Character is spontaneous, rather than coherent.

I've always believed we're a lot less definite than we think. We're like mercury; well never be held, we'll never take shape.

I sit down to write and I see nothing. No words, no ideas, no feelings, no nothing. The quiet is new and it scares me. Or maybe its old and that's why it scares me. Lately, I spend my days dissecting someone else's text, frustrated and tired. I come home and look at everything I've written and I hate it.

The stage manager is the only other girl. She has pretty brown eyes and moves like a bird.

"My friend who's a sculptor, a new artist, called me and said 'I'm looking at this piece I did and I hate it. I can't stop looking at it and I can't stop hating it. I need to go get drunk,' and I took him aside and I told him, 'Listen to me. Self-loathing is a huge part of being an artist. Every artist hates most of what they do. It's part of the whole thing. That's why so many of them drink too much, or abuse things, to escape the self-loathing.' He didn't listen to me."

She laughed. I nodded.

"You make art one time out of ten. Take a hard look back at all that you invent. My brother told me that."

Character is not what a man says, but the sum of his actions. If those actions come quick, without warning, surprising even ourselves, where does that leave us? How do we know anything?

I'm just trying to figure out what changed.

Maybe everything has its moment.

Sister Winter

"At Christmas, all roads lead home."

"There is, in lovers, a certain infatuation of egotism; they will have a witness of their happiness, cost that witness what it may."

The dreams started after everything fell apart. Not before. I know that’s true, because they didn’t feel like dreams. They felt real. Too real to just wake up and forget about, unfolding in what looked like little pictures. Little pictures that I had painted. Pictures of things I had seen before.

The time when I was awake began to feel less and less real. The days passed too slowly. I would lay in my bed while it was bright out and wait for sleep to come, so we could be together again. In my vintage dreams, she was more alive than people who stood in front of me. I was only happy in sleep. That haunted me. Maybe they were more like nightmares.

Silent nightmares.

Home is where the hot wind blows, where most girls are married by twenty-two, and where one person in thirty-eight lives in a trailer. Most people don’t have high school diplomas. There has been no rain since April.

Sometimes, when I've dried out, she does get back in. She likes to remind me that I didn't see myself ending up back here.

"I tried to run away" I tell her.

I did. I tried hard to drift far away from this heat and the past. I swear, I would have made it if it wasn't for those dreams. I would have made it, if I just didn't look back. I would have made it, if it wasn't for her.

...

I wasn't drunk the night I ended things, but I can't remember how I did it.

I know I said stupid things like I hoped that we could be friends. She said he didn’t think that would happen, that she couldn’t just be my friend. I know she asked me to reconsider, and I said I’d done a lot of considering. She said that she knew things were bad and that I wasn’t happy with her like I used to be, but that she wanted to try harder.

I said I didn’t think it was a problem that trying could fix.

I think eventually I said that we were just too different and that we had to go be different, apart.

She thought our differences were what made us special.

We talked late into the darkness. Eventually there wasn’t anything more to say. We both lay in the bed, not touching, not sleeping, not speaking. I heard my heart beating. I could hear her heart beating. We didn’t move from the bed until long after the sun rose.

I don’t remember saying goodbye.

I haven’t seen her since.

The rain always reminds me of that night.

Like Father Part Five

I have a fever. He's sitting with me in my bedroom. I try to remember the last time we were both in here together.

"What's wrong with you, kid?"

"I can't decide."

"Women are always like that."

I turn towards him.

"What do you think the main differences are between men and women?"

"A poet put it best. For women love is everything, for men, it's a thing apart."

I nod.

"What does that mean?"

"That men are cold. Women are tender."

That makes me sad.

"Do you think that's true?"

"Just look at the beast in the field. Lions, once the woman has her cubs, she stops paying attention to the man all together, and only fends for her babies. Male lions will eat their cubs, if they have to. They'll do whatever it takes to survive. Then, if the male lions eat the cubs, within three days the female lion will be getting it on with them again. What does that tell you?"

"I hope that's not true."

"It is. For centuries, men have had an advantage. They've had brute force on their side. So women have had to develop other skills to get along. Do you know what that is?"

He points to his head.

"My mother was quicker witted than any woman I've ever met. I learnt what women are like at her knee. Women will say things to you that you would deck a man in the street for. And they know it, that's why they say it. All women, your mother, every woman I've ever met, has tried to cut me in two with her words. I learned to be sharper than them with my tongue."

I think of myself. "Do you really believe all women are like that?"

He looks like he wishes he hadn't said that.

"Most. It's always a power struggle," he shrugs.

"That's true. There is always a push-pull."

"Exactly right. Why do people say it should be fifty-fifty, when everyone is just trying to win in the end?"

My Own Personal Jesus - Personal Essay Excerpt Two

I remember him how everyone is remembered once they’re dead; in stories you tell at a dinner party.

When Michael was seven, Patrick set up his first email address. It was used for their correspondance alone.

"Hey Mikey,
I say we get a six-pack of beer from the liquor store and then plunk ourselves down on the beach and whistle at pretty girls. What do you think, buddy?
Patrick"

Michael and I idolized him. He was the only grown-up we knew that was good at playing. Looking back, I realize he always did better with kids. Some part of him was unfinished, filled with boundless energy, restrained around people his own age.

As a child, there is no one that makes you feel so special as an adult who treats you like a friend.

Black Sheep - Belfast

Frank sat in the kitchen. His stomach was filled with lead.

She should have been back hours ago.

He turned the radio on, as quietly as he could. Every time the man’s voice grew louder, hiding up in his nose, Frank heard a bomb go off.

Every time he blinked, Frank saw a bomb go off. Every time his heart beat, he knew a bomb went off.

He saw her arms strewn blocks apart. He saw her chest, cracked wide open. He saw her leg, split in two.

He couldn’t stand the common, nasal, mean accent anymore. He clicked the radio off.

He thought of turning a light on, of finding some comfort in bright, but knew he couldn’t. Any change in light, in the sound of footsteps, in voices that carried, was asking to die. He slowly moved downward, and lay on the floor. He imagined a man six miles away, hearing a wrinkle in time and coming to kill him. He shivered.

The last time he was warm was in Canada.

He thought of his mother’s dining room table.

