Forty Days and Nights: Love Stories. 4. Sugar

The little boy and the little girl were hunting for Easter eggs. There were lots and lots of eggs, they knew, somewhere, no one could remember where. Could be anywhere. They kept looking everywhere but they couldn't find eggs. Their mother had told them this was the day for eggs so they hunted. The eggs would be full of chocolate when they found them, full, or maybe the eggs would have money in them. They hoped it would be chocolate; you can't eat money and they were getting hungrier and hungrier.

The rabbit watched them from the long grass by the garden. Again. Every year. Every year with the eggs. The rabbit was mystified by the eggs and by the children who hunted and hunted for so long before they found the eggs right under their feet. Why scatter eggs just to gather them again? Especially if you had such a hard time finding them? The rabbit himself wanted nothing to do with hunting or with eggs, he planned to eat baby lettuces in the garden. As was sensible. The rabbit watched the little boy and the little girl disappear between the trees and forgot about them. No one else saw them go.

They hunted and hunted but after a very short while only the little girl was hunting for eggs, the little boy was hunting for anything that looked familiar to him. He knew he should know just where they were and it bothered him very much that he did not. When he stopped walking and looked and looked around him, the little girl stopped too. She stood quietly by him, leaning just the smallest bit toward him, her head tipped a very tiny way toward his. She waited for him to finish looking. She knew he had a good sense of direction and that she herself did not. Their mother found that out a long time ago. So the little girl waited while he looked around. She was pretending to be patient. After a little time he said, I don't know which way to walk, but I'll know as soon as the sun moves and it isn't noon anymore. We can look for eggs til then, and the little girl was very serious and nodded. Chocolate.

They hunted around one more thick stand of trees while time passed and the trees slowly grew the smallest of shadows and just as the little boy was looking up from those shadows to say he knew the way back, the little girl said, I smell cookies and fudge, and instead of saying the way home the little boy said, look! They stood very still and very close and looked carefully through the trees at the place they had come, at the house made of cake and candy and doughnuts. The trees were quiet and still and nothing was moving or talking. They stood still and amazed though not surprised, their empty baskets, slightly askew, hanging from their crooked arms. Amazed to see the house, not surprised to see it because after all, it must be somewhere and here where they were was somewhere. The little girl was very hungry now, much more hungry than when they had begun to hunt, hungrier than ever in her whole, whole life and she felt this was a terrible moment. She waited while the little boy thought and thought. He folded his arms so the basket stuck out at a stiff angle, tipped his head to one side with his heavy thoughts, looked at the icing and the spun sugar and the peppermints and the rows of lollipops and the brownie bricks and the nuts and raisins and he narrowed his eyes. It was the raisins that did it for him. What sort of normal person put raisins on the outside of cookies for children? Real mothers never did that anymore, he knew. Raisins were pure storybook. His own mother put raisins in oatmeal and in curry and on her own salad and many of them, most of them, ended in a pile on the edge of your bowl. He looked up at the sun and then he said out loud, sometimes people are in a tight spot. He had heard that in a book, a tight spot. He said it again. Sometimes people are in a tight spot, he said, and they have to do something dangerous. The little girl nodded and made her face look serious. We may have to walk back home for a long time, even though now I know the way. We need food because we're starving, so we will quickly grab just one thing. Yes, the little girl said, one thing and then we run. They knew this story. She's old, the little girl reminded the boy as they walked carefully over the green coconut grass and the crushed rock crystal candy path to the house. No frosting, the little girl said, we haven't had breakfast.

They pulled off a whole apple pie from right above the mailbox. It left a big hole and strawberry jam filling gushed out. It was like they had pulled off a scab. The pie broke between their hands as they pulled and they stuffed the pieces in their empty baskets and ran. They ran and ate pie and ran and the little girl suddenly darted away under the trees. She crawled around for a minute and held up three Easter eggs. She was always best at finding things, she was the first one their mother asked when something was missing. They followed eggs back to their garden and as they went the sun shifted and it wasn't afternoon anymore, it was morning again, the morning of hunting for eggs. Their mother met them between the beans and the carrots. She was pretending she hadn't come looking for them. The little girl held up her basket for her mother to see it full of eggs she had found, full. The little boy dropped his basket and ran to their mother and wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her stomach. She leaned down when he whispered, I don't like to be in charge. Me neither, the mother whispered back, and she smoothed and smoothed his hair. Breakfast? she asked them. Bacon, the little girl said.

Forty Days and Nights: Love Stories. 3. Balls

They threw the ball back and forth as they walked around trees and between buildings, negotiating the busy people. Catch was her favorite game and she was happy, easy, tossing the ball back and back to him as they went. He felt silly at first, self conscious, stiff, too old for this sort of thing. It felt like having a very private conversation in loud voices on a crowded bus, this game between the two of them played around, over and in spite of people who were going studiously to class or seriously to work or hungrily to meals or wherever they were going to whatever they were doing, none of whom, in any case, were playing. She just kept her eyes on him, threw the ball right to him, every time, and he never missed or looked stupid and after a half mile or so he relaxed.
Relaxed.
Got cocky.
Threw too hard and she missed. Rather, she didn't miss, the ball missed her by a good ten feet and she stood still to watch it go by. Looked at him, eyebrows raised, jogged over to the low bushes where it had disappeared.

He yelled at her, sudden and harsh.

She froze, her outstretched fingers barely brushing the leaves, fingers curved and spread, the familiar shape of the vanished ball visible in her empty hand.
What? she asked, her eyes fastened on him in fright.
Don't! he said, and said it in the cross and frightened tone of one forced to warn, and with barely enough time, against an obvious danger. Like this: Don't step blindly into the street, Don't play with fire, Don't walk barefoot in the trash lot, Don't drink anything marked poison or it is sure to disagree with you sooner or later.
Like that.
Don't what? she asked, hand still holding the space of the absent ball but wilting a little now, her eyes narrowing, all her focus on him. Don't what?
The first thrill of his sudden fear was fading and he could be irritated, put out. She shouldn't do silly things. She should know better.
You don't just do that, he said. And he meant, though he did not say it, that she knew the rest of what he meant very well.

She looked at him for a moment longer, straightened up and twisted her head just a little bit. That twist said that whether or not she took his meaning, she was not going to close the gap, was not going to fill in what he hadn't wanted to spell out for the two of them, she was going to make him say all of whatever he had to say.
Don't just do what, exactly? she asked in a neutral tone that also said lots and lots of things she didn't spell out.
He had walked over and was standing next to her now. You don't just stick your hand into bushes, he said in a quiet and private and grown up tone and he did not add that this was a thing every sane person knows. He didn't have to.
Why not? she asked in that same tone.
He sighed, making words had become a burden. Snakes, he said. Obviously, he added silently.
She looked from him to the bushes, quickly, then back at him as if he were crazy and then at the bushes as if he were crazy. The bushes were fine, the crazy was all his.
Snakes? No. You mean spiders? she asked, giving him a chance.
No, he said, snakes. Snakes. You don't just reach into a bush.
Her eyebrows were up and now her head was tilted again, a downward tilt that managed to cast into serious doubt his whole life experience. He stiffened, defensive. Look, where I come from we would never reach into a bush like that, he said, voice rising, because of snakes. Because that would be dangerous and stupid, he didn't say out loud.

