Lucille can still taste the smoke from the barbecue, infusing itself with the smell from Dale’s cigarette. She can’t hear the cicadas anymore — that’s gone away with age — but she knows they’re chirping off in the marsh. It’s a feeling. She can still sense the day’s heat radiating off the deck, clinging to her skin.

      She can hear Dale talking, holding court as he always does. She can’t quite hear the words. He’s talking to the Maitlands. His daughters, her granddaughters, have been quiet. Louise is nursing her new baby. Renée has hardly said a word all evening.

      Renée has told her there’s an asteroid coming, and in a few days, they’ll have to pack up all their things and drive to a bunker to wait out the ensuing calamity. She believes her — Renée has always been very smart, always done well in school. Much smarter than Louise, who first married that god-awful deadbeat, then married the middling man in the camping chair next to her soon after. Renée says she’s too busy to start a family right now, but it would be nice for Louise’s little ones to have some cousins to play with. The Maitland children are too old for them.

      She’s not sure if the asteroid is God’s punishment, or if it’s got anything to do with God at all. She hasn’t been to church in a while, not since Dale took the car keys away. If anything, the asteroid seems like something out of the cartoons he’d watched as a boy.

      She can feel the arthritis in her knees, planting her soundly in the warped wood of her deck chair. She can’t see the marsh very well, even at this hour, as the light is just turning to gold. She suspects that when the time comes for Dale to drive her to the bunker, she’ll request to stay seated right here, soaking in the last of the heat and light.
‍

      Dale grabs another beer from the cooler and cracks it open, taking slow, steady sips between puffs of his cigarette. The Maitlands are talking to Louise about how the kids are handling things, so he stares out towards the marsh, grasses lit up like hot coals. 

      Nothing could be more perfect than this evening, he thinks, but he knows that it’s a lie. He’d burnt the ribs on the grill, distracted as he was by Louise’s husband’s verbal intrusions — it had taken every ounce of his strength not to throw his tongs at the wimp to shut him up. Now, having eaten, having drank, having baked in the heat for a couple hours, the conversation has sunk into relative lethargy. Renée, his eldest, back home for the first time since two Christmases ago, has barely spoken at all.

      He’ll go with them all to the bunker, to make Renée happy, if nothing else. If he had his way, he’d stay right here and watch the thing rip the sky open like the Fourth of July. He imagines they’ll be back out in a couple weeks, once all the caterwauling dies down.

      He looks at his mother in her ancient deck chair, glassy eyes gazing off into the marsh just like him. He has a feeling she won’t be leaving with them, no matter how much Renée pleads. She’s always been stubborn.
‍

      Renée hasn’t said a word all evening, not since she sat down. She worries that if she starts speaking it will all spill out.

      She doesn’t want them to know that she quit her job before coming here. She doesn’t want them to know that most of her department has too, after the extensive campaign of misinformation they’ve been made to spread, after the bureaucratic nightmare that was organizing millions of people into bunkers and convincing them that it will save them. It won’t.

      She looks at her father, his aging face framed in smoke. “Your papaw smoked all day and night and his lungs were as clean as a whistle,” he would joke. She knows he doesn’t believe in the asteroid, or believes he’ll be back on this deck cracking open another beer after a couple weeks of waiting. He’s always been this way. The virus, not real. The planet heating up, not real. The cabals of young satanist revolutionaries and human traffickers, those were real. 

      But this time, she feels like the conspiracy theorist. She knows what the government and the scientists and the media are hiding. And for once, she won’t attempt to explain herself, because the truth is impossible to stomach. On Tuesday, she’ll drive down to the bunker with Lucille, and Dale, and Louise and Curtis and the kids, and there they will spend their final days, and she won’t say a word. 

      She watches as baby Stella wraps her hand around Louise’s finger. Her sister’s other children must be out playing near the marsh, Martin with that Maitland boy, Lucy just beyond the deck. She can’t even think about the kids right now — her mind makes impact against a wall of solid grief. 

      She’d spent so long avoiding this place, these people, and now she knows it’s the only place on Earth she could bear to be, at the end of it all.
‍

      Martin sits back in the long shadows at the edge of the marsh, Harvey reclining next to him. The older Maitland boy’s hair catches the golden light just like the tall grass enclosing them, but infinitely more vibrant, more alive. He watches the boy run a hand through it, noting every articulation of his slender fingers. When the boy laughs, it is the same colour as the light. 

      The Maitlands are driving several hours north tomorrow, staying in a different bunker in a different state, to be with Harvey’s grandparents. Martin hasn’t quite thought of how he’ll say goodbye to Harvey tonight, after the sky grows dark, when they face each other awkwardly in the driveway. 

      If there was any justice in this world at all, he would hold him, hold him tighter than anyone has held anyone since the dawn of time. He would kiss him. He would drive north with the Maitlands, live out weeks or months or even years in their bunker, away from his mom and stepdad and sisters and aunt and grandfather and great-grandmother. 

      But he can’t. Touching Harvey is as impossible as touching the golden light of the evening, impossible as holding onto summer. 

      Harvey holds a hand above his eyes and looks towards the sun. Martin does the same, imagining that he can see the rock barreling through space towards them.
‍

      Lucy crouches in the grass that stands taller than her, intent on a cicada clinging to a stalk. When she touches him, he chirps angrily. This was funny the first couple times, but she doesn’t want to annoy him so much that he flies away. She stares at him instead. Sometimes, he crawls a little bit forwards.

      Mama told her not to play too far from the deck. She can’t see where the deck is, because she’s afraid that if she stops looking at the cicada, he’ll disappear. Mama also told her that soon, they’ll go on a road trip together, and stay in a house underground with Aunt Renée and Grandpa Dale and Memaw. She thinks it would be more fun to stay here at Memaw’s house, where she can play in the grass and look for bugs and get freezer pops from the cooler and eat them with Marty and Harvey by the marsh. She doesn’t want to be underground in a house with baby Stella crying and Memaw’s bony smelly hands reaching for her, making her sit in her lap. 

      She pokes the cicada, and he chirps again.

      She notices his red eye, and his red legs, and his body so black it’s almost blue, and the orange criss-crossing lines in his wings.  She notices all his tiny spikes and segments.

      She notices, for the first time, that he is beautiful. If she could, she would bring him with her. If she could, she would stay in this golden field forever.

I once read about Vipassana romance, an infatuation you develop with someone on a silent meditation retreat. My fantasies or daydreams, while few, have not been as dramatic. They typically arise when, after days and days of silence, when no matter how hard I try, I find it difficult to remain focused, when I feel mentally and emotionally exhausted and struggle not to be trapped in my thoughts, obsessions, pain, and frustration.  Then I am all too happy to check out other people, and that sometimes leads me down rabbit holes.   

‍

Thankfully, after years of practice, I can keep my mind clear for longer periods of time, although some retreats are better than others. Otherwise, I would have given up a long time ago. Most of my retreats have been at Zen Buddhist centres (dojos), and Hokyoji (translated from Japanese meaning Catching the Moon) will always be closest to my heart. It straddles the Iowa-Minnesota border in a rural area with lush fields, valleys, and forests, and like many retreat centres, it is a place of refuge, a place to step back from the frenzied pace of modern life, to engage in silence, stillness, and contemplation. 

‍

Even in such peaceful surroundings, little and big things can cause things to unravel, unglued. It can be like turning on a light bulb in my mind. Oh, I didn’t know that was there. Where did it come from? I might get angry and think I can’t stand another minute of looking at all my defects, or simply hangry, the intense irritation which comes from being hungry.  Those are the times I might be most tempted to check out other people, but when it happens, it’s never simple and it is never the same. Maybe I am trying to make a connection, to not feel so alone. When we are moving around at meals, on forest walks, when I can’t talk to people, when we are supposed to look downward, I steal glances into people’s faces, try to pick apart their facial expressions, unconsciously trying to find a window into their souls. To be honest though, it is not always peoples’ souls that I am looking for, but instead merely taking an inventory of who is sitting on chairs, sitting in lotus position, who is wearing special articles of clothing indicating their level of devotion, who constantly squirms or coughs, sniffles, or gets up and leaves the hall while we are meditating. Some know all the rituals, some none, and some who are familiar but not always fully well versed with Zen practice. These ruminations, however, often make me feel ashamed of my shallow thoughts and lack of attention.

‍

I can also be plagued by both minor (which seem huge) and more existential dilemmas. I get incredibly frustrated by my inability to keep still because of cramps in my legs or needing to scratch my nose or my bum. My sleeves become covered in tears and snot. While exploration of my psyche can be illuminating, I never know where my mind might take me. Sometimes, I drift into warm memories of people, experiences, and places, like hiking in bamboo forests with my daughters in Thailand, a road trip into the Rocky Mountains with my family, having a leisurely lunch with my mother on a restaurant patio on a perfect summer afternoon. Other times, it can bring up painful memories and regrets like not being attentive and present with my sister when she visited me three weeks before dying suddenly at the age of thirty-two, the grief of not being able to be with my mother when she passed, my daughters witnessing the battles with my ex-husband. It feels like plunging into a space both familiar and unfamiliar.