Then the lock moved.

His heart beat so loudly that he was sure he was dead.

It was Mariah.

He watched her take off her coat, not talking.

Underneath, she wore nothing but a tight dress that hung close to her body. Her eyelashes looked like spider’s wings and her eyes were wet. She reached her arms, sinewy bone, above her head. They moved like two ballerinas.

“I thought you were dead,” he spat.

“Things took longer than expected.”

“Did it work?”

She nodded, vacant. The violence surrounded her like nuclear waste, incandesant and powerful, seeping into the sky.

“I thought you were dead.”

She moved towards the mirror above the sink and lit a match. She was wearing a blonde wig, and her face was powdered impossibly white. The wig curled around her face. In the hazy dark, she became Jean Harlow. Kim Novak. Grace Kelly.

She pulled the wig off like Indians scalped intruders; vicious, furious.

Her red hair fell down her back like blood.

He watched her in the mirror. She brought a cloth to her face and moved it across her cheek bones in small circles.

“But can you think of a better way to die?” she asked.

“Run,” whispered the voice in his head, “Run as fast and far as your feet can take you.”

He moved towards her. Tears ran down her face.

“I want to drag my teeth across your chest to taste your beating heart."

He let her.

That night, she made love to him with a gun to his head.

On Youth & Young Manhood

“Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you - gently, with love, and hand your life back to you.”

Their closeness was born from a mutual misunderstanding.

He'd spent his life feeling misunderstood. She didn't realize until later, until she recognized it in him, but she had, too.

It was like he pushed something, gently, inside her. That push moved something else. Then an avalanche of new fell atop her. She'd travelled farther in her mind to see him than she had in her life's entirety.

Their closeness was born from a difference, a silent likeness.

They didn't need to talk. They saw what they shared; the misunderstood, the lonely, hovering around them, like steam in the air.

One says to another:

"Brother, are you headed home?"

He replies:

"Well, brother, aren't we always headed home?"

...

For a long, long time I've been trying to memorize your face.

I talked to a funeral director once. She was my age, beautiful, blonde and drunk at a party.

"You know, people think a crisis brings them to some belief system. Not true. Most people come to me believing nothing. And then they're fucked. You have to have a belief system in place. It doesn't just come when you need it. Have you heard of the whale? Yeah? Most people are too fucking scared to live in the belly."

She kept drinking her beer.

"What's your belief system?" she asked.

"Mine?"

"Yeah."

"That you never know what anything is until after."

Welcome to the road of trials.

Like Father Part Four

"I wasn't gifted, but blessed."

We're sitting in a sports bar. There's orange light spilling everywhere. Televisions are broadcasting sports games I don't care about. I feel relaxed and quiet inside for the first time in awhile.

Tonight, my Dad's face looks like a tragedy back lit by beauty.

"Do you think you worked hard, or do you think you were talented and that's why you were successful?"

"Something drives you. You understand that."

Do I?

"I was guided towards where I ended up. As sure as God makes little apples, if you work hard, you will make it. But you have to be talented. Some people work hard and just aren't talented. As my Dad would say, some people will never be talented as long as their asshole's point to the ground. Trust me though, you keep working hard, you'll make it."

There is no one in the world as comforting as my father.

...

We walk home.

"Who puts a clap board on the sidewalk? Real estate agents are the worst kind of whores. They might as well stand on the street with their dresses at their ears."

My heart's beating in my jaw. Just tell him.

"So, I'm writing a book about you."

There's a silence.

Fuck, I didn't say it right.

Then he does a pirouette in the street. He takes my hand, leading me in a poor man's waltz, scored by rumbling cars in the vague distance.

"Let me know if you need any information."

He rode in on a day too dark to see.

So what happens now?

I think we're all looking. Not for company, but completed solitude.

...

I wanted what he had. I wanted to know what it was like to believe you could save someone's life. He'd been saved and he knew it. Who was I to say it wasn't true?

Maybe that's why things don't work. I'm a skeptic.

This writing acts like a garbage dump or holy cemetery of my past. I organize everything abandoned. I take all that's wrecked and build something new.

I can make things stay together. I can make them work again.

...

"It's okay to sit and think awhile," she told me.

I nod. I can sit. I can watch the sky light up with near-misses.

All I want to do is be amongst the rubble, cleaning old parts. I collect the broken things like treasure. I want to hold them. I want them to forgive me for being thrown out in the first place.

I'm a woman made of stone. I escape more than before and I don't invite anyone with me. When things happen, I just watch, passive.

"I'll use this later."

I'm somewhere else, reassembling, in solitude.

Nine Months - Black Sheep

When I get home, Laura is in my apartment. She’s pregnant again.

She and her crazy pregnant stomach will not leave me alone.

“Frank! I was waiting for you. We don’t have any milk. Can you get some? I want some tea.”

She’s rubbing her back.

“Oh, this baby is heavy. My back hurts.”

My father told me once that when you spend your time seeking, all you see is the great absence of what you're looking for. Still, I can’t stop searching for the faces of my past. I know I shouldn’t, but I decide that just for today, I’ll play along. I can’t explain the reality of the situation to her, anyway. It's not fair to try.

Like me, she can't move past the moment she’s stuck in.

She is so beautiful.

"I missed you.”

“Can you get me milk?”

“Yes. What’d you do today?”

“Cleaned. I called my mother.”

“How is she?”

“Crazy.”

“She loves you, though.”

“Do you think I’ll be a crazy mother, like her?”

“No. Everyone is always a little better than their parents.”

“That’s true. When we’re old we’ll watch this one with her kids and see how she’s better than we are.”

“Of course we will.”

She walks towards me. I see her folded into me, pressed against my chest, her body resting on mine, but all I feel is the surrounding air. I look up.

Focus on anything other than the space, I tell myself.

When I look down again, she’s gone.

Quantum - Black Sheep

Belief divides people; doubt unites them.

It was a night defined by nothing other than quiet and space. Alone, and unable to escape the biting Montreal cold, Frank could think of little other than his wife. She was in London, he thought. Or was she in Scotland now? A part of him was motivated to write her a letter.

“Come home.”

But when he put pen to paper, he knew he couldn’t start there.

“So. Are you in love with her?”

