​Lois Greene Stone, writer and poet, has been syndicated worldwide. Poetry and personal essays have been included in hard & softcover book anthologies.  Collections of her personal items/ photos/ memorabilia are in major museums including twelve different divisions of The Smithsonian.  The Smithsonian selected her photo to represent all teens from a specific decade.​

“Remission is possible.  However, there really is no cure.”   Any patient hearing these words feels upset, frightened, bewildered as processing such information is difficult.  Helplessness and, possibly, ‘why me’, moves through the mind. What difference does attitude make with such news?
 
At age eleven, one of my grandsons learned he had a medical condition that had no cure; a concept of ‘lifelong’ must have been beyond his comprehension.  I took him for routine blood work watching his face as a needle stabbed a vein for his fluid.  I had him focus on my nose or see if he could out-stare me, something silly like that, so he wouldn’t see the needle pierce his skin after the rubber tourniquet was put around his upper arm nor the vials of blood being collected.  I, too, didn’t look. When there were many people ahead of him at the lab, he paced but refused to show emotion. 
 
After each lab visit, we went to a park, or plant-conservatory, or I’d, in advance, decide on something to have him look forward the rest of that day.  Among the life of trees or blooms, we both were aware of the determination of Nature and survival, and there was a sense of peace with this connection.  He understood he had a chronic condition, but we didn’t speak of it; when he was ready to ask questions, or just vent, I’d listen; he knew that.  Once we had a picnic on a bench and dropped bread crumbs for the birds to eat.  He spoke about a trail we’d taken when he was little, called a Bird Trail, and the flying creatures actually came to his outstretched palm and gently pecked at the seed he had there. 
 
A gastroenterologist gave him pills to quiet inflammation.  A stand-up comic could have made a funny routine of the volume in his daily plastic container some to take morning, some evening, some with food, some without food.  Refilling the slot for just a single day overwhelmed the holder! Eventually, he had to take prednisone for a year, along with pills.  His appearance changed as that drug causes bloating of the body, even the face; a few of his friends began to distance themselves.  No one could “catch’ his condition that was probably genetic, but it wasn’t ‘cool’ to be seen with a person whose body was so puffed-up.  Outwardly, he didn’t complain and accepted that this was necessary.  Was that because inwardly he was beginning to realize that he had both the power and ability to pattern his life according to his spirit, and that was elevated?  He chose a sleep-away summer camp because he wanted the experience and made no excuses for his appearance; campers must have thought he was simply obese.  The camp nurse who administered his meds knew otherwise.
 
Spirit.  As he felt connected to me, his medical caregivers, the greenery in the parks or when the snow dusted bare branches, he was linking to others and to his environment.  What I noticed was ‘spirit’ is as real as WiFi, which can’t been seen, or radio waves, which can’t be seen, and one doesn’t need to ‘see’ to have it verified.  While disbelievers proclaim something needs to be validated, how do they validate pressing a remote control button and having television light up, or having a garage door elevate by depressing a knob in their car, or speaking to someone overseas just by cellphone?  Those magic-connections can’t be registered by our eyes. 
 
Eventually his condition made it necessary for him to have infusions of a toxic chemical that would put him in remission, but the infusions probably are for life.  Arrangements had to be made at a facility near campus when he was in college, and his attitude was never ‘why me’ or ‘another needle in my arm and chemicals dripping in my body for hours at a time each time’.  Never.   When he’s in town, I’m with him during those hours, chatting, playing Scrabble with the board only facing him as he’s got one arm in a blood pressure cuff and the other hooked up to a machine via a needle in his vein.  We don’t talk about medical but behave as if this procedure just was nothing more than an inconvenience.  He is an amazing young man with quiet courage and life-oriented attitude.  Personal growth, as, ‘spirit’, can’t be readily seen but does exist.  His focus on what he has rather than what he hasn’t displays that to me.
 
His attitude has affected my life.  My arthritis aches and pains are put in perspective as they should be.  My half-paralyzed face that happened more than a dozen years ago, and changed the way others see me and the way I can communicate by expression, has been definitely taken into a different dimension: I see courage in that grandson’s face and everything he does, and I’ve realized that my personality is unaltered and only the facade has changed.  Only my appearance isn’t totally ‘me’, but all the rest, the important things, are definitely ‘me’.  My journey, with the added wisdom that comes with aging, to be kind and caring, protect nature and continue to pray for harmony on earth, has nothing to do with a fully functioning face.  The boy, at age eleven, began to make me think about whether I smile because I’m happy or I’m happy because I smile.  Essentially, it makes no difference if someone else sees I can only smile with half a face.  Within, I’m smiling because of happiness or to make me feel happier.   He lives that.  His quiet sense-of-self, acceptance about what has to be, sensitivity to others has also allowed him to believe in possibilities for friendships, employment, and so forth, and he lives truly knowing that life is sacred and not to be taken for granted. Who he is, and not a medical condition, defines him. This is what he’s taught me.
 
 
©2016The Jewish Press
reprinted Jan./Feb. 2019 The Humanist

             Pieces of childhood memories move in and out of our lives sometimes evoking apprehension instead of security;  how can a desk be one of those fragments for me?
            Stretched out on the double bed with spreading papers touching a tufted velvet headboard, my father did 'the books'.  Stock transactions, checkbook balancing, bill paying, insurance changes, and so forth, clung to the coarse threads of the chenille bedspread.  He leaned over to get the best illumination from the bedside table lamp, arching his back in an awkward position.
            I'd interrupt and plop on the small amount of space not covered with his work, and the force of my body would cause papers to scatter.  I didn't think what he was doing was important and it looked like fun making piles and piles of printed matter.  He smelled good, and the room carried his characteristic after-shave lotion while he was in it.  My mother's scent was fragrant and flowery and different.
            'What are you doing' was my statement rather than a question.  I wasn't trying to snoop, nor did I really care to understand;  I just liked making my presence known at anytime I felt like it, and usually had the urge when a parent was preoccupied with his or her own business.
            My red maple desk was efficient, sturdy, spacious.  I'd guessed my father didn't have a writing table because he liked leaning on bedspreads and playing with envelopes.  Since I used the mahogany dining room table for cutting out dress patterns, and large art projects, I knew he could have done 'his books' on that space.  He also could then listen to the radio built into the side of the false fireplace since the living room was nearby.
            When I started high school, a textured black Remington portable typewriter took up a large portion of the right side of my maple desk.  It wasn't easy to take a typing course when my academic load was pre-college rather than working toward a general diploma.  I skipped study hall to learn the keyboard skills.  My father didn't have a typewriter and still sorted mail on his sleeping furniture.  A sewing machine was added to the master bedroom fitting between the area made by a dormer window;  so I knew he liked using a mattress better, for a desk certainly could have been put in the alcove.
            Sometimes I let my mother borrow my heavy typewriter but forced her to lug it downstairs to the dinette table.  Everything in MY room was for my use only!  But everything else in the house was for my use also.  Parents are supposed to be pliable, available, unselfish, and totally understanding at all times.  I continued to push papers over to make room for myself whenever I noticed my dad's absence due to 'book work'.
            On a weekend home from college, I heard my father tell my mother he really wanted a desk with drawers.  My mother suggested making him a study out of a bedroom now unoccupied since my sister had gotten married.  Was he joyous?  Had he really hated being hunched up on the linty spread, reaching for the stocks to sell vs. the ones to keep?  Had it been burdensome to balance monthly statements and do the necessary arithmetic using his knees to hold the pad while his fountain pen scribbled numbers?  Was my childhood interruption really an intrusion?
            My mother busied herself with needlepointing a seat to cover a chair for the eventual desk.  She had walls painted a soft grey, and carpeting of crimson wool laid over the oak floor of my sister's vacant room.  She handmade drapes, then had the tapes on the wooden venetian blinds changed to match her new color.  My sense of "I", with young adulthood, was noticing "they" and my parents were really people with separate, but sometimes suppressed, needs.  He had wanted a desk!
            The walnut gift arrived.  Its shape was somewhat oval and softened corners seemed elegant.  Its top was inlaid with leather bordered by gold design.  The kneehole was ample but had a center drawer as well as ones going down both sides;  the pulls were bronze handles.  My room's desk was a functional rectangle with drawers that had maple knobs to grip for opening;  this was stately.  I looked at the bookshelves built into the back of this writing unit and was impressed by the creative style.  My father's eyes filled with tears when he ran his fingers along the leather;  when he smiled, some dripped into his dimples.  I held back a grin, which he noticed from my funny pursing of lips.
            Whatever I seemed to want or need, he sensed and provided for, yet only now did I realize he gave up in order to have money to give his family.  No trophy could have been more wonderful than, at age 45, having such a beautiful desk.
            On the brocade couch in the living room, he clutched his chest feeling anxiety and pain.  My mother cradled his head with soothing and encouraging words after the doctor left muttering 'indigestion'.  Moments later, his heart ceased to beat.
            I opened those walnut drawers that he had never filled with papers.  I played with the bronze handles letting them go up and flop back forcing a snapping sound.  Tears poured from my eyes and no dimples caught any in tiny wells.
            When my mother moved into an apartment, she asked me if I wanted the desk and chair for my own home.  I loved and hated that walnut item.  Her needlework would last for generations, I knew, but that oval chair seemed to be linked forever to the desk.  I shook my head, no;  my hair moved with the violence of my gesture.  I was angry, not at the offer but at the injustice.  How could I take it and be reminded of the unused;  how could I not take it and allow my mother to see a charity haul it off with her other belongings?  "Give it to charity," I whispered to my bewildered mother who probably saw my pain rather than my seeming indifference.
            I haven't made peace with the desk and the dying.  Each time I get something special that I've truly wanted, I get afraid that 'something will happen'.  A foreboding forms a shadow that  vanishes only when time passes.  Since that desk has haunted my emotional space, I've regretted not making my mother feel more comfortable knowing it would be used, and accepting it.  Did I think that a truck carting it to an uncertain destination would obliterate its message? 
            My obsolete, black, noisy, cumbersome typewriter had been saved and sat on a shelf in my basement until I donated it to a museum.  I passed my fingers over its suitcase-like container, before giving it to the curator, remembering my father's scent and 'book work' on his bed, perhaps to equip me with such a writing machine. 
            Through these years, I've come to realize that a desk is not just a writing table, and 'things' are for now rather than saving.  I also know that some people often put personal wants on hold in order to provide for loved ones.
 
 
 
published 1996 Palo Alto Review ©1996 Palo Alto Review
reprinted  2009   Via Clear Mt. Syndicate
reprinted  2000; 2013    The Jewish Press
reprinted  2015    Eunoia Review

​            Do you play tennis trussed up like the victim in a first aid course? How loudly do you groan as your aching elbow eats up the pain of a ball beating the racquet? Does the searing shoulder sensation add punishment to backhand placement? I envy you. In spite of the agony those limbs are enduring, they're still on the courts...but have I got an injury for you!
            Once my children were settled in summer camp, I embarked on my proposed athletic accomplishments. Graphing gains and intended goals gave me a sense of purpose. I divided the week between golf and tennis, playing the latter on the three days women were prohibited from the former. Yes, back then, country clubs were for men but wives were permitted to use facilities during certain hours and specific days. The private club to which my husband belonged has seven tennis courts and a superior golf course. Walking, with a caddie, did wonders for my endurance and leg muscle tone. That was only my fifth summer since I learned to play golf, but I was quite adept and it enriched my ego.
            The tennis books beckoned. Red crayon ran along such phrases as 'lob to opponents left shoulder', ‘lob when opponent has sun in his face’, ‘doubles is a game of strategy’, ‘aim for alley to keep poacher honest’.
            My net game was good. I needed an edge so better players would invite me to join them; by developing an area, the net, often avoided by women, I gained it. Aggressive, attacking, offensive, I put balls away to baseliner’s astonishment.
            The graph grew in placement, backhand, footwork; the serve was stable. I still had an overhead minus the smash. My husband suggested I adopt the push serve for a flatter faster ball. Shades of chauvinism crept into that cop-out.
            Round one of the club’s mixed doubles championship read 6-1, 6-3 in our favor. The one lost game of the first set was my service. It looked terrific in form but the sphere sped powerless to any place it picked.
            The September issue of a tennis magazine arrived with pictures and pointers to perfect a poor serve. Lean, athletic, in good health...there was nothing to contraindicate an overhead smash serve.
            Round three of the mixed doubles championship was coming and we were still in contention for the cup. I used a pull cart on the golf course to strengthen my arm muscles. The course has side hill, up hill, and down hill lies all at the same time on several holes. Balancing the cart was a feat. My graceful, grooved swing and super long ball made me question the statement 'one shouldn't play both golf and tennis'.
            A basket of wool tennis balls, instructions from the magazine, and time would take my right form and make it a right serve. Right?
            That's where my tale begins and ends.
            I altered the toss and a flat, deep, speedy serve was issued. After a half hour I tried to place it. There it was...right to opponent's backhand. I joined a game with three women that needed a foursome. Only my fantasies focused on a cup that might read Stone and Stone.
            I moved in for a ball and got a cramp in my right calf. Immediately I kneaded it, sat down, pulled off my shoe and sock and flexed my foot.
            Being the wife of a physician, I learned sooner than someone else that I had a partial rupture of the gastrocnemius muscle and would be on crutches for about six weeks. An orthopedic surgeon confirmed the diagnosis. This muscle forms the greater part of the calf and its action flexes the leg and points the toe. Together with the Soleus muscle, it forms a muscular
mass; its tendon of insertion is the thickest and strongest in the body, the tendo calcaneus.
How does a big, strong, healthy muscle on a physically-fit lean body partially rupture by a
movement?  Let me know when you can answer that.
            Enjoy your tendonitis, arthritis, strains, and soreness. Keep your weight down, muscles firm, clothing loose, sun off head, shoes well fitted, racquet tension correct. It won't prevent the partial or total rupture of the gastrocnemius muscle; it might help your game while you have two working legs on which to play.
            It was six weeks before I could put my leg down to walk, and many, many months before I carefully tried to play again. One of my paranoic pleas, at the time, was if that was "destined", couldn't Fate have waited until winter?
 
 

​How do years dissolve as quickly as if putting an ice cube into hot water!  Our son was deciding if tiny birthday candles settling into a cake’s top ought be replaced by two wax numbers indicating time passing.
 
Playful, he once ran tiny fingers across the satin of a baby blanket, enjoyed his left thumb between his lips at bedtime.... eventually, he hid a flashlight under his covers and pretended to sleep but switched it on and off once my husband and I left the room.  David didn’t know we were smiling. From flashlight to becoming a CPA seemed to be one leap for us.  For him, endless time was still ahead for wishes, dreams, achievements.
 
In August 2016, he said, “I just dropped my baby off to school for the last day. Sometimes the moment of the ending is stronger than the prospect of the next beginning.”  His third child was then starting undergrad school enroute to becoming a physician.  And I so recalled my putting him on the school bus for kindergarten, he, my third child, and I was reluctant to walk back into the house not yet accepting my ‘baby’ was now a school boy.  When he began university education in another part of the state, I started teaching college English Composition having planned ahead for that change.
 
Relationships, for me, need to be ‘real’ with the ability to speak thoughts without ridicule, not be judged nor judgmental, ‘be there’ emotionally.  And his aha-moment about actual endings  silently also spoke about aging. 
 
The daring teen who swam across Fourth Lake in the Adirondacks while in summer camp, climbed many of the High Peaks in the same mountains (including the Highest), was beginning to experience some physical limitations as yearly calendars were tossed.  Running in a sponsored road race no longer had his name as a contestant.  He was reluctant to speak about mortality as something real and not just a word used by poets or philosophy professors.  So I did:
            ‘Nothing you feel is ever 'less' because someone has it 'worse'.  What you are feeling is important to us.  Getting older on the outside and still being young inside your head is a constant adjustment.  Who else can better understand you than us who have loved you since you came into this world, and could once run and tumble without getting too injured and now knows an injury may heal or leave permanent residue.  And to not share your feelings because our lives are almost over is one dumb reason.  We hate that life ends!  Allow us to tell you that.  No, it won't prepare you for your anger about life and death when you've fewer possible years ahead than what's behind, but it might help that you know we, right now, don't understand we 'won't be' and there's so much still we want to see with our own eyes, and touch with our own hands.  If you weren't angry about aging alterations and that you'll never be who you once were physically, then there'd be something wrong with you.  Allow us to comfort you.  We can't kiss and make better, but we can kiss and make 'easier' to deal with.  We have spent much of your life living only a few miles from you and being part of the everyday.  We want to hear about your upset and never ever be 'fair weather parents' and it does help to let go of the 'damn it' stuff, and that is good for our relationship.  Were we supposed to not hear your "I'm scared" before a surgery?  Weren’t you scared, as a little boy, before your tonsils came out even though your sister was going to have it done on the very same day? You were both not at home in bed, but in a hospital! We want to help you through anything. Let us. We can't change who we are just because we're old on the outside.  Inside, we're still young parents remembering digging holes with you in beach sand, playing tennis and golf with determination with you, roasting marshmallows with your family in an area of your backyard you created for such, round-robin ping pong games.........”
 
How do years dissolve as quickly as if putting an ice cube into hot water! Time gone can never be regained.  All these months of isolation from physical contacts, familiar activities, going outside during this Pandemic of 2020 wearing a necessary face-mask, using Zoom to participate in religious services or graduations or just family sharing is a daily reminder of lost hours.  What does not ever have to be ‘lost’ is communication, caring, sharing, exchanging feelings, listening.  And as long as we’re able, my husband and I will try and help loved ones through their life cycles and allow them, as well, to hear our own whispers of aging with some role-reversal that we don’t like to accept.  We’ve been using two wax numbers, with wicks ready for a match to light, as adornment on our annual cakes.  It’s actually quite a privilege to be old enough to notice our offspring have this kind of dilemma.

