 All right, so it's really nice actually when it takes a while to quiet the crowd down because it's like a sign that you guys are actually talking, so that's I'm very excited about that. I'll do administrative stuff and then I'll be a writer. So if you haven't seen there's sign-ups on the whiteboard both for readings and talent night. The word talent is in its loosest interpretation. So you will see things that will leave scars for years afterwards. So if you have one of those kind of abilities, then you can feel free to also volunteer yourself. Okay, so I have a new book out now that I'm not going to read from, but I so this book is the evolution of Hilary Clinton and it's sort of an analysis of her and as you'll hear in the panel we're doing later in the residency on organizing a long work. I had to write that book basically in two weeks, which was a horrifying experience. You should never try, but it's possible. Anyway, so I have copies for sale, PayPal, credit card, check, cash. I will be selling them after the reading. Ask Dahl how good of a book it is. Dahl likes it. But what I'm going to read from tonight, I'm actually really happy that I reading after Hollis's wonderful seminar on writing disease because there's so much that connects to what she brought up. So the book that's coming out in the spring is a collection of essays called Pain Woman Takes Your Keys and it's about the experience of rheumatoid arthritis, but more than that, it's you know, it's an attempt as Hollis said to really get in slant at the experience of pain and I have done a couple memoirs and I wanted for this book to break away from narrative because I felt like narrative just doesn't, it didn't work for this subject matter. So, you know, people hear the topic of pain and you just think like, that's the last thing you want to hear about, but you know, so I'm trying to come at this in maybe even fun interesting ways. So this, I'm going to read two pieces. And the first piece, again, also really coming from what Leah Purpurra was talking about last night, the question of what genre some of our pieces are. This you know, what it's classified as an essay and essay collection. If you look at it on the page, it looks to me either like a list or a poem, but so I'll let you decide. What pain wants? Pain wants you to put in earplugs because sounds are grating. Pain has something urgent to tell you, but forgets over and over again what it was. Pain tells you to put your laptop in the refrigerator. Pain runs into walls at 45 degree angles and ricochets back into the center of the room. Pain resents being personified or anthropomorphized. Pain is a four-dimensional person with fractal intelligence. Pain wants to be taken to an arts and crafts store. Pain likes to start big projects and not finish them. Pain wants to clean one countertop. Pain asks you to break itself up into neat square segments like a chocolate bar. Pain makes a hissing, popping hum like high-tension power lines. Pain has ambition, but is utterly unfocused. Pain will get its revenge if you ignore it, but sometimes forgets what it was angry about. Pain wants to watch a different channel than you do on TV. Pain looks at you with the inscrutable eyes and thin beak of an egress. Pain stubs out the cigarette of your to-do list. Pain will first try to do some things on that list, but will end up with socks on its antlers. Pain demands that you make eye contact with it and then sit utterly still. Pain folds the minutes into fascinating origami constructions with its long fingers. Pain leaves the meter running. Pain asks you to think about the breath flowing in and out of your lungs. Pain will ask you to do this 307 times today. Pain does not mean any harm to you. Pain is frustrated that it is trapped in a body that is ill-fitting for its unfolded shape. Pain has been born in the wrong universe. Pain is wild with grief at the discomfort it causes. Pain wants to collect bottle caps to show you the serrated edges, which means something it cannot explain. Pain keeps pointing to serrated edges and scalloped patterns, but cannot explain how these will unlock it. Pain emphasizes that it is not a God, but then makes the symbol for neighbor over and over and you do not understand what it means. Pain puts its beaked head in its long-fingered wing hands in frustration and loneliness. Pain winks at you with its dot black eyes and tries to make the sign for I love you. Pain folds up its wings and legs and spindles quietly and blinks up at you when you say, I know. Pain understands that you cannot say I love you back, but that there is something bigger behind I love you that you do not have the words for. Pain also understands that the background to I love you is something like a highway. Pain licks at its hot spots like an ancient anxious dog. Pain, when held in place, spirals down into drill bits so it has to keep moving to prevent these punctures. Pain asks you to breathe deeply so it can zing about and not get caught on the edges and corners of calendars, books and electronic rectangles. Pain's favorite music is the steel drum and its favorite flavor is fig. Pain prefers any texture in which tiny seeds are embedded. Pain shakes its head. No, it says. That is you that likes that texture and will have nothing to do with spheres. Pain wants only for you to see where it starts and you stop, but you are a transparent bubble. Pain and its kind have waited patiently for humans to evolve into the fourth dimension, but they are worried the project is failing. Pain feels as though Earth's gravity is as strong as Jupiter. Pain has something metallic in its bones and is captured by the core of our hot planet. Pain envies flesh and its soft strength and ease of movement. Pain inhabits curved soft bodies in hopes of fluid movement and then cries when it breaks them. Pain would like french fries and Netflix. That's a weird ass stuff, I know. That's what you can do. Okay, so this one is not that weird. This is the title piece in the collection and it's called Pain Woman Takes Your Keys. And I wanted to read this one partially because it's about the interaction of pain and writing and voice. It would be