‍

Breakfast at Hokyoji was one of my favourite times of the day. After meditating for forty-five minutes, we would eat, sitting in a circle around a bonfire. In the dark, we held our bowls of oatmeal and instant coffee, our figures hidden in shadow. I would feel comforted by the hot food and the flames from the fire in the cold chill of morning. Our silence seemed to heighten the beauty of this time together, joined in our efforts to break through delusion and attachment, to find joy and meaning, to make sense of our lives.  All this felt healing and sacred. 

‍

During retreats, as part of my inventory, I find myself drawn towards (and sometimes intimidated by) those who I imagine possessing detachment, equanimity, and mindfulness; qualities to help attain enlightenment. One of those people was Tim. I first met Tim at Hokyoji, and over several days I created a picture of him in my mind which told me he might be well on his way to enlightenment. Although we both faced the wall during meditation, he was directly in my line of vision when we faced inwards to listen to dharma talks. He looked serious, monk-like, except instead of being bald, he had a dark full beard. His movements seemed precise and relaxed, and he possessed a calm demeanor. I found it interesting that we were the only people who slept in tents, while everyone else slept in the dormitory. I have always liked to have my own space at night on retreats, and I assume Tim did too. He told me later that he kept potato chips in his car, to supplement our simple diet, and I wondered if that what part of the reason he liked to sleep in a tent as well. By the end of the week, I decided that Tim was probably a philosophy professor, writing texts about ancient Buddhist scripture, a vegetarian and meditating for hours each day. 

‍

When we finally break our silence, I am surprisingly at first reluctant to do so. The sound of peoples’ voices seems jarring, and I need time to ease myself into conversations. When I finally did speak to Tim, I realized that the picture I had created came partly from my imagination and partly stereotyping. He told me that he worked in a post office, which made me feel foolish because …duh... postal workers can be serious Zen practitioners. At the end of a later retreat, the first thing Tim said, “I don’t remember your hair being so red.”  I just laughed and realized that he too was not so close to enlightenment either. 

‍

One afternoon, at the end of my last retreat, I noticed an orange towel hanging from a clothesline flapping in the breeze. I decided to write a poem connected to that experience, not knowing that the towel belonged to Tim. I don’t know how it came up in conversation, but when I mentioned my poem, he told me that the towel was his. As the poem was not finished at the end of the retreat, Tim asked me to send the final version to him, which I did. It is titled Seeing Orange.

      …. One sun-drenched afternoon
      beneath the shade of a cottonwood tree,
      I see and am seen by a bright orange towel 
      on a clothesline waving in the breeze, 
      its beauty washing hot tears down my face.
      A sunrise of fabric inviting me within, 
      soaking me with its warmth  
      as it glides across the horizon. 
      I will carry this orange towel,   
      spread it across this field under the sun, 
then under the moon and stars.

Since sending that first poem, I have been sending one poem per month to Tim for nine years. I would not say that I know Tim well, in fact, I still know little about his family, his friends and his everyday life. Yet even though we have spent only ten days together over an eleven-year period, almost exclusively in silence, I consider him to be a good friend. Perhaps, even if we don’t always know the details of a person’s life or get them wrong, being together in silence may free one’s intuition and perhaps allow us to better understand the essence of a person. What I do know is that Tim is funny, generous, empathetic, and in love with life and his enormous family. 

‍

The details I have learned about Tim include his life in Iowa, his wife Theresa, fairies and gnomes, his photography, his extraordinarily beautiful and bountiful garden, working in a post office, his dog Annie, and what it is like living in a Republican state. I even read his book written by him and Sheila the Zen Dog, which expounds from a canine perspective the history, practice, and wisdom of Zen Buddhism. The book is titled Zen Unleashed, which says a lot about Tim’s down to earth approach to Buddhism.

‍

Our emails are not usually long, although some are longer than others. He likes many of my poems, and when he doesn’t, he tells me why. I value his feedback and funnily enough, it is because he doesn’t read many books, and never reads poetry that I find it helpful, as he is unburdened by other people’s analyses and opinions. If he likes my poems, I am pleased. If he thinks they are nonsense or they don’t speak to him, that’s fine with me too. I don’t know how long I will keep sending poems, but I don’t have any plans to stop right now. Eventually I will run out of poems. I hope that day never comes. 

My sister shot herself dead the last time crude prices guttered. 

Estevan winters are Solzhenitsynian in breadth, 

and it turns out the distance from El Dorado to gulag 

can be mapped on a paystub. 

She got a hot-pink camo rifle that year for a Christmas gift 

and chose the basement laundry room 

I guess as a courtesy: you can hose-off the concrete, 

there’s drainage down there. 

She expired among Tide Pods, 

Roughriders Pajamas, 

immaculate blue coveralls X’d luminescent. 

As nightmares go it’s not an uncommon one. 

‍

I have sometimes sensed an obscure significance 

to the fact my irish-twin hung-the-moon sister– 

who I once watched coo a pigeon in her arms, 

then lift it clear into the Adriatic-air 

above the Gabriola ferry like a peace dove 

–exited this earth below the frostline, 

below the snow-scabbed fields, 

the moaning beggared pump-jacks, 

the wheat stubble standing out ragged in the thaw like a model golgotha:

the rotting augurs of Spring.

      These photos were captured in Montreal's Old Port during the total solar eclipse of April 8 of this year. Aiming to seize this riverside cityscape in the celestial wonder of the moment, the photos showcase a singular view of the event through shifting phases of the eclipse and a partial use of a neutral density filter. The photos do not contain any digital grading, remaining exactly as they were captured in the moment. With the spectacle of urban lights flickering on and off in the daytime, the elemental glow of the eclipse shining over the Old Port, the image of pigeons and gulls flying around in utter disorientation under the sun's interplay with the moon, and the curious sight of an aircraft streaking upward through a cluster of clouds in the waning stage of the eclipse, the photos strive to reflect an earthbound experience amidst this once-in-a-lifetime astronomical phenomenon.

      Highway traffic has slowed down and some drivers have decided to wait it out on the shoulder, just inches from where other vehicles are passing by. It’s a mid-November evening and raining heavily. The young couple are driving back to Toronto after attending a wedding in Montreal. 

      “This is crazy,” Ruby says, “Let’s get off this road.” 

      Shifting in the driver’s seat, Liam’s back aches; his neck muscles are wound tight.

      “No, let’s keep on going. We’ll be home in a couple of hours,” he shouts over the noise of a passing transport truck, the humming from his car’s tires and the pounding of the rain.

      “Sure,” Ruby says, “but first we have to live long enough to see home again.”

      “Don’t talk like that.”

      Liam eases his foot off the gas pedal.  

      “What’s coming down now?” Ruby says pointing at the windshield. “It’s not rain anymore is it?”

      “No, I think it’s sleet.”

      “Sleet! Oh come on, Liam, do we have get to Toronto tonight?” She rummages through her handbag, finds a bottle of pills and removes one. She places the Ativan on her tongue and with a sip of coffee from a travel mug swallows the tablet.   

      He does not reply but inclines his face closer to the windshield. After a minute he glances at his wife. “What are you mumbling about?”

      “I’m not mumbling, I’m praying.” 

      The sun is setting and the road is becoming slicker by the minute. 

      “What’s that?” Ruby says, pointing a finger.

      “I’m concentrating on driving. I can’t look. What do you see?”

      “On the other side of the road, in the ditch, an eighteen wheeler.”

      “Is it upright?”

      “It’s tilted.” She sighs, closes her eyes, opens them again. “We’re hardly moving now,” she whispers. “Maybe we should just pull over onto the shoulder like some of the others?”

      “No. If we stop here, a semitrailer might plow into us, kill us. Look in front of you. Way down the road. Red and blue lights flashing.”

      “Cops, ambulance?” Ruby says.

      “I can’t tell, maybe fire trucks.”

      “We need to get off this road,” she says. “We’ll find a hotel and stay the night or just sit in the car if we have to till it clears up.”

      “Okay. There’s no choice.” 

      He grips the steering wheel harder and his knuckles turn white.

      “Okay? What made you change your mind?”

      “The windshield wiper blade on my side is tearing apart.” His voice is charged with fear. “See? It’s leaving slush on the glass.” 

      He’s leaning forward, his nose over the steering wheel, his eyes fixed on the blurred highway. The hint of a smile crosses his lips. “Over there, the sign says Wynnewood next exit. There’s bound to be a hotel or something.” But he doesn’t sound convinced. “Anyway we’ll stop there.”