            My sister, Joy, ran her fingers along the tops of the copper horse statues on my maple dresser.  One horse had a broken leg but managed to stand on the three remaining;  a tiny shield on the saddle's side read Bear Mt..
            "Does Bear Mountain have trees?"  Joy played with the rough metal where the leg was broken.
            "What is it?"  I looked up from polishing my thirteen year old toenails.  The bottle of clear liquid was balanced on my radio.
            "Bear Mountain.  Why hasn't it trees?"  Joy spoke again.
            "It has trees."  I resumed polishing.  “It’s up the Hudson River.” 
            "If it has trees, why's it bare?"  The horse was replaced next to the others.
            "It has bears there.  Bears.  Animals.  Growling.  Not barren."  I shrugged my shoulders.  "You're nine.  Haven't you studied homonyms?"
            "Oh."  Joy wiggled one foot in embarrassment.
            "That's okay.  You're not dumb.  At least you only have me here.  When I was about eight, we were learning, in school, about colonial life, and I brought in a book about a colonel thinking it was about colonial;  the teacher laughed at me in front of the entire class.  Words sort of looked the same to me, and I didn't know how to spell the way I now do.  'Course the teacher didn't have to shame me."  I shoved more cotton wads between my toes to keep fresh polish from sticking.
            "I'm going to Bear Mountain.  Sleeping at Rhoda's;  her brother is away and I'll sleep in his room.  Rhoda's mom is going with the Brownies.  Lois,"  Joy paused, "don't laugh at me but I need, really really need, to ask you this."
            "Yeah?"
            "Well, I've never slept in a boy's bed and,"  Joy paused, "and, and..."
            "Get on with it, Joy."
            "If I fall asleep in it, will I wake up a boy?  I don't want to, Lois.  I don't want to be a boy.  Will I?"  Joy's voice was anxious.
            Careful, I thought.  Don't get giggling over this crazy question which, obviously, isn't crazy to Joy.  Aloud, I answered in a flippant way,  "Nope.  You're a girl for life.  You can stand in front of a toilet all day and still not pee like a boy, dry yourself with daddy's towel and not grow hair on your chest, wear bluejeans that button up the front and not grow a 'thing'.  Okay?"  I was glad I didn't giggle.
            "Okay.  You're sure.  Really, really sure."
            "Really, really.  Cross my heart, and no fingers or toes are crossed behind my back or anything.  No fooling. You'll stay a girl."  I responded casually.
            Joy, relieved, squat next to me and hugged me hard.  "You are the best sister ever.  You are."
            "Shoo," I said feeling pleased with myself," I've got to finish this before Mom catches me."
            "She can't see the clear stuff."
            "She can if the bottle's sitting here and I've cotton between my toes."
            "Oh yeah."  Joy nodded with understanding.
            "And you better not let her hear you saying 'yeah',"  I reminded.
            "Is it nice there?"  Joy started with questions again.
            "Where?"
            "Bear Mountain."
            "Sure.  But it's a long boat ride.  Better take jacks, or coloring stuff, or a book or something to do.  After awhile, all the water gets boring and once you've seen the engines going you really won't know what else to do.  Coming back you can watch people necking under blankets."  I let myself finally giggle.
            "Really!"
            "Really."
            "Will you be mad if I buy a horse?"  Joy looked again at the collection.
            "Course not, silly.  But don't get me a new one. I'm going to keep these forever and ever, even the one with a leg broken.  I love them.  You can't just replace something you love;  it's `it' you love and not a newer or shinier one."  I sounded philosophical like Dad.
            "Like the Deanna Durbin doll from Grandpa that had a broken body but you wanted the broken body one 'cause that was given to you."  Joy spoke in one breath, then gasped for air.
            "Would you have sent her back for a new one after being given her?  I didn't know the wood was cracked until I took off the satin ball gown.  She was already mine."  I was annoyed.  No one ever understood why I told Grandpa not to exchange the gift for an identical one.  It could never be identical, only another that appeared the same.  I think Dad understood.

            "I don't know.  Probably I'd want the same thing without the big crack.  Nope.  I don't think I'd've kept Deanna Durbin broken.  Grandpa promised it'd be the very same doll."
            Realizing that few would accept my stubborn refusal to trade-in or part with any of the things I loved once they were mine, broken or damaged or whole or soiled, I changed the subject.  "Pull off your shoes and socks, Joy.  I'll paint your nails."
            21st century: Pink polish.  Nail enamel glides on and dries almost instantly
            I glanced at a mirror.  “Still stubborn, aren’t you, Lois.  You replaced the hammers on your childhood piano and wouldn’t let the technician touch the strip of worn-out felt that lines above all the keys.  Broken, damaged, soiled, whatever, the cosmetic piece is part of...”  I giggled at my soliloquy.  “Just because I’m so much older,” I continued talking to myself, “doesn’t mean I changed personalities!”
            Turning from my reflection, I thought about a granddaughter who took my copper horse statues.  At age nine, when she collected sea-world stuffed toys and miniature wooden animals, she wanted those rigid horses unchanged by multiple decades of display.  Did she somehow understand my childhood refusal to exchange or discard a damaged toy? Will she put them on her daughter’s dresser, the very same one now on its third generation? Might I ever polish that little girl’s toenails and speak about sister Joy's innocent question, Bear Mountain, my Deanna Durbin doll, and those copper horses?
 
 
Published October 1999 “Rochester Shorts”

​            “Here’s my penny,” I placed it on the glass counter after selecting one strip of Candy Dots suspended from a metal rack. 
            The man by the cash register nodded to me.
            “My allowance went up to ten whole cents!” I said with excitement.  “So you’ll see me every day on my way back after lunch!”
            Since the walk to elementary school meant seven blocks uphill there, seven blocks downhill home for lunch, seven blocks back to classes, and seven blocks again to my house, and I had to do this five days a week for eight whole years, a candy store nearby the all-brick education building was quite perfect.  (Oh, kindergarten was walking-walking also but I didn’t count that as wasn’t really like learning.) Visual of colored circles of sugar, plus carefully pulling each one from paper without disturbing the others, was something I really enjoyed.  Now, with a bigger weekly allowance, I could actually have ten of these a week instead of only five.
            School buses didn’t exist in the community, nor did lunch rooms on site until 9th grade which had its own building and was from 9th through 12th.  ‘Middle school’ hadn’t been developed even as a concept yet.  For high school, one could walk really long distances or wait for city busses on regular routes.  Crowded with too many students, plus passengers traveling to specific destinations, walking, for me, was definitely preferable no matter what the weather conditions.  Same temperature circumstances existed for the first 8 years of learning so I was used to dealing with cold or rain or snow.  Sunshine and warm was as much a treat as thinking about Candy Dots!
            War Identification Cards were issued, and I was also given a plastic disc (suspended from a chain) to wear around my neck.  It said: Lois Greene, New York City.  But I lived where Long Island began, so why did the tag say where all the skyscrapers were!  Well, the special necklace  seemed fun and grown up, but my fingerprints were done in that candy store!  How could government people, or something like that, make my fingers inky and then stick them on a piece of paper when it was a CANDY store!  I looked at the display of Sugar Dots to concentrate on something pretty that I so liked in my mouth, how my fingers enjoyed peeling dots from the paper, anything so I wouldn’t have to watch dirty fingers being smushed on paper for some government reason I didn’t understand anyway.
            When my allowance rose to 25-cents a week, I could still ‘feel’ inky stuff each time I walked through the wood door and saw the shop’s owner.  I began to buy gummy dots, neatly boxed, since delight with my sugar-on–paper had been dampened by wartime government-decree to have my digits filed.  A teacher said if a bomb fell, and we couldn’t be recognized, those prints and dog tag would be identifiers.  I had to look that word up in the dictionary.  I know who I am, so why was some proof needed?
            My uncles came back from places across the ocean, a female cousin returned from being in the army of women, my mom no longer had ration books, my dad could get gasoline and use the car.  The Uncle Sam Wants You signs began to disappear, and I tucked the two identification items into a satin hankie case.
            Well, wars didn’t stop as I was an undergrad during the Korean fighting.  No one, again, had such ID tags except soldiers, I guess, and tiny candy stores slowly vanished.  The elementary school building seemed small and dated when I registered, at age 21, in that facility so I could vote in American elections.
            Adulthood.  Marriage.  Families.  My older sister lived 3,000 miles away, and, before our current technology, telephone communication was costly; we used regular mail.  When she was terminally ill, she told me to anticipate a present.  Wrapped in layers of tissue paper for protection, in a normal envelope, was a strip of paper with tiny-tiny sugar candy dots affixed.  Tears tumbled as I peeled away the first pink one. 

​“Five and a half, not just five.”   “Almost sixteen.”   “I’ll be twenty-one next week.”  Can’t wait to be older!   Then, quietly, it’s fifty, and almost with disbelief, many prefer not to answer if questioned after sixty.  A Medicare Card, proclaiming one is sixty-five, screams old-age rather than eligible for Social Security payments.

Is completing another year a celebration or a reminder that an invisible cycle is causing creases in facial skin, muscles to weaken, joints to ache, hearing to be difficult at certain decibels?
The Pandemic has a number for the virus Covid: 19.  Songwriter, Luke Combs, is promoting his new work titled “Six Feet Apart” regarding the current separation of people for alleged safety from contagion.  I heard his lyrics, “And there will be light after dark Someday when we aren't six feet apart”. I realized that graves are dug at that footage. 
Suddenly ‘six feet’ became a selection: good height for an adult male, depth of a grave, safe separation of people during Covid 19.  As a young girl, I’d read “Now We Are Six” by A. A. Milne.  I enjoyed the poem “Us Two” and its sing-song lines such as: “Wherever I am, there's always Pooh, There's always Pooh and Me.”  "I wasn't afraid," said Pooh, said he, "I'm never afraid with you."  Again, the digit six!  But “Us Two” signified, to me, that being with and loved by another can make scary stuff less so.
Sestet is a six line poem.  There may be a sixth sense for those who are clairvoyant.  A national theme park is called Six Flags. Numerology considers six to be a compassionate caretaker.  In both Judaism (with its six-pointed Star of David) and Christianity, the six might mean imperfection or connection. The Hebrew version notes both six days of creation and work.  Wikipedia indicates: “Six is the only number that is both the sum and the product of three consecutive positive numbers.”  “Genesis chapter 6 the word “man” appears six times; the sixth book of the bible is the name of a man; Joshua: (6 letters).”  Six years was the term for a Hebrew slave to serve, and the time allowed for fertile land to be used before resting it. The New Testament’s Book of Revelations notes that three sixes is the mark of the beast (the Devil).
Superstition slipped into action when President Ronald Reagan and his wife, after leaving office and moving to Los Angeles, changed the original address of their home from 666 St. Cloud Road to 668 St. Cloud Road.
History records specific plagues and flus with their epidemics, pandemics, and many of the methods tried to halt destruction of human life plus society.  Eventually, survivors will hug again, share celebrations in person, witness rites of passage, join hands, select items from supermarket shelves, book a cruise or a flight abroad, for examples.  Birthday candles will be extinguished with a push of a breath, live theatre will transport us to another place for a couple of hours as we sit among strangers sharing the experience.
When?  Our timetable doesn’t yet have a punch date to click as conductors once, long ago, did with a passenger’s ticket and the metal punch had a distinct sound.  But man will figure out how to eliminate fears from this newest deadly virus, control it, and possibly eradicate it.  Yes, another might develop before the century closes, and the process will go on again. Nature cycles.  So what can we do with numbers right now?  Possibly be grateful we are still counting them and hope the shovel for that specific six doesn’t happen until much-much later.

​‘Buy your tickets for the shuttle to the moon.’  Sounds laughable to consider being a tourist in outer space.  What kind of fool would consider that a travel destination.
 
Robert Browning wrote in his poem, Andrea del Sarto, published in 1855, “A man's reach should exceed his grasp, else what's a heaven for?"  Easier to understand his philosophy if you only read to the ‘comma’: "A man's reach should exceed his grasp.” Is being inquisitive important?
 
Imagine you are living in a log cabin with wood-burning fireplace for both heat and cooking; an outhouse serves as your bathroom.  A well holds your cold water supply.  Flaps cover your windows as glass panes have not yet been introduced.  You’ve all seen films depicting life in such time periods.  Can you hear the laughter if someone declared one-day there would be a house with heat from a power source, and toilets inside the home, and, maybe, an inside well?  Such chuckles could come from considering a way, during rain, to keep the daylight without shuttering the window cut-outs.
 
Imagine you are sitting in an open buggy, horses pulling it, happy you are not riding the horse.  It’s cold and a hand-made afghan covers you, but rain or snow begins to fall.  There are miles to go on the uneven dirt path and the buggy wobbles through the ruts.  Who could consider that there’d be an automobile to make the journey quicker, much less one with a closed top? 
 
My parents went to silent movies;  the wonder of ‘talkies’ was amazing.  They lived in apartment houses without elevators, and coin-operated heat for the rooms, and the individual units had no bathrooms.  A common bathroom was at the end of each floor for tenants on that level.  Bendix hadn’t yet invented the washing machine that could also wring out clothes in a spin cycle.  78 rpm records with a brief playing span seemed magical.
 
Man’s reach gave us inventions that had seemed impossible: light bulb; climate controlled houses and offices; propellor through jet airplanes; automobiles that have heat/cold air/voices telling destinations and how to reach them, telephones, for starters.  Our first tv entered our house in May 1948 with a test-pattern showing most of the day, yet we sat in front of that fascinated.  Automatic transmission was coming out for cars when I was a new driver but I learned on manual, which, today, is given a sporty name of stick-shift.  Steering was hard as there was no assisted power, and to make a turn the window had to be opened by the driver and the hand position indicated left or right turning.  During World War II, I warmed my clothing on a space heater, portable, that I shared with my sisters as we moved it from room to room; fuel for homes was in short supply.  Weekly, after I married, I also chiseled frost from the refrigerator, hand washed dishes; in 1961 I had a frost-free appliance and a portable dishwasher and couldn’t believe the wonder of such.  Soon after there appeared color-tv, automatic garage door openers, cassette tapes... incredible.  
 
Minds have to discard the ‘known’ and reach for ‘unknown’, accept ridicule as Wright Brothers, Edison, and others must have dealt with, realizing that what we don’t yet ‘know’ is valuable.  The cumbersome Stromberg Carlson telephone tied to a wall is a smartphone now.  A pile of shellac 78rpm records went the route to vinyl, LP’s, tapes, CD’s to fitting thousands of songs into an i-pod that itself is now obsolete.  A weighty Remington Rand portable typewriter, for me, was wonderfully replaced by an electric typewriter; in 1981 I bought one of the first IBM PC computers with the 5+” floppies, and even though few knew how to operate it I was determined to teach myself.  In 1988 Windows made the process easier, and floppies held more yet were reduced in size and not ‘floppy’ anymore.  Who could have imagined smartwatches, tablets, for example.
 
Without “A man's reach should exceed his grasp” quietly telling the satisfied that ‘more’ is the goal, and to never-ever be complacent, my offspring might have feared polio, newborns with problems would have died before sophisticated NICU’s, outer space would be only for star-gazers, even a suitcase would have no wheels.

​One day I will lie on my deathbed and reflect on my life. Will my final thoughts be about my stock portfolio or the nature of quantum gravity? I doubt it. As a doctor, I watched many people journey through the process of dying. It is never easy, no matter how well you may think you’re prepared.
The people I accompanied on this passage usually didn’t die “well”. Astounding as it may seem, most were shocked or surprised by the notion of their mortality. Death would never happen to them today. Maybe it was a possibility in the distant future, but not today.
 