She bent quickly, her whole arm going into the bushes, retrieving her ball. Well. You're not from around here, are you? she asked, and tossed her ball high into the air. She stepped away to catch her own toss, took another step to toss it again and then another to catch it. A stranger caught her eye as she caught the ball and she tossed it right to him, surely and easily. He took it out of the air and tossed it back, underhand, a low hard softball pitch. She took a step to catch it and a step to toss it back. A pitch to the stranger and another pitch back to her.

He stood, a thousand things passing through him. His hands stuck out a bit from his sides. They darted the smallest fraction of an inch toward every toss that did not come to him, and he watched her move a little and a little away.
Hey, he thought, hey. I want to play.
I just want to play.

Forty Days and Nights: Love Stories. 2. Panic

One morning a boy looked up and around and didn't see his girl. He looked and looked and shouted and shouted but she was not thinking of hearing him or standing where people could see her so he was very lost from her.

He tried not to panic.

He thought he would make her a treat, the sort of thing he knew she liked very much.
He baked and baked.
The sun was going away when he took the treats out and spread them under the trees and by the stream and among her flowers and carefully on the edges of the bookcases and delicately in her favorite shoes and down along the path to her friend's house and balanced some on the sleeping baby.
But she wasn't hungry just then, and she was thinking of other things so she did not come for the treats or clean up the crumbs til after he had fallen asleep on the living room floor, his hands all sticky.

The next day he thought he might try with flowers.
He bought some and he took some and he made some and he tied them in strings and wreaths and ropes and swags and bundled some in bunches and some in pairs and some all by themselves. He took all those flowers and laid them on her bed and everywhere in the refrigerator and twined them about the children and pressed them between the pages of the telephone book and heaped them all about the sewing machine. He got so tired from all that flower arranging that he fell fast asleep across the sofa and one chair and she had to be very quiet and careful when she gathered up all the petals.

The next day he remembered she loved music.
He sang in the shower and on the street corner and while he waited for the toast to pop and in his taxi where the driver made requests which he obligingly took, though he knew those songs were ones she particularly disliked. He sang to the birds in her garden and to the children while they watched television which made them turn the volume very loud. He sang a sincere thanks to the postman for the package and to the policeman for the speeding ticket and to the clerk for his change. He sang himself hoarse and silent and went to bed early and she left him a cup of honey lemon tea to drink when he woke in the morning.

He tried poetry.
He wrote with erasable markers in blank verse on the blender and on the back door. He wrote rhymed couplets on her jeans and all around the rim of the pickle jar. He wrote Italian sonnets in mustard on the children's sandwiches which they wiped off with napkins and reminded him for the millionth time that they did not eat mustard. With the erasable markers he wrote heartfelt doggerel fit for the finest, fanciest, glitteryest greeting card a mother-in-law ever resented all over the bed sheets, about which she swore quietly when she did the wash the next day.

He sent presents.
Chocolates in heart-shaped boxes. Shoes with high heels and shoes with no heels. Dresses a flattering half-size too small. Wigs, luxurious and blond. Engravings and signed first editions. Cashmere throws and designer perfumes and tickets to exotic places. A pedigreed lapdog and a case with a padlock to keep it in. A house in the country and a yacht on the ocean and a castle in the sky. An empty honey pot, a wishing ring, a flying horse and a magical bird in a golden cage. She sold all of it on eBay and put aside the money for the kids' college fund, except for the magical bird, which she let out of the cage and carried to the garden to set it free. But it sat on her head and sang a song of days long gone by and asked her, with tears in its eyes, to let it stay and to also keep the cage so it could sleep there at night, as that was the only really safe place for a magical bird to sleep. She agreed and carried the cage and the bird to her bedroom where she found him, dead to the world, sleeping on her side of the bed, his wallet empty and his credit utterly exhausted.

In the morning she called a meeting.
He sat across from her, trying not to panic.
She asked him what on earth he was on about and he asked where in the world she had been.
He told her he loved her and she pointed out that she had been thinking of other things and he asked her why she stood where no one could see her and she had no answer for that, no answer at all.
Now he was not even trying not to panic.
He asked her if it was over and she told him it was.
No more looking for her,
no more treats,
no more traps,
no more bribes,
no more sleeping when there was work to be done.
He put down his head and that was the end of the meeting. She went to feed the bird.
He mowed the lawn and she went to the bank. She had a large deposit to make.
He sent her a text and she answered almost at once.
She made chocolate cake and he grilled steaks.
She pushed him off her side of the bed and slept in the middle, to hold the ground.
He forgot to look for her and she sometimes stood where people could see her.
He let her flowers grow in her garden where she liked them and she made sure the children played nicely with him and with each other and he sang softly to her the songs she loved the best and which the magical bird didn't know. The bird didn't know any new stuff.

And she told all that was in her heart to the magical bird, which was what she had needed all along. He was happy that she liked his present.
Like it? she said, I love it!
He slept with a smile and the bird sang a song of days long gone by while she ate chocolate cake and watched the children and the flowers growing in her garden.

Forty Days and Nights: Love Stories. 1. Making Up the World

Once there were two people, a boy and a girl, who loved each other very much.

When the spring came the boy said to the girl, let's plant beans and corn and tomatoes. But the girl was afraid, she said the ground was too wet and the sun was too cold. So they did other things, things that needed doing, and the ground dried and the sun was very hot and there were no beans or corn or tomatoes that year in their garden.

When it was summer the girl said to the boy, let's take our towels and go swimming. But the boy was afraid, he said the river was running too high and the water was too cold and the girl didn't know how to swim. You might get hurt, he said. So they did other things, things that needed doing, and the river slowed and fell and grew sluggish and warm under the hot sun and no one got a tan or learned to swim that year.

When the fall came the boy said to the girl, let's rake all our leaves into a huge pile and jump in them all day and roll around together and when it gets dark let's invite all our friends and set our leaves on fire and roast hot dogs and marshmallows. But the girl was afraid, she said, I think every single thing you just suggested is against the law and you can't cook a hot dog on a leaf fire. So they did other things, things that needed doing, and the leaves blew into the neighbors' yards and there was no jumping or rolling or flaming of marshmallows that year.

When the winter came the girl said to the boy, let's go sledding and see who can go the fastest. But the boy was afraid, he said, I had a bad dream about sledding with you, what if that dream came true? I don't think I could live in that world, baby. So they did other things, things that needed doing, and a storm came in the night and blew and blew and covered all their doors and windows with snow so they could not get out for months. They ate beans and corn and tomatoes from cans they had brought from the store and they were warm enough under all that snow but it was very dark, all the time; their windows were blank white faces. They had lots and lots of things that needed doing and the time went by and by while they moved slowly and safely and there was no sledding that year.