      “Thank God.” She pulls out her cell phone. “I’m checking the internet for hotels around here. Wynnewood, where the hell is Wynnewood on this app?”

      “Don’t bother, we’re almost there.”

      Their Chevrolet SUV slowly makes its way off the highway.

      “Careful, Liam, they haven’t salted this road.”

       “Yeah, I can tell.”    

      Five minutes later there are no street lights, trees and low bushes border both sides of the slender two lane road. They pass a shack with a fading sign, ‘Lynda’s Hair Salon’ more trees then a red brick two bay automotive repair shop, ‘Gerry’s Garage’. 

      “Look down there, to the left. Maybe it’s a motel,” Liam says.

       The Wynnewood View Motel is a one-storey building divided into ten units. A flashing neon sign reads, vacancy. The structure appears to have been recently painted a cheerful green.

      “Well, it looks okay,” Liam says sounding relieved.

      “But where’s the view?”

      Moving at a crawl he drives the SUV off the narrow road down a slight incline to the motel’s parking lot. He parks near the only other vehicles in the yard, a dented GMC pickup truck and an old Ford Fairlane. 

      Liam and Ruby, careful not to slip, walk to the motel’s front door. 

      In the small reception room a man, of about fifty, is sitting behind the desk. He is wearing a checkered shirt and a Mets baseball cap and watching a black and white John Wayne movie on television. On his shirt front is a name tag, Frank.

      “Good evening,” he says smiling. 

      “We need a room for the night,” Liam says trying not to laugh at Frank who with his long sideburns and thick wavy black hair looks like a scrawny version of Elvis. 

      “Sure. That’ll be seventy-five dollars cash. We’ve getting the credit card reader fixed. Our motel is clean, quiet and warm. But the Wi-Fi hasn’t been working the last couple of days and the TV gets only three channels. 

       “Can we see the room first?” Ruby says sounding doubtful.

      “Of course. Follow me.”

      They move slowly in the dark and cold, shielding their eyes from the sleet which begins to melt as it hits the asphalt. 

      “Be careful,” Frank says as they walk through two inches of slush. They stop at unit three. “This is the largest room we have.”

      Frank, after a little jiggling with the lock opens the door. A musty smell assaults Liam’s nose but it quickly seeps out the open door and is gone. Inside the chamber appears straight out of the 1960s or 70s; wallpaper with red and yellow flowers on an olive green background, a starburst wall clock with hands frozen at five past three and a tangerine sofa in surprisingly good shape. 

      “Oh, it’s got two double beds,” Ruby say as she sits down on one of the mattresses. “Well it doesn’t squeak. That’s nice.” She lifts a mattress corner to look for bed bugs and finding none, checks out the washroom.

      “It’s okay,” she announces. 

      “I’ll be at the reception desk till eleven if you need me. Dial 999 and I’ll pick up even after midnight.” He points to an ancient phone with a rotary dial sitting on a nightstand between the two beds, then leaves.  

      “What is this place?” she says. “It looks like a museum.”

      “Yeah, definitely retro,” Liam says. “It’s just for one night. I’ll get our bags, stay here.”

      Liam half-walks, half-slides to his SUV. As he pops open the back door to get at their luggage, a man dressed in a brown parka and fur hat approaches the old Ford Fairlane.

      “She’s a cold one,” he says to Liam.

      “Quite the car you’ve got. How long you had it?”

      “Not long. I just got it in March. I only buy Fords, they ride the best.” 

      “You going now, in this weather? It’s rear-wheel drive isn’t?”

      “Sure its rear-wheel drive.” The man gives Liam a curious look. “I’m hungry and I’m going to find a restaurant, if this town has a restaurant.” He chuckles and tosses Liam a little bag. “Samples,” he says and gets into his vehicle. The Fairlane’s wheels spin a little in the slush, then fishtails its way onto the road. Slowly it zigzags south towards the town’s lights in the distance.

      Liam drops the bags with a thud. “Now what are we going to do about dinner? The owner of that old car said he’s heading into town to look for a restaurant.”

      “Let’s ask Frank.” 

      So they call the front desk.

      “You don’t want to be driving without your windshield wipers working. Gerry can fix that for you in the morning. You know, the garage just north of here.” 

      Liam asks about other meal options.

      Frank grunts. “Delivering pizza in this weather in this town? No one’s going to be driving around Wynnewood delivering food tonight.” 

      So they get instructions to the restaurant closest to the motel. 

      “Hike down to Yu’s. It’ll take you maybe fifteen or twenty minutes to walk with the sleet and all. The food’s good and he doesn’t over-charge.”

      So that’s what they start doing.

      Fifteen minutes later Ruby says, “I’m freezing. Where is this place? I’m walking five more minutes then I’m heading back. I’ll eat in the morning.”

      “Okay, five more minutes.”

      As they come around a sharp turn in the road they spot it, Yu’s Chinese Restaurant. They quicken their pace.

      “Table for two?” asks a young woman.

      “Yes.”

      “Rotten weather tonight,” she says. “I’ll bring a pot of tea while you look at the menu.”

      Liam orders lemon chicken and Ruby, Szechuan Beef. The eatery is busy, mostly seniors. The place feels secure and comfortable with friendly chatter among its patrons. 

      “Looks good,” says a small man sporting a polka dot tie and yellow shirt. He indicates Liam’s dessert of deep-fried honey banana.

      “It is good.”

      “New in town?” says the gray-haired woman sitting next to the man. She has a very pink face and puffy eyes.

      “No, just passing through,” Liam says. “We’re at the Wynnewood View Motel.”

      “The View?” laughs the man. “Listen to that Marsha, The View.”

      “What a joker you are,” Marsha says, her puffy eyes now full of mirth. 

      “What do you mean?” Ruby says.

      “What do I mean,” says the man. “The View burned down decades ago. I was only a kid. Poor little Ted lost his father Frank in that fire. A travelling salesman also died. They said he worked for Fuller Brush. What a terrible way to go, meet your maker.”

      Liam and Ruby looked at each other. 

      “Let’s get out of here,” Liam mumbles. “They’re nuts.” 

      She shrugs her shoulders. “These small towns are filled with kooks.”

      He quickly pays the bill and they exit the restaurant.

      “I don’t know what kind of people I expected to meet in a backwater like this.” Ruby says shaking her head. “Those two have a weird sense of humor.”

      Now with their stomachs full the couple leisurely walk back to their motel room. The weather has improved, the clouds are gone, the sleet has stopped and a full moon shines down on them. 

      “I’m so tired,” Ruby says as she looks at her cell. “Jesus, it’s only nine-thirty. I’ll sleep well tonight.”

      In the parking lot of their motel they stop next to their SUV. 

       “No motel?” She says her eyes wide with fright. She turns toward him seeking confirmation. 

      “No. I see what you see. Except for our SUV there’s only an empty lot with a few chard cinder blocks where some building once stood.” 

       “And our luggage?” 

      “It’s in the back. Looks like all of it. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

      “But the wiper blade.”

      “It’s cleared up. We won’t need the wipers I hope. I’m not staying here that’s for sure.”

      He fires up the engine, switches on the lights and without thinking turns on the windshield wipers. “It’s fixed. The blade is fixed. Bizarre.” 

      Ruby says nothing, reaches under her seat for her purse. “What’s this?” She holds up a paper bag.

      Liam glances at her. “Samples the guy in the old car called it.”

      Ruby turns the bag over. ‘Fuller Brush Company’ is printed on its side. Her hands shaking she opens the window and tosses the bag out.

      After taking a deep breath she finds her purse and takes out the bottle of Ativan removing one tablet. She swallows the pill without water. Five minutes later they’re back on Highway 401 heading to Toronto.

      “We’re not telling anyone about this,” Liam says. His jaw is clenched, his complexion pasty. 

      “I’m not even going to tell my therapist.”

      West of Grafton a speeding car pulls up beside their SUV. It’s an old Ford Fairlane. The driver waves at Liam and Liam waves back. 

      “Who is that?” Ruby says.

      “The Fuller Brush man.”

      The Fairlane takes the next exit ramp and heads north into the dead of night. 

      I.

      In the first dark photograph, I’m curled up on a mattress in an otherwise bare room. My limbs loose like spaghetti noodles, my droopy eyelids like two heavy rocks landing at the bottom of a creek with a loud thud, and my thoughts tangled in an imaginary ball of yarn that would intimidate even the most curious of cats. I haven’t shampooed my hair in days, and there’s purple crescents under my eyes. I’m wearing one of those unflattering hospital gowns, and the nursing staff have taken away all my belongings, including a black hair tie, a silver necklace, and a pair of cotton underwear. I’m left with nothing but my glasses, and with the lack of privacy, I might as well be lying naked on a treatment table, bracing myself for a full body scrub at a Korean spa. I imagine a small framed Asian woman massaging a mixture of salts and essential oils into my pores, even my wounds, then rinsing my body off with warm water, leaving my skin baby smooth. 