helpful for us and we can talk about it after I read it. And actually, like a lot of the pieces in this book, this one was... A lot of the pieces in the essay collection were prompted by someone asking me to write something for something or other. And then I was just in pain and so I was like, oh, how can pain connect to this? So someone had asked me to write something for a blog and this is what happened. Writing delivers sheer absorption and physical confrontation with myself. I step into the cockpit, fueled by a beautiful morning bubble of caffeine. The glowing screen dares me and taunts me. Make something out of nothing. Make a sentence that sucks slightly less than what you see in front of you. Make it true, whatever it might be. Writing has been a solace for most pain in my life, partially because of the focus it requires. The focus of writing leads me to a kind of trance with the happy side effect of an almost complete separation from this mortal coil. I forget my body and my surroundings. As I've lately confronted more physical pain, the focus of writing often delivers an hour or two in which the ache in my bones are erased. I've enjoyed this physical numbness and there have been days when writing has been my only relief. But then there are other days when I'm simply not myself. Past that point, I inhabit a strange altered consciousness brought on by pain. Over the past few years, I began to worry that the fogginess and ache of autoimmune disease would destroy my writing. This would be a triple loss for me, shutting out something I do for my job, something I do for joy and something I do for escape. As I've done for years, I sit down every weekday morning and aim for my hour plus at the computer screen. Some days there's nothing there, but I go to the page even when nothing feels promising, just for the relief of playing with words. Some days in the last year, all I could make was a blog post. My writing voice on those days felt like it had far less energy, less scope. It seemed obvious. I was not a writer, but a woman who could in fact barely string sentences together. Writing with the submerged pain voice feels like using a pinhole camera instead of a wide angle lens. Last year, in such an altered pain state, I gave up on serious writing and wrote a blog post called The Shadow Syllabus, which was kind of a fugue state reflection on what I think about as an essayist and a human being when I write syllabi for my classes. I put the piece up on my blog and walked away from the computer, feeling a little bit defeated. This was all I could muster for the day, but I was practicing being kind to myself by doing a little and then stopping. To my shock, the post went viral, linked and shared by various educators around the world, cited and reblogged and so on. Then the next year when syllabi time rolls around for professors and teachers, my blog starts up again too. This has been wonderful but strange because the pain woman who wrote that post doesn't feel like the woman I know who has been writing with my hands for 20 years. The woman who tries so hard to build essays with complex and multi-layered sentences. Pain woman has a different voice. She's a kind of messianic confidence that I do not have in my normal writing or even in my normal living. And this is the most shocking thing. The me I know or have inhabited most of my life is so ready to apologize for my point of view. I come at my writing sideline, midwestern, nerd, female, post-bullying, still gun shy of ever saying something directly. Pain woman gives no shit. Pain woman has stuff to tell you and she has one minute to do so before she's too tired. Pain woman knows things. My non-pain voice searches for metaphors to entertain you. She aims to fascinate with far-reaching pretty solar system lava curly cues hiding behind constructions that might allow you to forget for a second that you are even looking at a woman at all. Pain woman takes your car keys and drives away. This emergence of a distinct second voice brought on by physical disability and medical issues raises several strange issues about writing for me. First, it confirms my long-held belief that the phrase we hear a lot, find your voice, is inaccurate and probably unhelpful. It implies that voice is sort of a needle in a haystack, an elusive entity that we have to catch and then put on. Actually, I think what's true is that we're swimming in our multiple voices and we have to listen to ourselves. This is tougher than a game of capture the flag, hard and painful, because to hear our voices we have to grapple with what we hear, which might be different than our idealized or hypercritical versions of ourselves. We all have multiple voices, I believe. What's strange is that, at least in my case, some of the voices remain completely submerged until other voices are sloughed away. I'm misdivided by the pain voice for reasons having to do with craft. If pain woman's writing is sometimes very powerful, as judged by reader responses on my blog, I wonder if I've been trying too hard or using the wrong muscles with what I've known of my writing voice. I know that my collection of voices includes academia woman, editorial pissed off woman, dreamy essayist fragment girl, and hasty punk rock girl. Have I been trying too hard with all of them? Or have I not yet found the way to be direct and only pain can strip away the artifice that is hiding me from myself on the page? Or maybe I have had to learn writing first in order to unlearn it and strip it down to pain woman when she's required. Maybe I built skills with my sentence weightlifting these past years, so that I could thread this needle of pain with a different voice when she was needed. Another lesson from this for me is the nagging idea that when I believe I'm at my best as a writer, I may not actually be at my best in terms of meeting reader needs. Sometimes I think I'm humming along making beautiful sentences. I might just be doing a shtick I've honed over time using one old routine when I could try others. Pain woman's emergence and her strange rhythm, her simple plotting confidence make me wonder how each writer's voices develop and morph