He couldn’t start there either.

He preferred to not think of his wife, halfway across the world, wearing a backpack, spending all her time with a short-haired woman.

Sometimes, he heard her voice whispering in his ear.

“The people we were together don’t belong to us anymore.”

But it wasn’t really her voice, it was his, and in vain, he put it there, to connect them once again. He watched the birds outside dive through the air. There was just enough dark to see.

He called Marguerite.

“Hi, baby.”

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Nothing. Led Zeppelin are playing tonight.”

“Yeah?”

“Wish I was there.”

“Over rated.”

“Come over. Come over and we can listen to their record.”

And then, he started crying. He hadn’t cried in fifteen years.

“Baby, what’s wrong?” she asked. Her voice squeaked.

“Nothing. Goodbye.”

The phone slammed down. It rang again, and again, and again but he ignored it each time.

Patty was in Belfast, he decided. She had seen Sean. Lead by nothing other than a powerful feeling, they recognized each other in a sea of strangers, as friends. They were drinking together now. Sean had never really died. Patty wasn’t leaving him. Together, in a dimly lit pub, they were toasting to Frank.

They missed him.

Moved by visions of the only two people he’d loved in recent memory, he fell into a sleep where he spoke to his father.

“Another one bites the dust?”

“Aw, Dad. Why’s it gotta be like this?”

“Someone’s going to need you tonight.”

“What?”

“Just pay attention.”

As soon as his father condensed, floating in some sphere of darkness that Frank could feel but not touch, he woke to his phone ringing. Thinking it was Marguerite and wishing his bed was warm with a woman, he answered.

“Frank, it’s Dave.”

Dave was the copy-editor at the Gazette. He had a measly amount of hair on his head and he and Frank spent their nights taking shots of tequila, talking about Hemingway.

“Look, I’ve heard about you. My brother’s in a real bad way. You need to come here now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Can you come here now? Please.”

…

Twenty minutes later he walked into a small apartment in Montreal’s N.D.G. He was greeted by Dave who was wearing three sweaters, sweating profusely, combing his few hairs off his forehead with a shaking hand.

“Thank you for coming.”

Frank took off his shoes. He saw grey everywhere, followed by a painful flash of white that hit him like lightening to a tree.

There was sickness in this house, he could taste it.

Frank looked around and saw shadows whispering things to each other. Dave didn’t speak.

“Is it cancer?” Frank asked.

Dave nodded.

“He’s in a real bad way. He’s got two kids. I thought everything people said about you was bullshit, but… who’s laughing now, right?”

Frank nodded.

“I love those kids.”

Frank's breath slowed. He felt his skin swimming around him. Dave lead him to a back bedroom.

“His name’s Tony.”

The brother lay in a bed, shivering. Frank saw spikes of blinding light escaping him, replaced by a black snaking into his eyes. His breathing was labored. The light was painful to look at.

He moved closer to him, and with each step, Frank felt no separation between himself and the sick man. He could not see anything anymore, held by the darkness of the man’s body. He jumped into his stomach and swam around his lungs. He traveled deeper, hugging the man’s liver, and then disappearing into some place of just black.

Then he saw the blinding light, only upon this closer inspection, it looked like ocean pearls, knitted together. Frank had suddenly become tiny, so tiny he couldn’t see him legs beneath him. He ran through hell and towards the pearls of light, like a child in the sea. He grabbed them and smashed them and battled with them until he was sure he was drowning.

The last thing he saw was a little girl with brown hair eating the pearls. She noticed him and spit the pearls out of her mouth.

“Don’t be scared of me,” Frank pleaded. “Please, don’t be scared of me.”

“I’m not.”

She smiled and gave him her hand.

Together, they danced through the forest of illness, and he swore the rain in Tony’s stomach sounded like Robert Plant.

Ten minutes later, Frank regained consciousness. He jumped out of the Tony’s body, and found himself standing at his bedside, hands raised. His hands hurt something powerful but he couldn’t stop moving them along his withered chest.

“You didn’t do anything,” said Dave.

“Tell me how he’s doing tomorrow.”

On the way out, he saw the little girl with brown hair in a picture.

“Who’s that?” he asked Dave.

“Tony’s youngest.”

As Frank walked home in the cold, he heard Led Zeppelin bouncing off of every closed window, spilling into the icy streets. He heard people laughing, singing along, the songs butchered by tired Quebecois accents.

He lived ten more years, and at his funeral, Tony’s daughter found Frank. Now a beautiful young woman, she took his hand.

“Thank you.”

Her touch was so warm that Frank left, dressed in black, sure he had a second-degree burn.

Chosen One - Black Sheep

One broken window later, they were in the house.

“Are you happy now?” Paul hissed. “Look at this mess we’ve made.”

But Anne didn’t hear him. She heard her footsteps against the wooden stairs. She heard her breath escaping her. She heard the child sleeping in her stomach, the baby she knew was a son, and his heartbeat against her ribcage. She listened for any sound that Helen was okay, for any sound that her fear was unjust, for any sound at all.

There was none.

She first laid eyes on Helen from the sliver her bedroom door had been left open. She was lying too peacefully in her bed with her hands crossed on her chest. There was vomit everywhere.

Her glasses were on her bedside table. Her hair was curled. She was wearing the pink dress she wore to church every Sunday and her patent leather shoes. She was wearing gloves. Her face was caked with make up. Red lipstick, garish rouge and blue shadow smeared all around her eyes. It had been applied with little girl hands.

She looked so young.

For the rest of her life, Anne would remember that face.

She’d wanted to leave beautiful.

“You’re a stupid girl. You’re a stupid, stupid girl,” whispered Anne, running towards her on the bed. She lay her head against her chest and heard a faint heartbeat. She tried to lift her.

Paul stood, frozen, in the door frame.

“Help me!”

He didn’t move. She’d married a coward and, as time passed, that remained the most terrifying discovery of the day.

There was a hospital visit. There were doctors and nurses, and blurred images on ceilings that would haunt Helen for years as she tried to sleep.

All that Helen concretely remembers is Anne, whispering in her ear. “Listen to me. I’ll keep this between us. Just you, me and your brother. I’m not worrying your mother with this. This is between us.” She pretended to sleep in the assigned bed.