      II.

      In the second, lighter-coloured picture, I’m sitting across a psychiatrist, who asks me a series of questions. It’s mid-January, and he waits as I formulate my answers, still drowsy from the medication I was forced to take the night before. The Loxapine tablets have left me in some sort of metaphorical, sugar-induced coma. It’s as though too much glucose is pumping in my blood, and I’m suffocating under a weighted blanket. Unlike most psychiatrists, this one’s bedside manner manages to make me feel somewhat at ease, which is an enormous feat, considering the humiliation I feel at the thought of him seeing my nipples through the hospital shirt, which shreds the last bits of dignity sticking to my skin. I tell him about the sloshy waves and cars buzzing by, and the darkness of the unforgiving ocean. I tell him that taking your life requires more courage than I currently have, and the reason I failed is because I am 5’1ft, and too short to take the leap over the edge. He tells me that he does not make decisions lightly, and that I’m staying here. “The risk is too high,” he says, then gets up and leaves the room, his resident trailing behind him. I have just turned twenty. 

      II.

      In the following frame, I’m sitting in a wheelchair, accompanied by a nurse and security guard. The protocol stipulates that I can’t leave the acute care unit and walk to the longer-term inpatient ward located upstairs by myself, so I’m forced to have company. I’m not afflicted by a physical disability or a senior, so being pushed around doesn’t feel necessary. It doesn’t feel luxurious either, like a tired kid being pushed around in a stroller. We ride the elevator to the 8^th floor, and the nurse and security guard drop me off at the main nurses’ desk. They don’t say much and leave in a hurry, as if they’ve just delivered a bulky parcel, and I sit on a chair as the intake nurse takes my blood pressure and body temperature. This psych unit has big windows and natural lighting, and soon enough, it feels like a permanent home.

      III.       

      The following picture captures the monotony of the strict routines and daily inconveniences. Each morning, a nurse wakes me up and asks me to rate my mood on a scale 1-10, a question I hate despite it being popular with mental health providers. I prefer to trade numbers for words, because they roll off my tongue more easily, and capture the complexity of whatever is happening inside my head. Numbers have their strengths, however. When I feel lazy, or don’t feel like giving a lengthy explanation, a number works in my favour. The hospital staff seem satisfied whenever I rate my mood above a solid 5, and if I’m not a danger to myself, they leave me alone, and that’s fine with me. On Monday evenings, I blend pastels on white canvas and chat with the art therapist, Katie, while my roommate Jennie, in a full-blown manic episode, showcases her art, mostly pieces with vibrant colours and patterns. Tuesday evenings are reserved for the therapy dogs, Cooper and Maggie, and Wednesday afternoons are spent with Josh, a music therapist in training who lets me sing Disney songs. In my free time, or whenever boredom strikes, I complete jigsaw puzzles or watch TV.

      IV.

      The next photograph features a portrait, a handsome psychiatrist assigned to my case. Dr. G is Italian, and he stands beside my bed as electrocardiogram leads are stuck to my chest. I’m hooked up to different monitors, and the anesthetic resident gets the intravenous running, as Dr. G places electrodes on my temples. I breathe into an oxygen mask and start to relax. The room begins to spin, the ceiling lights become blurry, and I regain consciousness after receiving a round of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). The resident removes the IV, the nurse gives me Tylenol Extra Strength for headaches, and I rub peppermint oil on my temples to ease the pain. It was Dr. G who suggested ECT, following the prescription of a new medication and subsequent allergic reaction. I’m in a rush to feel better, so I signed the paperwork, not caring about the potential side effects of the procedure, which later manifest in the form of memory loss, brain fog, and an inability to remember a combination of numbers. 

      VI.

      The next picture is glossy, taken during Spring, following my discharge from the hospital. In May, I land a part-time position working at a bookstore. It is oddly therapeutic, and my confidence grows as I suggest titles to customers, famous children’s books to expecting couples, and literary classics such as The Bell Jar to teenage girls who are probably just as sad as I am. I work a mere 12 hours a week, but it’s more a matter of salvaging the small amount of self-worth I have left, and I make friends with the owner of the coffee shop across the street. 

      VII.

      In the next frame, it’s early June, and I empty three bottles of pills, lining them up at a ninety-degree angle on my bed. Before I swallow a handful, I call a crisis line, and the volunteer on the other end urges me to call 911. I’m afraid that the ambulance ride will cost money, and I don’t want to make a scene. I call a taxi, but not before slipping the pills in the pocket of my backpack, just in case. In the ER, I sit next to a group of girls - Rachel, Megan and Anna - and eavesdrop on their conversation. I learn that Anna has been feeling suicidal, but her casual tone and laid-back appearance makes me wonder whether she’ll be taken seriously by the hospital staff. On my left, a young Korean man sits in silence. A missed injection of antipsychotic medication and appointment with his mental health team has led to an arrest, and I feel nervous at the sight of his handcuffs.

      VIII.      

      The next photograph lacks exposure. On the Brief Intervention Unit, I befriend Anna from downstairs. While I lie in bed with a blanket over my head, she paces around the room. She’s an actress preparing for an audition, and she asks me tips on how to get the psychiatrist to give her a day pass. I doubt she’ll be allowed outside - at least for the next little while - but I don’t tell her that and wish her luck instead. In the hallway, I meet a girl with blonde hair named Mia, who’s Irish and experienced a psychotic episode after a bad LSD trip.  She’s known for her string of past abusive boyfriends, and she transforms her room into a hairstyle station. We spend time together and speculate about the future. I tell her I want to visit the UK someday, and a friend comes visit, and shows us magic tricks. One afternoon, I sit on a chair, tilt my head back, and close my eyes. I wish we’d met at summer camp instead of a psychiatric facility, but when Mia begins to hum a song, her fingers combing my hair, I wonder whether this is meant to be.

      X. 

      The next picture is a collage, fragments of a summer spent in bed, at work, or in my therapist’s office. I suffer from persistent nightmares. In my dreams, I kick the furniture and hit my head against the wall until security guards drag me into a seclusion room. Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat, not knowing where I am. I speak with several doctors in the hopes of obtaining answers. One psychiatrist has a Freudian looking office, and I refuse to lie down on his couch, complete with decorative cushions. One physician tells me I will need to stay on medication forever while another assures me that I can taper off my meds within a year. 

      XI. 

      In the following photograph, my appearance hasn’t changed, but the trajectory of my life has, and I’m moving in a new direction. The scenery is no longer the same: the steepness of the hills has lessened, the sharpness of the curves has decreased, and the road ahead has become smoother, dirt and gravel being replaced with concrete pavement. I have a better grasp on the steering wheel and I’m able, for the first time in a year, to steer my life in the direction I want. On good days, I make it to the grocery store and tidy my bedroom, even dust my bookshelf. I’m a character in a video game. Each time I fold my clothes, brush my hair, or move my body, I earn a golden coin. 

      XII.

      In the next picture, it’s early September. To celebrate my return to university, I treat myself to caramel tone highlights, get a double helix piercing and buy my first pair of Vans sneakers. One day, I step into a spa and walk out with manicured nails as well as exfoliated skin. I undergo a social media detox, deleting unnecessary apps from my phone, in the hopes of becoming less bitter towards those around me, especially old classmates who are now married and purchasing their first home. One evening, I go out with my friend Alexa, who likes to talk economics and politics, and who introduced me to punk music. We get tickets for a show at Astoria, an unpretentious dive bar filled with hipsters, pool tables, and a couple arcade games. After a round of shots, I stand in the middle of the crowd, Alexa flanked by my side. Listening to Indie rock bands I have never heard of, playing songs with unfamiliar names, my head buzzes with exhilaration. I lean towards Alexa and shout over the loud music, “This is what healing feels like!” I don’t know if she can hear me, but I say it anyway. 

      XIII.

      The final photographs are in focus, candid and joyful, moments from a Polaroid camera. To somehow make up for all the days spent in bed, the hours pacing the halls of the hospital and every minute lost to a semblance of a normal life, I attend dinner parties, go on coffee dates, and shop for sunglasses at the mall. I’m still a straight A student, but not as proud of my embodiment of overachievement. I wonder if I can still count on my brain’s loyalty to keep making the world an interesting place. There’s anger and tender sadness underneath, natural parts of the healing process, and gratitude for life-long friendships and moments of laughter until my belly hurt. 

      I sigh and nestle the photo album on a shelf inside my mind, where it remains until I’m ready to flip open the pages again. 

      “Did you see the announcement in the newsletter at today’s service? Confirmation classes begin in March. I think it’s time someone attended.”

      From the car’s rear seat, he watched with alarm as his father shifted gears, then nodded in agreement. 

      “But what about hockey?” 