and ferment and merge over time. Many spiritual paths include texts that deal with the ever-present concern of physical and mental irritation in life. So much of spiritual practice addresses ways to cope with pain, and some teachers exalt pain as the path itself, a scourge that somehow purifies the soul. But I don't think my pain is making me a better person. I think it is constantly destroying my concentration, and that for a writer is interesting. Ultimately, I think that the most interesting sentences come not where I think they will emerge. I find that revision is mostly about questioning my assumptions about whether something is working, whether I'm on a roll. So maybe the way pain woman works is that she is unable to access the routines and habits I've picked up, the automatic scripts of what I see as my style. She can find the shadows and scraps of them, but she has to use them to make something else. I don't know what I would have to say about any of this, but pain woman would say, take your own voice and destroy it, shatter it, and look at yourself in each of the glinting pieces. You have more options than the writerly self you think you should be writing through. Thank you. So we have time for a few questions if anybody has questions. Yeah, with my pain? Yeah. This is all like totally, it's a self-interested project. It's made it much easier to live with the pain. That was totally why I did the whole thing. It was driving me nuts, and I felt like it was some awful thing. You know, we were talking, Hollis mentioned, you know, there's a very famous, Susan Sontag has written very famous on, against illness is metaphor. And I also have found the opposite. Like I needed every freaking metaphor. I needed the whole carnival of metaphors because I just, it felt too blank. So I just decided, you know, is there a way to have, not fun with it, but I really, I did have fun. I read in my introduction to this book that this is the most fun I've had on a book, which seems really weird. But I did it because I needed a new relationship, yeah. Yeah, definitely, because I think like most people say, like anything else uncomfortable, it takes half as much energy, it takes half the energy to actually ignore it, right? Yeah. And you know what I mean? And you know what I mean? Yeah, I mean I feel like at least for this project, like the idea of an empty auditorium, what I really wanted to do was populate it with different visions of pain. I wanted to see, I wanted to see the characters, yeah. And I think especially for a nonfiction writer, even when we, I incorporated a lot of research about this, which was also helpful because it's helped me connect with the wider community of people who have chronic pain. And that's also definitely diminishes isolation, but the real engine for it was like, if I don't research into this, it would prevent me from doing other work. So you know, so it's important I think sometimes to write about the things that are actually really bugging us. Thank you. Yeah. I feel like it doesn't break space in my head anymore, any in my heart. Yeah. I really did. I mean I didn't even expect to and I didn't write it so that I didn't, I mean because the pain is not going to go away, right? But I feel a different relationship to it now, which I didn't expect because a lot of these essays are very, you know, they're research based or they're spiritual or they research, you know, the neurobiology of pain or pain in public health. But I think really like allowing myself to dwell in it. It, you know, exercised something. So now I can sort of think, oh, it's an essay topic. No, you already did that. Oh, how great. Okay, good. I think that was one of those like, I was, I was stupid to say there's such degrees though. I wasn't really in pain when I was writing that and I was really frustrated. But I like that piece because it's so, it's playful and ridiculous, you know, but it was sort of like, I mean we do, we think of pain as the scary, horrible nightmare and it is, but I just wanted to personify it really badly in non-threatening ways, you know. So I felt like I needed that sort of repetitious insistence of like, you know, what are the signals from the deep that this crazy thing with antlers who doesn't like the flavor fig wants to tell you, you know. So yeah, there was something about like listening to that emphatic voice. But yeah, as far as, you know, what that, what that would be classified with, I have no idea. I don't know if I would count it as an essay. I don't know. So I think about what's going on with the voices. Yeah. And it's kind of interesting because over the past few years you've been hearing a lot of people say, don't feel like you have to be bound to a specific genre. That's floating around a lot and then we're, you know, we're on four readings. So there's a lot of things about that. And once you, once you realize that, once you're working kind of, you know, in break apart those conceptions of how you think you have to write, how does that change your process when you're approaching a piece, now that you have all these new, and it seems like it would almost be a positive thing that presents all these new options to you? Yeah, I really, I mean, I've struggled with this. Even my first two books, I really struggled with the right voice. And in some ways I feel like that's really the key for figuring out the voice for each writing project. And sometimes you have to do a lot of writing before you actually figure what's the right voice. You know, like is the voice going to be angry? Is it somewhat removed? Is it reflective? It can even be a mixture of those things. But so I guess, you know, the thing that I'm interested in now is, you know, is it possible to use more than one voice in a piece? I think I really, even though I told my students not to, I was really sort of hung up on the idea that there's an essayist voice and there's a memoir voice and I have to be sort of reflective and words-worthy and careful about, you know, my experiences when I'm describing them in an essay. And so, I mean, I was actually, you know, being here through multiple residencies and hearing my fellow writers, poets, you