When Anne woke up the next morning, she was still crying.

Helen spent the next two weeks, on her knees, praying. He’d sent someone to save her. That was all she needed. He’d loved her enough to let her stick around.

Through death, she found God.

“I owe Anne my life,” Helen would tell her friends in another language, with one too many drinks of wine as decades past.

“What do you mean?” they’d ask.

“I owe them my life,” was all she’d say.

Then she’d find her way home, lost on the cobblestone streets, speaking to some angel high above her that kept her company, alone, in the most beautiful city in the world.

And Seek.

Miss lonely, but you know you only used to get juiced in it.

How much good are we doing?

How much fun are you having? How many people are you kind to? Or more, how many people, that you let in, are kind to you? Can you count on one hand the people that understand you? Is it hard to be alone?

Is it hard to be together?

Well, then, you're just a fugitive in his arms.

...

I mark years by snow. How much has changed since last Christmas? How much has changed since the Christmas before that? What were my resolutions last year? Did I live up to them?

How much have I done, that I can measure?

I know that time is not so linear. Things invite themselves in overnight only to disappear without a trace.

Where'd I go?

In Love, Not Limbo

“A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.”



It all started with a wrong number, a phone call ringing three times in the dead of night, a voice on the other end of the phone asking for someone she was not.

Well, more or less.

So far as she could remember things had always started and ended over the phone. Things are too black and white without sight. It was so easy to lie when you didn't have to look at the person. All she had ever trusted, her entire life, were the nuances of someone's face.

...

"The weird thing is, the last night I slept with him, I slept so soundly. I can never sleep in a bed with anyone else. But that night, I slept without moving. I wasn't...I wondered if that meant something."

"I can't remember sleeping soundly with someone."

She knew then that neither of them thought they would ever fall in love. The danger was, what they couldn't see, is that they would fall in love again, then again, and probably, again.

"Remember that night in Montreal? We danced on the bar? You broke Ben's toe? We requested 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight'? Remember those things?"

"Remember when things didn't matter?"

Elvis - Black Sheep

The garage was cold.

Frank took the spray paint out of his jacket. He held his loafers in front of him.

This was worth the four bucks, he told himself.

The silver paint exploded in the air, moving all around him. He watched the tiny particles of paint mist, enveloping the cold. He smelt the sour smell. He danced with the paint to avoid getting it all over his uniform. He saw the silver sparkle, and he heard it whisper to him. As it grew, he felt like a King wearing jewels, with a crown, with a throne. He shrunk down, closer to the ground, the paint spoke to him and told him that life was for the getting, while the getting was good. It told him that one day, he'd own this town. He'd have ballplayers as friends.

It didn't matter that he was lonely now.

He took a shot of the whiskey in his other jacket pocket.

He hung the shoes to dry.

The next day at school, he was the only boy with shoes like the King.

Three weeks later, he lost his virginity to a girl at a party that was offering herself to anyone who was interested. There were rumours that she'd been with twenty men, but Frank didn't see how that was possible. The party only lasted two hours.

"Thanks," he said, still inside her, lying in bed.

"I did it because you have shoes like Elvis."

Walking the neighbourhood, how he did every night, unable to sleep and as dawn broke, he thought that was as good a reason as any. As the sun rose, he danced in the street like Elvis, moving his body parts every which way, sure that now, he was a man. That now, he was different.

He was fifteen.

It's cool when you realize that you're becoming the person you want to be.

Audience of One

I'm no good at telling stories.

I give everyone the cliff notes because I'm bad at punch lines.

Stories get told to me. They find me, floating around like live music through your floorboard late at night. Weird voices live in my ears, strange ghosts walk through me, reality splits in two; what I'm living and what I can use later.

I hear conversations in black and white font. Things spill out of his mouth and I can't even see anymore. I read life as it happens.

His words crawl the walls in Times New Roman.

"But what's the plot?"

I wish it was that controlled. I don't know the Rising Force. I don't understand the Climax. What's Resolution? Have you ever had one?

"But, what's the hook?"

I don't know how to explain that to you. Just trust me when I say the hook's in me, dug deep in my back.

I'm more tender by the second.

Attachment Theory - Black Sheep a Novel

I open my mouth to say something more but she’s evaporated.

People, alive and dead, come and go, whenever they please. It’s a phenomenon that taken over as I’ve gotten older. My past blends into my present. There is no separation between then and now. It’s crowded in here.

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice. It’s been turning over in my mind ever since. He told me, “time rushes towards you like your wife when she’s told you she’s pregnant. Terrified, expectant and saddled with growing responsibility.” I thought life was like watching the baby grow, monitoring her stomach expanding every second. Tick, tick, tock. One moment after another, after another, after another, like pearls on a strand.

We really are sold a lot of lies in this part of the physical universe.

Once it happened, my wife, the third one, Laura, would visit me pregnant whenever she wanted to break my heart.

“Dad, who are you talking to?”

My daughter is here. No, actually here. She’s let herself in. She likes checking on me.

“No one.”

“I heard you talking to someone. Who do you see?”

“Stop treating me like I’m losing my mind.”

She looks at me. She has spent her young life concerned, which is probably my fault. Or maybe her mother’s, I know they are close. I can smell the fear around her. Men watch her as she walks and have since she was very young. She is frightened of the attention, shrinking under their gaze.

Last year, I told her that people come to visit me. I shouldn’t have. It was a moment of weakness, born of living in the past more often than before. I guess I thought that maybe people came to visit her, too.

They don’t.

She touches my arm. A blue surrounds her and has since the moment she was born. I love blue. When her blue is near me I feel safe. I don’t know why. It has always been difficult for me to trace the genealogy of feeling. Where is anything born, if everything that’s happened exists before you at once?

Five minutes later, Marla leaves quickly.I am very tall, and I have to lean down to embrace her. For a moment, I see her mother in her eyes. She left quickly, too.

When I head back to the kitchen, I see Marla as a four year old, hiding in the corner, laughing. I love children. They are much easier than adults.

“Hi, Daddy.”

“What a wonderful surprise!”

“Sorry for hiding. I miss you.”

Don’t envy me. Just because my memories are just three-dimensional doesn’t mean I get to choose the pace at which life happens. Death comes fast or it comes slow. Time will, one day, end it.