In a world where everything dies, why were they stunned? At this precarious time, they stood in quicksand up to their necks. There was no life ring to grasp and they generally died without the sense their lives had meaning or purpose. They never asked the questions or did the work necessary to answer anything more than their superficial needs. They were frightened and lost.
I am not suggesting anyone goes happily into that dark night. In the few patients who I felt died “well”, they possessed a sense of peace, as though they accomplished their mission in life and were ready for whatever came next. Most didn’t seem worried about anything being next. They felt at ease with whatever was to happen without angst. They possessed a faith they had run the race well.
Most of the patients who died in peace seemed not to have words for their own end-of-life journey. Fully understanding the gravity of the storm swirling around them, they also depended on the heart’s way of knowing to sustain them. Contributions from both head and heart were necessary to sustain them in navigating their final days.
Our society doesn’t value questions about life and meaning that can’t be placed on a bumper sticker. We are mostly about the superficial and material and neglect the deep and meaningful. The answers that stick, are formed over years, not at the moment of last breath. These questions are not easily answered. Thoughts of personal demise are painful and usually avoided. It’s difficult to imagine a world without me.
Are there answers revealing meaning and purpose, and if so, how do we find them? Historically, religion was the source most of us turned to for answers about
meaning and purpose. The reference, at least in the Christian West, was an all-powerful God. This Deity created something from nothing, the first miracle. No mechanism existed other than God said it.
Growing up in the 1950s, I learned the Bible was the story of God creating the Universe and humanity’s relationship to the Creator. Much of the Old Testament seemed to me to be how God’s plan for Creation was continually thwarted by less than clever humans trying to live as though we are the only reason the Universe existed.
It’s difficult enough understanding stories written in the present in our common culture and language. I find it almost impossible to travel back two millennia and dig out wisdom from civilizations and world views so different from my own. Many people are able to bridge the gap in time and traditions, I am not one of them.
Then, in about the 4th century AD, the story stopped, and no more chapters are found. What happened? Why did the story of God and Creation stop in mid-stream? Little boys in the 1950s were not supposed to ask such questions, but it continued to bother me.
Growing up in the 1950s was a heady time. Science was on the ascendency, as jet airplanes, nuclear power, antibiotics and rockets, held out a utopian future satisfying human reason. We know how that turned out, forgetting the shadow side of progress. Science also fell short of fulfilling our deepest longings: for meaning, belonging and purpose. Head knowledge is not the same as wisdom.
Fast forward a few decades and now I am a retired surgeon living with my wife of over fifty years. I did work on resolutions of those nagging questions causing dissonance in my life for so long, but it wasn’t an easy slog. It also wasn’t a straight line leading from where I began to today. Many detours and blind alleys littered my path.
What did I have to offer those people who entrusted their lives to my often-clumsy care? I didn’t have the wisdom to help them on the final passages of life. Other than being concerned and hopefully compassionate, I was mute. Hadn’t I learned anything through science and medicine? Why couldn’t I articulate how to answer questions of who am I, what is my place in the Universe, and what is the purpose and meaning of my, soon to be departed, life?
My religion consisted of a series of clichés of little use. There remained too much dissonance in the common understanding of Christianity to help guide my life. Obstacles in applying ancient principles to modern living led to a dis-connect between belief and daily life. In the background lurked a feeling of incompleteness. Has anything happened in the last sixteen hundred years to fill in the blanks and generate a sense of harmony and peace?
Two competing world views, one of religion and the other of science profess answers to our deepest questions of meaning and purpose. Religion supplied heart knowledge while science delivered head knowledge and yet neither completely satisfies. Instead, we now have many disaffected and distrustful of both science and religion. Is there nowhere else to turn?
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to teach a course to mature adults on the wonders of the Universe. Light-years, black holes and colliding galaxies filled my first presentation. It was stunning in scope. Two problems raised their heads. First, the story was so full of enormous distances and powers it dwarfed most people’s experience in daily life. They enjoyed the bright colors and grandeur, but it remained a cerebral exercise. Second, the concern surfaced of how this amazing new story related to their lives. In essence, they said, so what? I fed their heads but starved their hearts.
In the first part of my life, I avoided lessons of the heart, looking only toward the factual for answers of meaning and purpose. I assumed science alone possessed the power to deliver fulfilling answers. No matter how hard I pushed science, the answers were always lacking in some quality I couldn’t quite grasp. It was like chasing a mirage, always just out of sight. I know now the missing quality was heart, where knowledge becomes wisdom and is lived day in and day out. My students told me the images and unimaginable powers were awesome, but not enough by themselves. More is needed.
The next time I taught the course, I decided to go all out. I would combine the stunning images and narrative of science with wisdom of the heart. Science would lay the foundation, leaving heart knowledge to complete the picture with meaning and purpose. A hurdle remained, little is written about how to carry out reconciling concerns of head and heart.
Using modern science and cosmology and aided by gorgeous pictures scattered around the internet, I took them on a tour of creation. Billion of years and trillions of miles became the ground of our search for meaning and purpose. We followed the evolution of the Universe as it progressed from nothing to the vast array of galaxies, stars, planets and life. We always looked for where our lives fit into this always expanding tapestry. There remained a problem.
While most of the class got the idea of using the Universe as a metaphor for our search for meaning, the scale presented a problem. The vastness and energies were so far beyond anything experienced in daily life some of the class was left adrift. I needed to find a smaller scale story more in keeping with daily experience.
Fortunately, the Universe possesses an economy of scale and pattern. Meaning creation, at many levels, follows similar general templates. It’s like the ripples we see in clouds miles high being the same pattern as the sand on a creek bottom. The story may be told, in all its wonder and meaning, at a scale anyone can experience. It is vast and personal at the same time.
No story is the reality it describes. We are creating a new myth or metaphor, consistent with the science of today and satisfying to the heart. Its value lies not in the words, but how our lives are affected and given purpose. The narrative I presented revealed a cosmology valid from anywhere in the Universe. It remains open to growth and discovery, consistent with the unfolding of the Universe. Unless the story maintains its flexibility and is subject to new knowledge, it will become ossified and suffer the same fate as our present metaphor of life.
The same wisdom and lessons, as of the Universe, can be discovered at a smaller scale. Our tale is how a human child arises from nothing to become the wonder it evolves into. It’s different but totally embedded in the creation of the Universe. Our human story begins before the first act of creation and doesn’t end with our personal death.
Each step is supported by but not limited to science. The scientific method was never intended to encompass all of existence. Questions of meaning, purpose and wisdom are beyond any scientific theory. In the final account, the reader should be able to develop answers to some of the profoundest questions humanity can ask: Who am I? What is my place in the Universe? What is my purpose in life?
Much happened in the last sixteen hundred years. A bridge is needed to span the gap in time and make sense of the new metaphor. We’ll start at the beginning of the Universe. I described the original state as Mystery. It is unknowable and larger than our concept of Universe. I used this porous, undefinable word as both a noun and verb. After one session, a retired minister came up and asked why didn’t I just call Mystery, God? Surely, that is what I was referring to. I told him the “G” word is a fighting word.
Everyone has strongly held ideas of what God is or isn’t, or whether God exists. If I used that word, blood would stain the floor. Instead, I chose the word Mystery. The other reason was I have no idea of what Mystery is. If I did, it wouldn’t be Mystery. Think of it as the primordial stuff or principle of the Universe.
Science calls this a singularity or Oneness, beyond human language and concepts, and yet it describes the entire Universe, a nothingness. This state is before the Universe unfolded according to the Big Bang Theory. (Search Google: Big Bang Theory Cosmology).
I cannot conceive of “nothingness”, another reason to use Mystery, but I also use singularity or Oneness. I call it by different names because none apply.  It is a word without definition and open in all directions. With no definition, it can’t be hemmed in or fit into a box. It also saves much bloodshed. It’s hard to fight over Mystery.
It has no physical characteristics, but a few attributes are distinguishable. One is it has infinite potential to become all that ever was, is or will be. Another related to its turning from potential into the things and properties of our material world. I call it creative becoming.
Another point about Mystery, it’s the only reference point for all that follows in creation and our story. Any other viewpoint may be skewed and unreliable. Humanity is important but not the center of existence. It’s not always about us. The wisdom of the Universe may be the same as understood by us, or it may be radically different and not understandable from our limited viewpoint. Shifting our perspective to the Universe clears much of the dissonance found in our ancient stories and cosmology.
As we observe and study the evolution of the Universe, an additional principle stands out, nothing is destroyed, only transformed. Nothing is wasted and everything is of value in the unfolding drama of existence. Things are only destroyed when viewed from our smaller perspective and not from that of the Mystery. Often, we can’t see what’s going on behind the curtain.
The Universe is a self-disclosing drama, beginning as nothing or “nothingness” and becoming something. No mechanism exists, it just is. We continue to marvel at the myriad ways it manifests throughout the cosmos. We think the general flow of how the Universe comes into being is described in the Big Bang Theory. It isn’t the story of an explosion, like a firecracker, going off somewhere in space far away, and us observing the pieces flying everywhere. Instead, we are embedded in this flowering of existence. It is the entire Universe coming into being. It is impossible to sit outside and watch it happen. Outside doesn’t exist.
The characteristics I call infinite potential and creative becoming have a flow and it’s like breathing, in and out and back again. The most famous equation in science is Einstein’s . This describes a symmetry or flow between energy and matter. They go back and forth; both are forms of the same thing. Potential and becoming are similar.
I also describe an imaginary “arrow” representing this circular flow. It has nothing to do with physical properties like entropy. It is just a metaphor of the way the Universe becomes.
The arrow flies as though guided by an unseen compass exerting a creative pressure on the becoming process. The general flow is toward “more”: capability, adaptivity, fullness and any other “more” qualification you might wish to add. It breathes between potential and becoming. They reinforce each other.
Dead ends and mistakes happen along the way. When potential becomes a material object and brushes up with the rest of the world, the new form may not be able to survive or may need modifications. The material form flows back to potential and the arrow tries again. Nothing is destroyed, only transformed. We call this movement evolution.
One of the consequences of the flow is it only operates from the viewpoint of the Mystery, meaning we humans may not understand why or how events happen. An element of faith is necessary to accept the Universe is evolving and becoming as it should.
The story is ready to be written both in our minds and our hearts. Only there will it find meaning and transform into wisdom.
                                           A Story for the Ages
The formation of a human child is embedded in the unfolding of the Universe. Only the scale is different. Both accounts are full of Mystery and wonder. Neither is understood beyond a cursory level.
The Universe becomes something from nothing, and a human child follows the same pattern. On the larger scale, the “nothingness” becomes some form of energy. This energy is the fullness of the Universe at a specific time and contains the potential for all that follows. You might say the original energy contains the cosmic DNA of the Universe.
On our human scale, two non-viable cells, a sperm and egg represent our “nothingness”. In textbook line drawings, the merger of egg and sperm is simple. The reality of this merger is elegant and beyond comprehension. It happens, but how is as mysterious as the first becoming of the Universe. The creation of a fertilized egg is pure potential, containing within itself everything necessary to guide and form the body of a human child.
The language used to describe these events and flow, require poetic license since no words or concepts describing many of these becoming’s exist. Just as the Universe contains everything by definition, so does a developing human embryo. Thought, imagination, creativity and wonder are not physical things but are still real. Most of the reality of both the Universe and a human are invisible and immaterial. The potential for all this is embedded in the Universe and child from their inception.
The Universe progresses from nothing to energy to matter and all the invisible unknown forms of existence. This is the general direction of the arrow as nothing becomes something, taking on many forms. The arrow flies toward more capability, creativity, fullness, diversity and adaptability.
A human embryo does the same using the pattern of building with cells, the LEGO block of life. The fertilized egg is the first cell with the potential to become a human being. Each step of the way, from one cell to a trillion, is guided by the arrow toward “more”. There is a sense of each step knowing what comes next, even though the cells never completed a similar process before. Starting with a simpler form, more complexity and capability follows with each step.
In human form, the original nothingness is the sperm and egg. These two half cells unite and form a single fertilized egg. The single cell is almost pure potential, with very little physicality. Within this cell is the complete genetic potential and fullness of a human baby. Implicit in this single cell is an arrow knowing where it’s going. The exact sequence of events leading up to the birth of a child and beyond is present in a single bit of material and its embedded potential. As the result, the Mystery becomes incarnate.
As an example, follow the development of a human heart. (Search: Google Images, Embryology of human heart). Simpler, more primitive cells start to form parallel tubes which then undergo a transformation in shape and structure. In only two weeks, the heart is formed and beating. The final product is the result of the arrow becoming more at each step of the way as if it knows its target, a heart. How this is embedded in our DNA is a mystery.
The Big Bang begins as nothing and becomes something, energy. The potential for all that follows is embedded in a bit of energy. The arrow works everywhere at all scales. Human development is the same. Nine months after conception, a trillion-celled baby emerges, beginning the lifelong process of becoming fully human.
Human evolution begins as pure potential and incorporates material from the physical world as it progresses. Continuing throughout life, bodily change generally follows the patterns set down by the child’s genetic endowment. Height, sex, hair color and all the rest of the characteristics we associate with ourselves aren’t easily or quickly changed.
One part of our body is governed by a different flight path of the arrow, our brain. While it has a fixed component, it is both flexible and changeable. It can adapt to new environments like no other bodily system. If our environment turns cold, we can either wait for the evolutionary process to grow a thick fur coat, or we can quickly add a layer of clothes for comfort and safety.
The arrow changed directions. Before, it concerned itself with bodily changes leading to more adaptability to our environment. With the formation of our brains, there is less emphasis on bodily changes and more on an entirely new set of targets. These would be sentience, knowledge, imagination and creativity.
The power of these changes is unprecedented. Imagination, wonder, awe, and abstract thinking become possible. Humans can ponder questions of our origins and the meaning of life. Perhaps for the first time, the Universe developed the ability to reflect on itself. The lights went on and humanity became more than just unreflective creatures.
As the arrow flies, its course can be altered, at least for a time. The arrow points toward personal growth, understanding, creativity and fullness, from before birth through death. What we call free will allows us to help or hinder its path. Our lives and purpose are entwined in its judicious use.
Humans are not separate creatures divorced from other forms of life, the cosmos and Earth. We are embedded in a reality far surpassing our senses. Just as there are no single-celled creatures living separated from life on Earth, our bodies are made of more than human cells. Humans are composite creatures, consisting of human derived cells and an entire ecosystem of bacteria, fungi, viruses and single-celled creatures all working together giving the experience of one single human.
Our minds are now free to roam the depths of interstellar space and return to the beginning of time. The evolution of the entire Universe goes into creating a human being. The Mystery of the Universe is fully present in us. It is us, as it lives itself.
Two processes, the formation of the Universe and a human child are different, yet use the same template. Both are complex beyond human understanding and remain mysterious, full of potential and capability. Being embedded in the Universe gives us the perspective and knowledge to move forward. Our story is brought up to date and written in terms we can begin to appreciate. The foundation is laid and those questions plaguing us for the ages are ready for answers.
                                          The Questions  
Use your experience when answering these questions and ask whether the earlier discussion rings true. The wisdom you encounter should be meaningful to your life and consistent with what we understand and experience of the Universe.
One reward is a sense of peace, as the dissonances between the old story and the reality of daily life resolve. The contemporary story doesn’t negate the old, instead it provides a much-needed update. The Universe is our teacher. She wants us to know her wisdom. Listen to her voice.
Who am I?
I am not my job, social status, gender, family relationship, or any other description society uses. These are like the clothes I wear. They are removed and discarded with no eternal consequences. Who I am, relates to my fundamental relationship with Mystery.
Everything that was, is or will be is One with the original Mystery before the Universe began its great transformation. That relationship is still in effect. I have seen where I come from, the Mystery of creation. I am part of it and it is what I am. Creation and I are more than just connected; the Oneness is embedded in us here and now in the 21st century.
Because of this primal relationship, all my fellow humans are closer to me than an identical twin. This close relationship extends to all life and the inanimate world as well. We are all interdependent, and I must use my will, talent and effort to help creation become, more.
From this relationship, I have responsibilities. I must respect and value not just fellow humans but the entirety of creation. To harm any part, harms all. To disrespect or injure any part of creation goes against the flight path of the arrow. A high price is exacted for attempting to divert its course. The Mystery created me and every human as part of a greater whole. Humanity is a significant part, but not the sole focus of the Mystery.
What is my home?
My home is the Mystery or Oneness and has been since before the beginning of time. This is where I am from, live and where I will return, when this phase of life is complete. There is no other place to go.
Earth is the only known place in the Universe with life. I only flourish when I live in harmony, respect and love with my fellow humans, the natural world and Earth. Any other way, flies against the course of the arrow and cannot succeed for long. To injure Earth harms myself.
My home is not a physical place or temporary dwelling subject to storms and decay. I am embedded in this Mystery, as it is embedded in me. Due to this relationship, any idea of separation from any part of creation is an illusion.
What is the purpose of my life?
My purpose is to first know who I am and where I am from, then to live in harmony with that experience. If I am to live a life of meaning and purpose, it requires both head and heart knowledge. The arrow always wants me, in my life, to become more. As a sentient being, my responsibility is to push the envelope of becoming and aid in the creative process which has been going on for over thirteen billion years. My energy, creativity, and effort should aim toward this goal.
My free will is the ability to help or hinder evolution move toward more, to help guide the arrow or try to knock it off course for limited and misguided short-term gain.
In a sentence, my purpose is to recognize and incorporate into my life the original Oneness. It is always present even if I don’t recognize it.
What is the frame of reference for finding meaning?
Only one viewpoint is true, that of the Universe or Mystery. What may be a tragedy to humans will instead be transformative, looking at the entire tapestry. Nothing is destroyed.
From the viewpoint of humanity, life is full of dissonance. Due to our tunnel vision, I can see only an infinitesimal part of creation at one time. From my restricted perch, it may be impossible to decipher what the Universe is doing. At some point, an element of faith has to develop; the Universe is evolving as it should. My job is to help the arrow find its mark, even if I don’t see its target.
What is our common story or cosmology?
Everything in the Universe originates from the Mystery or the singularity before the unfolding of creation begins. No matter the knowledge we discover, an undefinable Oneness will be our common heritage. Every sentient being in the cosmos should be able to discover the same. We are of the same origin, including the animate and inanimate worlds. There are no lesser beings. Everything and everyone have a place for a time, transform, and then return to Mystery. We, along with creation, are children of the Universe, no matter what corner is called home.
What are life and death?  
To me, these may appear to be different states of existence. Both are delusions stemming from my distorted point of view. There is only one valid perspective, the Universe, and it transforms. It destroys nothing.
Life and death are part of a continual flow of nothing becoming something and then back again. Life and death are not separate states of being. Nothingness and somethingness are two sides of the same coin. From the viewpoint of the coin, one side can’t see the other. The Mystery sees both, as it is both. I contain elements of both sides at all times during my life. The Universe prepared for over thirteen billion years to bring me into being.
Starting as pure potential, I gradually put on the cloak of a material body. Now I retain elements of both. Life is a rough and tumble experience. My body, as part of the material world, will one day wear out. It will no longer be able to sustain the non-material potential present during my life. Both my material body and non-material potential are immersed in the Mystery. I will be transformed as I return to the place I never left. Nothing is destroyed, only transformed. Hopefully, the arrow will be a bit closer to its target. This is the way of the Universe.
Summary:
I have used metaphors of the Universe and the coming into being of a human child. The reality is there are probably an infinite number of ways to find the same timeless truth. If the smallest part of what I am describing is right, all becoming points to the same wonder and awe. Something comes from nothing. Only the details are different.
This new metaphor helps find meaning and purpose in a vast and wonderful place we call Universe. No matter at what scale the cosmos is examined, the storyline is consistent. The key is to behold, and to experience, both with the mind and heart, the wonders and meaning prepared for us to discover.
Mystery may be called by many names. It doesn’t care. Just don’t put it into a box or limit the unfolding. Observe and listen attentively to your surroundings. Imagine your life as experienced by the Mystery. There is profound meaning to be discovered.
Remember the goal of your personal arrow, to become “more” yourself and aid the Universe to do the same. To not try is thwarting the flight of the arrow. It wants you, me and the Universe to be more. Journey on.
                                                          The End
 

​In the first dream I had, I tested positive for Coronavirus.  Delirious, I woke up and fell to my knees, praying.  I recall saying “No, no, no…” over and over again.
 
Subsequent nights included dreams in which I was repeatedly trying to call my doctor but getting a “wrong number” or “out of business” message, people in HAZMAT suits chasing me, and suffocation dreams. 
 
I have no doubt that, as COVID-10 becomes the new zeitgeist of our time, my dreams and nightmares are a byproduct of streaming too many virus movies, watching too much news and doing too many web searches starting with “Coronavirus and _________”.
 
Last night was the most horrific nightmare by far. 
 
In my dream, I had to take an emergency flight out of LAX to see an old boyfriend.  We had recently reconnected over social media because of the pandemic and we both agreed that we still loved each other and wanted to be together. 
 
As some sort of small shred of compassion still left in the apocalyptic pandemic world, the government was issuing each citizen a one-way, “final flight” to meet up with a loved one. 
 
We were told that it was the last chance we had to see each other again, as global tourism was shutting down – for good.  Once we got to our destination, we could never travel again.
 
When I got inside the airport, I was shocked by what I saw:
 
The airport was packed as frantic travelers pushed and shoved and trampled each other to get to their last allotted flight before the borders would be sealed.  The world was just hours away from a full and permanent lockdown.
 
All tourists had gloves and masks.  Many had strange, makeshift protective gear – from snorkeling masks to duct-tape-and-plastic-bag body suits, almost looking like body bags.  All employees had gas masks and major protective gear from head to toe. 
 
Horrified, I tried to turn around to leave but was abruptly stopped by two security agents in biohazard gear and was strictly told that there was “no turning back.”
 
I watched the glass doors to the outside seal shut with a sickening, vacuum-like swoop.
 
As they pushed me with rifles toward the TSA line, I fished in my purse for my passport and government papers, which included more personal information than I had ever given anyone. 
 
I had some kind of special passport – something I applied for that let me travel one last time to soon be with – and quite possible soon dies with – the one I loved.
 
The passports were given out by a lottery system and mu number was recently chosen by the government.
 