know, the characters in fiction that really speak with an urgency, I think those voices speak to us because they're in us. You know, so it was sort of the desperation of this particular challenge I was facing that led me think, like, could I write sometimes as desperately as I feel and not feel that I had to, like, pretty it up later? You know, that's a scary thing, sort of. You know, so I let myself do it in pieces because then we have the problem of at what point do you bowl the reader over, right? Or how do you make that both strong and approachable at a conversation? So it's like, it's still evolving for me to think about it, but I like the idea of experimenting with a really direct voice. Just like to do the revealing. Yeah, because I get, I mean, you know, the book come out in the spring and you can read, like, there's sex in there. Those of you who are a fan of my husband, my husband's in there. You know, pretty much every element, I basically, like, when I started to see that I might have a book, I said, okay, well, what are the missing elements in my life? What are the ways that pain is hard or interesting? That I have not yet written about. So those were the remaining homework assignments to me and those were some of the hardest. But those assignments made me uncomfortable, but that was, I think, part of the liberation thing that I was, that Susan had asked about because those were the things I didn't even want to write about. So, you know, writing through some of that has helped me to reassess. But yeah. When you wrote this? Yeah, I've done a lot of recent reading and research and yeah, really fascinating stuff. Alright, well, let's see, I guess what we could do is we can continue to talk afterwards. I have books over there, I don't have the pain book yet, but I have the Hillary book if you're interested and we can chat more about pain and other fun things, so thank you. It is not too great of an exaggeration to say that Al Davis is one of the main reasons why I chose to continue down the path of writing. After my first residency at Enders, I found myself lost and indecisive. I'd enrolled in the Fairfield MFA program with little background in writing and for all the wrong reasons. I was fortunate enough to be paired up with Al as my mentor for my first semester. His outstanding attention to detail, deep commitment to my individual work, and acumen as both an instructor and a writer helped ignite in me the passion for writing and literature that is needed for any creative writing student. For helping give me a purpose and direction, I'm indescribably grateful. Al holds an MA from the University of Louisiana Lafayette and a doctorate from the University of Denver. Among other honors, he has earned two Fulbright awards to Indonesia and Slovenia. He's a professor in the MFA programs at our own Fairfield University and Minnesota State University at Moorhead. Al is also the senior editor at New Rivers Press, one of the most prestigious small presses in the country. He was hailed by Dorothy Allison as a voice that transports and sings following the 2000 release of his collection of short stories along with the owl. And his third collection, So Bravely Vegetative, won the Prize Americana for Fiction in 2010. It is my honor to introduce to you tonight Al Davis. Thank you, Sean. Thank all of you for being here. Sonia and Elizabeth and Bill wanted me to mention briefly that we'll once again be doing New Rivers Press and the Fairfield University MFA program will once again be collaborating on a book prize. We've done this three times before and any alumni or present student is eligible to submit a book link manuscript in any genre. And I think the deadline will be this fall. Maybe we'll make it November 1st. So November 1st will be the deadline. Details will be forthcoming. You'll get details from Sonia or Elizabeth or Bill or all three via email and so forth. And we're still figuring out who the finalist judge will be. In the past, the finalist judges were Charles Simic, the Pulitzer Prize winning poet and poet laureate of the United States at one point. Danny Shapiro, a wonderful writer in multiple genres and Richard Hoffman. And I don't know if any of the alumni who won any of those prizes are here tonight. No? Okay. But we've had three winners. The third book will come out this fall. And then this book would be, the deadline would be November 1st and then a year from now or thereabouts. Next summer we'd announce the winner I think. And then a year after that the book would come out. Last year to celebrate the 50th anniversary of New Rivers Press we put out a book called Paper Camera, a half century with New Rivers Press. It's like a press taking a selfie. Getting tons of people to write essays about the press. I'm just going to read you a blurb on the back of one of the editors who wrote. Paper Camera is a lens focused on the tenuous life of literary publishing. Bill Trusdale, who founded the press, who I knew and who started publishing a few years before me, sums up our start by saying we had no idea what we were getting into. Yet we persisted. New Rivers Press managed to survive a difficult transition from a founder driven press to a teaching press, which is what it now is at Minnesota State University. Paper Camera documents both those early days and the contemporary reincarnation of the publishing house and serves as a primer for those intrepid enough to follow us down this path. So keep your eyes and ears open and you'll be getting more information about the Fairfield University slash New Rivers Press book prize. Sometimes soon, later in the summer or early in the fall. And if you've got a book ready and you think it's appropriate for sending to a small press, by all means we look forward to reading your work. Thank you. Since I'm doing a seminar Tuesday, today's Sunday, I restrike the time here, on using objects in your stories to structure the stories to serve as a kind of fulcrum for the story and to figure out how to make the story work. I thought it would be logical to read a story where I do that. So I'm going to read from my second collection along with the owl, a story called Movement