Then the boy found himself staring at the wall or the window, it made no difference which, a thing that needed doing hanging loose in his hands. The girl found him in the dark and said, I'm trying and trying to remember something important but I can't remember what it is, and she was crying. He said, what were you doing when you tried to remember? and she said, I don't know, I lost the thing that needed doing, and he said, I can't remember either, and they went to sleep afraid.

When they woke the next time the world had shifted and they couldn't think where they were or what had happened to their house. She could see him, that he was old now, and he looked at her and wondered how long it had been since the last time she had slept at all. They walked carefully in the rooms and the girl said, what has happened to the walls? and the boy said, baby, those are the windows and that is daylight, and she said at the same time, is that the sun? because they had forgotten. They went softly and bravely out their door into a ruined world. Their trees were smashed and splayed and the river was roaring and tearing the banks apart and the garden was broken and bent from the heavy snow. The girl turned her face away and said, I think I might die here, what can we ever do about this? and the boy took the girl's hand and said, don't be alone. Please don't be alone.

The girl looked at the pieces of their world for a long time, and at the boy and then at the sun and said, I never want to eat corn or beans again, but I do love tomatoes. Let's plant some peppers and some basil too, and the boy said, I'm going to build us a boat that will carry two, and the girl said, there is a place here for a ring of stones that can hold a fire hot enough to cook meat, and the boy took a deep breath and said, if we go on the sled, can I sit in front? Can you sit behind me and be safe? And she was silent til she asked, in the back? You want me to be in the back? And they both cried and he said, can I hold you tight if you go in front? And she smiled at him and said, I will never leave you alone. Then they began the things they wanted to do and it was all that long day of sun before they slept again.

Meditations. The Glory of a Woman

Brian Kershisnik, Sisters

I'm needing a hair cut.
My middle child answered a question, sent an email; consequentially, photographs of us (yet to be taken) will be part of an upcoming show, a show of Thirty Strangers. You can Google that, if you like, when you leave here. Photographs. I don't like having my picture taken, I usually climb under the table when I feel threatened in that way. I'm very quick and clever at it. (Climbing under tables is a useful method for escaping a wide array of fraught or confusing situations. I recently scooted with commendable speed under a table to avoid being kissed. That moment was doubly fraught and confusing as, while the would-be kisser was a man (which you'd have no doubt expected), at the moment of the attempt, for purposes of a play, so was I, also, a man (which no one should have expected). I'd have gone under that table in any case, but, things being what they were, I was really moving. I bring up this incident of attempted man-on-sorta-man-kissing only for obvious reasons; I am talking here about my short hair. You see the connection.)
I'm going to need a haircut before I submit to having my picture taken. That's the trouble with having short hair, it needs cutting. Long hair pretends it meant to be this way. Short hair is all about history, recent history, as in, you just washed or you just styled or you just cut it--or you didn't and you just should have.
All this short hair is new to me.
Until maybe a year ago (?), from the time I ever had any hair at all it was on its way to becoming long hair. Past my shoulders, past my waist. A lifetime of long hair.
I cut it, had it cut off, to see if I could, if I could wear short hair. No, I wasn't even that brave. I already knew I could wear it. My sisters all had cropped their locks at one time or another and it was great on every one of them; since we resemble each other, I assumed. I wanted to see if I had it in me to chop it right off, if I were made of that stern sort of stuff. After the chopping a lady at church stopped me, took me by both shoulders and looked me over carefully. "Well," she said. "Now that you've done this, you can do anything." Anything sounding like she was thinking of maybe arson. Or skinny dipping. But in a happy way, at least in an it-looks-good-on-you sort of way. In a maybe envious way. An I-wish-I'd-thought of-that sort of way.
Her hair was (is) shorter than mine.


My friend had brain surgery and of course they shaved her head. I went with the painter to visit her when she came home from the hospital. It was Halloween time and she had all these closely set staples forming one half of a deeply arched widow's peak rising just above her ear and descending in the middle of her forehead. Sweetest, hardest Halloween look EVER. Road Warrior. Steam punk vampire. She was fragile and tired and drugged and so, so unbearably lovely. I felt as if I'd never before been able to see her and now suddenly I could, could really see her with all that long hair shorn away. She had long hair always, said she loved it, but I'd never believed it was a deeply considered position. More of a false tradition. A way around the curly hair she was born with and a way out of really having hair at all. I know about that (not the curls). There's nothing in the world easier than long hair you wear in a pony tail. It's far simpler than no hair at all because no hair has to be explained, defended, carried off. My friend with her hair cut like a man's and her head full of staples (I was trying to imagine getting through airport security) has a sister-in-law who shaved her head but for rock star reasons and wore her close-cut hair with ripped jeans and hauteur, with rhinestones and stacked heels and a glamor of low cut evening wear in the grocery store.
My friend will never again, I think, grow her hair long; it would be too hard, too messy and time consuming. Too silly. A waste. What on earth would she do with those awful curls in the in-between stages, the troublesome lengths between past-the-ears and pony-tail-tamed? Shudder. Anyway, she's beautiful just as she is, beautiful like a fragile shell, as if, should you hold her up to the hard sun, you would see through her the shadows of your own fingers. Her sister-in-law will yet, I believe, do all sorts of things that are hard and impossible and messy and beautiful, including growing her hair right into and then on through troublesome lengths. I cannot imagine, if you held the crop-haired, jazz singing, rocker sister-in-law in any sort of light, you'd see yourself through her.
When enough time goes by that my friend has lost her staples (modern methods of staple removal, it turns out, are not a topic for polite dinner table conversation. By the way. In case you wondered) we talk at my house after dinner about our lost long hair. My niece is with us, a short-hair evangelist (now, about that aforementioned sister-in-law? The singer? I've never met her, you know, only seen videos on youtube (and how, from those, could you ever determine?) but I'll tell you, she really reminds me of my niece, this short-hair evangelist who does much that is hard and messy and beautiful). My niece speaks passionately, sings from the heart, of the tribe, her soul mate sisters who have short hair. She claims she can tell by looking at a woman coming toward her with a slamming short hair cut that they would be great companions. My friend (her arcing scar still very, very cool and clearly visible to me from where I sit) and I are careful with our glances. We are not convinced. Perhaps we are too old. Perhaps we miss our hair.