      His mother turned her head and stared at him. “The classes are every Wednesday. You don’t play hockey then.” 

      As an infant, he’d had no say in his baptism sixteen years earlier, and by now, Paul Mathews knew enough not to argue with his parents.
‍

      On the first day of classes, a hand-made sign pointed downstairs towards the church basement. Three boys and four girls looked up as he traipsed across the room and slumped down on one of the folding chairs arranged in a circle. He checked his watch and thought about where he’d rather be. 

      Reverend Barnes appeared, wearing a dark suit and white collar. “We’ll start in a moment,” he announced. “A group has just arrived from the girls’ training school and will be with us shortly.” 

      As Paul surveyed the mint-coloured walls and grey concrete floor, a dozen teenage girls suddenly trooped into the room and filled the remaining chairs. He had never seen any of them before. They were residents of a juvenile detention centre and not allowed to attend the local high school. This was one of their rare outings. 

      At the minister’s urging, everyone introduced themselves. Paul’s attention was drawn to a girl named Eva. She wore a pale blue short-sleeved sweater highlighting her black hair and olive skin. He noticed a crude star tattooed on her inner arm just above the wrist. She surveyed her new surroundings with an air of bored detachment. 

      He tried not to stare but soon succumbed. It was so easy to be smitten in seconds, and he often was. But acting on those feelings was another matter, thanks to an awkward shyness.

      The girls were carefully chaperoned, arriving just before class and departing shortly after. Every week, they sat next to each other in the circle. Eva was always somewhere in the middle. One day, after showing up later than usual, he wandered over to the only empty chair and sank down beside her. 

      An attendance sheet was circulated at the beginning of each class. As Eva passed it on, he tumbled into hazel eyes and emerged below a slim nose and slightly flared nostrils on lips that were tantalizingly ripe in the middle before tapering off and turning up at the corners of her mouth, giving the impression she was either pouting or about to crack a smile. His musing dissolved when she pushed the tip of a sharpened pencil into his other hand. He caught the trace of a smirk as it snaked across her lips.

      The following week, the girls didn’t leave right after class but remained in the church basement. The vehicle that picked them up had broken down, and they were waiting for alternative transportation to arrive. 

      Paul was to meet Reverend Barnes about leading off next week’s class, but the minister was speaking to another student, so he went to the washroom.

      As he came out, Eva was headed to the girls’ restroom next door. They passed each other, and his left arm brushed against her shoulder.

      “Sorry.”

      Their faces were inches apart. 

      “Your name’s Paul, isn’t it?”

      “Uh-huh.” 

       “I’ve seen you looking my way. Is there something wrong with me?” 

       “No…no, you’re fine.”

      She eyed him for a moment and wound a strand of black hair around her finger. 

       “Is there anyone in the boys’ washroom?” 

      A muscle spasmed in his lower back. 

       “No, why?” 

      Her pout turned into a smile. 

      “Do you want to go in there?”

      A bead of sweat ran down his arm. 

      “You and me?”

      She nodded.

      “Okay.” 

      With no one in sight, he followed her in. She headed to the end cubicle opposite the urinals. 

      After he entered the stall with her, she pushed the door shut and locked it, then wrapped her arms around his neck. Her lips were soft, her breath minty.

      “Be quiet. We don’t want anyone to know I’m in here.”

      He just wanted to kiss her again. 

      Eva turned around, lowered the toilet seat cover, and guided him onto it. She straddled him, her feet dangling off the floor, then bent forward, and her breath warmed his face. This time, the kiss lasted longer. 

      The outer door to the washroom swung open. 

      “Mr. Mathews, are you in here?” 

      He struggled to find his voice. “Yes, Reverend Barnes. I’ll be with you in a minute.” 

      The door slammed shut.

      Eva’s eyes widened. She put a finger to her lips, then whispered in his ear, telling him to head off with the minister. She would follow when the coast was clear. 

      Before dismounting, she leaned forward and gently pressed her lips against his.
‍

      The next day, the local newspaper reported that a girl from the training school had escaped while attending religious instruction at a downtown church. Eva Addington was the name under the photo. 

      Paul’s father showed him the article and asked if she was in his class. 

      He was staring at the black-and-white picture when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

      “Well, yes or no?” 

      A sigh escaped. “Yes.” 

      “She’s a good-looking girl,” his dad said, “but you can’t always judge an apple by its shine.”  

      After his parents settled down to watch the evening news, he retrieved the paper from the garbage, cut out the article and retreated to his room.

      In late May, having completed the classes, he took his First Communion. To celebrate the occasion, his parents gave him a Bible. He stuffed it in a dresser drawer. 

      A week later, his mother asked if he was making good use of his gift. 

      “I pick it up every night at bedtime.”

      She beamed. 

      He didn’t mention the photo underneath.
‍

      Five decades and a failed marriage later, he was flicking channels in the front room of his tiny apartment and noticed a documentary about an investigation into allegations of sexual abuse by staff members at several girls’ and boys’ training schools in the 1960s and 70s. Curious, he taped the program.

      The next day, after eight hours spent pounding sidewalks and climbing stairs to deliver packages, he lacked the energy to prepare a meal and shoved a block of frozen lasagna in the microwave. 

      Later, seated in his beige recliner, a cup of tea on the side table, he settled in to watch the program. There were testimonies from two women who had been residents of the training school in his hometown about the abuse they had suffered. He paused the program, dumbfounded by what he had just seen.

      Suddenly, his memories of a youthful innocence seemed tainted. The Saturday mornings in September spent with his buddies playing touch football on the field adjacent to the high school. The pure joy of it all. Laughing and joking. Cheering that unexpected catch or the quick deke to the right to avoid being caught. While less than a mile away, this other world existed, one he knew nothing about. 

      He pushed the play button on the remote. The second woman interviewed had shoulder-length grey hair and was wearing a black sweater. Fleshy pouches nestled below her eyes. Sagging skin surrounded her chin. The voice was gravelly, like that of a long-time smoker. Her fingers were entwined, one thumb moving up and down the other as she spoke. There was a nervousness about her.

      “I ran away once, shortly after my arrival and was free for a week before they tracked me down. That’s when it got bad for me.

       “You’re a teenager, locked in there, and the guards come by regularly at night to check on you. Some took advantage of that. You’re told to keep quiet, and it will all be over soon. 

      “If you resisted, they could write you up for some phoney infraction. So, you learned to do what was asked and tried to move on.

      “After a while, I wanted to end it all.” 

      She pulled up a sleeve, turned over her wrist, and pointed to a jagged white line. 

      Paul noticed something else as well. He leaned forward in his chair. There was a faded star beside the scar. He couldn’t believe what he’d seen, stopped the program and rewound it, then watched the sequence again.

      It had to be Eva!

      He froze her image and studied it, then returned to the start of the interview and checked the name at the bottom of the screen. Evangeline Drabowski. That must be her married name.

      Moisture slid down his cheeks. He didn’t know if it was relief to see she’d survived and could tell her story or if it was sorrow and shame at what had happened to her. But now the tears were flowing. He wiped his eyes and stared at the screen. At Eva.

      God, how she’d changed. He rose, walked to the bathroom, grabbed a tissue, and blew his nose. Looking into the mirror above the sink, he no longer saw a sixteen-year-old boy. The changes were not flattering.  

      He returned to his chair and watched the remainder of the program. It explained that a collective case had been brought against the government seeking compensation for the abuse suffered by girls and boys held in the training schools. 

      If only he had known about this, maybe he could have helped her. Then it dawned on him. Without intending to, perhaps he had. At least for the one week of freedom during that hellish period of her life. 

      He wished Eva and the others well. No compensation could wash away what they had suffered. But if the acknowledgement that what had happened to them was wrong brought a sense of relief, all the better. 

      He’d like to reach out and tell her that. Provide some kind of support. Maybe he could find out where the hearing was taking place and show up. Would she be there? Would she recognize him? He was sure she would remember their meeting, though maybe not with the same nostalgia.

      According to the program, the hearing was to begin within the next year. He’d follow the newspaper and check online each week, then decide what to do when the time came.

      He turned off the television, walked into the bathroom and washed his face with warm water, then studied himself again in the mirror. After brushing his teeth, he lumbered down the hallway to his bedroom, a weight that wasn’t there before heavy on his shoulders. 

I sat on the banks of the Humber,

on that old bench, 

watching the sun set into the river.

That scene has never lost its magic,

and its ability to move me.
‍

It was quiet, as I sat

surrounded by the beauty of nature.

But I also rested among the shadows of the past.

The burned in memories.

The people and places left and lost somewhere

upriver. 

I sat there and finally understood Rilke’s words,

“I am too alone in this world, and not alone enough.”
‍

It was quiet, except for the rustling wind

which rush and roared

like crashing waves through the branches

and leaves.

As if the universe was reusing the sound.