Frank, by the way. My name is Frank.

...

The Oakley family was accustomed to Frank performing during mealtimes. Some nights, he literally sang for his supper.

“You need to sit down, Frank. Listen to your father.” Catherine, his mother, forty, was old for a mother. She was overweight and came from money. No matter how she tried to hide it, she was charmed by Frank, even if looking after him meant she had to vacuum with one hand on the machine, one hand gripping the collar of his shirt.

At night, as she would tuck Frank into bed, she whispered in his ear, “You’re a terror, you know that?”

He’d nod.

“But that’s why you’re my favourite. That’s the reason I fell in love with your father. Women are always attracted to terror. Never forget that.”

...

"I can see time!" yelled Frank.

There was a loud moan from the other side of the table.

The oldest Oakley son, John, after his father, had cerebral palsy. He was difficult. It was Paul and Frank’s job to take him for his daily walk after dinner. He was getting restless and wanted to go on his walk now.

Frank took that to mean that John believed what he was saying. His oldest brother saw, like him, as plain as the nose on his face, that he could read time like a book.

As Frank grew, he learned to keep it between himself and his oldest brother. Just because he heard the future, first as a voice that was not his own and then saw it, painted like murals in the sky, didn’t mean he could tell people. He was sentenced to a life of lonely secrets, guarded by one sick brother.

“How did John get sick?” Frank asked Paul once, when he was about four. Paul was eight.

“Dad was painting his room and left him alone. He was about two and he crawled to the paint and drank it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Poor Pops.”

“Yeah.”

It was the one moment in Frank’s memory that Paul had not made him feel stupid.

There was some upsides to having a sick brother. They were the first family on the block to get a TV. John spent his days inside, not moving, watching three channels in black and white.

“You can’t predict the future, you just got lucky,” said Paul.

“Our big brother believes me,” Frank whispered.

“My son, the storyteller. You can’t make any money doing that,” said John.

That night, Frank stayed up in bed, under his covers, writing a story about an Indian who killed people and let the world know by releasing smoke signals above the town he lived in. They acted as a warning of what was to come, making the murderer sympathetic.

Frank believed you could do anything, so long as people could sympathize.

He read it to his mother the next morning.

“That’s beautiful,” she told him.

At that time, the strongest influence on his life and work was whomever he loved.

"Why do you move around so much?"

My aunt Rafy was my Mom's best friend. She was one of those surrogate aunts that ends up being of more significance than most of your family. She has wild red hair and remembers things I forget.

"I never feel like I have a choice. He lived there so I had to visit. A movie shot there so I had to follow. Opportunities were... I don't know, I don't really have a choice."

"Do you feel like it's a way to avoid being committed? To anything?"

Now, that conversation echoes. I want to stay still.

Genes Repeat

She rolled into Nazareth and was feeling about a half past dead.

“I find her very tragic,” she told me.

“What was she like when she was young?”

“We were close. Very, very close. That’s hard to believe now, isn’t it?”

“What else was she like?”

“She was so smart. She was a great actress actress. Hard, hard worker. She would get up in the morning and work, work, work. You two are a lot alike in that respect. She didn’t drink much, but when she did, she got drunk. Also like you."

"And what else?"

"She was beautiful but she tried to look bad. She would wear headscarves and glasses and no make up. Not when she was on stage, but in real life. She was a militant feminist. Everyone was then but she was always pretty fucked up with men. She was book smart.”

“When did she become like she is now?”

“Like all illnesses, it was progressive.”

"We'll Meet On Edges Soon," said I.

Things change.

In society today, images have replaced words. We remember things with a picture, not a sentence. Torn pieces of paper, taped up on some wall that exists in our stomach. Flash. His face in the morning. Flash. My hand on his. Flash. The way he moves in the dark.

At first, I'd always wonder if I was doing okay. I watched myself, watching him, watching me. All the pictures molded together. They'd play in my head like a movie.

"Don't fuck this up," a voice said.

The pictures were close-up, but slowly became wider. The movies left, frame by frame, replaced by infrequent flashes in a big, white place. Lying next to him, I sink some place between dimensions. There's a lot of room. There's quiet.

Once an image exists, etched inside you, it never changes.

Your understanding of the people in the picture does.

As they grew, Caroline and Oliver spent every second together, no matter how anyone tried to keep them apart.

“You have a strange imagination.”

They spent hours, days, weeks, months in bed. Oliver had wondered if they tallied up all the time they spent lying in bed it would equal years of his life. One summer, he was sure they got bedsores.

“I do?” he asked.

“Yes. Whenever I speak to you in made up languages, you know how to speak back. And I get the feeling you are using the past tense and future perfect.”

He had no idea what she meant.

“Are you ready to have sex yet?”

They were fourteen.

“Are you ready to be that intimate?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re always asking me what I mean.”

“You’re never telling me.”

Her face changed a lot and sometimes the way she looked at him made him think they were strangers.

“I guess...sometimes I worry about being so close to you.”

“Why?”

“Do you think that being close to people slows you down?”

“No. I think being close to you is nice.”

“I know, it is nice. Do you ever think it’s dangerous?”

“I still don’t understand what you mean.”

“You’re right. Being close to people is the point.”

He held her because he was scared she might not want him to. Then he kissed her until his lips were too sore to talk. A hard-on will make you do strange things.

The next day, she let him make love to her, only, she wasn’t really there.

From the moment she was born, Caroline had a racing heart. It didn’t matter if she was lying down for hours and not moving, her heart banged against her ribcage and there was nothing she could do to fix it. Her heart was always three steps ahead of her; telling her to hurry up, to not miss anything, to keep going. She worried that one day, the machine inside her chest was destined to overheat.

For as long as Caroline loved Oliver, he could hear her heartbeat, strong and steady, like his own. He heard her heart marching on in his ears, with his two steps behind.

He got used to hearing the world in double-time.

...

When they were ten, Caroline and Oliver sat in a tree.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” she asked him. She always asked him that.

“I don’t know. I don’t really think about when I grow up.”

“Yes you do. Tell me what you want to be.”

“A hockey player,” he lied.

“No, you don’t.”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“Why do you always bug me with this stuff?