Airport employees were yelling over megaphones.  The National Guard was in place inside and outside the building.  Police and police dogs were everywhere. 
 
The TSA was stretched to its breaking point like ropes on a breaking bridge over a deadly river.
 
As I put my bags down on the security belt, I was told to strip down to my bra and underwear.  Before I would protest, a security officer gave me a towel and two women in PPE lead me to a decontamination shower where they handed me a white paper gown and told me to take off my bra and underwear. 
 
(This is quite possibly a memory of a real-life trauma I experienced in my college sorority when I was, along with the other new pledges, awoken in the night, led to shower, told to strip, take off all jewelry and nail polish, and given white sheets to cover us until we were taken to an undisclosed location for a clandestine ceremony – about a topic so secret that if we told a soul, our lips would “wither and return to dust.”  Perhaps another piece on this true story later.)
 
In the airport bathroom, I stepped into a narrow, Plexiglas decontamination chamber and held out my arms as a cold, chlorine-smelling mist sprayed over my shivering body.
 
I put on the paper gown ad was then escorted by a woman to more TSA checkpoints – a kind of X-Ray scanner like the TSA has now that can see through your clothes, but instead of scanning for the typical terrorist weapons like knives, bombs and guns, this one was scanning for bioweapons. 
 
Even though I had nothing on but a paper gown, I kept beeping.  I had to go through the scanner machine several times. 
 
I finally made it through the scanner after a long line and was given a green hospital bracelet.  I was then told that my belongings, clothes and luggage would be returned to me once I was in my seat on the plane.  All I had was my gown, plastic coverings on my feet, and my plane ticket. 
 
On my way to my gate, I was looking around, so horrified and bewildered at what I was seeing that I lost my footing going up the escalator and I tripped.  I fell and cut my palm open on one of the metal, jagged stairs.  As I struggled to rise at the top of the escalator, a policewoman, a high-ranking male police officer and some kind of high-security airport agent surrounded me and lifted me to my feet. 
 
The gash on my palm was bright red and bleeding.  A woman in a hazmat suit took out a scanner that resembles those forehead temperature scanners we’ve become all too accustomed to lately.
 
“I don’t have a fever!” I said, “They took my temperature when I got here. “ 
 
“We’re not scanning for fever, Ma’am,” the high-security police officer said, “We’re scanning your blood for bioterrorism.” 
 
“What?” 
 
The woman scanned the cut on my palm. 
 
As we waited for the results on the scanner, the police officer said, “Ma’am, you understand that if you test positive, you will be 100% guilty of international terrorism” 
 
I started gasping for air.  I wasn’t sure if it was from the shock of what I had just heard or if I was suddenly experiencing a telltale symptom of the virus.  As one of the officers readied his gun and another slapped a handcuff on my wrist, I woke up. 
 
 
I was in sweats, sitting up and panting. 
 
As is often the case when waking up from a vivid nightmare, I was still groggy and was trying to convince myself that the reality I was now back in did not contain elements of my staggeringly frightening dream.  But there we’re some elements.  And I was scared.
 
I felt my forehead – cool to the touch.  I turned on the light, got up, splashed cold water on my face, then found a clean towel instead of the used one in the bathroom.  I wiped off my face and the sweat from the dream, washed my hands vigorously with bright orange liquid antibacterial soap, then used the clean towel to turn off the water and turn the doorknob. 
 
I gulped some clean water from the glass on my nightstand and got back in bed.  I didn’t go back to sleep after that.  I didn’t dare. 
 
 
In an April 5th, 2020 article  in USA Today by Alia A. Dastagir entitled “Coronavirus interrupted our lives.  Now It’s infiltrating our dreams”,  Dastagir writes:
 
“Experts say dreams are a way for people to understand themselves.  Their main function is to process emotions, which for many people have been more intense during a pandemic.  People’s waking lives are fraught – fear, uncertainty, and helplessness pervade the day.  Those same emotions make respite at night elusive. “’
 
She quotes psychologist Ian Wallace, who says, ‘In our lives… we’re only consciously aware of about 2% of what’s going on around us and the other 98%. Most of that is emotional, and we use our dreams as a way of understanding those emotions…In a situation like this pandemic, where emotions are heightened, people’s awareness of their dreams are also heightened and these dreams might seem more vivid and more scary.’
 
Perhaps in our waking lives, we can use our dreams as insights into our inner selves as well as the hearts and minds of those dear to us.  Coronavirus dreams are certainly scary, but if we can use them as an opportunity rather than something to fear, we can connect with ourselves and others in such a way that could lead to a more compassionate, healed, post-pandemic society.
 
I plan to document my dreams here and elsewhere, hoping that this will be the case. 
 

​Tennis anyone?  Horseback riding?  A round of golf?  Try your luck at the shooting range, or out on the hunting grounds?  Aim clear of the private zoo, with its collection of peacocks, yaks, ostriches, deer, antelope, pheasants, and wild boar.  For the motoring minded there is a lineup of antique cars to ogle, 27 in all, valued at more than $1 million.  At the end of a busy day a spa awaits to offer massages (Thai, Swedish, or facial, with designated rooms for each), a tanning room if nagging clouds have obscured the Slavic sun, and a fully functional gym to tone muscles left untried.  Dinner awaits in either of two formal dining rooms or a restaurant housed in a Spanish warship afloat on a manmade lake.  Before bedtime, nightcaps are poured into crystal glasses in the wood-paneled bar.
            Were these the delights on offer at a five-star resort on the Black Sea coast?  No, they awaited guests of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych at Mezhyhiriya, site of his country home until he fled to Russia on February 21, 2014, following a flurry of nationwide protests.  Until then he could lay claim to the dacha of all dachas, funded through the proven combination of political savvy, ritual payoffs, exploitation of bureaucratic loopholes, and ability to pull the strings of power so that the Ukrainian state would become a puppet in the service of his personal needs, and tastes.
            Mezhyhiriya is a land of low rolling hills and woodland along the Dnipro River.  As expected, its history is as knotty as the rest of Ukraine.  Mezhyhiriya got its start as the site of a monastery built in 1786, but the next year it was burned to the ground, allegedly on the order of Catherine the Great.  One hundred years later it was resurrected as a convent, but its lease on life was cut short in 1923, when the Bolsheviks ordered it closed following the Russian Revolution.  For a few years Mezhyhiriya served as a school for ceramics production, and then a retreat for Communist Party bosses until Nazi officer Erich Koch chose it as his home during the German occupation of World War II.
How Yanukovych came to acquire Mezhyhiriya is something of a case study in the mechanisms of Ukrainian corruption.  He came of age in the hardscrabble province of Donetsk in the post-Soviet 1990s, when organized crime was the primary industry in the region.  In his teens he did jail time for robbery and assault, but worked hard enough on polishing his image to become the governor of Donetsk in 1997.  Five years later he was appointed prime minister by president Leonid Kuchma and was given one of the buildings at Mezhyhiriya that had been lying idle in the Fund for State Property for his exclusive use.  Yanukovych had quickly learned the tricks of Ukraine’s political trade.  The following year he was able to rent another building through a state charity based in Donetsk, under the condition it would be used for “the promotion of national and international programs aimed at improving socioeconomic status.”  He paid 80 cents a year in rent.
Old habits die hard, and no harder than in countries long governed by the backdoor rules of cronyism, prestige, and financial leverage.  He cozied up to big business interests, including billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, founder of the System Capital Management Group, a conglomerate involved in mining, energy, banking, insurance, telecommunications, and real estate.  Government positions from the police department and taxation to diplomatic posts and heads of government agencies were filled with “friends of Yanukovych,” mainly from the Donetsk region.
In 2004, Yanukovych saw an opportunity to run for the presidency but was defeated by Viktor Yushchenko in a closely contested race that ended in a runoff.  Six years later he tried again and this time defeated professed reformer and prime minister Yulia Timoshenko, and he was savvy enough to wrap himself in a reformist cloak.  Shortly after taking power he stated: “Bureaucracy and corruption are today hiding behind democratic slogans in Ukraine. . . . because a small handful of people who have been plundering the country for 20 years, from which the whole society, the whole state and our image in the world have been suffering.”
The masquerade didn’t last.  A year later Yanukovych found himself dutifully following the autocrat’s playbook.  Rival Timoshenko was thrown in jail on trumped up charges of corruption.  Yanukovych sought to see Russian declared an official language, rejected NATO membership in favor of Ukraine becoming a neutral, nonaligned state, and appeased Vladimir Putin by pushing for an agreement on the status of Russia’s Black Sea fleet at the port of Sebastopol—a move that arguably emboldened Putin to seize the entire Crimea four years later.
But Yanukovych had overplayed his hand.  Ukrainians had had enough.  Near the end of 2013 protestors filled central Kiev and came onto the streets in other cities.  They, too, had been hardened in the realities of Ukrainian politics, having faced down security forces in another uprising in 2004.  Yanukovych saw the writing on the wall.  In February 2014 he fled Kiev for the eastern city of Kharkiv, and from there hopped over the border for safe haven in Russia after a warrant was issued for his arrest.  The charge—the mass murder of protestors.
The Orange Revolution of 2014 ended Yanukovych’s plans for control of the Ukrainian government, and his hold on Mezhyhiriya.  Yushchenko and Timoshenko became president and prime minister.  Yanukovych was shown the exit and evicted from Mezhyhiriya.  Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the next prime minister, estimated that within two years of Yanukovych’s time in office $2 billion in bribes were paid to officials across the government spectrum—senior judges, members of parliament, the election commission, international organizations, and anyone else who could benefit from, and offer benefits to, the Yanukovych regime.  And during his hold on power government funds worth $70 billion were spirited out of the country.  Yanukovych’s net worth today is estimated at $12 billion, yet in his entire career as a government functionary his salary never topped $2,000 a month.
I had read a great deal about Mezhyhiriya in both the mainstream and tabloid press, but reading is first cousin to hearsay, while seeing is believing.  So one cold, cloudy December day in Kiev I decided to head out to the suburbs to see it for myself.  I took the M3 metro line to its terminal station and there hopped on the 902 bus for the last leg of the trip. 
Earlier I had read that a spanking-new highway had been built to link Mezhyhiriya to Kiev so the president could rush to his country retreat untrammeled by local traffic.  But the road from the M3 metro to the gates of Mezhyhiriya would have passed for standard issue just about anywhere in Ukraine.  Once it leaves the Heroiv Dnipro metro station it passes through Kiev suburbia, lined with the customary cordon of shopping complexes, gas stations, and fast-food restaurants.  As it approaches Mezhyhiriya the townhouses become spacious villas girdled with walls and fences, and the cars in their driveways rise in price and resale value.  This is hardly Yanukovych’s world—far from it, and far below it—but it does represent the expanding upper class that benefits from contacts with oligarchs and the nouveau riche who feed from the trough of politicians like Yanukovych.  
Soon enough the bus reached its end point—a tiny parking lot across from a large sign that announced, in English, “Mezhyhiriya National Park.”  But no English was spoken at the tiny ticket kiosk at the entrance gate.  A tinier plastic window slid open and the woman on the other side snapped at me when I tried to ask about the widely advertised guided tour.  I paid for my ticket, she pointed toward the gate, and the window slid shut.
There was no one to punch my ticket so I walked on through.  A pair of security guards in olive drab fatigues with wool stocking caps pulled over their heads stomped their feet to ward off the winter chill.  One recognized the word “excursion” and waved vaguely beyond a stand of trees and in the direction of I knew not what.
I wandered deeper into the grounds, crossed over a bridge that spanned one of Yanukovych’s many manmade ponds.  The bridge and the pond and the rolling greenery evoked an Asian garden, even in December, but the marble busts perched on pedestals tried to mimic the architectural glory of Versailles, Peterhof, and Schonbrunn.  They served as a rude transition from commoner’s Kiev, with its crowded, rumbling metro and irregular bus service, and the make-believe world of the oligarch class.
Yet aside from the stone heads and odd security guard, the grounds were empty.  Further ahead a plume of colored balloons floated in the breeze at the entrance to a bland, squat building that turned out to be the Mezhyhiriya souvenir shop.  I popped in, more to get warm than with any hope of getting reliable information about the tours. 
Cotton linen shirts and blouses embroidered with geometric peasant patterns hung on the walls.  Hand-carved wooden knickknacks were piled in plastic bins.  It wasn’t so much a shop as a shrine to rural Ukrainian culture, as most souvenir shops are in Ukraine these days.  Ever since the Russian invasion of 2014 half of Ukraine has become a flea market peddling resurgent nationalism wrapped in the homespun symbolism of the heartland.  It stirs the memory of a time, illusory it may be, before complex geopolitics made the world, well—more complicated.
The clerk was immersed in his smartphone and hardly noticed me enter.  Were tours running?  The sign at the entrance gate said they were conducted daily at two o’clock.  I raised two fingers.
He held up a printed sign the size of a piece of paper and pointed to a phone number.  I tried it.  A voice answered, and I asked about a tour, or “excursion.”  There was a grumbled reply, and the line went dead.
The clerk had returned to his smartphone game.  I got his attention, pointed to my own phone, and shrugged.  He put his game on pause and tried a different number.  There was an answer.  He babbled to someone on the other end, cut off, and then led me out the door.
“Five,” he said, extending as many fingers.
I shrugged.
“Five,” he said again.  “Five,” and this time pointed around the corner of the building.  “Five!” he repeated, and then returned to his cave of warmth and the distraction of his video game.
I did as I was told, took two right turns but found nothing but a locked glass door and large adjoining window filled with a paper mache mockup of Viktor Yanukovych.  I waited, beat my feet together.  A guard or two strolled along the footpath, and a woman with two children bundled into bright, puffy parkas the color of gumballs.  I felt like a fool, standing idle in the December chill, but after a few minutes the door rattled open and a man appeared wrapped in a flag—not the blue and yellow banner of modern Ukraine but one comprised of two black and red stripes and embroidered with the tryub, a slender, aquiline trident that appears on T-shirts and coffee mugs, soldier’s graves and flower arrangements, and has become independent Ukraine’s national symbol.  The flag itself evoked a whiff of déjà vu—it had been the standard of the Ukrainian Liberation Army in its struggle against the Nazi occupation in World War II.  Throughout the former Soviet Union history is a stain that continues to bleed through the fabric of the present day.
The man draped in red and black was Petro Oliynyk.  Petro was from the western city of Lviv, which languished under Polish rule for almost 600 years before the carve-up of eastern Europe in the aftermath of World War I pass it to the control of the Soviet Union.  Petro had run a grocery store in Lviv but came to Kiev in 2014 to join the Orange Revolution that eventually toppled Yanukovych, and afterward found a second career as the guardian, host, and tour guide of the former president’s country digs.
“Health club,” Petro smirked, snapping on the lights in the separate chambers designated for massage, suntan, and facial treatments, but he saved the best for last.  Another light popped on in room where the walls were caked from floor to ceiling in sparkling white. 
“Salt,” Petro said.  He inhaled deeply.  “For the lungs.”  His grin spread wider.  The scent was thick enough to taste.  I licked my finger and rubbed it along the wall, touched it to my tongue—a taste test.  It passed.
“One person,” Petro chirped, and then he was on the move again, jangling an immense ring of keys that hinted at even more spectacles to come.
Petro led me to an underground passage that led from the gift shop entrance to the “Honka,” named for the Finnish company specializing in the construction of log buildings that built the “club house,” the modest name it acquired during Yanukovych’s salad days.  We emerged into another underground reception room.  Petro again jangled his keys and opened the gateway to a greenhouse-like corridor outfitted with tropical plants and bird cages. 
“Cockatoo,” Petro chirped, pointing at a cage where a ball of bright orange and pink feathers fluttered inside. 
Again the keys jangled.  We entered another reception room.  A dark-wood-paneled bar stocked with premier liqueurs awaited guests in a small room to the left.  Yanukovych’s tastes were definitely national budget-sized.  The bar featured bottles of Cristal, a liqueur favored by 19th-century Russian tsars.
Petro tapped the surface of a circular glass table in the center of the room.  It was at least an inch thick, with decorative frosted trim wrapped around its circumference.
“Crystal—French,” Petro snipped.
It was time to enter the main house.  An elevator awaited.  The former president of Ukraine was not going to waste precious state time climbing stairs.
Yanukovych’s summer-home elevator was double-doored, both French crystal, decorated in frosted designs.  Petro and I were now traveling within the summer cottage as the former president would have.  We reached the first floor.  More keys jangled.  Petro flipped a light switch.  A billiard table—the necessary fixture of any British aristocrat worthy of the name –filled the middle of a large drawing room.  Petro flicked his finger at on the surface of a window that overlooked the Dnipro.  A ping rang through the room.
“Crystal,” Petro added—without the ping.
He pointed to a trio of mosaic panels stretched across the back wall.  They were Mediterranean in style—Greek, ancient or modern, maybe Italian, or Roman.  Whatever their intent, they evoked a classical age.  Petro tapped the crusty glass baubles dangling from a light fixture.
“Swarovski,” he said, and again—“All for one person.”  And after the necessary pause: “Super crazy!”
The keys rattled again.  Petro flung open a door made of hand-carved cherrywood, priced at $64,000 per panel, according to Mezhyhiriya’s own accounting.  What awaited?  A dining room that sat two dozen.  Once again, crystal glass windows offered a crystal-clear view of the Dnipro.
“Crocodile,” Petro said, pointing to the leathery skin stretched out on the tabletop.  But the reptile skin wasn’t the highlight.  Petro pointed at the floor.  For the first time I noticed it—a mix of hardwoods that formed swirling patterns that drew from the interior designs of ancient Greece and Rome.
“Parquet,” Petro said.  “All Ukrainian wood.”
I rubbed a finger across the surface, the margins where the various woods and patterns met.  It was marble smooth, the entire surface untroubled by the slightest change in material or design.  Only master craftsmen could have accomplished the feat.
Petro’s keys rattled once more.  He led me into Mezhyhiriya’s private cinema.  A TV screen the size of the billiard table filled one wall, but this was would have been by obscured by the silver screen that descended, when needed, from its resting port above.  Fifteen or 20 leather recliners awaited the president’s favored audience.  Upfront, stage right and left, were a pair of overly oversized leather thrones that were intended to magnify the stature of anyone they received but in truth did the opposite, made them seem small and inconsequential.  I wondered if Yanukovych reserved these for guests he wanted to humble or himself.  My guess is the latter.
Petro and I rode the crystal elevator up another floor.  Another dining room awaited, larger than the one below.  Another giant TV screen filled the far wall.  In every room we passed there had been at least one TV screen, sometimes two, or even three, all two meters wide, all high definition, all Sony.  I asked Petro how many TV screens filled Mezhyhiriya.
“Twenty-two,” he replied.
Here the floor was even more multicolored, or multi-shaded, than the one below, and even more dazzlingly intricate.  Complex patterns were expressed in swirls and curves of brown, beige, yellow, and amber.
But enough of the floor—Petro ran his hand along the top of a chair. 
“Silk,” he said.
I ran my finger along the chair.  It was soft and as smooth at the parquet floor, the silk tightly spun, without as much as a ripple for the threads of gold brocade.
“One person?” I threw at Petro.
“Super crazy,” he replied.
The thicket of keys rattled again.  A door swung open.    Petro—host, guide, footman exemplar—offered me entrance with a sweeping gesture of his hand.  Beyond the threshold was the Honka’s holy of holies: Mezhyhiriya’s master bedroom gazes out over the Dnipro beyond a balcony separated from the main chamber by floor-to-ceiling panes of crystal.  It was as big as a New York apartment.  The cherrywood headboard stood high against the wall like an Orthodox altarpiece.  A yellow silk bedcover, putting-green smooth, stretched out below.  At the back of the room, undivided from the sleeping area, was Yanukovych’s toilette.  Petro pointed to the faucets.
“No gold,” he said, dispelling a myth of Mezhyhiriya.  Yanukovych’s golf clubs may have been golden but his water taps, which few would see, were merely gold plated.  But the floor of the shower, of walled-in glass, was real, genuine mosaic.
The household lift sped us down to the first floor and Mezhyhiriya’s showpiece—the grand salon, three stories high.  A white Steinway limited-edition piano stood in the bay window, a replica of the original that John Lennon had given to Yoko Ono.
            Petro was quick with the numbers: “Only twenty-five made.”
            The salon was several rooms in one, 18th-century style, with separate seating areas for conversation, games, musical entertainment, and since the 21st century—television.  Another cinema-size screen took pride of place above a circle of leather couches. 
            The walls glowed warm reddish brown, matching the carved ceiling, the curved double staircase, and the balcony overlooking the entire room below.
            “Cherrywood,” Petro stated, “all cherrywood,” his hand drawing a sweeping arc, taking it all in.
            Petro’s tour was wrapping up.  He fished for the last of his keys and unlocked the door that would return me to the grounds, and ultimately everyday Ukraine—the December chill and grey clouds scudding across the sky, the crowded metro, the vendors offering sausage rolls and half-liter cans of beer.  The annual profit from one of these stalls would have paid for a single Swarovski bauble at Mezhyhiriya.
            It was a bit of a walk back to the entrance gate, enough time, if I dawdled, to tally some of the costs of Mezhyhiriya.  The price for the wooden staircases—$200,000; paneling for the winter garden—$328,000; the cover for a neoclassical column and flight of steps— $430,000.  Almost $1 million was spent on imported fittings.  Each chandelier cost the Ukrainian budget $100,000.  Yanukovych spent $800 in state funds to treat his fish, $14,500 for tablecloths.   But all this pales in comparison to the $42 million spent on light fixtures.  Yanukovych also had a dreadful fear of being prisoned.  To foil possible schemers he constructed greenhouses to produce the produce of 20 different climates, to satisfy his diverse culinary tastes.  The final tab for Mezhyhiriya came in at anywhere between $80 and $100 million, all of which, to be expected, was foisted onto the Ukrainian state.
            An age-old saying says that “clothes make the man.”  Let’s take this a step further and argue that one’s house is the “clothing” in which one wraps oneself, and is therefore a projection of self one imagines themselves to be, like most clothing.  Seen that way, what did Mezhyhiriya say about Yanukovych?  What kind of man was he?  Man of the Ukrainian people?  Greek or Roman dignitary?  British or French aristocrat?  Oligarch?  All of these in a kind of wannabe manner, but in the end none of them, except in a wannabe manner?
            I nodded goodbye to the remaining guards at the entrance, still stomping their feet to fend off the now late-afternoon chill.  As for Yanukovych, and other megalomaniacs like him, the only explanation came from Petro, who had seen his life up close and yet had a commoner’s distance to make an informed judgment: “Super crazy!”
 