In my grandmother's house was a wonderful picture, a wedding picture. My aunt with her short curly blond hair. I never knew her any other way, never imagined her other than the sassy aunt with a soft sort of 1930's look. Grandma told me one day, out of the blue and apropos of nothing, that my aunt's hair was short in the photo because she had had a terrible fever and all her long hair had to be cut off. Shorn off, close to the scalp. "Long hair," she told me, looking carefully, not at mine falling below my waist but at the short hair in the picture, "draws off all of your strength." "It does?" I squeaked, awed and disbelieving. "Oh, yes," Grandma sighed, assuring me, "it weakens you dreadfully." My aunt's hair had been cut off while she was so sick in order that she could get better, recover. Grandma said it as if she would add finally. Finally cut off and gone. Finally. All that hair. Said with something not altogether unlike admiration and not altogether unlike disgust.
All. that. hair.


Sheer self preservation drove my momma to keep me in tight braids whenever she could, but she also sent me to school all on my own and once there I became a champion of repressed hair everywhere, a freedom fighter. I loved to let it fly, set it loose from its twistings and moorings. I was romantic in that way. I thought lots of unrestrained hair made me beautiful. Like a lion. The school bus windows were nearly always down on the way home unless we were in the bleak midwinter. There was wind from those open windows and that wind whipped us about. This string of events (wind, lots of long hair, vanished braids) led, what with one thing and another, to snarls. To lies. And to fights with my momma. Threats. She was going to cut it all off if I didn't and didn't right now. Didn't be good. Didn't behave. Didn't stop being a lion and start being a lady.
I remember the shiver of deciding to learn braiding it myself, of teaching myself ponytail and pigtails. Taking back my hair. For the first time. Soppy, fat, loose braids that did not survive even a bike ride to the store, a paltry three and a half country blocks from home, those awkwardly crafted early plaits growing steadily softer, sticking out hairy arms and legs all down their length. Pigtails that were never of an even thickness (and the part? Who even knew? Think I've got eyes in the back of my head?). A ponytail always slipping away from me. Fixing it, doing it again. And again. Drawing a definite power from doing my own hair. By myself.
I watch my girls reach for that power. Watch them carefully craft funny, crooked braids and tails to wear to school because these are talismans, amulets woven from their own selves. Power. Becoming. Silly, unbalanced hair that says, Hey! Get outta the way! I did this all by myself and MY MOMMA WANTED ME TO. Watch me stand up , people, look at me go. Hair that gets a fond and pained and loving and conspiratorial look from every woman with eyes to see it.
One day, after a while, they get good at it and then they look just like everyone else.


It keeps you warm, long hair, like a scarf, like a shawl. Keeps you warm winter and summer. Also, people step on it and sit on it and lie on it if you don't prevent them by cutting it off. Once, when I was a freshman at Snow, a man hooked, snagged and dragged me with him for about twenty feet in the hall of the Administration building. By my hair. He used only a simple suit coat button, the most effective hair-hook God ever invented (it had to be God, it's that good). I was immediately hopelessly snarled, my route altered instantly and I was hopping along, backwards, at his side as he strode in a direction I had not intended to travel. He was irritated. As if I had thrust my hair at his button with malice aforethought.
All. that. hair.


I resisted letting my girls cut their hair. Once it's gone, it's gone. I didn't absolutely prevent them, but I did absolutely require they either leave it long enough to go into a pony tail or cut it to chin length. Out of self preservation. To insure that they (I) could get it out of their (my) way. There's a family portrait, the painter's family, and the three of us look like we're growing hair for a cause, like we're trying to make a point or keep a vow or observe a hair-covenant. It was shocking to me when I saw the photo. Within a month or so we all of us had significantly shorter tresses.
All that hair.
My sister cuts my hair. I don't know what I want, I only see other people with hair I covet. She explains to me I can never have that hair, mine's too thick or too straight or has too much wave. One day we miscommunicate and by the time the dust has settled I have nearly nothing left. I find myself in a strange spot, looking into the mirror and seeing there my son. Only, he's wearing my clothes. Now, this was all an accident. Within a short time there is another accident and I am cast in a man's role in a play. This is a favor for a friend; he says he will make the character a woman. But it just won't work that way and now I am playing a man. I have the hair for it, you see? Inevitable. I get this very weird attention. From men and from women. Pretend you're a girl and you're told you're "disturbingly handsome."
Wait, what? So I'm...is that... a compliment?
Hey.
I do have a handsome son.
My hair's longer now, lots longer. In fact, since I began writing here, I have cut it all up. It was too long and I have to be photographed, remember? My sister hates it when I cut my own hair, I make it all weird. But I think it looks good, better, anyway, and she can fix it and I can submit to the upcoming photos. And it will grow back.
It always does.


Even now, a year or more after the cutting, when I am facing a difficult day, having a hard time, I catch myself thinking, ok, get all this hair out of the way and then let's get going! I even move to put it up, to twist it out of my way so I can set the day spinning. That was always the signal I gave myself that things needed to get serious.
High, tight ponytail and away!
When it was long I played with it all the time when I thought hard or talked to people, twisting it up onto the top of my head over and again. I had a set of twists I did without thinking that always landed me in the same complicated, knotted mass, and I'd catch myself with it in a state of completion, having accomplished it without noticing. If I tried to do it, if I thought, I couldn't for the life of me make that knot. I had to be focused somewhere else and my hands just knitted my hair up and up. I wondered if I would lose the hair-playing action when I lost the long hair but I find I mess with it constantly, more even than I did before. My hair grows across the back of my head from right to left (widdershins) and I stroke it and stroke it. Twist a lock on one side or the other in front, where I (try to) keep it longer. When I write or think hard I pull it up in big handfuls and sit like that, fists full of hair, or I twist and rub it around and around on the top of my head.
Fortunately, I do not work when other people are around.


My little sister cut her hair off all the time when she was small. It was awful and complete. Jagged and strange, there was no fixing it, no softening it, we had to wait around for it to grow while people wondered, politely, why we had perpetrated this savage hairdo on our little boy. When it did grow out at all she cut it again. And again.
Now she's a momma and her own little blond girl just committed upon herself a serious and terrible haircut.
For the second time.
Karma.
All that hair.