“Because I saw this bird yesterday. He was outside my window and he sang so loud and so clear. He was singing about my life, about what I can be.”

“No he wasn’t.”

“Yes. He was. Trust me, he was. I know it.”

Oliver put his hand on her thigh.

“My heart beat’s slowing down.”

“I know. I hear it slowing down now.”

“Did you know I’m only happy with you?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Because you don’t worry that much. You are like a blanket of don’t worry.”

“Why do you worry so much?”

“Sometimes I think that I’m just too young and just too smart. That makes me the best candidate for a broken heart.”

People that fall in love as children are damned. Once you’ve been together like that, you are never really apart.

“I’m a feminist and everything, but the thing is, when I look at you, I want to take care of you. I want to have your babies. I would stay home and do everything, for you. I would sand the floors for you.”

“Is that a good thing?”

She said yes but she felt no. Until that moment she hadn’t realized how pitiful being a woman really was.

“What do you want?” she asked him.

He thought for a long time.

“I just want you to notice when I’m not around.”

"Why is it so hard for you to be happy?" I asked her.

"Who told you it was supposed to be easy?"

As I fell asleep, I thought that outgrowing me might be the best thing for her she's ever done. She fell asleep and she dreamt of this billboard, this big, blank billboard, with black letters that said, "You can have it, too." And then below it, in smaller letters that only she could read, "Why don't you want it, too?"

She told me years later that she dreamt of that billboard every single night of her tumultuous and beautiful youth. I asked her how she knew her youth had ended.

"I stopped dreaming of the billboard."

"But how did he know that he didn't love her?

I never understood how it could be so black and white. I was never sure if I loved someone. I can love a lot of things about anyone. He might look back later and realize that he did love her. He might like her more than he knows. And she might realize that she never loved him at all, even if she was sure she did. How do you know, in the moment? He'll find out that this whole crisis has nothing to do with her.

Trust me when I say that everything is always all about you."

Sternum - Short Story Excerpt Two

I watched this thing on the Discovery Channel. It said that in the 6th Century, some theologian decided there were three kinds of angels, whose only shared gift was the ability to see beyond a mortal timeline.

If that's all it takes to be an angel, where is my halo?

Anyway, the three kinds broke down like this.

The first kind is represented by wavelengths of light and force fields and frequencies of sound. These kind spew vibrations. Like, waves of devoted love into the universe. The devil was this kind of angel before he fell. They are the most powerful, to be feared, and kind of like God, only less of a fucking show-off.

The second kind live between the heaven and human world, like a go-between. They strike a balance between matter and spirit, good and bad. Its a lot of work jumping between the worlds, but someone has to do it. The coolest part is that they take orders from the angels above and convert them into miracles for the deserving. That's cool, right? Like Jesus.

The last kind are guardian angels, which apparently, we all have. Mine's out for a smoke, I'm sure of it. But these ones are pretty badass because, like us, they're vulnerable to sin. They look like humans, too. Some are Archangels and they deal with human rights issues. You could argue Martin Luther King was an Archangel. You could maybe make a case for Dave Chappelle.

When I turned off the t.v, I thought two things.

One, who died and made that theologian king? Like how do we know there are only three kinds?

And two, what kind was she?

New York

The light in New York was beautiful.

The sun was different there; diving through the leaves, shaking the branches, falling like snow everywhere she looked.

She sat with her mother waiting for the train to arrive. Something about her mom seemed older than before. Softer, slower, sadder.

God, my mother's beautiful, she thought.

Looking at her felt totally new. She didn't understand why. Leaning against a tiled wall that said 56th Street, she watched her mother's face like stop-motion animation. Was she okay, now that she and her brother were getting older? What would she do? How would she spend her days, with more time and more space than before? Was she lonely?

Then a voice broke out, echoing amongst the tracks and cement, hitting her like a shot in the dark. She turned to her left, and saw a middle-aged man with long hair and worn shoes, singing. He had a sorrowful voice but it was hopeful. He held his guitar like a woman and with such aching tenderness, that she knew he'd been lonely for years. She could hear it in the high-notes.

She turned back. They were both crying.

"Life is so beautiful," her mother said.

They held hands until the song finished, until he started another, until the train came, until they were all the way home.

The Summer I Lost My Mind - Personal Essay Excerpt Four

While walking from Evan's 20th birthday, obliterated, I ran into my brother at a convenience store.

"MIKEE!" I yelled.

"Holy shit," he said to his friends. I walked closer to him. "Kate, why are you shoeless?"

"You win some you lose some. Walk me home," I told him.

"No shit, Sherlock."

He told me if I didn't put my shoes on that he'd carry me home. I finally gave in. We passed some girls Michael's age on the way home who I was friends with on Facebook.

"BE CAREFUL!" I screeched at them.

What did I mean, be careful? Be careful or you'll end up like me, a crazy, drunken lunatic who had her shit together in high school and then lost it in the real world?

"Go to bed," Mike told me as he dropped me off on the corner of our street.

"Enough outta you!"

I walked down my street. I saw Rebecca, a girl who I had gone to high school with that I’d always liked but had never really known. She seemed cool; hipster and self destructive. She had long blonde hair in high school and since shaved one side off and wore printed tops with leggings. She was sitting on the curb outside a local bar, O'Malleys, known for an infamous coke ring, a clientele of local welfare recipients and not carding seventeen year olds.

When dawn broke, I realized that every gathering has its moment. You, and whoever else is attending, will repeat themselves one too many times. You'll run out of dope or liquor and quite suddenly realize that’s all you ever had in common.

I was permanently stuck in the moment when you realize that the party is over.

The Hottest State

She liked being pretty; she wore lipstick and painted her nails, she thought about her hair, she was always wearing a new dress and rarely ate; but there was something she didn't trust about it, I could tell. Every time I called her beautiful she looked at me like I was lying.

It made me think of my mother. She always called me a handsome bullshitter. She said they were the saddest creatures on earth because everything came easy to them, then they did nothing with it.

...

The Hottest State by Ethan Hawke

"Well, trust her instincts. She's probably right. First of all, you're not exactly a piece of cake to be with."

"What'd you mean?"

"You're pretty skittish. You just don't seem like the kind of guy who would stick around."