 
 
 

​“Would you ever have an affair with a married man?” This was a question my friend asked me while we were sitting at a cafe near our apartment complex. I hadn’t ever considered it because I’d never been put in the situation; but when I responded, I approached my conclusion from an ethical point of view. “Well, I definitely wouldn’t ever cheat on someone. If I wanted to be with someone else, I would break up with the other person.” “But what if you’re single and the other person is married?”, she probed. Still thinking through a moral lens, I replied, “I think I would put myself in his wife’s shoes, and I would feel guilty because I know how much that would hurt her. I’ve also been cheated on already, and I didn’t understand how someone could do that to another girl, so no I don’t think I could have an affair with a married man.” My friend looked at me and seemed satisfied with my answer. She later revealed that she had asked because her sister had been engaged to a man who had been sleeping with another woman. Up until that point, my friend hadn’t deemed it wrong to sleep with a stranger’s husband; but after seeing how deeply it affected her sister, she had changed her mind. 
 
Two years had passed before I had ever reflected on this conversation again. I had been working on an Army base for six months in Fort Gordon, Georgia, when I first started shift with Isaac. We were part of the same unit and had spoken from time to time; but we had never really gotten to know each other prior to our shift work. Those first six months we did not see each other often because we worked on different shifts, and when we were both free, he would drive out of state to visit his sister, while I would spend time with the people who shared my same schedule.
 
This all changed when, in the middle of August, our commander decided to mix the personnel and place everyone into new groups. Isaac was now part of my team, and it sparked a new beginning for my time in Georgia. Our shifts demanded that we see and converse with our team for twelve or so hours at a time, four times a week. Sometimes the workflow could be slow; in fact, I would say the majority of my time there was spent working at a leisurely pace. During these lulls, we inevitably began to chat about our lives, our pasts, our thoughts, interests, and our experiences. I learned more about my teammates in a month than I had about a classmate in four years. 
 
After Isaac first introduced himself to our group, I was interested to learn more about his background. He had grown up in the suburbs of Maryland and the city of Philadelphia with a father who had been raised in both Argentina and Ukraine; and he had spent summers in Lviv, so his speech represented every place in the world that had shaped him. His words were painted mostly with a Philly accent, but his diction, my friend once joked “was of a person who knew 99% of the English language.” He would use a preposition with a phrase that was just wrong enough for you to think twice after he said it, “That doesn’t bode well with me”. Every now and then Isaac’s sentences were interspersed with misspellings and malapropisms, “May I illicit a square of chocolate?” (For those of you who are confused, he meant to say “elicit”-but was still incorrect-he really should have said “solicit”). This quality endeared him very much to me because it reminded me of my Dad, who had been born in Puerto Rico, but grew up with a German American grandmother. He too spoke in a way that made you question whether or not he was foreign or native to English. From conversation, you could see that they were both still very educated-they simply mixed up their words, which was something that I believe resulted from their exposure to so many languages and cultures. 
 
I was intrigued by his past and always made an effort to learn more about him when we worked as partners. Over the months, I discovered that our upbringings shared many similarities. We both played soccer all through our youth and adolescence, and we had a lot of siblings. We were also raised by somewhat unorthodox parents. He and I could sit together for eight hours and talk about our lives without any pause or conversational discomfort. We bonded over the idiosyncrasies of our foreign “papas” and how we had to navigate both the culture of our fathers and our own as we grew up.
 
Aside from our natural rapport, our friendship was solidified in the sole fact that I knew he was married, and I knew he would never cheat on his wife with me. The idea of a romantic relationship had never even begun to cross my mind as a possibility. Indeed, I almost relished the fact that for once in my life there were external factors preventing me from pursuing a potential love interest; these constraints enabled me to greater appreciate the beauty of our friendship, one never to be inhibited by the natural course of the affections that grow between a man and woman. These thoughts were never spoken, but they were certainly understood. On some level, I knew Isaac recognized this. He hadn’t articulated it exactly so; but I was certain he had this established in his mind.
 
One day we were sitting next to each other, working away, when he turned to me and said, “Do you know that you’re my only female friend that I have made independently of my wife?”
 
“What do you mean?”, I asked with a confused but flattered look. 
 
“Well I’ve made female friends through her, but before I met her and even after, I had only ever seen females as a romantic pursuit. I never wanted to be just a friend with any of them.” 
 
“And what about the ones you weren’t attracted to?” I asked. 
 
“I never saw the point to engage in conversation with them. Because I had so many male friends, I wasn’t looking for that in a female. I would only approach them to potentially go out with them. I also was never in the situation where I would see females as friends. My workplace and school and soccer team were always filled with boys. Only in the Army have I had to work with females.” 
 
Overlooking the sexist undertones of his thought process, I thanked him for the compliment, and I told him I was glad we were friends.
 
“I hope we continue to talk after all of this is over,” he said. 
 
“I’m sure we will. I don’t cut others out of their life once I stop seeing them in person. I like to think I value the friendships I make, and even if I can’t talk to the person as much as I would like to. I do always make an effort to keep in touch.”
 
Isaac agreed with me that it was important to maintain contact with people from your past to show you care for people and are invested in their well-being.
 
 As time went on, I began to see even more of these hidden sides of Isaac. He was a voracious reader. He had studied political science, not because it was trendy, but because he was sincerely interested in politics; and he continued his passion for it well after he graduated from college. Every now and then, he would send me scholarly articles on communism or on various economic theories. For anyone in the military, this behavior is somewhat unusual to find among the enlisted ranks.
 
As opposed to the gruff nature that many of the soldiers exhibited, Isaac embodied an approachable innocence. He fostered no sense of false masculinity and never felt the need to demonstrate superiority in anything over anyone. As a matter of fact, he would go out of his way to help those he could, when no one else would.
 
One boy there didn’t have a car, and he was a bit of an outcast. David couldn’t connect with his team at a social level, and he often made everyone in the room uncomfortable because of his inability to read social cues. His mannerisms were atypical. He hardly blinked, staring vacantly at the person with whom he was conversing, and most of his movements lacked the intricate subtlety of a socialized person. Instead of casually looking up from his desk when his name was called, he would move his entire neck and head as one gradual motion. It was somewhat alarming to the person who had spoken his name.
 
David would make the sort of uncomfortable remarks that would abruptly end conversations. He would stand off to the side in group gatherings, even when it was clear he was meant to be within the circle of people. The trouble he had adapting socially made was evident in his lack of friends. And unfortunately for him, he was the only person there without a car. This was an inconvenience because it forced him to walk to places that were just far enough to be a bother. Isaac would offer to drive David to the commissary and help him carry his groceries every week or take him on whatever errands he needed to run. I and others marveled at his selflessness and generosity.
 
Isaac was also one of the most amiable people there. Everyone wanted to be his friend, and when he walked into the room people revolved around him like he was the sun and they were planets. He had a magnetic presence. Despite this though, he had no sense of arrogance. I frequently wonder if he was even aware of the effect he had on people. In his absence, people would tell stories about him, and I noticed by their tone that they felt special or privileged to have interactions with him, especially the females.
 
Isaac was one of the most handsome soldiers in our group of forty or so soldiers. He was as fit as a model, and he would walk casually around the laundry room with his shirt off, displaying his sculpted body for everyone to see. In Georgia, especially during the sweltering hot and humid summers, you could do that. You could see the Eastern European features in Isaac’s face. His strong jaw, his emerald colored eyes, and larger angular nose. He had a full head of hair that would pile on his head in voluminous brown waves when he would grow it out.
 
There were other, less overt parts of Isaac that I really admired. One of my main problems that I faced on a day to day basis occurred with the other men at our barracks. In the Army, the majority of the soldiers are men. There were very few women where I worked, under 15%, which is below the percentage of women in the entire Army. I believe, and this is based on experience over data, that women tend to receive even more attention in the Army than they would in civilian life because of this imbalance. At my workplace, this phenomenon tended to occur even more because there were even fewer women than in a normal shop, and about half were either gay or married. In my mind, I was the object of attention for all of these reasons. I particularly stood out because I was far from your typical soldier. My long, wavy hair was unruly. My bun was never within regulations no matter how much gel I applied to tighten it down. My curvy body was not meant to fit into the straight, boxy shape of the uniform. Looking in the mirror at my camouflaged outfit, I would think I was playing dressing-up as a solider, and every day was like Halloween.
 
During meetings or after-action reviews, my mind tended to drift into another world. My eyes assumed a blank stare and reflected an unformidable look. I would say my disposition was unassuming, and almost never did I try to impose a sense of expertise on any subject matter. I preferred to listen and observe when I was surrounded by strangers. I asked candid questions, spoke out of turn, not out of insolence but of honest ignorance. I disliked raising my voice, and if a superior had ever wanted to punish me, he or she would only have to command me to mandate orders to other soldiers.
 
Socially, I seemed entirely out of place in the military, but physically, I managed to hold my own. My affinity for running was my one saving grace. It gave me a sense that in ways, I did fit in and helped me excel in the more labor-intensive facets of the job.
 
The athleticism that I developed throughout the years of soccer and running may also have affected how the men there interacted with me. Regularly, I had to time when I left my room and calculate the route I took to the car because they would either follow me to talk to me our would text me, remarking on my body; but when Isaac was there, he protected me from them. He acted as a shield against all of the unwanted attention. He, among so many men who were blind to their behavior, understood how maddening it could be to be a woman in the military, a fact that the provincial men there denied outright. They didn’t understand that I couldn’t go running alone at night without constantly looking over my shoulder. They didn’t know the feeling of uneasiness when men would comment on my ass to one another. “Just give them a mean look”, my boss would advise, when I would complain about it. It was as if admitting that men could be disrespectful would undermine their entire belief set; and in turn, I would rarely receive any show of support or legitimate consolation.
 
At a personal level, I would experience this at least three times a week. Fortunately, Isaac did empathize, and he supported me. The others didn’t recognize that men could mistake my kindness for infatuation and then treat me poorly when I rejected them. That they thought that my friendliness was a form of leading them on. Isaac acknowledged what I dealt with and acted disgusted when he saw it. He used his position and upstanding reputation to give me a voice when I had none. When I was seen as an exigent girl with irrational grievances.
 
Isaac also was a respite from the constant fanatical conservative discourse that echoed around me each day. A lot of those people appeared as puppets of Fox news and actively needled me or anyone who deviated even slightly from the right, to either gain a sense of validation or reinforce their own mindset. It was infuriating to be a captive audience within that setting. And to argue was futile. They were not looking for an open discussion. They wanted to stand on their soapbox and complain about everything that was wrong with liberal America, to bask in their resentments, and to feel a sense of superiority because they had “picked themselves up by their bootstraps” unlike the Americans who were lazy and only wanted handouts from the government.
 
Their character, however, could not be defined by the zeal from their politics nor from the behavior that stemmed from it. They would help me with tasks I couldn’t do or buy expensive dinners for the entire shifts. They were strong teammates and listened to my opinions about our work. They encouraged me to pursue my studies and were flexible when I wanted to take extra time to do so. In a way, their actions really didn’t align with their personal ideologies. One man fostered a child who had jumped from broken home to broken home. The child had behavioral problems; and from the stories I heard, acted entitled and insolent at times. Despite his frequent mischief, he continued to live in my coworker’s home, and my coworker did his best to support him. He was clearly a very compassionate and patient person yet seemed to lose this sense of understanding whenever he applied it to macro level situations, such as to youths who had fallen into drug dealing or single-parent mothers who couldn’t afford to feed their own children.
 
This man was a conservative conspiracy theorist who believed there was no direct explanation for any worldwide issue. He would tumble down the rabbit hole into his own theories with other like-minded people on the mission floor. While I would listen to their diatribes, I would long for the time that Isaac and I could spend talking about politics in solitude. We would point out the contradictions that many of our teammates lived by. How could they condemn universal healthcare and education one minute, and then praise the military for taking care of people by providing the best healthcare in the country, by giving the soldiers education benefits that not only paid for tuition but also paid for apartment rent? They would commend the private sector and proclaim that there should be almost no government involvement in the affairs of American citizens, and they would then devote their lives to working for the government, having never once worked outside of it. Their actions were a living hypocrisy of their sententious remarks, and they were totally oblivious to it. Isaac, in this time, was my sanctuary of sanity. He and I would talk for hours about it, each time increasingly more baffled. This in part, I think really cemented our bond and made us more and more eager to see one another.
 
As months passed, Isaac and I would spend more time together participating in our common interests. We would listen to NPR together and discuss what was going on in politics.  He would ask me to come to his room, and I would hear it playing from his phone: “This is Lakshmi Sang, Live from NPR…” My heart would flutter as I approached his door. By a certain point, he had given me the code to it, so I could walk in. I would inhale the smell of coffee he had prepared for both of us from his French press. He would offer me whole grain crackers with almond butter, and we would share them, while we listened to what was happening in the world. Isaac told me that he had tuned in one Sunday to a story on NPR, and the speaker had narrated past memories of him and his father. And at the end, he encouraged all of the listeners to take time to record their parents’ voices to have a keepsake of the precious moments they had experienced together. Isaac told me that as he was listening to this, he began to cry, thinking about his own dad passing away; the story had been so moving that he promised himself he would record his conversations with his father.
 
I was touched by Isaac’s openness. He didn’t see vulnerability as a weakness. He was true to his emotions, and that made him almost invincible. I thought it was commendable that someone who in many ways exemplified the societal concept of “a real man”, was willing to defy the expectations of how a man should act and expose his feelings so outwardly. Because we had grown so close, we began to share more personal stories; and to me, the dialogue always hinted at his interest in me and mine in him. The coquettish compliments were not in any way a rarity, and the follow up questions proved to be an inadvertent form of satiating a curiosity for the other person. He and I would detail stories to one another of our past exploits. Undoubtedly, we both were imagining how we would act with each other if that were possible. We knew it couldn’t be. He was married after all. But on that base hundreds of miles from his home, his wife was a concept. She wasn’t his day to day world. He was isolated from his family. And so, it made it much easier for him to imagine a life with me, someone he already saw nearly every day. This fantasy, at that time was more attainable and realistic than spending time with his wife, than making love to her. I was only four doors away. By then, I had broken up with my boyfriend, and I was equally lonely there. I had pondered the idea of me and Isaac, but I had never really been given the opportunity to consider him as a romantic interest, until late after one very long night.
 
We had been in downtown Augusta with our team and one of Isaac’s friends who lived in Grovetown. I hadn’t really drunk much because I was feeling down after the breakup, and I didn’t think alcohol would improve my mood. We didn’t have work the next day which gave Isaac the liberty to consume as much alcohol as he wanted.
 