Mary Ingalls got sick, became blind and her long golden hair was all cut off. Laura's hair grew and grew, it passed her knees, her daughter wrote of the terrible headaches her mother suffered wearing her hair up.
Maybe the real Lady really rode her horse through the streets clothed only in her hair, and if she did, I'm sure that act really caught her husband's attention. But he had asked for it. What could he have been thinking? Maybe she really did just have a ton of hair. Maybe she just really needed to make that point. (Under a specific set of circumstances my momma used to call me Godiva when I was small. Very small. Minute.)
I read a story, long ago, a ghost story by Guy de Maupassant, a specter beseeching, begging a man to comb and to braid her long black hair to save her, to cure her. I never forgot that description of the ghost hair falling to the ground over the back of the ghost's chair as she sat in the bedroom the man had unlocked in her empty, haunted house, while he combed and combed with the comb she carried, him all shuddering and horrified. Her hair icy, like black snakes. And in another of Maupassant's stories, a man maddened by love and desire for a long-dead woman whose beautiful, golden braid he found hidden in a secret drawer in a wonderful antique cabinet. Driven to obsession, driven past sanity by a braid tied with a golden cord.
Bernice bobs her hair--heck, Bernice bobs everybody's hair--for proof. To prove she will, she can. As it turns out, she really can't and her successes all fall down around her, piled with her long dark locks on the barbershop floor, so much detritus, so much waste, so much loss. Clunky with her dark hair in "blocks", not awarded a husband by the story-gods, not honored for her social sacrifice as her classical namesake was honored who traded the goddess golden braids for a safe returned husband. I never admired Bernice's desecration of her cousin, the rape of those locks, but she really does bob her hair, she does it and she escapes into the night on her own two feet. She'll drive into her future behind the wheel of her own car. Sign of things to come.
Jo Marsh cuts off her one beauty for money, for the honorable woman's way to quick cash.
A wonderful Christmas present bought with money from lost hair, hair weighed, chopped and sold in a festive, wild act of seasonal and abandoned loving. He holds her to him tightly, loving her so hard, tells her all that hair will grow back so she can wear the combs-- and it will, of course it will. By the time it can have grown out to its full length, no one but no one will be wearing their hair long anymore and those wonderful, unaffordable combs will still lie pristine, awaiting their big break on The Antiques Roadshow. Lucky the people in the story don't know that, huh? Perhaps the view I'm taking here is too dim. Let's see, this is 1906...yeah. Well, maybe her hair grows super, super fast. Anyway, that is certainly not what this story is about. Merry Christmas.
If you were in a tower and a prince came along and said, hey, let me climb up there the same way your jailer climbs up, let me come up there to you, well, you'd let him up, wouldn't you? Even if it meant a man were climbing your hair? I mean, wouldn't you?


When I think of myself, when in my mind I see myself moving through the world, my inner construct has long hair.
The I'm the tall one with long hair.
I don't even know who that is, that dark-haired woman in photographs, the one with no hair.
Am I just hair?
Am I anyone without it?


You know what makes me crazy?
So, she lets him climb the braids to the tower because, who wouldn't? I mean, for all she knows, that's the only way people go visiting. It's not like she's got any other experience. It's not like she lives in a normal house built normally for normal people. The thing's got no door and only the one window, so right off the bat, in the very structure of her world, she's in trouble. Only one person comes and goes so, as far as she can see, as far as she knows, the whole world makes all their entrances and exits up and down her hair. This prince is her Jacob and she's his ladder. He's an angel coming and going from heaven on a golden cord strung out of a person. Sounds like love, doesn't it?
So far, so good.
But this story is going to get crazy.
Long strong braids are one thing. I've had those myself. And so are witches who think they've got it locked, got set it up tight and strong so nothing can change, nothing can go wrong. No snarls. People close enough to be like family, baby, we've all got those. But there's a question of responsible behavior here, of a badly botched rescue.
He wants her to go away with him and so he should. He's got to see that her situation is unsustainable, that she's in terrible danger. This would not be a stable family life for anybody, even for someone protected by absolute naivete, sheltered in utter ignorance,who knows nothing whatever of anything else.
Maybe he asked her to do the obvious thing. I'm telling myself he did. "See, baby, if we just cut off these braids we can tack them to the window here and we can both go the next time." He's got a fast horse. They'd have a shot, anyway. Maybe he tried to get her to see.
And maybe she was terrified because she'd never climbed anything but up onto a chair or into her bed. Or maybe she was worried about the window fastening (always the weak link); maybe she had nightmares of braids unwinding, coming from together, separating, untwisting, and she's falling and falling with her prince into the hungry, menacing thorn bushes growing around the base of the tower (abusive landscaping); thorn bushes reaching up to catch them, to snatch them. Maybe she just didn't believe him when he solemnly swore to her it hurts not at all to cut your hair. Maybe she worried about who she'd be if she ran with this guy and left behind all that hair.
She came up with a different plan, all on her own.
It was a dumb plan, but then, she'd have had no idea about danger, about time slipping away, about peril that grows with every risked exposure, every stolen kiss. So her prince brought her the silks she asked him for because, well, he loved her (when I was small I thought it was such an odd material, silk, but seeing as she thinks ladders are made out of hair, really it's an obvious choice) and she squirreled them away telling herself, soon, soon it will be enough, soon it will be safe all the way to the bottom. And he came to her and came to her even though he must have known it was folly. What was he going to do? He loved her so. Anyway, he was young, too, and he'd never died before.
He still had that to look forward to.
That's right, kids, let Tower-Girl formulate the escape plan. Her super power is not getting it.
It broke upon them like thunder, like the dead of winter, like the fall of a tower.
But how could she have known?
But wouldn't he have warned her?
Maybe it never occurred to him how many things would never occur to her. Maybe he couldn't wrap his mind around what it would mean to have no experience of anything. Maybe he got lost in all that hair.
It makes me crazy because it was all going anyway.
He climbed so confidentially, set his feet in the places he trusted, his passage woven of the woman he loved.
The last thing he saw would be her severed braids tacked to the window (hey! good idea) and another woman altogether (her crazy not-a-family), not his girl, not the one he loved at all, before the thorns had him.
But she.
She was out there, hair swinging in a low-maintenance bob, free! She got thrown away and it made her free. And she does better than you might expect. Maybe all that hair was drawing off her strength, all along. She must have hung on, hung on so tightly to the idea of him and it took her years, but she found him, found him wandering in an bottomless night. She cried his sight back into him even though his eyes were scratched right away and even though, on the face of it, I know, that seems completely impossible. Remember, though, this is a story about hair. This is a story where lost things grow back and our passage into the whole wide world comes right out of our own heads.


It's who we are.
We cut our hair, it all grows back.
I needed my hair cut and I cut it.
Maybe one day I'll show you the photo.

Elizabeth, Wales
Noah's photo

Meditations. Words. That Which Cometh Out of a Man.

I am the same which spake,
and the world was made,
and all things came by me.
D&C 38:3

I stutter.
It can get worse when I am tired. Or if I audition for a play. Sometimes in church settings. Stress, too.
Or none of these things at all.

My family says they do not hear it.
In the car we discuss the movie we have seen, a king trying to take words from inside him and pour them out his mouth and into his people. As we discuss the story of the king and the therapist and stammering and stuttering and I talk about the ways in which I am similar to and different from the king, the painter says, "The trouble, the problem, with you is that you don't stutter enough."

Do you have those moments when your understanding of English, of communion between humans, of myriad meanings and any sort of guessing as to another person's possible intent, flees, deserts you and you stare, empty; the most inner space which should be warm and whispering and teeming with thoughts and feelings and what you are planning to say next desolate and whistling as outside air blows frozen and unimpeded across your perfectly blank mind?
I looked at the painter, when he said that, from such a place. I could not for the life of me figure out his words.

Insufficient stuttering is not the trouble, the problem, with me.

I stutter. I stutter a lot.