of Natural Light, which I haven't read before but I think it will. Work good when read aloud. It's also about a guy who's a lapsed Catholic so it's perfect for this family. Movement of Natural Light. John Bloor and his stepson, Hammer, bought the aquarium several months before they moved from California to the Chicago suburbs. They stocked it with dwarf angels, damselfish, clownfish and a large butterfly. A predatory creature, the clerk at the high tech pet store, told Bloor could be trouble. Bloor liked the risk factor, he told his wife, Phoebe, who stood over them as they assembled the tank. Imagine damsels and butterflies terrorizing an angel, he said, his mouth just a little crooked. John, she said skeptically, why now? She was wearing a black embroidered sweater and her hair was pulled back tightly. Why not when we get to Will Med? It's just something else to take apart. I'm very tired of taking things apart. It's just another breakable object to move. This is the time, you'll see why, he said, motioning her away. He did in fact have an answer to her question and it concerned Hammer, his stepson. He wanted him to be a normal child who ate hot dogs, played baseball and thought a lot about girls. And the aquarium was the first step, one initiated by Hammer. John, he had said that morning, rusting his stepfather from sleep. Let's go get my aquarium. You've been promising it for months. Hammer, old enough to decide he was a Buddhist, donated a rotunda stone figure to the aquarium. It was about the size of a large egg and the pygmy angel in particular took to it immediately, nibbling on it, keeping it clean of algae. Bloor, as a child, strictly a Catholic, now a nothing, chuckled indulgently. Buddha belongs in a fish tank, he said. He thought it was funny, Hammer didn't. When it happens, it happens in a flash, Hammer said, and added to enigmatically for Bloor's taste. Now the fish can nibble on the pearls that were his eyes. Phoebe liked the aquarium. Late in the evening she often sat in its light to the rest of the room dock, its coral shining, the symphony of sorrowful songs playing on the stereo. It's beautiful and sad at the same time, she said, sipping her nightcap, wearing a gown with a scalloped silk collar that Bloor liked to feel between his fingertips. Sometimes it looks like Disneyland, sometimes like Kubla Khan's Pleasure Dome. Pleasure Dome repeated Bloor, excuse me, he let the words roll around in his mouth, Disneyland. It's a miracle of rare device, Phoebe said, putting down her drink and leaning against Bloor, who stiffened a little before putting his arm around her and reaching for the collar. It's wonderful when we connect, isn't it? It happens so seldom. Connect, said Bloor, sipping his own drink and nodding as he stared into the tank. I'll pause whenever there's a space break. When we get to Will Matt, Bloor told her later, folding his Wall Street journal and tossing it beside the bed, I'd like to send him her to a real school, one with a baseball team. A baseball team? Phoebe let her mouth stay a little open. She closed her book and tilted her head toward him as though to hear him better. A baseball team, a cafeteria that serves real meat. Bloor ticked off the items and stared at his stubby fingers. You know, regular stuff, great books, a yearbook, a high school ring, calculus, stuff he can use. I mean, there's nothing wrong with meditation, biofeedback, yoga, tofu, all that crap. I'm just saying the boy has a spiritual foundation, Phoebe. Maybe now it's time to take him away from that yoga school. It's not a yoga school. It's an institute of personal transformation. Whatever, Bloor smirked. Look, no reason to call names. I'm not trying to fight or anything. I'm just making a sensible suggestion. He nodded sagely in his pajamas and stared at the star-patterned quilt. I just think he needs some real education. In her nightgown seductive and slinky, she stalked to the bathroom door and turned. Is there anything I do that you agree with? Hey, I didn't mean to upset you. Come here. I'll show you something I agree with. Bloor saw the expression on her face change. He raised his eyebrows and grinned boyishly. Hey, sorry I didn't mean that. I'm teasing. We're just failing to communicate here. That's all. She slammed the door. Our problem has nothing to do with failure. Her voice was muffled as though in the basin. Bloor counted to ten. He forced himself to his feet, pulled up his sagging pajamas and trudged to the closed door. There just isn't a big demand for yogis, is there, he said. That's the only point I'm making. Phoebe opened the door and stood there, alms crossed, steam still rising from the basin. There's always two stories, John. There's always your story. Even as the story of what's really going on. Bloor, whose first marriage had ended in muffled, irreconcilable anger, nodded and pulled up his pajamas again. You know what happened in front of that aquarium, Phoebe? He and I connected. He said holding the pajamas in place with one hand. He launched into a negotiation strategy learned in business school. Phoebe relaxed a little, dropping her arms. Bloor reached out to her. I'm sorry, he said, and tried to kiss her. She turned away, so he pecked her on the cheek, a patronizing kiss and offered a back rub. Sometimes it's easier and wiser, he said, his fingers working her spine to walk away from an argument. Will you just do me one favor? His fingers dug in deep. Will you just think about what I said? Alright, she mumbled. After a few minutes she sighed. Satisfied, he told her about the angel fish talking to himself when her breathing deepened to the rhythm of sleep. In the morning, without his usual complaints, he drove hammer to the yoga school. You know, he said, in high school, I was a pitcher. I had a curve that nearly snapped off my arm at the elbow. I could be wild, but when I had control, I was something. They'd chased pitchers already in the dirt. When I was good, son, I was good. You hear what I'm saying? Loud and clear, hammer formed a steeple with long, thin fingers over what looked like a roll of hospital gauze. I don't believe in competition, he said. He pursed his lips, but I like the aquarium a lot. I just hope the tank is big enough. I'd hate to see that angel get eaten. He unwound the gauze and twined it around his head. Tell me, he said, did you ever go to church? Blower, a little startled by the question, glanced at his stepson who seemed quite curious. So he choked off an impatient, angry reply. Yeah, I used to go to church every Sunday. Holy days too. I was brought up Catholic. Did you pray? Pray? Blower said ruefully. Yeah, actually, all the time. Every night I'd say the Jesus prayer a hundred times, like my mother taught me to make up for my sins. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on my soul. I'd say the damn thing over and over. It didn't make me a better person, but it made me feel better. Why'd you stop? I don't know, he said, tersely. I got older, other things became more important. Blower had a scary feeling that took him back to the curtained confessional of his youth. So that the role of father and stepson was temporarily reversed. Blower was the penitent hammer, the father confessor. You ever think of going back to church, you mean, he said, gruffly? No. I like to meditate in front of the aquarium. Would you ever try that with me? I think not, Blower said. If hammer is the father confessor, then that makes the fish the church and the aquarium the sacrament. Or maybe the aquarium is the church, he thought, and the ocean the sacrament. Blower played around with the notion vaguely remembering some scripture, something about fish, learned in Saturday morning catechism years ago. Hammer left it at that and Blower kept his thoughts to himself. The rest of the way to school, hammer tapped the dashboard and pointed out the neighborhood's power points. Places where a jogger could stop and breathe green healing energy. You had a jog every afternoon and run. It would strengthen your resolve and improve your spirits. My resolve is just fine, thank you. Blower smiled at the thought of himself jogging, his punch jiggling like a pot roast. He'd break to a stop at the school, a low slung building without windows. The novice yogis, turbines wrapped tight, were meditating stone faced on the front lawn. Son, it's all chemicals. We're pieces of meat, dead meat, unless we're careful. That's what I believe, so keep control, yeah, but throw a few curves along the way. Throw them in the dirt, keep people guessing. That's really a depressing thing to say, Dad. Hammer opened the door, look at it this way, he said. Dusty, unconditioned air rushed into the car. We do what our karma demands. He closed the door and was shielded from any possible reply. Phoebe and Hammer moved to a wheel mat several weeks ahead of Blower. He called each day. Did the fish survive the journey? Did the stress trigger any aggression in the large damsel? What about those bottom-dwelling gobies? The clownfish. Hammer reassured him on all counts, but Phoebe couldn't take him seriously. You identify with that clownfish, don't you, she said, laughing. Makes sense. And as for the stress, we've got two of them in therapy, they're coming along very nicely, thank you. Blower was furious at her bantering tone and gave her strict instructions concerning the care and feeding of the fish. She and Hammer would be strictly responsible for their nurturing until he got to the new house. Yes, sir, she said. Any other commands, Your Highness? She poked his Mercedes at O'Hare Airport. His plane landed in an afternoon shower. He claimed his car and reached his new house after a long drive down moist suburban avenues. The trim was the color of the ocean, he thought. From the moment he climbed aboard the plane, he had daydreamed of his arrival. A wife waiting in the drive, a son on summer vacation with lots of time for his father and the splendid piece of the aquarium. At the front entranceway, Phoebe was unbraiding her hair and introducing Hammer to their new neighbor. John, you're late, she said, flirtatious. Dappled by leaves and playful sunlight, she was beautiful. And Blower, rubbing his five o'clock shadow, asked himself an awkward question. Why am I aging so much faster than my wife? I'm not late, just bewildered, he said, glancing at the new neighbor's curb where bags of garbage had accumulated like sacks of leaves. The neighbor, a lean and hungry-looking Ron West, held out his hand and laughed. The garbage collectors are on strike, I'm afraid. In fact, one of our quick-tempered citizens ran over two of them while they were picketing. Phoebe stretched in her skimpy summer blouse. It's tempting, West said, his blue eyes sparkling to solve problems like that in a flash. Hammer studied the neighbor with interest, Blower noticed. He felt a little flustered, diminished again by that odd feeling of being possessed by his childhood. He could swear that West had maliciously glanced at his waist and eyed his wife. You've got some spit on your chin, he said to West. West, goggle-eyed, stared at him. Beg your pardon, spittle, Blower said, as stripping down your chin. He pulled out a handkerchief and offered it to his neighbor. West left quickly, his face flushed, and Phoebe was quietly furious. Blower followed her to the couch, scowling intense and as angular as a piece of modern sculpture, he thought. She sat facing the aquarium. A lemon-peel angel flickered against the glass, alternately visible and invisible in the movement of natural light. I'm sorry, Blower said. I don't know what got into me. I was just testing his sense of humor. He doesn't have one, does he? Bullshit, you were doing what you always do, being a deliberate jerk and playing one of your little games. Tell me, John, did you win that one or not? He sat beside her and cracked his knuckles and stared at his hands. To be honest, he said, looking up at her, noticing a golden teardrop earring. I don't know how to keep you happy anymore. I felt like he was making fun of me. Oh, come on. He was being friendly, that's all. Friendly to you, yes. Her glance was slanted, at least once removed from the room. You're getting on better with hammer, she said, and pleased about that. Let's just settle for that for the time being. She stared at him for what