Meanwhile, the cool water gently rolled along.

Everything bathed in gold and verdant green.
‍

And I thought, I am too alone in this world

and not alone enough.
‍

Birds chirped and sang;

ducks and geese floated calmly on the slow-moving current.

So beautiful, as I soaked in the last few moments of warmth.

I hoped that the shorter night would be better for me,

for I was too alone in this world and 

not alone enough.
‍

Another loud gust through the trees

drowned out the other sounds.

A few other people strolled past,

as fading light and shadow danced on the ground,

and as the sun continued to set on us all.

It was time to continue my long walk,

along the paved and unpaved paths,

to nowhere.
‍

It was quiet there on the banks of the Humber,

and I desperately tried to make the moment holy.

But I felt too alone in this world,

and not alone enough. 

      During the pandemic I experienced a little bump in productivity on the assembly line. Currently my publisher had THE DEAD DREAM, due out for the Christmas rush, THE DEAD WALK and THE DEAD RUN, books nine, ten and eleven in the Callum Cogan PI series. The deal was one book a year. I did the math and reckoned I had some down time coming to me.

      Woof. C’mon Dad.

      “Alright, old buddy.”

      The truth was I was sick of Cogan, though appreciative of the financial success he had delivered to my table. With that in mind, I decided it was time for a new direction. I stood on the balcony of my condo and looked at the clouds. Follow them, I thought. 

      Woof, C'mon Dad.

      Victoria Memorial Park had been a graveyard for the British military stationed at Fort York, during the late eighteenth until mid-nineteenth century. Me and Photon II had just come abreast of the old gravestones at the east end of the park. I saw a man sitting on the bench under the big maple tree. 

      The man was seated with his legs apart, both hands resting atop an unadorned wooden walking cane. He was dressed casually; straw fedora, a tan blazer with a yellow hanky spilling out of the pocket. A dapper sort of fellow, vaguely familiar.

      It took me a few seconds before I realized that there was a dove perched on the top of the dapper man’s hat. The dove was completely still. But then the bird rearranged itself slightly, thereby announcing that it was alive.

      Odder still, the dapper man did not flinch. I had the feeling again that I knew the guy. Then it dawned on me. I was looking at Martin Frobisher. 

      Photon II ran ahead, tail wagging, woof, woof, throw the ball, Dad. The dove leapt into the air.

      The man’s eyes were open, and they seemed to be staring into the distance. Towards the pub in fact. A man with a sense of direction, I thought, but as far as I could tell, Martin Frobisher, winner of just about everything from the Governor General's Prize to the Giller to The Booker, short listed for the Nobel, was pretty much dead. 

      I loved his books. He was everything I wasn't as a writer. It was like he wrote with a chizel. It was as if he chipped each word out of the vast frozen north that he loved. You read one word you felt cold, two words you felt a distinct chill, three words your nose was frostbitten. What do you say to a dead literary genius?

      “Good afternoon, sir,” I said, awkwardly, as I came near.

      I gave his toe a little nudge. 

      “Good afternoon, sir,” I said, a little louder. 

      Not a blink. 

      “Photon,” I said, “the man’s dead.”

      Woof, throw the ball, Dad.

      I called it in. 

      I looked the man over and noticed a trade paperback partially hidden by the hem of his jacket. It was THE DEAD CALL, the fourth instalment of my Cogan franchise. Some lunatic said of the book; ‘Cogan is a force of nature.' Who was I to disagree, sales through the roof. 

      “You’re a fan of Cal Cogan,” I said without conviction.

      The dapper dead man shifted his eyes, “Yes, the man's a force of nature.”

      I wasn't hearing any irony in the statement. I sat, keeping a little distance between myself and death the way one might avoid a runny nose on the streetcar.

      “You don’t think he’s a little over the top?”

      “Of course, it’s entertainment.”

      “What about Sugar Salks?”

      Sugar Salks, Cogan's Pollyanna sidekick, bore a striking resemblance to Tinkerbell.

      “Tragic elegance,” he said, with what appeared to be a look of fatherly concern.

      “I’m thinking of killing off Cogan,” I said.  “I was heading over to the pub to sort it out over a pint or two. Write something else. A memoir, maybe. My Irish ancestry, the coffin ships, alcoholic father, the Afghan war, Mountain Thrust.”

      I tapped my prosthetic leg.

      "PTSD, opiates, failed marriage, therapy, Callum Cogan as therapy."

      “Sorry to see Cogan go. Nothing like a good who-dunnit,” Martin Frobisher said, sounding sincere.

      Woof. Throw the ball Dad, Photon II said, frantically wagging his tail. 

      Martin Frobisher sighed.

      "I started out wanting to be a crime novelist. Never got the hang of it, you know the pacing, the snap, crackle, pop of the thing. And there was winter, all that winter, the voice singing to me from beneath the river ice." 

      A crime writer? Martin Frobisher sighed again.

      “You’re off to the bardos then,” I said.

      I knew about the bardos because Sugar Salks practiced Tibetan Buddhism. “Some spiritual detailing before you move on.”

      “A shoeshine for the soul?”

      “More intense,” I said.

      “Boot camp.”

      “Yes.”

      We sat in silence for a while. Eventually, I heard a siren in the distance. 

      “There’s your ride,” I said.

      “Charon the hack.”

      “A sense of humour always helps in times of need.”

      “I don’t need anything.”

      The siren grew louder. 

      "A piece of advice," Martin Frobisher said.

      Advice from a dead man, why not?

      "Sure."

      "Always save a dance for the one who brung ya."

‍

How The Dead Dance Died

      "Mrs. Dogsbody speakin', how may I misdirect yer call? No, the great man is not currently available. Yeah. Yeah. Yer kiddin' me?  Alright then, hang on."

      Aoife handed me my cellphone.

      "Who is it?"

      "Your agent calling to say you're going to need some new patio furniture."
‍

      Notes in my GRAB BAG dollar store notebook somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean:

      1. A middle aged woman with an extension ladder attempted an escalade on my 2nd floor condominium.

      2.  Just as she had a leg up on the balcony rail she was interrupted by Harry-the-concierge. "Scuse me ma'am, can I help you?"

      3. The woman tossed a hammer at Harry, striking his forehead just above the right eye.

      4. The woman continued her escalade but was unable to gain entry to my condo without the hammer.

      5. The police arrived.

      6. The woman began tossing my balcony furniture onto the sidewalk below.

      8. The police entered my condo and after some back and forth a constable tackled the woman as she attempted to toss herself after the barbecue.
‍

      Woof, woof! C'mon Dad.

      Yeah, me too, ol' buddy. We were happy to be home, and well, just a little shocked at the immanent changes we'd set in motion on the back stoop of the stone cottage in Knockgraffen prior to the drive to Dublin to catch my flight. Me and Photon II loved Ireland. I'm guessing it was the Celtic kibble for the Woofster and the big magical heart of Aoife O'Casey for the both of us. 

      Aoife was due in a couple of weeks, a scouting mission to look for some studio space for her loom that she could afford (good luck with that). It was part two of the test to see whether or not our plan to divide our time between Toronto and Knockgraffen was workable.

      Woof, c'mon Dad.

      Alright then. 

      It was nice to see Harry-the-concierge was back at work, though with a sinister looking black patch over his right eye. 

      When we got back from walkies there was an email from my agent. One of the news feeds was reporting that the woman who attempted the escalade believed that my intrepid private detective Callum Cogan was the father of her daughter's child. (Maybe this was related to THE DEAD FLY series #2 in the series in which Cogan fends off a paternity suit from a mysterious Russian woman, whose mother in THE DEAD SING, series #1 disappeared after she was exposed by Cogan as an ex KGB assassin.)

      No indication of what she intended to achieve from a confrontation with Callum Cogan.

      The whole thing was too bizarre. I copied the note to the sub-file ODDs & ENDings, in the master file entitled GRAB BAG. I had a shower and then me and Photon II crashed on the couch. Good to be home.

      A few days later my agent emailed me an update to say that the woman, who claimed to be an actress and who went by the name Honey B, had escaped custody from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and thrown herself in front of a subway train. 

      I'd seen enough misery, (see THE DEAD HIDE, series #3, Callum Cogan failing to cope with PTSD, from  my experience in Afghanistan during Mountain Thrust) to have an idea of the terrible depths of the woman's pain. Still...
      I always start with the elevator pitch. Buy this book because, in twenty five seconds or less. The pitch was my anchor, the chunk of concrete that kept the good-ship Callum Cogan from splintering on the great rock of my imagined genius.

      The pitch: A woman attempts to hire Cogan to investigate the undercover police detective from a popular television crime series who she believes is the father of her daughter's child. Cogan declines, because obviously, the woman is nuts, but then her head explodes from an assassin's bullet. 