That's not what he meant, of course. His meaning didn't match the words he used. What he meant is that he has lost his ability to grasp it, the stuttering, to pull up from his memory stumbling specimens for examination, to tease my speech apart and figure it out. There's no longer enough of it for him to grab hold. It is not gone; it is gone from him.

I know I do it. I am strategic. I make choices, mindfully breathing, picking and choosing from among thousands of words those least likely to trip me up, to knock me down. Still, as my sister says, at some point you're gonna have to face using words that begin with W. Like, for example, word. Like that. You may be able to think of a few more W words difficult to avoid. And then Y is tricky. L is nasty. My daughter's name begins with L. S can be a problem-- obvious difficulties there. Watch me take a careful breath before I tell you my name. Watch me stumble anyway. You will lean forward, tiny frown, tiny smile. "What's that? What was--I didn't catch--"
Watch me. Another breath. Second try will be much better. Or much, much worse.
Watch me do this all my life.

I'm just shaping the sound,
I'm just turning the syllables round.
Dipping my toe in the water
and watching you drown.
-Keane, Again and Again

I know I stutter because people misunderstand. I misstep, hit the first syllable of a word twice and people react to what they heard, repeat it; amused and/or annoyed that I have made a stupid and mildly funny joke, a broken pun, an annoying embroidery on a bit of conversation. They throw it back at me, ha, this is funny-dumb, you said a dumb-funny thing, ha. I have to look at them, have to say into their eyes, "No, I didn't say that. I stutter." Clatter, smash. You can hear that word go to pieces on the stones at the bottom of polite conversation. I stutter. Like a special parking permit. Allows me to stop this friendly flow of unexamined words in their tracks. Baby, nobody adult wants you to say I stutter when they have just tossed a casual, a thoughtless-- no-- an unconsidered slur on something you've said. Makes them, suddenly, nakedly, afraid they might actually, after all, secretly, be not so nice people. As they feared all along.
You should try it.

And the Lord said unto him,
Who hath made man's mouth?
or who maketh the dumb,
or deaf,
or the seeing,
or the blind?
have not I the Lord?
Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth,
and teach thee what thou shalt say.
-Exodus 4:11&12

A woman comes to me at church after I have taught a lesson. "You stutter," she announces without preamble or introductions (lucky for me), "you stutter and stutter and look at you! Just look at you!" I look at me. I do not know what she is talking about. Has she come up to me after class, made all this social effort in order to hand me an atta-boy award? "Look how it doesn't stop you, how you think you can just talk anyway." She goes on, flows and gushes on, words pouring unbroken and pure from her so I have not time to perceive, let alone give form to the aghast thoughts rising and fluttering in masses inside my head. "My daughter stutters and she will not speak. Will not. I can't get her to speak even with us, even with people who don't care. She just has stopped talking and I just wish," she's holding on to my arm, crying a little and twisting it, "that she could have heard you give this lovely lesson and stutter!"

I sift through words in order to speak. I re-order. I substitute. It's a habit. I listen. I think. I will take your sentence apart and put it back together.
...will not speak...even with people who don't care.
She doesn't mean this thing she's said, exactly.
She means her daughter will no longer speak; of course, she must have once spoken. Will no longer speak even with people who do care. People who do care about this girl enough to want her words limping and crippled, who still care so much for her they want her insides to show on the outside. People willing to trade caring about the form and precision and beauty of spoken words (because they do care, they do, we all care, observe our love affair with the British accent) for a share in this girl's thoughts and opinions and bad jokes, however marred, however fragmented.

...you think you can just talk anyway.
It is a new world this nice, concerned and moved Mormon lady opens to me. One I had not before considered. I might, in my life, have chosen a different world. I might have chosen silence.

Then I said, Woe is Me!
for I am undone;
because I am a man of unclean lips,
and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
for mine eyes have seen the King,
the Lord of hosts.
Then flew one of the seraphims unto me,
having a live coal in his hand,
which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar:
And he laid it upon my mouth,
and said
Lo, this hath touched thy lips;
and thine iniquity is taken away and thy sin is purged.
Isaiah 6:5-7

I stutter. And I talk too much.
I talk all the time. Incessantly. About everything. Need something said? I work for free. And I never shy away from anything except asking people questions about their lives. That's yucky, but the rest of spoken everything is free game. Ask me a question. My response may or may not include a long and detailed story about my life, ruminations on word origins and connotative meanings, digressions into the causes of the Battle of Hastings and speculations as to its effect on fast food in America and some pointed observations on modern Mormon mores. If you can keep your wits about you and your focus sharp (if you can stay awake) you will see all those words will be my answer to your question. Sometimes a friend will ask a question innocently and unguardedly and I will take a breath and there's this suspended moment when we look at each other and then I say, "Do you really want this answer? Or shall I say, 'It was fine' ?" and they think about it. Some go one way, some go another.
I talk.
To people. All, all, all the time.
Hands, face, body, words, words, words.
I'm the one who says, "That's a cheap answer. That's easy to say."
The book club girl who says, "Huh. I don't think it means that at all. And by the way I didn't like this book."
The one who says, "Wait a minute-- what did you just say?"
The one who says, "What could that possibly mean? What on earth do you think they thought they were saying?"
I say, "Wait, I don't understand. You lost me. What are you talking about?"
"What do you mean," I say, "Why?" "How so?" "And is that true? Do you think that's true?"
My friend says, stopped in his tracks, caught short by some query, "Man, you are just the one to stick people with tough questions, aren't you?" I have stuck him by asking him to explain why he chose those words he has just used.
Look how it doesn't stop you, how you think you can just talk anyway.

But it might have been different. This had simply never occurred to me.

And behold, the glory of the Lord was upon Moses,
so that Moses stood in the presence of God,
and talked with him face to face.
And the Lord God said unto Moses,
For mine own purpose have I made these things.
Here is wisdom and it remaineth in me.
And by the word of my power have I created them...
-Moses 1:31&32

Lately I am plagued by people running from their own words. People who claim not to have meant what they said, who cast from themselves the words of their own making like so many bastard children. Sorry, Son, whatever it was in my head that I meant at the time I certainly never meant to make you. Distancing themselves as if these things out of their mouths were not things made, chosen, but things that came upon them in some sort of fit, outside their control, like storm squalls or tax law.
That was said in anger, it was because I was desperate, I don't know why you feel this way about what I said, I'm not sure I want to be held to those words, just because I said it he thinks I meant it, she is holding me to what I said but---
but
but
I want to not be held
to,
by,
these words
I have made.

they're only words they're only words they're only words

DAMN IT, YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.

What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself;
and though the heavens and the earth pass away,
my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled,
whether by mine own voice, or by the voice of my servants, it is the same.
-D&C 1:38

Begin picking words, selecting between them, at about the age of three. Take careful breaths. Listen. Otherwise, if I cannot get some control of this thing outside my control, I will have to spend more time with the school speech pathologist. We met, the pathologist and I, when I was in third grade. He was the first ever adult I realized was unable to keep up his end of a conversation. I tried to speak very carefully around my teachers after that so as to minimize therapy and contact. Breathe. Think about all the words that do not begin with W, L, S, Y...

