all equal again. There were no divisions amongst us, and I could remain student #23. The fourth smallest in line and last alphabetically. The quiet girl who could climb like a monkey.

This kid named Ethan asked me one afternoon why I was all alone. “Why don’t you have friends? What do you like to do?”

I was silent. I felt exposed for my lacking. Who was I?

“Agnes, you must be into something. What? What do you like to do?”

His friends ran over and started poking him and teasing, “Ohh you like her” and “She’s a loner, let’s go.”

Ethan left without looking back. I asked if I could go inside to the art room and the helper agreed. I felt like the colors inside me were all muddled, that I had to somehow put them on paper, or they would implode. I wasn’t sure they were worth an iteration. Was I just a lump of a child, moving through the motions every day without worth? Whom did I matter to besides my parents anyway?

Then and there, I created something. It started out as a child missing her mother. I drew her with an aching heart, knowing we would talk on the phone that Friday as we had for two months already.

In that image, she was happy. She was holding out her arms to welcome me home after school. I had faith those days would return. But what about the rest of the picture? I didn’t want to return to her like some abstract rainbow and be absorbed by her love. Instead, I wanted to show her who I was.

I drew parts of our life at home first – the food, the music, the cedar trees, wooden blocks, the TV, my room. And I then drew me at school. I loved when we had gymnastics in PE or got to climb the rope to the ceiling. I was the only girl who could do it. I felt alive when we talked about animals and science in class. A lady had come to show us the inside of owl pellets. I wanted to ask my mom if I could go on the nighttime owl viewing trip with her and a few other kids. I realized maybe Dad would go with me. I drew a picture of Martin Luther King4 whom we had learned about a few weeks ago. I thought his speech was beautiful and had decided I wanted to do something brave like him when I was older.

Looking back at that picture in my box of childhood things, I can see all the pieces, but it just looks like a bunch of swirling colors and lines. Somehow, I knew it at the time, too. I wanted to write it out. I wanted to write what was in my mind, who I was becoming.

And then I had an idea: I would write it as a letter to my mom. I didn’t have to wait until she came home. The phone calls were always short; she asked a lot about school and what we were eating. She didn’t want to talk about grandma, because now I know she was dying at the time. She always said the call was expensive as a way not to talk about it.

I ran into the car when my dad picked me up. “I want to write Mom a letter!” I announced.

“Oh, that’s nice, she’ll appreciate it.”

He didn’t understand the intention, but I left that silent. He thought I was thinking of her, when I really wanted to understand myself. It made me feel guilty. And then more shame set in: “Dad? I’m not sure I can do all the characters. I only know a few. Can you help me with them?”

“I can, of course, Agnes. But you know, your mom would also understand it in English. Up to you.”

“But she will only understand some of the words then…”

My dad was laughing, “Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh! It’s just, well, she’s been, um, tricking you.”

“What?” One of the only two people who really cared about me had lied to me?

“Don’t be angry. No, Mom insisted on speaking only Cantonese with you and even pretending that she couldn’t speak English. She wanted to make sure that you would learn. She’s afraid of losing our Hong Kong culture. Mom went to The University of Hong Kong when she studied psychology. All her courses were in English.”

I was dumbfounded, completely unable to speak. Dad laughed again. “Stop laughing at me!”

“Sorry! Sorry. I’m not. I’m laughing at your mother. You know she can be so stubborn sometimes. I told her this was quite unnecessary. So, do you want to write that letter in English or with traditional Chinese characters?”

We had just pulled into the driveway. Bright green grass in need of mowing and an Easter bunny door decoration I had made at school greeted us, waiting quietly for my reply. It wasn’t like this in Hong Kong. I knew because I had been for a short trip two years before. I didn’t know which place I liked better. I just knew they were different. “English. I’m going to tell her I know what you just told me. Ok?”

“Sure, it’s about time I think.”

When we got inside the warm house, shielded from the crisp New England spring, he found stationery and pens, which he placed on the kitchen table. He began making pizza from scratch. The dough reminded me of my mom’s dumplings, but I was too busy writing to help. Occasionally, he let out a little chuckle, even a rolling giggle. I smiled, put my head down, and wrote my first letter.

⬩

For the three months that followed, while my grandma was slowly dying in Hong Kong, my mom and I exchanged countless letters. I didn’t always wait for a reply. I just kept writing, weaving ideas and anecdotes, fears and dreams, sketching pictures and adding occasional Cantonese.

A lot of the things I wrote about felt like paradoxes: How could I enjoy drawing but do better in math at school? How could I be shy and have strong ideas about America? Why did I sometimes hate my big shoulders even though they helped me to climb to the top of the gym? I asked my mom these things rhetorically, although occasionally she had an answer. Once, I asked her why she didn’t work if she had studied so hard at school.

I really wanted to make sure you were ok. I wanted to spend more time with you. What do you think if I go back to work? I was thinking I might when I return. Virginia down the road said her practice needs a part time psychologist. I could start that way. Tell me what you think. 我鍾意你5

I was shocked my mom was asking me what she should do. I showed my dad.