      I put the pitch aside and thought I'd spend an hour working up a general outline. A title came to mind, THE DEAD DANCE.

      I was interrupted by Harry-the-concierge. He called up to say that a woman who appeared to be a homeless street person, had dropped off an envelope.

      It wasn't an envelope but a single sheet of paper folded over four times. I unfolded the paper and saw that it had the CAMH logo at the top. There were some lines of tiny ink scrawl.
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            Stank of urine in the hall

            A guy with no legs smoking

            A guy curled up on the couch weeping

            You know what I did

            I opened the windows

            You know why I opened the windows

            I opened the windows

            Because it was a beautiful day

            Yes
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      The paper was signed at the bottom in loopy backhand letters: Honey B.

      I went out onto the balcony and sat in my comfy chair. It was a Hogtown summer day, hot enough to melt asphalt, air soggy with the humidity. I read the poem again. I thought about it for a few minutes, the Yes. I reckoned that it was a remarkable yes, a simple yes, spoken with all the beautiful, doomed hopes and dreams of Honey B pouring into a world that didn't much care. 

      I thought about the window me and Aoife had just un-shuttered, both of us trying to throw off the shadows that haunted us.

      Yes, we'd said to each other on that back stoop in Knockgraffen.

      Woof. Walkies, Dad.

      I fetched my laptop. I deleted the elevator pitch from the GRAB BAG file. I folded up the handwritten poem and set it on the coffee table. It was something to hold onto, but in a way that respected the sad life of Honey B. Maybe that's what I'd think about when me and Photon II went walkies.

      Woof.

      Nope, Aoife's gonna love the humidity.

Washington-DC-based Texas author Elizabeth Bruce’s debut novel, And Silent Left the Place, won Washington Writers’ Publishing House’s Fiction Award and distinctions from ForeWord Magazine and Texas Institute of Letters. She’s published in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Malawi, India, Yemen, South Korea, Romania, Sweden, Israel, and the Philippines. A co-founder of Sanctuary Theatre, her bilingual book, CentroNia’s Theatrical Journey Playbook: Introducing Science to Early Learners through Guided Pretend Play, garnered four indie awards. She’s received DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, HumanitiesDC, and McCarthey Dressman Education Foundation Fellowships and studied with Richard Bausch, the late Lee K. Abbott, Janet Peery, John McNally, and Liam Callanan.

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In ‘Universally Adored and Other One Dollar Stories,’ Elizabeth Bruce gives readers 33 ways of looking at a dollar. Her empathetic, humorous, and disarming embrace of plain-spoken people searching for a way out, charms and provokes. Published by Vine Leaves Press, these are bittersweet stories of resilience and defiance.

In “Universally Adored,” a color-obsessed artist draws a facsimile of a dollar—a masterpiece universally adored—to win her girlfriend back. While checking for spare change in the laundry, in “Bald Tires” a Tennessee housewife with a malcontent husband finds an unused condom in his Sunday trousers. In “The Forgiveness Man,” a runaway teen with a newborn follows a vagabond healer absolving the bedraggled godless through hugs of forgiveness. And in “Magic Fingers, a ladies’ room attendant tracked down by her abusive ex finds refuge in a cheap motel with a 1970s era bed massager.

Riffing on the intimate object of a dollar, Bruce’s humane short fictions—from a great mashed potato war to the grass Jesus walked on—ring with the exquisite voices of characters in analog worlds.

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I appreciate you making time to talk to me. I wanted to ask about your journey as a writer. I saw you published And Silent Left the Place, which is such a fascinating story, and now you've written a collection of short stories. How did you first start getting interested in this format?

      My first creative discipline was as an actor. I got into theater at the age of 25. I wrote things in college and did a lot of nonprofit writing, so being a wordsmith was always a livelihood for me, but I spent about 10 or 12 years as a theater artist. First as an actor, and then as a costumer, and then as a theater producer.

      That was thrilling. It was intense. It was a fabulous experience with its own unique set of terrors. Of course, being on stage is terrifying in many ways, but then when I was in my mid-thirties, my husband and I had our first child, and we moved out of our junker basement apartment into a little row house in Northeast DC. So suddenly I was a mom, and I had a mortgage, so my theater life went into deep storage, and it stayed there for a long time. I couldn't have a life in the theater and raise a young infant. 

      Eventually, I switched to creative writing. I was an English major in university, so literature was always near and dear to me. I started taking writing workshops at different places in this area in Washington, DC, and I started a first novel. I was really fortunate to be accepted into the inaugural Heritage Writers Workshop with the wonderful writer Richard Bausch. As you probably know, he’s won every award and is a fabulous writer and instructor. I spent a long time writing this first novel. I had a first draft that I put aside for various reasons and started all over again with this central character who’s very unlike me, my old man Thomas Riley in And Silent Left the Place. He’s an 81-year-old World War One veteran who came back from the Great War middle-aged and silent.

      I spent many years writing this very spare, very short novel, and after a long struggle of trying to get it published, I was fortunate enough to have it accepted as the fiction prize winner for a local literary press in DC called Washington Writers' Publishing House. I’ve stayed active in the press and they reissued a new edition in 2022. It's a slightly updated version with a new introduction. 

      I'm pretty committed to writing fiction. My acting career has more or less been reduced to doing readings and making audiobooks of my own writing. It's been a great journey.

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That's awesome. Do you have a favorite writer?

      I love that question. I can't limit it to one, but several of my favorite writers include Cormac McCarthy, whom I hasten to add I had not read before I wrote my Texas debut novel. He's dark and bleak and so brilliant. I'm swept away by his writing. I also love some old school folks. Carson McCullers is a longtime favorite writer from the mid-20th Century. She's mostly known for ‘The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter’ and ‘The Ballad of the Sad Café’. I also love the 1951 Nobel Prize winner Pär Lagerkvist, who writes these short parable stories. ‘The Sibyl’ and ‘The Dwarf’ are his two best knowns. I have recently become a renewed fan of Marilynne Robinson who is most well known for ‘Housekeeping’. She also has a trilogy set in the middle of the US. ‘Gilead’ is one, and I just finished reading ‘Lila’, and there's another one entitled ‘Home’. I'm in love with her literary voice. She's so beautiful. A couple of other writers are Kazuo Ishiguro, who wrote ‘The Remains of the Day’, and ‘Klara and the Sun’ is a more recent one. I love the writing and the sentences of the South African writer J. M. Coetzee. There are a lot more writers I’m just in awe of, including all the writers I’ve studied with, but those are some whom I admire tremendously both for their storytelling, with their lyricism, and their incredibly beautiful sentences and deep characterizations.

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Would you say the lyricism and the characterizations are what really group them all together for you?

      Yeah, I would say so, I think they're all incredibly lyrical writers, even if they're not using high-blown language. I mean, Cormac McCarthy, he has some big words in there, but it's the cadence of what he writes. As you can tell, I'm partial to Southern US writers; there is this cadence to the speech, the vernacular, the descriptions of the land. I love that, and I'm inspired to reach my own versions of lyricism and cadence in my own writing.

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I did notice a certain cadence in your writing, and when I saw later on that you were from Texas, I wasn't surprised, which is a good thing. How else do you think it’s influenced your writing?

      Yeah, I am a native Texan from a little town on the Gulf Coast of Texas right off the Galveston Bayou. I had a Texas daddy and a Yankee mama, so I'm not a full blood Texan, and I've been away from the state for most of my adult life. But I still visit family there, and I'm so influenced by the love of storytelling that Texans have. I joke that Texans will forgive anybody anything as long as it makes for a good story, so there's a sort of bigness and brashness and humor that laces through Texas. 

      I’m slowly working my way through these different eras of my life. I'm still dealing with my early years from a little bitty blue collar town. It was a bedroom community for the petrochemical industry, and it's not a big sophisticated place. I spent most of my adult life in cities, but I'm still really fascinated by small communities. Being from a small place means my life was shaped by regular people. I've had all manner of advantages in life, but I grew up in a really unpretentious place. I've tended to live and work in really unpretentious worlds. And I'm so reverential of the stamina and the grit and the wit of people I've lived and worked with as both a child and as an adult.

      My writing isn't terribly cerebral. I have a pretty spare, plain-spoken style as a writer. I don't use a lot of flowery language, and I don't really write about the intelligentsia. Mostly, I write about regular people who are in hard times doing what they can to move on. Writers are smart people, and increasingly literary writers are associated with universities and the academy. They're incredibly well spoken, have deep theoretical knowledge, and there's a lot of intellectual banter that goes on in some cases. There's intellectual game playing that happens in a lot of contemporary fiction between very smart characters who are knowledge workers in this or that field, and I don't come from that world, not really. I'm a college graduate, and I have really smart friends, and my husband's a really smart guy with two terminal degrees, so I love intellectual discourse, but it is certainly not the only sort of prestige that I think should be examined in the world of literary fiction. I admire the wit and the mental gymnastics that go on in a lot of contemporary fiction, but I'm more focused on the struggle, an undauntedness of the characters.