I would say that I'm sorry if it would do any good
But to never regret means you have to forget
and I don't think that I could.

Don't say words you don't mean,
When I'm gone please speak well of me.
-The Weepies, Please Speak Well of Me

It's a story we tell, a world we make and we make it all out of words. What do I know of you? Your dress, your countenance, your movements, your deeds, your words. Nuances of dress may elude you, your face is what you wore into the world, all we can do to be known is move our limbs and shape the air that passes from our lungs. Marks on paper, movements through time and space, vibrations of air across vocal cords. Of such tiny stuff are our whole selves made, as far as concerns others and their knowing of us. How to connect, ever, worlds without end, except through our saying? And then, that anyone would desire, embrace, pursue, seek to disown their words? To be separated, divided, from their own making of meaning?
How terrifying.
Not that we wouldn't take back. Not that we wouldn't regret. Not that there's no place in the world for an editor (heaven knows). Not that anyone can get it right.
It's a question of ownership.

Not much for conversation
I still find need to pray
Sometimes I get tired of walking
Through these ordinary days
If nothing else I get to see you
Even if we never speak
The harm of words is sometimes
We don't quite know
What they really mean
-Jars of Clay, Ordinary Days

In the beginning was the Word.
And,
the Word was God.

My niece is small, three years old. Pretty, blond, a good girl. Earnest. Smart. She began stuttering one day. Out of the blue. Fully developed inability to get sounds out.
Why?
And how you gonna get along without W words, baby?
She tries. Deliberately. Carefully. Breathes. Tries. Heartbreaking to watch.
One day, playing with her cousins, she breaks. Cries, stops speaking. Withdraws.
...even with people who don't care.
Her mother is good, a good mama. We have spoken, counseled, she is sensible, not making too great a fuss, exerting any sort of pressure or weight, we know this is common, will probably not last, is not the end of the world.
Only, of course, it might be. It might be the end of that world in which this little girl speaks freely.
Look at you...how you think you can just talk anyway.
Her momma tries to comfort a despair too huge for only three years of living. "Maybe, maybe tonight we can pray to Jesus and He can start to take this away, to help you." Words said in hope, to push away pain. The little girl grasps them, the words, takes them, makes them real. She goes immediately, prays. By herself. Makes words and gives them to God and no one hears those words but God. We will not know if she had to chose between tricky words and the faithful friends. She has not stuttered since that conversation with the God she loves and trusts, to whom she has spoken.

But remember that all my judgments are not given unto men;
and as the words have gone forth out of my mouth even so shall they be fulfilled,
that the first shall be last,
and that the last shall be first in all things
whatsoever I have created by the word of my power,
which is the power of my spirit.
D&C 29:30

Never occurred to me, that there might have been a different world.

In the movie the king makes his speech. "Breathe," says his therapist, just before the terrible moment, the crisis. And after, after the words have come out and not come out, after the great and terrible, limping success, the therapist tells the king he did stumble on some of the W's. He had to leave those in, the king says, had to put them there so the people would know it was him.

I stutter. You know it's me.

For it is my voice which speaketh them unto you;
for they are given by my spirit unto you,
and by my power you can read them one to another;
and save it were by my power you could not have them;
Wherefore you can testify that you have heard my voice,
and know my words.
D&C 18:35&36


Noah's photos

Stories. Dreaming. The First Part.

Brian Kershisnik, Practice

The reason angels can fly is because they take themselves lightly.
~G.K. Chesterton, "Orthodoxy"

He says, leaning over remains of soup and noodles and Beef Waterfall, that he has only one recurring dream, a dream that came to him as an adult. The other man leans back, listening, and though he speaks not of dreams recurring or of dreams singular, I know he dreams seldom but that his dreams, when they come, linger long, unsettle the order, can deeply upset him. They are quiet about their dreaming, these two men, but I ask them questions and questions; I cannot stop myself (I do not), I always must know the details, the twists and turns of other people's thoughts directed and thoughts aimless in waking consciousness or of thoughts spinning and twirling in sleep.

We talk of dreams.
I'm one of those recurring-dream people.

The earliest dream of any dream I can remember is of standing on a bridge at night, a bridge lit by city lights, and looking over its edge into distant water so far below me that I can hardly make it out. I gaze and peer and stare, enticed, griped by a formless dread or desire. A river, a river flowing far below the streets of the night city. I get over or through or around the railings and there, built into the edge of the bridge, just below where my feet had been when I still stood safe behind the handrails, is a little platform that pulls out, like a bread board in a kitchen counter, like a writing board in a rolltop desk. In the dream I must pull this out to stand on so I can see further down, over the edge into the water, which is so very far below me. Still I don't see far enough and I pull out the little platform more, and a bit more, but cannot yet see whatever it is I need to see through all the dark distance and I inch the platform out more and then it's too far and it all comes uncoupled and I'm falling and the platform falls with me and I wake up, heart exploding in my chest, just before I die. I will dream of this bridge and its strange viewing platform dozens of times before I turn eight and we move to Utah. I have no idea why I need to look down and down, what I am striving to make out, nor why I must pull out the little platform and pull it out and pull it out til it tips me, slides me into the dropping darkness like a body slides off a plank over a ship's side and into the ocean. That's the shape, the destiny, of the dream, it's how it goes, and it's always the same. I dream this and I am, what? three years old? four? Being the child I am I will hold the horror close and close and never speak of it all the years of my life til now.

Please help me, I'm falling...
Close the door to temptation, don't let me walk through
Robertson & Blair, Please Help Me

One night will be the last time I fall off the bridge. I will catch myself in the dreaming, somewhere between the first look over the side and my climb through the rails. I will recognize the bridge, think, oh, yeah. Here. This place. Why do I do this? Why pull out the platform and strain over the side? Why die for this view? And though I will not quite change that destiny, though I will slide into the river, I will fall slowly enough to think it through, to decide this is pointless and to be done with it.
I will never dream of the bread-board-viewing-platform again. And I will be about eight years old.

Many's the time I've been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and I've often felt forsaken
And certainly misused
Oh, but I'm all right, I'm all right
I'm just weary to my bones
Still, you don't expect to be
Bright and bon vivant
So far away from home, so far away from home
-Paul Simon, American Tune

Then the jumping dream comes.
In this dream I can jump so very high and then even higher, rising above trees, then above buildings, into sky that is measurably colder and I do, I jump and jump because seriously, who wouldn't? And I keep jumping into air thinner and air stranger til suddenly (always on the way up and up) things take a dream twist and I (every time) realize that I have been here before, I always, always jump higher and higher until I am irrevocably outside my own control. Though I am on to this, canny, realizing the dream, I still follow its shape to the inevitable end. Horribly, now I am a little older I no longer wake up before I hit the ground. In jumping dreams I hit squarely, solidly, flatly, abruptly, and it kills me. I slam awake, dead. There is this literally breathless moment before my heart hits me inside my chest so hard it makes me alive again and I lie in the darkness, gasping, alive, waiting for my chest to stop hurting so I can sleep again.