seemed like a full minute. Blower could hear the clock ticking. I've talked to him about attending a traditional school. He's willing to give it a try, especially since the alternatives up here are limited. God damn it, we both agreed to come here, didn't we? Now you bring it up and throw it in my face? Who's throwing anything in your face? Phoebe pursed her lips and shook her head in exasperation. Then her mouth tilted down as though she might cry. I don't understand the first thing about your moods and you sure as hell don't seem to know much about mine. I get all dressed up for you, even put champagne on ice, and then you insult the next door neighbor and screw everything up. Blower stared into the aquarium then turned to her. What do you see in me anyway? Phoebe thought about his question. There's a lot to see in you, John. She murmured something softly to herself as though escaping from the tension of the moment into a song instead of a cigarette. There's also a hell of a lot to put up with. I just wish you could let yourself go sometimes and admit how much you don't know. You take care of me but you never ask for help. I don't think I've ever heard you ask for help. Her head twitched, an acute angle of sunlight broken to fiery blossom in her hair. Look, I'm sorry too. Maybe I overreacted. I'm never happy for long. It's part of my nature. I told you that when I met you. West, the neighbor, was a residential designer who worked at home. He began to take coffee with Phoebe. Blower would sometimes drive up and find them huddled at the table, the curling steam of the coffee between them. Did you know Ron designed our house, Phoebe said? She was wearing a white turtleneck with blue dots and Blower imagined that each dot was a fish. He wanted to tell his wife that she was living this afternoon in a world full of fish. But it was a flirtatious thing to say and Blower did not want to say it in front of the architect. He wanted to take his wife to the aquarium and make love to her in its glow. It would be a small reconciliation and put to rest the recent tension between them. But it couldn't happen because the damned architect was at his house. Was that so? He said facing west, a childless widower. Is that why I can never find clean cows in this house? He smiled, his muscles opening into the habitual lines that served him so well where he worked. No, just kidding Ron. How long have you been at designing, I mean? Years now, John. I like to work at home. He told Blower about reality meditation. After I lost my wife I was devastated as you might imagine. It was a form of therapy someone from the Baha'i House of Worship taught me. Don't think, open yourself to the world. Watch the lotus blossom or the angels on the head of a pin or the fish in your aquarium, whatever. Whatever turns you on. Let the good things settle. Let the junk float to the surface and wash away. Look, leave the aquarium out of it, Blower said. Any junk in that aquarium is supposed to be there. It was a sore spot, because in fact the water in the tank didn't look right. It was sort of muddy, a little cloudy all the time. And Blower had taken to brooding about the fish, constantly checking water temperature and studying the ultraviolet sterilizer. No offense, man, he added, glancing at Phoebe. None taking, John. West said, he studied Blower over the rim of his tilted cup. We have a group. Come join us sometime and see what you think. It might help. Blower put out his hands, one wrist crossed over the other as though he expected to be tied up. Have mercy, he said. Anything but that. One of the dwarfs died that year, and after a time the pygmy angels seldom ventured away from the stone Buddha. It would hover under one elbow, now thickly covered with algae. Blower continued to drive Hammer to school. It's the size of the tank, Dad. Hammer argued earnestly in the spring and produced from memory some statistics he had scared up while visiting the Shad Aquarium. I respect that opinion, son, but to my mind the tank is plenty large. The mini reef system provides lots of hiding places and lots of algae and the sterilizer controls bacterial troublemakers. A tiny foreign car cut him off. It took a small act of will, but he refrained from leaning on the horn in deference to his stepson. No, it's not the tank. It's not maintenance, and it's not neglect. There's some unseen stress somewhere in the system. At a red light Hammer pointed across a wide expanse of lawn. Ron designed that place, Dad. It has mandalas on the floor, a spiral jetty instead of a back porch, and a gazebo wrapped in plastic. A spiral jetty, Blower said. Dad, what about salt content? Hammer adjusted the straps on his backpack, preparing to disembark as his father pulled to the curb. Have you been monitoring that? Blower snapped his fingers. You might have hit it. It's always something obvious we forget, isn't it? Something we should have known all along. I'll go back home and check it out. He touched his stepson on the arm. Hammer, you're forgetting you're a glove. Freudian slip, Hammer smiled. Don't expect too much. I'm no ball player. It's just a gym class. The salt content was okay in the aquarium, but a night blooming serious next to the tank looked on its last legs. Blower moved it to the other side of the room and stood for a minute by the drawn drapes, taking in the musty silence. The house seemed unusually quiet, and Blower, feeling the onset of an anxiety attack, was tempted to kneel before the tank and scratch against its glass. Instead, he went looking for Phoebe in the bedroom. She wasn't there and his anxiety increased, but he found her in the kitchen and his panic subsided a little. Her hair disheveled, still in her flannel robe, she was scrubbing the sink. That's work, you said. You should save for the maid. She jumped. John, you scared the shit out of me. You vacuumed, you dust, you do the laundry, leave it. Go to one of your personal growth seminars, right in your journal. That's very tactful, John. She rubbed her forehead. Look, I know we're supposed to have drinks at the Bernards, but I think I'm going to pass. Ron's group is meeting tonight. You sure you don't want to