I don’t remember the details of that night too well before we went into the car with his friend Kyle, but what happened after initiated a subtle shift in our relationship. I could sense that Isaac was becoming uninhibited the more he drank. On the way back in the car, as we approached base, he told me out of nowhere that I was one of the funniest people he had ever met. At this point he was guffawing uncontrollably, and I was in the backseat thinking that I would have to take care of him after Kyle dropped us off. We arrived at our barracks, and I thanked Kyle for driving us home. I accompanied Isaac up the stairs and noticed that he was stumbling and didn’t seem to be doing too well. I offered him a bottle of water. This was a pretext to be alone with him in my room, to see what would happen, to tempt fate; but I had no intentions to do anything: he wasn’t very coherent after all.
 
 It took no convincing for him to follow me. He immediately agreed, and we entered my room. I then handed him a bottle of water and waited for him to thank me and to then leave. But instead, he paused, and he looked at me as if he were begging me to communicate what was on his mind, to fill in the silence for him, so he wouldn’t have to. We were standing in the warm glow glimmering from the stream of lights that was dangling along my wall. He held my gaze and stammered through the beginning of his confession.
 
“Y-you know, y-you’re very pretty. And if I weren’t married, I would want to be with you. We would kiss and hold hands. You’re just so fun to be around, and we really get along, but I’m married, I’m married.”
 
I was frozen. I didn’t know what to say. I just nodded along and said that I understood. I didn’t express any of my feelings towards him because I was afraid to misstep even further. My arms were crossed bashfully around my chest and where desperation was written across his face, hesitation marked mine. Here it was finally, the unspoken was voiced. Expressing it out loud made it much more real. Before there was plausible deniability, but now there was no avoiding it. He wasn’t very articulate the rest of the speech, and he talked in circles. Standing there so visibly shaken, he took my hand, slowly met my sheepish eyes with a longing look in his own, and remained silent, knowing we couldn’t ever act on what we both wanted. The tick tocks from the clock on my wall counted the seconds as time passed in a lingering quiet. He must have decided that he needed to break this tension, so he walked slowly to the door and asked if I would come to dinner with everyone the following night. I accepted the invitation tacitly and then said goodnight.
 
He shut the door, left, and returned to his room. Minutes later he messaged me and asked if I could bring him more water. I knew that it was an excuse to be alone with me again, but it didn’t bother me. I wanted to know more about what he thought. I nervously fixed myself up and then walked through the halls, hoping that no one would see me go into his room. After all, if he were suspected of infidelity, he could be discharged from the Army, like many others before him. I was cognizant that any suspicion raised against Isaac’s favor would jeopardize his reputation and employment.
 
 I knocked quietly, and he instantly opened the door. I figured he must have already been standing there. I handed him another bottle, only to see a half full pitcher of water on his kitchen counter.
 
I looked around the room more waiting out the anticipation. I loved that he had bought plants and placed them all around to give cheer and life to the place. He cared about his living space, even though he knew it was temporary. He paid special detail to appearances, I noticed. There was an ironing board placed in his room where he would carefully iron the wrinkles from his uniform. All of these details uncovered subtle insights about his personality. These hints here and there were like the little keepsakes of moments that define the true joy of the day, like the first sip of coffee in the morning or an unexpected compliment from a stranger. 
 
My mind snapped back to reality. I raised my eyes to his to encourage him to talk because I was uncertain as to why he had called me into his room. He started again, “I-I can’t remember exactly everything I said back there, but I just want you to know that I could never cheat on Carly. She’s my wife, and I love her. But I want you to know that I would court you and bring you flowers and take you on dates if I weren’t married. You’re just so beautiful, and you have a wonderful personality. But I can’t, I’m sorry.”
 
There was such conflict in his eyes, and he was begging me to resolve it for him. I was part of the problem though, I couldn’t. I was unusually quiet and thought that listening to him was the best course of action, while he talked through his internal strife. His wife would be there in a less than a month. Saying anything and starting an affair would only cause me more heartbreak in the future. It was better to find solace in accepting that there was nothing that could be done, but that my love was not unrequited on an emotional level. That, above all, was most comforting. Because I was not rejected for reasons that would hurt me. I frequently think that it is not the outcome that is painful but rather the reasoning behind it.
 
And just like this for the remainder of the time there we continued. We recognized each other’s feelings, but we never acted on them. I was content and safe that way, and so was he. He wasn’t cheating. When we would hang out, he would always tell his wife; and we never kissed or engaged in any form of affection. We were walking the line, staying within bounds, and based off of technicalities, we had broken no rules. We were able to be friends still and find joy in the time we could share together.
 
Finally, a few days before his wife came, he sat me down one night. He had explained to me that our intimate friendship would have to be put on pause. He chuckled to himself, telling me that he couldn’t simply invite me over while his wife was in his room. No, of course not. But if we were only friends, how it would it be any different than if he were to invite a boy over? Because it makes all of a difference if the guest is of the opposite sex. There would be an unrecognized suspicion lurking in the minds of all parties. I knew all of this, but it didn’t make me feel any better. Isaac tried to assure me as best as he could, and I respected the gesture. The words and status of our friendship still hurt me though. Was I devastated? No of course not. I did my best to comprehend the reality of the situation; but I felt slighted, nevertheless. I felt like a placeholder for him. I served the purpose of his romantic interest-even if left unfulfilled-until he could be with his wife again. As I got to know Isaac more, I concluded that this in itself springs an unprecedented delight for anyone. It is more exhilarating to exist with an infatuation, especially one that is ongoing. The sentiments he had developed for me were even more exciting because he could fantasize to infinity. Marriage was the leash he needed to pull himself back in control: to never be able to unlock this unknown end with me. It would forever remain a mystery; and for the time, I was the object of a romantic fancy that so clearly played an important role in his own happiness. This changed when his wife arrived, and for those three weeks, I was reduced to a casual friend- I was no longer the distraction he needed while he bided his time in Georgia.
 
During this time, I hardly saw Isaac, except for when we were at work. At the start of December, I suggested that my team do Secret Santa, and that before I went on leave back to Maryland, we could exchange gifts. The day before we were set to go to dinner, Isaac told the group that he was bringing his wife. I felt mildly uncomfortable with the idea, but I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. The next day, we had off, and I spent it buying the gifts for my Secret Santa and preparing baked goods for everyone. I drove alone to downtown Augusta and arrived late because I had trouble finding a place where I didn’t have to parallel park. I then went into the bar where everyone was sitting in a line. I approached and sat down next to my direct supervisor, Sergeant Reinhold, a jovial old man with a good sense of humor. I saw Isaac and his wife, and he introduced us to one another. She was taller than I was and slimmer. She had died her hair blonde, but one could see her natural color was brunette. Her face was distinctive looking. Her green eyes were set close to one another, and her bone structure was rather square. I had never seen anyone who looked that way. That was the extent of our interaction there. Later, when everyone had had their fill on drinks and wanted to eat dinner, we left, and I walked with her and Isaac to the restaurant.
 
I felt that even though I wasn’t particularly taken by her, I wanted to make her feel welcome to the group. It can be isolating for someone to come to a dinner with a group of Army personnel because the conversation is usually filled with strings of acronyms and jargon that only people in the military can understand. I went out of my way to ask her how she liked Georgia and South Carolina to make her feel more welcome. It was a little strange to me to have such a connection with her husband but none whatsoever with her.
 
 I thought, well maybe it is because she is eleven years older, we have less in common. Isaac was seven years old than I was, and that could have made less of a difference. Later on, I decided it was because we were polar opposites. She had a type A personality. She was a planner and organized every aspect of her life. She was the type of grade-school student who never broke her crayons while she colored, who never lost a paper, who never had a hangnail. Bobby pins never fell out of her hair. She needed to hear instructions just once to create any sort of handicraft.  
 
She could have fun, but never too much fun. Her drinking was always responsible, and her Starbucks coffee was fat free with no added sugar. She was never late to the airport, had never forgotten her keys, had never washed a red shirt in a white load, and had never spilled food on herself. She was unforgiving towards bad service and wouldn’t hesitate to send back food that wasn’t cooked to her standard. She never made a fool of herself to anyone. She was a living plan of action that had been executed to perfection. She was the type of woman who was educated enough to incorrectly use first person subject pronouns: “this stays between you and I”. She was a bleeding-heart liberal not because she held strong convictions but because it was a badge of honor in her social circle. She was proud to say she stood with the disadvantaged but flashed a look of disgust each time a homeless man asked her for money.
 
Where Carly succeeded, I struggled. I frequently found money in my pockets because I had forgotten to put it in my wallet. My shoelaces always came untied, and when I did tie them, one was apt to break in half. I suffered from car problems, finding myself stuck in a ditch I couldn’t see when I was reversing. I had never won at bingo night in elementary school, I found it difficult to keep my room tidy, and whenever I cracked an egg in a pan the yolk scrambled everywhere. When I went on vacation, I never participated in guided tours, and I barely planned anything. I liked to walk around a city unfettered by pressure to arrive somewhere, and with that, I didn’t like to be restricted by time constraints; in part, it was because I was likely to get lost in a city even with the GPS. I never bothered to carry an external charger, so my phone would sometimes die, and I would have to ask people for directions. Any inconvenience Carly thought to mitigate, I would surely face at one point or another in my day to day life.
 
Our romantic history signified the greatest distinction between me and Carly. My past relationships or romantic pursuits were either defined by tragedy or unavailability. I would go for men who were seeing other women at the same time or whose feelings changed at the turn of a second. I had pined for gay men, my teachers, my platoon sergeants, and the best friends of my boyfriends. Predictability had never been an element of any of my love interests. Carly’s love life, on the other hand, was an extension of her personality. All of the relationships she had had prior had faced a somber, but convenient ending. Nothing too dramatic. Nothing to devastate her. They had simply reached their natural conclusion, and it was time for her to move on, to find someone who fit appropriately into the live she envisioned for herself. She had built a life that was secure, certain, and above all manageable. She could fulfill all of the expectations for a career woman living in an East Coast city. She had reached respectable heights already, and with a husband who was soon to work a government position in the Department of Defense, she was well on her way to the success she intended for herself and her future family. So how then, you might ask, did she and Isaac fall in love, if their personalities were what I would say, too opposite to attract?
 
Isaac, before he met Carly, was already seeing two other girls. At the time of their first date, Carly became the third he began to see. This of course is something he told me, something he would never tell Carly, for it would shatter the image she had built around his love for her. To this day, Carly still doesn’t know the real Isaac. She believes him to be Dorian before he sold his soul to the devil. Isaac was never the Dorian with the sin-tortured portrait.
 
They began to date, after Isaac decided he wanted her over the other two. At this time, Isaac was still an untamed lion-he was a slave to his emotions, brazenly charging through life. He was the most energetic person to arrive at a party, the best storyteller, and the person with the kindest heart. Isaac’s romantic pursuits were reckless, but they were ultimately well intentioned. He never meant to hurt anyone, and he lived in world built upon ethereal foundations. Surely, Carly was drawn to Isaac because of his amiable, playful personality; yet more importantly, she saw him as a project. He could be someone who she could help. She could teach him how to be fiscally responsible, how to pursue career goals, how to conceive notions of a family life. And he could do it with her. By the end, Isaac would live up to the potential that Carly saw in him, and it would all be her doing. He would be the end product of fastidious care and crafting, and nothing would make her prouder. And Isaac would be the sparkly bow on the present of a life she had so carefully wrapped. He would be the one aspect of her life that made her special, that made her a little different from her otherwise ordinary friends. She would have a husband she could showcase and tout as a result of her own achievements.
 
Carly sat with perfect posture in her chair at the dinner table. We were to exchange gifts after we finished dining. She had seated herself next to Isaac in the middle of the group. Her dazzling diamond encrusted wedding bands sparkled as her hand moved gracefully from her fork to her napkin. I wonder how much of a down payment he had to put on those, I thought. I caught myself staring at them longingly, not for what they were, but for what they meant. As jealousy began to creep into my heart, I heard someone comment on her rings. Yes yes, she said, her pitiful attempt at humility seeping from her lips, “they’re elegant, yet still modest.” In what world are those modest?  She nodded at Isaac with a coy smile. “I think we should tell them about our wedding.” Here go the next twenty minutes. I have to be captivated by the expensive details of wedding napkins and tablecloths. I have to pretend that her dress isn’t a tacky attempt at alluding to a dated fashion. Thankfully, there was another girl there to help me humor Carly while she prattled on about her wedding. It was as if I was listening to Carly read off of the overpriced program she hired someone to create for her special day, except with elaborate captions. It was as if I was there, dancing with Isaac while everyone watched. This is how I can make this tolerable. I can just imagine that I am Carly. Isaac and I were arm and arm at this point smiling as the cameras took our pictures. That we would include on our Christmas card. We then took each other’s hands and watched the Ukrainian dancers, waiting for our turn to join in…
 
“Okay, I think this is enough”, Isaac said, smiling slightly, nudging Carly a little, “You don’t need to talk all night about our wedding, Carly.” Blushing, she returned a smile and rolled her eyes. “Okay, Isaac, okay.” No one raised any opposition to his ask.
 
The rest of the dinner centered around everyone opening presents. I was the last person to open mine. By its rectangular shape, I knew that it was a book before I even unwrapped it. Everyone’s eyes were on me, and I was thinking to myself: How should I open it? Do I tear all the paper at once like I would at home? Or is it more polite to carefully remove the tape from the paper? What would Carly do? Surely, she knows the social convention. I hated situations like these. It was like cutting cake slices for everyone at a birthday party. Everyone watching and my motor skills were never good enough to cut even slices swiftly, so I inevitably became the bud of everyone’s jokes.
 
I took a guess at the right thing to do. I began to unwrap from the edges timidly, as to not wreck the neat wrapping job; but as soon as I did, I realized I had chosen wrong. “What are you doing? Just open the present!” My teammate barked. “I hate when people do that, like you’re going to throw out the paper anyway.” “I just didn’t want to be rude.” I mumbled. Then Carly chimed in, “Yeah, I hate when people do that, like no one cares if you preserve the paper.” Oh, so now you’re part of the group? I just met you like, what, ten seconds ago? Well I guess to fit in the best way is to pick on the target. I suppose it’s easier to connect with people that way rather than by showing interest in them.
 
Instead of saying what I was thinking, I rushed to open it and saw that it was the new Game of Thrones book! “Oh my gosh thank you Sergeant Reinhold!” There was no better gift I could have gotten from him. The express joy I felt made up for the digs that I felt I had suffered.
 
That night was the last I saw of Carly. She stayed in the South until New Year’s Day, and then she returned back to Northern Virginia. I was happy she left because it meant I could go back to spending time with Isaac, and things could return to our normal. We never really spoke of our short hiatus, but I knew by the extended time I would spend in his room, that he had missed me. He would text me and ask if I had any chocolate or any sweets in my room, and then after I would welcome him to my batch of baked goods, he would stay and chat with me. He would pose questions to postpone his departure and always express the desire to meet again before he left my room.
 
A week before we were set to leave Georgia, my team planned an end of mission party. I was excited to celebrate with the rest of the people on the mission because I never had the opportunity to see them, as they worked on other shifts. We all went to Sergeant Reinhold’s apartment, where he had prepared a large spaghetti dinner with sausage. There was more than enough alcohol to go around, and we ended up playing some trivia game. There were an odd number of players, so problem-solver that I am, I kindly volunteered Isaac to be on my team. We would smile gleefully and whisper the answers in each other’s ears, trying not to break out in fits of laughter. “Come on! Come on!”, he said in between child-like giggles, “You gotta keep it together! We are so close to winning!” I had already spun out of control. Between the alcohol, the infatuation, and the general mirth that engulfed me, I was intoxicated in too many ways to maintain any sort of composure. “Okay, Okay!”, I attempted to talk quietly so the other players wouldn’t hear, “I think the answer is Cathy, Yeah, yeah she was the main antagonist in East of Eden.”  I loved leaning in close to him, our eyes twinkling, as we beamed at another, feeling the dizzying attraction that hung in the intimate space between us. It was more of a challenge to behave ourselves than it was to answer the questions. “Okay then! Let’s give that as our answer!” He replied excitedly. We were right, and it was this last question that won us the game. “Yayyy!” He turned my shoulder a slightly closer to him and gave me a gentle high five. We were grinning ear to ear, as we went to grab more drinks.
 
The rest of the night we were lost in conversation. Around the time that everyone else was leaving, our friend told us she wanted to drive home. We hadn’t noticed how late it had gotten. We walked to the living room of the apartment and said goodbye to our coworkers and then descended the stairs. In the car, I was a little melancholy because I knew this was one of the last nights I would spend with Isaac. I hoped that he would try to go on a walk with me or ask me to tea when we got back.
 
In my room, I contemplated messaging him to see him again before the night ended. As I was debating it, he sent me a message asking me what I was doing. After some back and forth, he invited me to watch a movie in his room on his bed. We assured one another that if someone fell asleep, the other would nudge and then I would go back to my room and go to bed. Despite these promises, my heart was beating against my chest intensely, pleading to jump out to freedom. I knew that something was going to happen, but at the same time, I kept saying, “No, it’s impossible. He’s still married, and he’s probably still talking to Carly, as we speak.”
 
I went into his room, and he motioned me to sit on the bed and choose the movie from his laptop. I can’t even remember what I picked, because my mind was so far from enjoying a film. We lay there in silence for some time, not touching. Slowly though, I began to feel the heat from his hand, as he interlaced his fingers between mine. Just like that, we were still for five more minutes, and as each second passed, my heartbeat skipped faster and faster. No words had been voiced still. After what seemed like days stretched between mere seconds, he turned to me breathlessly, and said, “I just want to kiss you.” I paused in shock, but he pulled me in and we began slowly, navigating the newness of it all, and then more passionately as we found our way. After a few minutes, I pulled back to give him time to rethink his decision, but he had already committed to the infidelity.
 
I was living in a dream with him. He had reiterated time and time again that he would never cheat on his wife, and there he was breaking his vows. He held me in his arms and told me he had been dying to do this for months now. We lay there in silence for some minutes after and he turned to me and said, “You know, obviously this here is uh a tricky situation. But I think the line has to be drawn somewhere. I can’t have sex with you. I really want to, and we have this connection, this force, but I can’t. I still have to think of my wife. And I’m sorry.” I just let out a sigh of understanding and lay there wondering how he could architect moral boundaries when he had already violated so many. Even within a breach of ethics, he had still maintained some semblance of a code. And now I had to navigate that. Rules constructed by the second out of desperation to do right by two people with conflicting interests. He was trapped in a labyrinth with an end that could in no way ever appeal to every party involved.
 