Flying without feathers is not easy; my wings have no feathers.
~Titus Maccius Plautus

Even though in these dreams I know each time when I feel the dreamscape skid away from me that this is a dream, it is not real, this time round I never get to that why-perform-this-pointless-dream-action-anyway epiphany and I'll tell you why. Unlike teetering on the edge of a bridge-extension bread-board in order to gaze upon distant water drowned in darkness, jumping higher than even mountains can grow is not stupid, folks. It's great. And there's no way, no way, I'm ever going to talk myself into wanting to give it up.

There is an art, or rather a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
~Douglas Adams, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

About the time I left home for college these dreams became a terrible burden. I was dying too many times a week and my heart was aching in my chest during the day, during classes. From the strain, I guess. I was losing too much sleep waiting for my pulse to calm down after falling such a long, long way, for my heart to calm back into normal living. Then came a night when, after I hit the ground, the dream didn't end as it usually did. I lay flattened face down into the dream dirt waiting helplessly to be awake and alive again and I was given to know in a firm and kindly way that this could not go on. I was going to have to change things. I was going to have to learn to fly.

And I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
or driven to its knees
but it's all right, it's all right
for we lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the
road we're traveling on
I wonder what's gone wrong
I can't help it, I wonder what's gone wrong
-Paul Simon

Learn to fly.
Learn.
To fly.

"What can you conceive more silly and extravagant than to suppose a man racking his brains, and studying night and day how to fly?"
— William Law, 'A Serious Call to a Devout and Holly Life XI,' 1728.

Have you ever wrangled your brain around beginning to learn how to learn to fly? Not wonky sweating with pencil and paper or light wood and cloth or sheet metal and plexiglass to invent or to construct (supposing one were so inclined) a machine on whose cold, unbreathing back one might rest between rigid and strutted wings while an engine performed the work, released the power from fuels stored underground in secret black lakes of oil, freed the force and spark left from myriad ancient lives that can now, with a little geometry, a little physics and good weather, give you, the rocket man, lift, thrust and speed. No, baby, I mean unassisted flight. Just your human soft and squishiness, all by your onesie. No wings of wax and feathers, no rocket pack, no wires. Over a long and painfilled series of nights I stump around the problem, regard it critically from multiple angles, take running starts and stabs, mull on it as I mull over my chemistry chapters. How to begin to try to figure out how I can begin to learn to fly. Do you run and jump? Arm stuck out and stiff, fist clenched, head down, muscling your way into the ether? Appears to work for Superman. And I run, I jump. Jump, I can, (it's a problem, remember?) far, high, as is my wont. And I fall, far and hard, as is my wont. And I jump again. Farther. Higher. Concentrate. Fall. Farther. Hit. Harder. Arm stuck out stiff, fist clenched, diving straight into the dirt. Heart hurting in class during the day.

Brian Kershisnik, Victim Man

I try ballerina leaps. Fly like the gazelle flies. This is good. Seven league leaps. Not flying exactly, but certainly running with style. Panache, even. Citius, altius, fortius. And a slip in the structure, a twist in the mindscape and a skid and a fatal crash. Heart break.
And again.
And again.
One night I am surprised in my practice by one I know in dreams, one who wishes me ill. I never saw him coming but come he did, wondering, suddenly, over my shoulder, soft into my ear, just what it was I was doing? And if there was something, some other thing, he and I could do? Together?
I run.
He runs.
I jump obstacles. No one can jump like I can jump. Fly like the gazelle flies. I am forever and forever away from him and I risk a look back.
He can jump, too.
A stagger. A kink. I stumble.
He flies like the gazelle. He does not stumble. He is coming he is here he is smiling and he is not smiling. This is not going to be death like falling. This is not falling.
And I can fly. Not far. Not long. But fly, which he cannot. I know the trick. The trick of kicking free from earth and lying softly upon the air that loves me, will hold me, will swim with me and around me and through me just as water swims me along.
I fly away.
I can sleep in the air.

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.
~Friedrich Nietzsche

Control is troublesome, I am unwieldy, too many thoughts for the sky. I get flushed with victories, over confident at tiny successes and go too high, fall to far, wake with my heart slamming me back into life like it's trying to pound its way out of my chest.
This goes on for about a year.
Then I forget I ever could not fly.

And I dreamed I was dying
I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me
Smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea
And I dreamed I was crying
-Paul Simon

So I fly. Because, really, folks, who would not? Around, where people can't see me, at first, because people aren't supposed to know that other people can fly. After a long time I realize people aren't ever going to see me, that people simply don't see one of their own flying past, and I'm not so careful anymore. Still, I try to stay out of sight, try not to draw attention, swimming delicious in my delirious secret. Showing off to myself, visiting exotic and imaginary places for free, flying in the stars after dark, napping in the air. Turning somersaults, walking across ceilings (specialized flight), zipping at crazy speeds between evergreens in dense forests (especially in the crisply blue dusk), prowling through abandoned, ruined buildings, taking the stairs (get it?). And once or twice, in a panic, in a horrible dream, trying to save my own life, I can't fly when I need to, can't get off the ground even though I can, damn it, I can. The bad guys, the monsters, they get me. But here's my terrible truth. Sheer delight wears off after a time. It just does and flying becomes tame, routine, and mundane once you can count on it forever and always. I stop dreaming it every night. It becomes, well, a recurring dreamscape feature, like running very fast and far, or being able to swim and swim like a fish (which I can't at all in this world, or not well) or not being able to open my eyes, keep them open (dream that all the time). First, I come to fly simply out of habit and at this last, seldom ever fly at all.

When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.
~Leonardo Da Vinci

It has come to this. I am now occasionally expected to fly dream people around with me, to fly large objects from dream place to dream place, or sometimes to fly large objects filled with people. I know, in my dreams, that this work is important, being able to move groups and their stuff, should the need arise, should they be in distress. Fly them and never drop or tip them so that they slide away from me, cascading in helpless streams toward the dream dirt. Fly them carefully around and away from kinks and twists in the dreamscape, never letting things get out of hand, never pushing it too far, too fast, too high (never be cross or cruel, never give them castor oil or gruel). It is important work, but it is work and I confess I find it annoying, working in my sleep. Gently but deeply annoying that these people do not learn for themselves. Learn how to learn how to fly, to swim and to sleep in the air. Learn either how to let go of having to see to the dark at the bottom of things, or, for crying out loud, fly on down there yourself and get a close look.

Oh, and it's alright, it's all right, it's all right
You can't be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day
And I'm trying to get some rest
That's all I'm trying to get some rest
-Paul Simon


Brian Kershisnik, Flight Practice with Instruction