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In ‘Universally Adored’, you wrote about a relationship that came apart because one party was pursuing their passion for painting, but it wasn't bringing in enough money, and ultimately that didn't work for them. You mentioned that you pivoted from theater to writing in part because you had a mortgage, so I wanted to ask if you struggled with that personally.

      Yeah, my pivots and compromises in life have been continuous. As a younger person, I was doing it all. I was working–I've been incredibly fortunate in my life to have, quote, “day jobs” that I loved and were creative in their own way. And they were focused on the public good, so I've been incredibly blessed to have livelihoods that I felt passionate about. I also had my evening work as a theater artist back in my young adulthood, my pre-parenthood, I would work really hard all day and then I would do theater at night and burn the candle at both ends. None of this was happening at a Broadway level that would require a full-time investment, so as an artist you get used to working all the time. I mean you're working on your art, you're working on your job, or you're working on your life.

      Making the decision to pivot away from a life in the theater was an incredibly easy decision to make. I'm an older person. I came to my creative life at 25, was an older mom at 36, and an older writer. I didn't publish my first novel until I was in my 50s, and I've just published my first story collection at 72. So in some ways, all these compromises and trade-offs have meant that I'm just on a more delayed time track than a lot of younger people who have been really focused and able to pursue their artistic disciplines, if not full-time, then at least with all deliberate speed during their younger years. 

      I don't regret any of it. I think all of these pivots away from a completely artistic life give a person insight, humility, and a depth of life experience that can only enrich your work, either as an actor or as a writer. I've been fortunate enough to be able to do both. So many people in the world have no time at all in their lives for anything other than work and survival and maintenance of whatever equilibrium they can scratch out of the hard worlds that they live in. Being able to traffic in some of the same realities that one's characters traffic in is a plus. I know what it's like to be a motel maid. I didn't have to do it for my whole life, but it's good to have done that just for some interim point in one's life. So I don't regret any of the trade-offs.

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You said you managed to have some day jobs that you were passionate about that had some public good. Which was most significant to you?

      I met my now husband, Michael Oliver, in DC in 1983, and we started a theater company where we were knee-deep in theater production for five or six years. It was called Sanctuary Theater, and it was in the sanctuary of an old and desperately poor church. It was sort of a Peace Corps-like experience because we were in a poor community, and it was the hardest I'd ever worked. We didn't make much money. I had little side jobs, and my husband was teaching full-time, but he didn't make a lot of money either, so that was incredibly formative. 

      When we became parents, we both pivoted full-time to education. I spent about three decades working as a teaching artist, an arts administrator, and a nonprofit writer, and I had tremendous intellectual and creative freedom. 

      I spent 10 years creating a project called the Theatrical Journey Project: Introducing Science to Early Learners through Guided Pretend Play. I worked with three to five year olds on these really beautiful, sweet journeys where the kids would become the skilled science problem solvers, and we would go and solve the problem of the sick teddy bear or why the farmer can't find the rain, or other wonderful things. It was incredibly dynamic, exhausting, and joyful working with young children. Three to five year olds are natural actors, fabulous actors, they are completely available to the theatrical impulse.

      That was my “day job” for the better part of 30 years. It was flexible, so I could do my mom duties and have a creative life in the corners and crevices of working full-time or part-time. It took me a long time to write my first novel as a result, in between taking the kids to school and all the ballet classes and gymnastics and staying up late, but I have noticed since I've, quote, “retired” that my creative output has increased tremendously. I no longer have to run off and teach four classes in the morning. That was incredibly creative, but it was a different kind of creativity; it was narrative, but it was also performative.

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I love what you said about three to five year olds being completely available to the theatrical impulse. What did you teach in those classes? Could you teach someone to be available to the creative impulse?

      That's a great question. The kids would come into the journey space with their teacher, and we'd sit down and do vocal and physical warm-ups, warm up their imaginations, and do a lot of social-emotional stuff where you create a culture of collaboration. There's a lot of focus on mutual respect, where the children become the experts, and the Journey Guide is not a teacher but a colleague.

      Then the imaginary phone would ring, and the science emergency would be introduced. For example, in the journey of the water cycle, the farmer can't find the rain. The animals are thirsty; the crops are dying. So the kids would have to put on their Water Scientist hats–these little headbands with a picture of the water cycle on it–and they'd get a little Sun Stick–which was a popsicle stick with a picture of the sun and a magnet inside–and they'd go over to the ocean, which was just a big piece of blue cloth, and there would be paper clips on top. Then they have to shine the sun harder and harder, beating down on the ocean, and touch the Sun Stick to the paper clips, and it would attach to the magnet, and they could bring it up like evaporation. They’d go into the clouds–which were white streamers–and they'd swirl around and around in the condensation stage of the water cycle, then go over to the mountain, and there'd be this device that was covered up with a cloth, and they’d make thunder sounds by shaking a poster board, and there would be a storm over the mountain. Then you take the cloth off, and there was this little upside down salad bowl that had cloud pictures on it and was attached to all these tubes, and they would have to take the paperclip, the evaporated raindrop, and drop it through these clear plastic tubes to make precipitation. They’d run back and forth to get more evaporation drops. It was so sweet. Especially for the little bouncy guys who were always plucking the teachers' nerves; they would never be in trouble during journey class because the parameters of acceptable behavior were wider, and they were up on their feet and moving around.

      To close it down, we'd write a letter to the farmer, so it’d have an emerging literacy component to it. You don't really write at three to five, but we’d draw pictures of the sun or the raindrops and tell the farmer not to worry, we found the rain, it's over in the ocean. You just have to get the evaporation up to the condensation, and then we're going to have a storm over the mountain so we'll have precipitation, so it's coming.

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I love that so much. I absolutely adore that. And it makes science so approachable.

      It's so completely approachable. But to answer your question, part of it is revering the theatrical space, the world of the play. The Journey Guide never drops the pretend world. You don't step out of the role and become the teacher and fuss at someone for making too much noise or something. You're completely engaged. It's this immersive experience where, in the moment, you are in the world of the play, the same as the kids. Then, at the end of a journey, you close your eyes and say goodbye to all the journey elements to bring them back to their school. I’d open my eyes and go, “Are you back at your school?” and they’d go, “Yes!” And you point to their teacher and go, “Who is that?”

      There's a Theatrical Journey Playbook available in English and Spanish. I've done workshops all over DC, and I went to Ghana twice, worked with colleagues over there, went to Colombia once. It's available for anybody who's interested. They can shoot me an email, and I'll talk to them more about the Theatrical Journey Project. Happily, my longtime colleague Edelmira “Mimi” Nuñez Kitchen has taken over the Journey Project at CentroNía.

      My husband Michael and I, on our podcast, Creativists in Dialogue, just interviewed a long-time colleague named Aleta Margolis, who runs a trailblazing organization called Center for Inspired Teaching. It's all about using creative teaching methods to transform the teaching and learning experience for both teachers and children.

      Podcast Link: An Innovators, Artists & Solutions Conversation with the Founder and President of Center for Inspired Teaching, Aleta Margolis.

      Episode Transcript: https://creativists.substack.com/p/transcript-our-conversation-with-0e0

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Have you noticed a difference in availability to the theatrical impulse among different age groups?

      Another great question. Adults are not nearly as available to imaginative play. They have all these concerns about being undignified and silly. With adults, you have to do warm-ups and get people to reconnect with their playful selves by being playful as a teacher. Reconnecting as an adult to your playful, joyful self means that the kids get to experience a kind of joyfulness also. So working with adults, I do pretty much the same journey. I have to get them to loosen up and take the theatrical space seriously, but if you can get people to loosen up, they have a great time. They come up with wild, crazy solutions for things.

      The older a child gets, the more self-conscious they become, so you have to give them an “actor hat.” You have to give them some kind of ego cover so they don't feel silly becoming a teddy bear doctor or something. And they can be more judgmental about who you are. Like, “What do you have to offer, lady? Are you worthy of my abandonment?” 

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Fascinating. Thank you for speaking with me today, I learned a lot. Is there anything you’d want to leave our readers with?

      Thank you so much for your time, and thanks for being responsive and more thanks to the Spadina Literary Review for publishing one of my stories sometime back, and even recommending it for the Pushcart Prize. I was really honoured by that. 

      Anything people want to know about me is generally on my website, Instagram, Facebook pages, or LinkedIn. My social media footprint is not as tremendously high as some people’s, but I am available for book clubs and author chats and anything else. If you want to review the book, just holler at me. I'll give you a copy. And of course your readers can buy the book directly from Vine Leaves Press at Universally Adored and Other One Dollar Stories by Elizabeth Bruce – Vine Leaves Press.