"I don't like when people say things like that - everyone telling you something's true about yourself so much that you start believing it. I have to stop seeing her."

"Why?"

"Because...I'm scared out of my mind."

"Smart girls are tough. They're a pain in the ass," he said. He wasn't grasping the situations urgency.

"There's a difference between a someone who's smart and someone who doesn't like you."

We were silent for a while.

"Sometimes I think if I could get her to love me, then that would mean everything I don't like about myself would've disappeared."

Do you ever wonder what people aren't telling you?

What they're keeping to themselves? What they think, lonely, when you're not around? What image floats past them with you on their mind?

Do they look at you when you aren't looking back? What do they say that you don't hear? What do you say, without any intended effect, that echoes and reverberates and matters long after you don't?

When you're asleep next to him, what races through his mind?

What's in that furious silence, living between you and another person, when you're both thinking things you can't share? What do you think of him when you're alone, having conversations no one else can hear?

It's more important; what people don't say. What they can't, or don't know how to, or don't want to, because you become what's left unsaid. Who knows what anything is until after? Until it's given time to grow?

Until you look and decide that all this happened, more or less.

"Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women."

Pedestrian Poetry

“If you don’t know death, you don’t know life. Maybe it’s just me, but is this the most beautiful fall you’ve ever seen? The colours are so vibrant. Yesterday, I stopped and stared at a tree. The red was just so red. That's life, man. So beautiful. I’m talking about stopping the car and staring at this tree, arrested by colour. I guess fall is a lot like death. To me, there are two things that matter; beginnings and endings. You remember when things began, and then you remember when they ended. Yeah. You never forget the last time. Death is just one moment. Life is so many of them."

Lessons From an Old Man - Entire Essay

Ours is a strange and wonderful relationship.

I called my grandfather on the phone earlier this week and told him that I wanted to interview him.

“Why, yes, my darling,” he said in a John Wayne voice.

When I walk into his house, cold from November’s endless afternoons, I realized he didn’t understand what he was agreeing to.

“Don’t ask me how long have I been married. I don’t know. All I know is that it’s a mighty, mighty long time.”

“No, Pop, I just want to talk to you about life. No specifics,” I smile, trying to show him there are no wrong answers. “It’s to conclude my book of personal essays.”

He nods but I think he’s nervous and unsure; he doesn’t know what a personal essay is. He looks and acts younger than he is. I have to remind myself of his age.

The truth is, I want to talk to him for selfish reasons. He is the most eccentric man I know, and I need him and his colourful world. He’s smart, in the way that often, I’m not smart. I think if anyone I know can give me guidance, can remind me of what matters, it’s him.

I’m all over the place. I awaken, every night, in the dark, with an aching back and crippled hips. There is little comfort anywhere. My heart won’t stop banging against my ribcage.

“I like your rings and fingernails. You go in and show your Nan,” he tells me. I look down at my blue nails and turquoise ring, tapping the white table.

“Where’s my cat? How’s your brother Mikey?” Pop asks.

“His ankle is still broken, but he’s okay.”

“He’s walking on it? Your Dad come up to see him?”

“Yeah, Dad’s helping him a lot. It’s nice.”

“How are you Mom and Dad making out?”

“Eh.”

“Comme-ci comme-ca,” he says in an accent that is not French. He grew up in Newfoundland, and if you didn’t grow up around him, you have a hard time understanding him.

“Speak slow for the camera, Pop, okay?”

He nods and dances across the floor while winking at me.

“What do you want to know? I’m a male. Eighty-years old. No, eighty-two! Christ, I forgot. That’s how old I am. I listen to that woman, she’s eighty. She was ninety yesterday,” he motions to my grandmother, far older than him in her outlook and now also older in her body. She spends her days lying on the couch, rarely moving.

...

Theirs is a crazy love. It’s not a secret that, in their youth, their marriage was tumultuous and unhappy. It was a strong glue that held them together.

She looked like Ava Gardner. He looked like Clark Gable. She was mentally ill. He was an alcoholic but with star quality that got him out of as much trouble as it got him into.

Pop should have been famous. He was a country and western singer, like Hank Snow, only better. He spent weeks in Nashville, had a fan club and got Christmas cards from Elvis. But rock and roll happened, and then, so did life. My grandmother became pregnant with my mom. Soon, two more children were born and quite suddenly, there was no room for cowboy songs. I grew up never hearing him sing. Some things are too painful to love.

“Are you giving up on acting for this?” he motions to my camera and pad of paper.

“No, I just do this too, now.”

“Good. Never give up acting.”

I feel guilty. He was so talented and unable to pursue his dreams and I complain about mine. I can tell he wants me to make it because he should have.

...

“Pop, what’s love?”

“Love is when you quit drinking. And you realize you can’t have a beer. And smoking. Them are all bad habits which is a good thing that it’s gone.”

“What else?”

He smiles.

“I don’t know, what is love? I love my wife, I love my family, I love the cat. I love everything. Not flies. I go around in the day and killing them all the time. In life, my wife and my family are close to the best things that’ve ever happened to me.”

He relaxes in his chair and I know I need to keep the questions coming furiously or he’ll start performing, hiding behind his generation’s idea of what a man should be.

“How have you changed since you were young?” I ask.

“I’m better. I know more. I was always sick when I was young, on the way out. My childhood was real good, though. The first few years I was sick all the time, I go no schooling on account of it. I was sick with everything, my heart was supposed to be eighty-years old and I was about seven or something like that.”

Now, at eighty-two, he has the heart of a seven year old.

“How else have you changed?”

“I got old. I got almost grey sometimes, until I dye it. I feel healthy enough. I think I’m smarter, but sometimes I play a lot of Lotto. Then I’m a dummy.”

I lay my head on the table, laughing.

“How are you able to be so, I don’t know, funny? Happy?”

“Well, I couldn’t answer that. I don’t think that much about it because I enjoy every night and day. My outlook and Lottos allow me to enjoy life so much. I don’t worry so much. I don’t see nothing to worry about and if I can’t do something about it, I say 'fuck it.'”

“I should say 'fuck it' more,” I tell him.