come? She often blowered an aggravated, tight smile and exasperated tilt of her hands. If I go just to please you, we could be on our way to a divorce. A divorce, Bloor said, genuinely surprised. Where the hell did that come from? Women. He tilted his head comically toward the heavens and grin, but Phoebe was having none of it. She was staring at him. She sighed audibly. Listen, Bloor continued, his voice earnest now. I want to make you happy. That's my first priority. He paused and cracked his knuckles because he knew it irritated her. But if we ever do split up, I want hammer. What do you mean you want him? He's not even your kid. He is indeed my son. Get real, John. Get real. Bloor nodded emphatically then turned to the white wall and stood there, arms folded, jaws working, chin pointed a little up. Do you mind if I ask you a question? Are you diddling with West? Diddling. She dropped a wire brush into the sink where it glanced with a dull click against the drain. Because Ron was a woman. Would you complain about two women who drank coffee together? Maybe so. Damn right I would. Still facing the wall, Bloor considered the question more seriously. It's not the same, he finally said. Why not? She raised her hands in capitulation. Never mind. Of course you're right. Have you ever been wrong? She started chewing on a fingernail. If whom is where the hot is, maybe I don't have a hot anymore. She paused. Or maybe we don't have a whom, John. You do what you have to do. I'll do what I have to do. When the two things connect and we'll do something together. You think that might happen anytime soon, John? Because there's something in you hiding from me and it won't come out. Do you think you might ever let me see what it is? Whatever it is? Let's go look at the fish, Bloor said. We can talk there. She stared at him so intensely that he decided to study the baseboard. I feel sick, she said. I think I have a fever. Bloor fell far away from whom on the lake on water skis no longer attached. He went to the party alone that night, flirted outrageously and woke long before dawn with night sweats. Half drunk after dreaming of a woman just beyond his reach. He stared wildly around the curtain room, drowning for long seconds in amnesia. When he realized Phoebe wasn't whom yet, he looked in on Hammer, who was asleep. A copy of the book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, propped open on the bed. Wind chimes thin copper wafers tied together with fishing line. Hormonized like a host of tiny voices in the steady rush of air from an air-conditioning vent. Bloor poured himself a drink and stared at the fish tank. The coral was still shining, breathing the water and the open sea clownfish upon a centred that seemed never to sleep, was dawning from shining coral, its usual habitat, to algae green Buddha. The pygmy angel was motionless belly up. It was floating transfigured in the aquarium's bright surface glare as though it had spent the last of its material being in the presence of Buddha and spiritual truth. Bloor had a tingling in his ankle and his left wrist, a ringing in his ears. He measured his pulse and took a few deep breaths. Each time he looked at the fish, it was still dead. There was something about mixing invertebrates with angels in a single tank that he had to think about. There was something inhospitable in the aquarium, some mystery that had to be fathomed before he could sleep. But he was still too drunk and fatigued to think straight, so finally he fished out the dead pygmy with a small net and took it to the toilet. For just a moment, getting giddy, he thought of swallowing the angel fish. The impulse passed, however, and he flushed the fish without a benediction and doused his face in the sink for a long time. The sound of water splashing on porcelain was reassuring, but his lids were heavy like lead sinkers and he felt a bit stupefied. He wanted to suspend the laws of chemistry and shrink himself to the size of an angel so that he could fit under Buddha's elbow in the aquarium. At the aquarium, Hammer was sitting in the lotus position as close to the tank as he could reasonably get. His breathing was very deep as though he was still asleep. When he turned with bright eyes and motioned silently, Bloor knelt on the geometrical parquet and lowered his head. His breathing was labored and ragged, his nose whistled and his rotunda belly hung over the waistband of his boxer shorts. The floor was a dizzy patchwork, he now saw, some sort of mandolin. Bloor cupped his hands together. The boy, his eyes closed, hummed under his breath. It sounded like a double bass. Have mercy on me, Bloor said, closing his own eyes. He dredged up the words from some thirty years ago, finding the Jesus prayer again as if emerging from a bout of amnesia. The prayer in those language days had been his daily penance. He raised his head self-consciously to see if Hammer was paying attention to him as he prayed. The boy's eyes were still closed, his face filled with artificial light and a deep humming sound still emerging prenaturally from some place inside him. Have mercy on me, Bloor said. Lord, have mercy, have mercy on me. He repeated the words over and over as if his life depended upon them as if he was still uncertain about who he was and what his place in the world might be. In a trance, his head buzzing, he continued to pray, his eyes open. He stared into the aquarium. The clownfish was taking over the territory vacated when the angel went belly up. Apparently contented with its new fate, it was nibbling at Buddha's algae-covered eyes, but the butterfly, hungry-looking, was swimming in ever smaller circles, moving in for the kill. Thank you. Thank you very much. If there are any questions at all, by all means ask them. I'll also sign books over in the usual place and we can talk there if you'd like. Okay, thank you. So just as a reminder, our book store is open so you can buy books. I will sign. And then at, what is it, is it 8.15 or 8.30? 8.15, we've got Talent Night and it's in St. Michael's B. I'm sorry? Student reading. Right, Talent Night tomorrow, I'm so excited about that I thought. Alright, so see you there.