For the subsequent days, we spent every moment we could together. We would have brunch together, run together, and even while we would do chores, the other would be in the room for company. When his wife called, he would tell her he could talk later. He was struggling to balance everyone. One night he invited me to have dinner but told me I had to wait an hour because he had to arrange flights to Portugal with Carly. On the one of last weekends there, he went to his sister’s house; and I was disappointed because I knew it would be some of the last free days we could spend together.
 
Isaac wanted to make up for the lost time with little gestures of kindness. He would prepare me breakfast and offer to take me to a quaint bookstore in downtown Augusta, where we would enjoy browsing the selection of books together. A few weeks prior, I had bought a book compiled of great American short stories and was enthralled by many of the plots and the poignant prose. Urging Isaac to read them with me, I hoped for him to gush over the works just as much as I did. He responded one night, after having finished The Wife of his Youth by Charles Chestnutt, “Wow, what a story..it was so lovely”, and commented further on how he admired the unremitting devotion a man had for his wife through the passing of many years. This form of intimacy between us was one that I cherished most. Isaac always leapt with enthusiasm at the opportunity to read literature I suggested; he never dismissed my recommendations as something he would get to eventually, nor would he ever put it off until he thought I had forgotten about it. I, so overjoyed at the prospect of exploring books with someone else, at the opportunity to reciprocate one of my greatest passions, would gladly become immersed in his own literary worlds. Our artistic loves sewed the threads of our intimacy, the mutual appreciation for a cinematic experience or an eloquent story were our own form of communication kept secretly between us, a common language that needed no verbal articulation. Woven in the seams literary wonder, we showed our love for one another with the equivalent potency of personal affection.
 
I floated for the passing hours on this dreamy cloud through twilight skies of prolonged farewells. I was trying to delay our separation as long as I could, but time eventually overcame the strength of my efforts. Before he left, he told me that we couldn’t be intimate anymore, explaining that he had ridden a swirling wave of infatuation, but now the currents were calm, and he had to revert back to his old life. We walked out of his room, but I didn’t feel the need to say anything, I wanted to compose myself before I spoke on the matter. We came to the juncture where we would go our separate ways. But on the staircase in plain sight, just before he skipped down the steps to his car, he pulled my hips towards me and kissed me over and over. Then he left for two days to go to South Carolina.
 
Over the weekend, I couldn’t sleep at all. I was a wreck; drowning in passion and confusion. I thought that the fairest decision would be to carry out the affair with me until it was time for us to go back to Maryland. Maybe he had come to that decision too because he messaged me and asked if I wanted to have dinner in Aiken, South Carolina on Sunday night. Just a month before, I had gone there with two of my friends, and had thought that it would be an enchanting place for a date.
 
 All day prior I spent getting ready, so nervous and excited for him to return. I decided to wear an emerald colored dress and style my hair, so it fell gently in golden ringlets. Days seemed to have passed before he picked me up and we drove to Aiken. I didn’t know if anything was going to happen between us again. In an attempt to temper my expectations, I told myself I would let him make the first move. As soon as we exited the car, he took my left hand in his right, and we walked through the charming historical city. If one had observed us, it would have seemed as if we were married. Hand in hand laughing. It was as if no one else mattered then and there. I was living in a story that I wished would never end. He would ask me questions and I would think, “Does he really want to hear about my time as a preschool teacher? How could that be interesting for someone who has no experience working in education?” But when I am drawn to someone, almost everything he says is fascinating. He had captured my attention by explaining how a French press operates. My God, I thought, he could be reading from an instruction manual, and I would still be riveted.
 
We were a slightly cold from the crisp January air, hurrying to go to the restaurant he had chosen for us. I walked through a pathway under a trellis interwoven with vines of heart-shaped leaves. There were gardens on either side of the stony path with exquisite black-iron chairs resting on the soft soil around miniature tea tables. As Isaac led me through the door, my eyes took in the cozy ambiance of the restaurant. All around us, families, friends, and couples were dining. The firelit room had the same welcoming effect as a mother’s hug does for a child. I felt a blanket of quiet bliss settle itself on me as the hostess led us to our table. We were seated in a back area, away from most of the tables. All through the dinner, Isaac and I reminisced over our childhood memories, living and growing up in big families.
 
Though we were having fun, I couldn’t shake a restless feeling nestling itself in my heart. In the back of my mind, I could not forget that he was married. I was in a state of shock thinking: how could he be doing this right now? All of this is so crazy. But at the same time, it was as if his wife were not a part of our romantic dinner. She was not an element to be considered. In that emotional reprieve from our lives, we were alone in one another’s company, cherishing the special occasion we had planned together before we went back.
 
After Isaac paid the check, he took my hand and told me a story from one of the summers he spent in Ukraine. It wasn’t that I was disinterested, but I was overwhelmed by what was going on. My mind was spinning, finally grappling with what was transpiring between me and him. I could barely pay attention, and all that was running through my head was what would happen when we got in his car and got back to our rooms. Would we kiss again? Or was it over? Was this dinner the last grand gesture of his before he went back to his normal life?
 
 When the status of your relationship with someone is so undefined, an insecurity consumes you, and you can think nothing beyond what the relationship means to the other person; you yearn for affection and attention to assure yourself of his feelings for you; and any time the person acts in a way that runs contrary to what you hope for, you feel a great slight, so much so that you question if he likes you at all. You question everything. His motives. His loyalty. His character. Your mind becomes restive when too much time has passed between each show of love; the backbone of a relationship-the understanding that you love each other exclusively no matter what-is not there. Its absence cannot provide you the security that would otherwise keep you calm in times of potential doubt; for you would know, he loves me and no other person, and this would be enough to grant you equanimity when he can’t or doesn’t want to see you.
 
My heart was pounding, and my hands were sweaty when we finally reached the car. The sun had already set, and the moon shone through the cloud dusted sky. He turned the key in the ignition and waited for the car to warm up before putting it into first gear. We sat there in a tentative quiet.  Both knew what the other wanted, but both were unsure how to act. Finally, I took my hand and rested it on his jaw line. I held it there for a second before pulling him into a kiss, hoping that he would forget his promise to himself and kiss me back. Within seconds we were kissing again, and I felt the unique combination of relief and happiness that came with knowing he still wanted me. He stopped momentarily and whispered in a hushed tone, “Whoever you are with in the future is the luckiest man alive.” I knew it was meant as a compliment, but I felt a harsh sting, as those words meant that I wouldn’t be or end up with him.  
 
When we returned home, he promised to sleep one last night in my bed with me but affirmed that it would end there. I agreed without any sort of resistance because I knew that he would probably change his mind. He was capricious, and to some degree, I was thankful for it. This meant that at any minute he could continue to cheat on his wife, even though seconds before he had sworn it was over between us. On the other hand, I hated being at the mercy of his whims. It was miserable to never know if he would want to see me again. It was unjust, but it was fair. It was understandable but unreasonable, it was a curse cloaked as a blessing. The arrow he struck through my heart could be coated with the finest gold or laced with the deadliest poison. Here I was existing within two disparate realities simultaneously. As much as I despised living this way, I knew that the alternative-Isaac’s absence from my life-was that much worse. I acted resigned to it but internally I was constantly struggling to reconcile our relationship. Each moment we were apart seemed to bring forth an unwavering despair.
 
I let him into my room for the hundredth time. We were met with shadows dancing on the walls of my room around the soft flicker of a candle on my desk. I sank into my bed, sitting upright. I was gazing outside through the window at the starry night, my thoughts wandering sideways. Isaac was sitting by my side on my bed trying to search for words that would console me. “You know,” he began quietly, his voice just above a timid whisper, “You know sometimes I think about how if something ever happened to my wife, if she died, how I could maybe be with you, you know grieve for a year or so, and then find you after so much time, and reconnect, and we could be together. I know it sounds terrible and cruel, and please don’t tell anyone I’ve said that.”  I didn’t respond immediately, thinking that Isaac didn’t realize the gravity of those words. Such thoughts seem unspeakable on the surface, but I thought the sentiment that inspired them was pure. Living in a world where he cannot express his emotions is worse than eternal confinement to a cage. He speaks freely, albeit heedlessly, but when these words pour out of his mind, there is no malicious intent driving them. He sails in the whirlwind of romance; he does not consider the implications of what his qualms or actions disclose about his marriage. His world is colored from unattainable endings, not shaded by the sad realities of his dissatisfying present.
 
There was a long pause. I felt my heart in my throat, and if I had tried to speak, I would have been choking on my words to hold back a flood of tears. Isaac saw that I was distraught, and in an attempt to pacify my disappointment, he continued with his speech. “I’ve had time to really process all of this, and I know it has to end. The first few days, we were the marionette dolls of a puppeteer, and I was just reacting. The guilt hadn’t settled in yet. But now I just, I can’t talk to Carly anymore without feeling like I’m lying all of the time. I just can’t do this anymore, I’m sorry. We had our time together, and when I’m older, like my dad’s age, I’ll look back fondly on the memory, on the intimacy I shared with a gorgeous girl. It has to come to an end now. We can still keep in contact, and I’ll check in on you every now and then. But I can’t be seeing you in Maryland, and I can’t continue on now.”
 
I took some seconds before I responded. I was crestfallen. My whole body was trembling. I felt like meteors were showering down on my heart. I was thinking that his marriage shouldn’t be. How could Isaac go back to her after saying such things? He was wading in a sea of sharks, treading in place, hoping that with time that somehow the waters would clear. He was going to guard this secret for the rest of his life and bury its treasured truths with it, instead of uncovering the light it shed on his feelings toward Carly. I thought he should at least take measures to repair his relationship. But it was pointless to say that. He would only conclude that my suppositions stemmed from the desire to be with him and from nothing else. Whatever I said, even if back by reason, was undermined by his perceived notion of my interest in him. I settled on giving a neutral response, one so unremarkable, I cannot recall it now. I was inebriated from the overconsumption of the affair’s potion, and all I hoped for was that afterwards that I would see Isaac again in Maryland.
 
For days after, I would cry in frustration at myself, at him, and at the unfairness of his attempted resolution. I needed to talk about what I was going through to someone who knew the both of us. The anxiety and internal conflict I felt forced me to confess to my friend. I knew that she would respect my privacy and wouldn’t disclose our affair to anyone. I told her I wanted to speak with her about something personal. She invited me out, and I finally confided everything. The new love and daring affair flurried within me. I argued how there was little reason for him to stay with his wife. Clearly, their relationship was in a precarious position if he failed to stay faithful after only ten months apart. And my perspective may have been partial, but it was grounded in fact. Isaac had dreamt of a fairy tale forever with me and had proposed the possibility of our end together if circumstances changed. 
 
I looked desperately at my friend seeking approval or at the very least empathy; but her skeptical eyes mirrored only wariness. She believed his confessions were nothing but lies seeking to placate my uneasiness. I knew how unrealistic it sounded. Isaac only wanted to achieve an end to the chase he had so longed for all that time. I was nothing more to him than a fleeting indulgence, one never to trouble him again after we parted ways. I understood why she doubted any sincerity in his words and actions; I was a cliché, a woman deceived by love’s tricks and man’s impulses, and though these thoughts dawdled in my mind, I held with strong conviction that on some level he did want to be with me. At least in that moment, Isaac was true to his heart. That is the problem though, he tended to live in the present, spoke truths within the second his lips moved. His lack of introspection could not reveal his genuine emotions, those that were deep seated, those that should have guided his actions. It is possible that in the long run Isaac was lying to me; but I witnessed his insistent entreatments, the desire for me to believe his words, to trust in a future that could have been but would ultimately never be. 
 
As I exposed my and Isaac’s affair more to my friend, I immediately saw that she would never understand my perspective. She thought that my judgment was blinded by my intense infatuation. In her eyes, it made no clear sense to be drawn so deeply to a married man. But when have feelings ever followed rationality? Their involuntary nature is what distinguishes them from stony reason. From what ensues as the result of what people conceive is right and moral. But perhaps, if people followed their feelings down a deeper path, they would find a more veritable end. To her, I wasn’t coming to the conclusions that would form had I assumed a more practical viewpoint. I perceived this at the time as clearly as I do now; I knew it was in vain to try to explain to her. I think sometimes pragmaticism is an excuse for cowardice. People can armor themselves against unrelenting damage by hiding within crevices of logic. Why jettison yourself into a tempestuous sea when you can remain secure on a steady vessel? People can view what is more sensible as what is the path of least resistance. To stay with a spouse certainly involves less hassle and emotional upheaval. But without the toil and consequently, the personal growth that comes from it, this person will still be lost, trying fruitlessly to navigate a life they’ve settled for, and he will reassure himself that he’s made the responsible choice. But still as years go by, and milestones are passed, he is troubled by nagging doubts nettling his mind.
 
At least, this is what I told myself a year after our affair, when Isaac’s first child was born.
 

This story was first shared at the Story Salon in Los Angeles on the evening of March 11, 2020. After a full day at work, I rushed to make headway in traffic, zigzagging across the windy Topanga Canyon road, at the same time trying to take in the AM radio news. Whispers of the pandemic were growing louder, so I wanted to be informed. Within a span of 30min– between bits of spotty radio signal and incoming text messages–  I learned about the canceled NBA season, President Trump declaring a European travel ban, and Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson contracting the Coronavirus. 

Now with half the usual audience at the Story Salon– whether by choice, commitment, denial or a mixture of them all– the event still went on. 

My story is about hope in the face of what I thought was only a happy time seared in the past that couldn’t possibly come back because– well, that’s not how life works. The truth is, it can, vividly so, and hypnosis proves it. In these changing and uncertain times, I hope my story inspires you to believe in good times ahead, too.

​

In 2009, my first starring movie had its premiere screening at the historic Paramount Pictures’ Sherry Lansing Theater.  The event was called “Freshly Squeezed,” parading a delicious illustration of a juicy orange on it’s digital flyer to showcase short films of select USC grads. I invited agents, managers, casting directors, and organized the car ride with my new LA friends. Strutting a cute dress and mini entourage, my excitement plumed. I was living my dream, and I was sharing it with a packed house of industry peers. Until recently I realized, I was honoring myself most of all.
 
10 years later I met with Yasmin Verberckt, a hypnotherapist. I reached the end of my rope. All the spiritual know-hows I practiced to feel centered were barely successful. That night in 2009 was supposed to change my life, I thought: I would be recognized as a rising star. I even signed with a talent manager, impressed by my performance and emotional range. But with years of nothing coming close to the experience I had on that film– so proud of the end result and overjoyed by the reception– doubt set in. I lost the small bit of confidence I gained. In my naivety, there was a single trajectory to one’s career, and I wasn’t very kind to myself if I didn’t emulate this falsely perceived, upward path.  
 
The hypnotherapist asked poignantly, “Tell me the happiest moment in your life thus far.” Without hesitation I described the moment I saw my face on the big screen: ​

It really was a miracle to re-create a momentous occasion through hypnosis. Keeping up with the recording diligently paid me a powerful reminder of what’s possible if you can dream it. 

​

​My husband and I do not always see eye-to-eye – or even see the same things.  And on that afternoon in Munich, we vibrated on altogether different wavelengths.  Bob had arrived several days earlier to attend a cardiology conference, and was now clear-eyed master of the local terrain, ready to show me where things were and how to get to them.  But having landed barely two hours before, my eyes squinted at the cityscape through a jet-lag haze. We stood on the steps of our hotel on the BayerStrasse -- the InterCity.   It was a mere block from the Hauptbahnhof --  the central train station, explained my husband, waving his finger at the street.  Maybe not in the fanciest part of town -- but being near the Hauptbahnhof – that was a big plus.  I nodded, straining to appreciate his savvy.  A bearded man wheeling a dinged-up suitcase stopped just beyond Bob’s finger, stooping to pluck a package of sun-lit cellophane from the sidewalk.  Tilting my head, I could make out the red-and-yellow logo of Lucky Strike.  The man shook the wrapper, but getting no leftover butts, dropped it and continued on his way.  My husband took my elbow.  First order of business was a stroll to the Marienplatz, a key tourist destination.  For orientation’s sake, he said.
 
It wasn’t a bad idea.  I am geographically-challenged; Bob is a born path-finder.  Yet his tour did not feel absolutely critical.  We’d be in Munich for just two more days and then depart for Reykjavik and our Icelandic vacation get-away.  Two years before, our son had sent us jaw-dropping photos of that opaque volcanic land, and now we were thrilled to see it for ourselves, eager for sights beyond the Gothic spires and museum collections of mainland Europe.  And to be honest, at that moment I wasn’t really up for orientation anywhere.  Increasingly tired, I was barely able to keep my shaky legs moving.  What I wanted was a place to lie down.
 
A Schlafsack, the Bavarian locals would call it. A home-made bed-roll.  (My German was weak, but I knew that word.)  Just as we turned a corner, there it was.  Right in the midst of bakeries and boutiques, snuggled against the buffed granite exterior of a gift shop, the good citizens stepping carefully around.  While I gawked, Bob – palming his Google Maps display – strode right on past this miracle of soft architecture, a delicious monument of blankets in layers of pale pink and blue, edges lined up just so.  Constructed with great care, I thought; perhaps born of its maker’s respect for the upscale surroundings.   
 
Although Bob had missed it, I nearly stumbled right onto it.  How was there not a single dirty footprint?  The top cover was only slightly rippled, like a pond bothered by a breeze.  A corner was turned back in a tidy triangle, although I knew it was not to welcome me.    More like the occupant had ducked over to the loo, or out for fresh coffee.  A lid-less paper cup stood undisturbed at the side, only a quarter full.  A modest size, the impromptu bed asked for nothing.  No pleading sign scrawled in all caps: “Ich habe hunger”; no container for coins.
 
The bedding transported me back to childhood nights at home in the States.  Our Girl Scout leader, Mrs. Frederick, insisted we learn to construct our own sleep-away-beds before she’d allow campouts in puffy commercial sleeping bags.  I never did get the hang of them, my heaps of lumpy covers nothing like the serene surface of the Munich sleeper’s nest.
 