“You should. Don’t get married again until you’re old enough to take the blame for it. You’re free, like a bird, enjoy it. See, my philosophy in life now is that I married a good woman. You don’t need to marry no good man right now. But I’m still in love with your Nan after fifty-odd years. To me, she’s a goldmine. Every time I get broke or go bust she says, ‘Are you sure you got enough money?’ and if I don’t, I say, ‘No, darling, I don’t,’” he whispers and slyly looks away.

He has never gone ‘bust’ and if he did, my grandmother would never give him money. He’s heard that line in an old movie, and thinks it’s charming to say in front of a camera.

“I love my wife regardless. I give her all the credit for everything I’ve ever done. I haven’t been a perfect angel all my life, but I’m trying to be now.”

I see what he’s getting at. My grandparent’s marriage really is old fashioned in that, they stayed. Whatever happened, the commitment and closeness they have now seems worth it.

Will I commit to anything long enough for it to be worth it?

...

“How do you get over heartbreak?”

“Get another woman or man. I think when you got lot of troubles and you get more troubles.”

“Is that a mistake, though?”

“Not actually. Nothing is. I might have made mistakes at the time, but today, they aren’t mistakes because I got this far with them so I’m on the right track. Look at my family, I got three lovely kids and grandchildren, I am quite pleased with them. You’re one of them. Mikey’s one. Then my great-grand children. Jesse is only two years old I think. Goddammit and I’m eighty-two!”

That’s what I love about my grandfather; he is always surprised that he’s old. In that way, I’m like him. Forever surprised by what happens, by the life I’ve lead, the choices I’ve made. It’s like I was never there to begin with.

“What’s wrong with the world today?”

“People are not having enough fun. Too much pressure. A lot of people, the government are screwing them out their money, left and right. I worked a place for almost twenty years, the union insisted we went on strike for two months and now I can’t get no pension. $14.19 cents per month! Not even enough to feed the cat. I think about it, hard on the brain sometimes. Hard on the wallet, too.”

He blows me a kiss and I look down at my paper. Why don’t I spend more time with him? Will I read this when he’s gone and be happy I spent today with him? That I made him feel important, even for just an hour?

It's not enough, is it?

“What advice would you give young people?”

“I could say enjoy yourself, be good to other people and they’ll be good to you. When you’re kids, you think you know everything and you don’t realize that sometimes, you’re stupid.”

I nod. He’s right. I never realize I’m stupid until way after the fact.

...

“Do you believe in God?”

“I’m a great believer in God. From the time I was knee-high to a grasshopper, my granddaddy was religious and my grandmother was religious. My mama was at one time a preacher. I was taught it all up through the years and it carries me a lot through life. You get any trouble you ask the good Lord to carry you through, and he do.”

I’m surprised. I’ve never heard him speak of God before.

“Do you think everything the Bible says is true?”

“To me, I think they all had a party and got the commandments, just when they were all drunk. Don’t do this, don’t swear, don’t commit adultery. The way life is today, you can’t do that.”

“Do you believe in your own version of God, then? One where you can swear?” I laugh.

“I believe in a lot of people’s versions of God, but I am a religious man within myself. I could be more religious, but I ain’t doing too bad.”

“No, you’re doing great.”

I look down at my paper once more. All the questions are gone.

“Okay, all done, Pop.”

“Fantastic, my darling.”

He puts the kettle on. I want to stay but I’ve agreed to something, someone, somewhere, just to fill the space I don’t want to spend alone. I wish I’d cancelled. When I hug him, he feels smaller in my arms than he ever has before.

“You are a gem, Katie. Never forget that,” he tells me and then spins me around the kitchen.

...

On my way home, I think about my grandfather, about God and men and love and every word that’s filled this book.

Maybe men will just float in and out. Maybe one will matter permanently, one day. Or maybe they will all matter permanently, just occupying different spaces and places that live and die in me. Maybe all love has conditions, but happens and finds you, whether you want it to or not.

Maybe God is what you believe in because you need to feel you aren't alone. Maybe God is that part of me I never touch but always feel, always there and always strong, even when I'm not.

Then I think of my Pop once more.

“Just be happy,” he yelled at me from his porch, as I walked away from him, dressed all in black, with my hair whipping every direction, with my hands in pockets, with my shoulders shaking.

I walk farther.

I pay my three dollars to get on the subway. I walk down to the platform and a great gust of wind swallows me. The train barrels towards me. I look around and I watch people move in and out of the doors and I decide that I can wait for the next train, glued to the ugly tile and concrete walls.

I think of endings.

Finality is strange, isn’t it? I can feel the goodbyes coming now. I look in my mind’s eye into a collage of people, of places, of things I thought I knew for sure, for some clue of what to let go of.

That’s the thing about endings. When you know one’s coming, for better or for worse, you always want to hold on, just so it can hurt a little bit more.

Like Father Part Three

He's wearing a stained red sweatshirt, a trench coat and a black Indiana Jones hat. In the diner's morning light, I can see that he was handsome once and, in some ways, is still. His features are shaded by age and a life disconnected.

No matter what, he always says yes when I ask him to have breakfast with me. There is always time but I make none for him. Looking at him, I feel touched and like something is stuck in my throat. I can't find the words to explain why.

"Where'd you learn to write?" he asks me.

"You."

"I'm taking no credit for it."

"Of course I learned from you."

"I suppose I was always careful in how I spoke. I never felt successful, though."

"You didn't?"

"Not at anything."

"Really?"

"You're the same. Do you feel successful?"

"No. Never. I hope one day."

"You probably won't. I never did. Well, I had a few moments, at the Gazette and later at The Star, but they were fleeting. A ballplayer told me once, never think you have it made. He was right, you never do. Nothing is ever made."

I watch him eat his pancakes. He's too old for that much syrup.

"I was like your brother though, I was basically unemployable until I was twenty-one. Never tell him that."

"Why'd you always get fired?"

"I would oversell myself."

"You did?"

"Yeah, and being a drunk. But the gap between what I said and what I could do eventually narrowed."

"Dad, I feel really confused."

"About what?"

"Life. I'm losing people all over the place."

"Yep, you are. That's growing up, kid."

After we get the cheque he walks home too slowly, always five paces behind me. When I close the door, I watch him go where he lives now.

He's lost to me, too.