“Why don’t you just tell her to do whatever would make her happy?” I agreed. I wrote it to her in Cantonese with my dad’s help.

Each day, I started to feel more alive. It was difficult sometimes, facing the world. I wasn’t always playing under the cedar trees anymore. Occasionally, I returned. I even brought a new friend named Thomas who lived nearby. He was also really into our American history lessons and climbing the ropes at school. I showed him how to leap between branches and we made pinecone art together. We started to invite other kids in the neighborhood to see it. Sometimes they liked it, and other times the laughed at us and ran away.

Everything was changing. I had a new relationship with my mom in her absence and at the same time got to spend so much more time with my dad. I had told him how much I liked Martin Luther King when he saw the picture I took home that day, so he told me he would take me to a political speech. It was a senator at a rally in Boston. We sat up high in the rafters after passing through security. I was amazed and inspired by the optimistic visions, the emotion from the anaphora and body language, and the reflection of hope in the crowd. That was the seed that made me want to be a political scientist.

But I was still alone after writing these letters and attending this rally. In fact, I was more alone than before. Because I had found something else: peaceful solitude. In writing, I could discover who I was and feel loved before encountering anybody else, their judgments or invitations. I was no longer in a cocoon – that space that could have remained a prison had I not found out who I was. I had found love…for myself.

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Postscript

I’ve been an immigrant elsewhere for seventeen years, so I imagined being an immigrant in my home country – the USA - when I received my prompt. I grew up in a town with many immigrants, and many of them from East Asia. These were my friends, and I think it’s a large part of why I was interested in moving to Hong Kong for so long (eight years). I tried to invert the immigrant experience I had in HK but using a HK family in my story. I hope none of it comes across as cliched. A lot of immigrant stories deal with or refer to language, food, and family/school conflicts. This story comes from my experiences as well as those of my friends and a bit of research as a response to the great prompt I received.

I also want to recommend a collection of short stories I’ve used with many students called Growing Up Ethnic in America. I especially love the Gary Soto and Amy Tan stories in there.

It has been truly rewarding to attempt to step into someone else’s shoes, and I want to thank for the opportunity to participate in this great project. I’ve already asked him permission to steal this idea to use with my students next year!

To the anonymous writer of my prompt: Thank you for sharing your story! I apologize if you had something else in mind but hope that this explored some of the ideas through an empathetic lens. Your prompt was poetic!

All readers: I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Thank you. And please do check out the rest of the collection on Ben’s site when you have time.

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The Matterhorn: truth in fiction
how to layer stories with ideas, culture, places, and texts
podcast and original fiction from author and academic Dr. Kathleen Waller

⎯⎯⎯⎯

Tuesday: learn about layers of fictions & how I write

Thursday: get creative with 5-minute ‘Let’s Do This’ versions of the podcast

Saturday: read a new chapter of A Hong Kong Story

⎯⎯⎯⎯

⬇️ Jump to chapters and podcast titles

🎙 Truth in Fiction: How to Layer Stories ⬩ Spaces & Places
🎧 Let’s Do This

A Hong Kong Story

Original fiction by Kathleen Waller ⬩ jump to chapters

A juxtaposition of Ivy’s solitary navigation with Hong Kong's journey in the 2010's.  A story about divergence, culture, and love. What do you do when the future’s suddenly unclear?

purchase e-book

purchase paperback

free e-book for patrons

♾ Live links after weekly publication —

📖 Part I Getting Lost
🎙How to use frames and titles to amplify stories ⬩HK topography
🎧 Let’s Do This

📖 Quarry Bay, i
🎙 How to layer the cinematic in fiction ⬩ apartment buildings
🎧 Let’s Do This

📖 Quarry Bay, ii
🎙 How to use multingualism in fiction ⬩Quarry Bay
🎧 Let’s Do This

📖 Causeway Bay, i
🎙 How to consider political censorship in fiction ⬩newsrooms
🎧 Let’s Do This

📖 Causeway Bay, ii
🎙 How to include discourse about class and income gap in fiction ⬩MTR and metros
🎧 Let’s Do This

📖 Sheung Wan, i
🎙 How to use physics in fiction ⬩cafes
🎧 Let’s Do This

📖 Sheung Wan, ii
🎙 How to use the concept of the Pharmakon in fiction ⬩Sheung Wan
🎧 Let’s Do This

📖 Vienna, i
🎙 How to use pathetic fallacy in fiction ⬩reclaimed land
🎧 Let’s Do This

📖 Vienna, ii
🎙 How to use negative space and gaps in fiction ⬩Vienna
🎧 Let’s Do This

📖 Part II Flying

Ubud
Seminyak

📖 Part III Navigation

Wan Chai
Dragon’s Back
Soho
Sai Ying Pun
Tsim Tsa Tsui
Tai Hang
Moon Street
Discovery Bay

📖 Part IV (Dis)Orientation

Big Wave Bay
Sai Wan
Lamma Island
Bowen Road

📖 Part V Journey

Old Colonial Building
West Kowloon District
Lai Chi Wo
Cheung Sha

📖 Part VI Leaving

Home
Non-place (Paris)
Admiralty
Kennedy Town