Once, Mrs. Frederick took our troop on a field trip into midtown Manhattan.   The day is lost to memory, except for an encounter outside Penn Station.  Lurching down the street towards our green-uniformed cluster of ten-year-olds was a man in torn and filthy clothing.  He tripped in a crack, staggering over to the curb.  Imbued with the Scout’s Promise to Help other people at all times, we girls rushed to him as one, hoping to prevent a full-on tumble into the gutter.  Mrs. Frederick shouted at us to stay away from “that bum.”  I don’t remember whether she blew her Scout whistle or not, but it was usually around her neck.  Maybe her adult nose discriminated odors of pee or whiskey or vomit that we could not.   Did she fear he was contagious?  She didn’t seem troubled that he could fall into a street puddle, only that we might fall into his clutches.  On that long-ago afternoon, it didn’t occur to me to wonder where he would sleep that night.
 
The next morning in Munich, Bob off at his doctor meeting, I headed once more for the Marienplatz.  Elbowing through the Hauptbahnhof throng, I started across the street, my thoughts on our Icelandic adventure.  Like other well-spoiled people of the First-world, we looked forward to our get-away-from-it-all trip.  To judge from our son’s photos, we were in store for spectacular vistas.  Glaciers, barely finished carving up the land, dropping huge shards of ice into the ocean.  Waterfalls, cascading over cliffs from one end of the island to another.  And the entire surface humped with volcanoes – carcasses of ancient ones now overtopped with grass, right next to younger ones still burbling, biding their time.
 
Just as I was pondering volcanoes, I realized I’d bungled my bearings, and dug in my pockets for the hotel’s City Guide.   Still curious about the bed-roll, I hoped to retrace our steps from the day before.  How would the bedclothes look this morning? Rumpled or smooth?  Still clean?  The resident’s hair matted or gently tousled?  I believed it to be a she, not a he.  (But what did I know?)    I considered why she might wish to lay her head so near to the famous plaza.    Perhaps down on her luck, she simply wanted to sleep in a part of town that had once been home?  
 
It was no good; I was unable to make my way to the Marienplatz – let alone to the bed-roll, instead finding myself in a busy neighborhood full of kaffee bars and souvenir stands.   After a few blocks, I was seriously lost.  Giving up on the guide, I switched to Google Maps – Bob’s version of the city.    Peering at the display, I decided to go back and try the little connecting lanes shown as near our hotel – although they were not at all familiar.  These took me to a wide (and equally unfamiliar) Strasse­, which I followed in one direction and then, having no luck, tried the opposite.  I turned the device upside down: which way was north?  The screen swiveled back on its own, its smartness mocking my stupidity.
 
Desperate for a clue, I stopped at an intersection and scanned the avenue. Back-and-forth, back-and-forth.  I didn’t even notice the man crawling across the lanes until what must have been the very end of his passage, as he hauled his body up through the gutter and vaulted over the curb, landing almost at my feet.  Fifty-ish, he wore a black shirt rolled up past the elbows and black pants shredded at the knees – the point at which his legs disappeared.   At first I’d almost missed him, but now I stared.  Was he born with those half-limbs?  Or had his lower parts been amputated by a surgeon, shredded by factory machine, or minced by battle weapon?  However he had come to this state, he was undeniably, utterly unlike anyone else on the sidewalk.  He was Other. 
 
Taped to his hands were inch-thick pads of yellow nylon foam, apparently to cushion the impact of rough pavement.  He dragged himself past me, tanned biceps shuddering with the work of locomotion.    His eyes, burning above a salt-and-pepper stubble some days beyond a shave, were hard-focused directly ahead against the perils of a tossed cigarette butt still alight or bit of broken glass.  I couldn’t smell him, or hear his panting.  He said nothing. Yet I imagined I had a sense of how he must feel there on the sidewalk, the upright ones looking down.
 
I’d had my own moments on the ground.  Born with long and loose ligaments (“hyper-extended” said my doctor), in childhood my unstable knees were prone to slip out of alignment  (or “sub-lux”) with sudden moves or turns, dumping me without warning on dirt or floor.  Adults smiled and called the phenomenon a “trick knee.”  Calling it a trick didn’t make it feel funny; and I had two of them.  Running across streets, playing sports, dancing at parties – came at a price.   Once, at a gymnastics meet, my right knee “tricked” in mid-air just at the peak of a vault.  Coming to on the mat, my eyes looked up into a ring of teammates’ faces.  “She’s probably faking,” whispered someone.  Spills like these came with pain, but worse was the embarrassment washing over -- and knowing another unpredictable come-down was around the corner. 
 
What washed over me then on the Munich plaza was not embarrassment, but shame.    If I’d been undercut by childhood joints, my adult ones had been retrofitted with titanium-and-plastic knee-replacements.  That afternoon I had not made my sure-footed way to the Marienplatz, but within days I’d be hiking the glaciers of Iceland in full vertical mode.    I could never claim membership in this man’s pain-wracked league, or match his steadfast, gritty progress through the city, fixed upon his goal. 
 
And what was that goal?  At first, I envisioned lowly purposes.  A bar, maybe, for a drink to drown sorrows.   Maybe he was homeless and bound for the bed-roll confection of the afternoon before – despite my belief in its feminine provenance?  (Yet, male or female, I could not imagine hands that sloshed through city grime arranging those pastel blankets just so, leaving no smear of tar or mud.)  And then I switched lenses, pulling back for another look.   This man might be headed towards job as newspaper columnist for an eminent Zeitung!   Again, what did I know?  Or maybe he was en route to a stint as radio DJ, grime tolerated given his mode of travel.  Foam un-taped from his hands, I pictured those same fingers punching buttons on a studio console, welcoming listeners to an hour of his favorite soft jazz.
 
The audience would likely have no idea what it took him to get through to them – or through a day -- the ripples of his arm muscles, the torrents of contractions propelling his trunk through the city.    In the days of Hitler, the Nazis would have been in pursuit of his Otherkind, never allowing him to gain even the far side of the Strasse.   He would have been sterilized, or given a send-off cleanse in a Reich’s shower-sized crematorium -- precursor of its industrial-scale version.  But on this day, the man was tolerated like anyone else.  I heard no one swear at him, saw no one trample his fingers.  More than tolerated, he’d been helped; someone had assisted with the hand-pads.  I couldn’t see how he’d affix those alone.  And how much courage was required to move from sidewalk into street?  Bad enough to be stepped on by a citizen – but squashed by a vehicle, the rest of his body would go the way of his missing limbs.     To the drivers careening around the plaza, his pace must have seemed infuriating, even glacial, as though he carved his incremental way forward via chisel.  
 
Was he Deutsch or foreigner, perhaps a recent Middle Eastern migrant?    His stubble masked ethnic clues.   Signs of refugee influx were evident everywhere along the BayerStrasse --  café placards in Arabic, men in dark beards, milling women tented in black abayas.  And although the waitresses at the restaurant next door were Heidi-like, blond braids bobbing atop checkered Bavarian pinafores, their headwaiter was a swarthy Egyptian from Alexandria.  It wasn’t only entitled vacationers on the move; other citizens of the world had reasons of their own.
 
Moments ago, I’d completely lost my compass, even though I’d been elsewhere in Germany.  What must it be like for new arrivals who had never so much as heard the language, let alone encountered the culture?  Driven here by default, not choice.    From the recent surge of displaced people flooding Europe, Chancellor Angela Merkel had welcomed some one million asylum-seekers.  Far too many newcomers for her infuriated opposition, apparently; the chancellor had just announced plans to step down.  The free flow of migrants would be choked to a stuttering trickle, refugees required to slow-walk a gauntlet of border-processing centers.   Could the bed-roll maker or the man crawling the sidewalk have been among the last to make it readily across?  And while any journey of that man was daring, the ladies swathed in black also gave me pause.  What had they conquered to get here?  
 
I’d like to say I was frozen in my tracks, contemplating the heroics of my Muslim sisters and the street gymnast, not to mention the builder of the ad-hoc bedroom.   But no.  It was time for my get-away!   And the next afternoon, the sun sliding toward the horizon, I buckled myself snug into a seat on a Reykjavik charter flight, all ready for the mind-bending sights to come.
 

​I reach into my kitchen’s utensil drawer for a wooden spatula and come up with a strange-looking metal contraption. What on earth? Oh, it’s one of those egg-grabbers. You know, tongs to pull hard-boiled eggs out of hot water. Squeeze it and the oval-shaped mouth opens, release and it holds your egg for you. What useless nonsense! I just use a spoon.
It’s familiar now, however, this silver, asymmetrical gadget. Although I can’t recall ever having used it, it has managed to tag along through several moves, serving as filler among the kitchen supplies. I guess every time I packed, I thought to myself, Perfect for the next time I color Easter eggs. I have NEVER colored Easter eggs. But it sounds fun! And then I will be prepared. Then I will have this very handy thing to help me. Me, the Easter-egg -colorer, the artist supreme. Bring on those eggs! I am ready!
There’s something hopeful about Easter:  the joy of spring, a time of rebirth and children dreaming of bunnies. Eggs hold all that potential. Chocolate Easter eggs with caramelly or creamy centers make me feel like I’m on holiday.
On holiday with my husband, in the early morning, in a hotel with a long table laden with an amazing breakfast buffet:  cereals, breads, cold-cuts and cheese. At the end, a hot-pot with an open box of eggs and a timer standing next to it. You could just plop an egg in the hot water and there were these tongs, these very tongs, to lift the egg right out the moment it was ready. The perfect egg, made just for you, embraced in silver arms.
Wouldn’t it be fun if my husband and I had stolen this utensil from one of those hotels we had visited in our sunnier years? Wouldn’t it be great if we had used it one year to make Easter eggs? But we haven’t. Not yet.
I place the egg-grabber back in the drawer and take out the well-used wooden spatula. As I close the drawer the egg-grabber smiles at me with promise. After all, Easter comes every year.
 

​One must eventually get started doing what one loves. Sitting down to write one’s second novel is a serious affair, for it has a reputation to renew or to repair. Sitting down to write one’s third is a matter of saying something that one had not said in the first two but that one had wanted to say all along but had not known. Or to make money, if one is that kind of novelist, to sustain a reputation as a publishing writer in hopes that the later work will merit “real” notoriety, an advance and royalties.
The third and subsequent novels are the works of a writer’s maturity. Some authors succeed in writing their best first and then write such different books thereafter that their reputations do not suffer for having been prodigies. Isaac Bashevis Singer’s first novel Satan In Goray, set in Poland, where the fraught-with-ghosts’ stories were typically set, was such a one: He was an artist who later went in a different direction with his subject matter, de-dybbuking it; and although he never wrote a better novel than the first, he later published equally excellent and imaginative stories and novels different from his earliest and earlier books; these are the ambiguously autobiographical works that followed the fantastic period of Singer’s creative adolescence, which, for their verisimilitude and regenerativeness and sheer volume of life experience—especially the experience of the middle aged and elderly in New York, Buenos Aires, Miami and Tel Aviv—shall be read and remembered as the typical Singerian tales and novels.
A great novel may not necessarily be from the most mature period of a writer, although the mature work may give us more to sustain us as human beings, as persons and personalities, making our way in the world. Whereas the great work of art may have been the prodigious feat of the genius of youth, yet it may not give anything that we could eat and live: It may give us only the instructions how to die; or how to love the beautiful and entirely useless; or it may be a mythologically faithful picture or rendition of a place long ago and far away, some unique enclave of experience that was once upon a time, before some great war or apocalypse such as mar with excoriations and pocks the cadaverous reminiscences of the twentieth century; or perhaps it was a situation or circumstance only in the mind of the writer (but then it could not be the work of art we are claiming it to be), none the less real for that, but which no more is, except in his peculiar and fantastical miracle or mode. In fairness, such a prodigy of literary art may sustain the reader but while his family starves or goes without their NIKE sneakers.
In the third and subsequent novel, the writer should not make too much of an attempt to say something important—as he must do, unless he be a genius, as a young and/or inexperienced writer—but to let his living and his observations of his living, and of the living of others, and of art and history, write what must be written, given the material that one has been exposed to and in which one has been interested but which has been more or less forgotten. This way the material of memory and of the natural, ordering capacity of the psychic and creative apparatus can be remade into something entirely new because it no longer pulls at one’s personal heartstrings but has largely been forgotten, or lost the force of its emotional impact, or because one is unaware of any emotional or feeling tone attached to the material; or perhaps the material is of such stuff that it is remembered if at all not by the consciousness of the writer but by the faculty in him which records what never really reached the notice of the person at all; and below that, there is the cargo with which one had come freighted—auspicated or fraught!—into the world and which is his legitimate heritage as a human being and which almost none is aware of, but which it takes art to make us aware.
If one really wants to write anything at all very good, he cannot be too enthusiastic or too passionate or think too determinedly about his subject or his characters or his setting or his beginnings, middles or endings. For there will be many of each of these in their turn, and they shall each be transposed with the others, shall transpire and resurface and the artist in love with his expressions shall at times resuscitate what should stay dead; so that what one had begun with becomes what one ends with, and what one had thought to be the matter of the expansive middle passage of the book dwindles to the insignificance of a word overheard or bypassed in the dark hallway down which some minor player had wandered while one believed himself lost to his story, never to find his way back; while the current of the circuit continues on in its obedient (to itself, not to the writer!) and metaled way toward a new beginning, through a storied if muddled or busy, though vital and spirited middle, to an end that happens to be the last turn in the road before—displaced by what has become its beginning—having been taken as the supposed road more traveled and so abandoned in preference for its eventual genesis. Which turns out to be the road one must travel and the road that one might have traveled had he begun with the ending and taken his turn as he would be wont to do, even had he conspicuoulsy chosen to know his subject before he began and planned the whole thing with an outline or something as ridiculous as that.
So, in like humor—in ridiculity—one finds oneself writing a Writer’s Preface or Introduction to his book before ever he has written word one of his novel or work of art, if he be lucky to be allowed to produce such a thing, or either of these; they are not mutually exclusive though their being both and one is mighty rare. Only a handful of plays and poems and novels and songs and the like from all times shall also qualify to be treated as works of art; for the majority of what has been written and is written daily and published annually is perfect mediocrity or, in other words, only what the audience had thought that they wanted. That is popular art, not for art’s sake but for the sake of the publishers; and for the public only insofar as the public consumes for the publishers’ sakes and for the sake of the “health of the economy” generally, that is nationally, speaking. And in the world economy, licenses and copyrights being sold to foreign translators and their publishers—or foreign publishers’ or foreign branches of the big publishers’ teams of translators, etc.—for the world economic situation as well. Forget art, art is shit, is the dictum of the publishing business. Is it salable; and is the author billable on social media? Can we make him or her famous, and with what audience?
This business of giving the audience what it thinks it wants is the law of adaptation in the publishing world, which is subject to the laws of tooth and fang, demand and supply, manufacturing demand, identity building, market analytics and all that; but the artist is not confined to the necessity of function begetting form but may, must, insist upon form communicating the mysteries which form itself—and only form—entertains and countenances, while beggaring function and the demands of the market. Art’s only market is history. And its true stewards are historians, all kinds of historians, and the lovers of art, book lovers, people who read poetry because they like it and who look at paintings because there are things that only a painting can impart, what a poem can’t; but a story may have something to say which only it can, as a poem its unique province, as a sculpture its own. Can the same be said of a video game? of a YouTube video? a popular song? I will not pretend to know. Nobody today can know that, though we love our Netflix series as our record collections, as our art collections if we can afford that kind of thing, our vases, our vintage Porsches, our refurbished ESSO pumps and signs.
Art is completely useless, as Wilde would have it. The artist has nothing to say but what the forms—what the seed of form—purely, economically, or ebulliently and ostentatiously, nervously and beautifully and magically, reveal in their tight-lipped, staid, seductively quotidian, bizarrely commonplace, weirdly mystically Lynchian, vain, generous, litigious, fantastic, naturalistic, urbane, hokey, nostalgic or futuristic or speculative or negligently open-arsed contours. Which is to say, that ugliness is also representative in art; but as what must appear new to the spectator, the reader, as it were something novel, therefore ugly; in the way that anything must be which is alien to our sensibility; but which, again, may be, if not harmless, then neutral unless we use it to harm. Nevertheless, it will be something antique, or ancient, expressing itself newly, if not fully formed out of Eternity, as scripture, for instance—as Greek Tragedy and sculpture, the Tao te ching, the terra-cotta army, Bach, “The Three Hermits,” the drawings and sculptures of Giacometti, Highway 61 Revisited—always of the essence of the present moment. 
Ugliness, as also beauty, equally variegated and variable and incomprehensible, must be there in Reality, which is always the intersection point of time and timelessness at the corner of here and now, for there is ugliness in life. Ugliness is only incompleteness, and any pure form may comprehend any number, that is an infinity, of partials within its whole nature. The artist must leave alone the business of writing from the exterior to the exterior—from the world to the world—and instead record what passes out, through his own sensorium, of that place from which all mysteries are revealed in their forms, which will ensure their being whole and not partial, or if partial then integral therefore completely necessary, reconcilable, regenerate, indispensable; thus becoming manifest, after revolving in eternity as objects of a divine, incomprehensible nature, which in their own seasons pass into time, from Eternity into the light.
It is through the specific style of parthenogenesis of the individual artist in his role as impersonal interpreter—he must interpret—that these truths or essences, of which art is made, are revealed to him and to us. It is not enough that the artist merely records his visions, for to record alone is not to make art but to dream awake and to record one’s dream. Which, for the purposes of art, appears a formless thing, being but a torn flag of an illimitable cosmos, while the work of art must have limits. Being, as it must be, the very most intense formulation of consciousness and life into a new thing, a thing within which all that might be contained is contained, and constrained, to within the sheerest threshold of its bursting—the pervious bounds of itself threatened to become again nothing.
The work of art is a living thing and by instinct it comes into being, and by force of its beauty and its giving the appearance of the fragility and ephemeral nature of life remains alive though the centuries; seeming as delicate as a flower, yet it is next to Eternity Itself in its imperviousness to mortal dissolution. It is sensitive and flexible enough to ratify and to renew itself after the succeeding of further works of art coming into being. The real work of art can and must be altered by, must adjust to, every new and subsequent living work of art. This is as Eliot has stated. And we must trust him, if only for the fact that he is the author of Prufrock, The Waste Land and the immortal Four Quartets and carried on many other experiments in verse, some of which succeeded in becoming poems better than most; and who wrote several essays which cannot be ignored: “Tradition and the Individual Talent” elicits a citation in the above idea concerning subsequent works of art altering those of the past as well as the present and likewise being altered by their historical succedents. It is to the artists, as well as to the mystics and prophets, that we owe the preservation of the renewal of the spirit in a world at times seemingly devoid of such silence and reverence as works of art return to us and we to them. The true values cannot be descried in the world but must arise out of us. Often they arise—they emerge—in art, which at its best is a form of prayer and meditation, a contemplation of and a communion with Eternity or, if you prefer, with God.