After waiting over forty minutes for the rare and irregularly timed buses to

come by within this small city, she got on a bus with her baby pouched onto her

back. A seat near a young man with a plain face who was thumping his foot to

the music of his portable radio was the only one left. She took it. She was

grateful to have it. Having to balance herself and a baby to the movements of a

bus was something she had mastered like a sport but it wasn't a preferable

hobby. Adagio liked the bounces but she doubted that he would care to bounce

off of a window. After the door of the bus was shut and the vehicle was

beginning to roll without any sudden speed it was rapped by a hand. The driver

stopped the bus and folded the door again. A woman around 20 years old entered.

She smiled and greeted Gabriele with diffident childishness after shouting her

name triumphantly to the back of the bus and by a wave of her hand. Then as the

vehicle picked up speed her expressions became more diffident and she stumbled

to the back of the bus. "What do I do?" she said. "I don't see anywhere to

sit."

"You'll have to stand," said Gabriele.

"What do I do?"

"Hold onto the railing," she scoffed.

Lily grabbed it and began to dangle there like a leaf on a tree. "I guess you

forgot me," she said timidly.

"No, you said that you would come in the morning. I thought maybe you had

decided against coming." Her expressions were hard. It wasn't her idea to get

this Rita/Lily person to come with her but she didn't own the services so she

couldn't tell her to not come. "Really, you know, it isn't for everyone, Lily"

"Rita," she said.

Gabriele could never empirically detect the existence of a second personality

that the girl purportedly had, and as such she could not believe that one

personality came out in manic stages and the other during depression. When the

Rita/Lily person called herself Rita and when she called herself Lily she was

both timid and fragile, and tended to lie or imitate language like a parrot

within her stages of depression. When she called herself Rita and when she

called herself Lily she was even a little timid and fragile within contumacious

manic fun. A month earlier she had contradicted herself by saying that she had

not been sexually abused when she was young and that the patriarchal abuse she

was "always talking about" was infrequent sexual abuse experienced as a

teenager. The abuser was also amorphous: at one time a stepfather and another

time a biological father. Gabriele again thought, "Once didn't she claim that

her mother and father would soon be experiencing their twenty-fifth wedding

anniversary? And yet there is a stepfather? What an interesting little liar."

These contradictions were performed consistently by both of the

"personalities." Furthermore, she talked of enjoyable times that she

experienced with her parents. These times seemed to be ongoing. At any rate she

spoke of them happily instead of looking onto happy but deceased memories

sadly. It didn't appear that emotional trauma or abuse was bedizened as sexual

abuse in a display to get others to empathize with her tattered past. It didn't

seem that she was fabricating a happy family life scenario like someone

extirpating weeds to plant flowers. That would be trauma- induced schizophrenia

that would not be attributed to a manic-depressive who was being prescribed

lithium. She claimed to have had a hysterectomy although neither childhood

molestation nor cancer was claimed as the culprit. Gabriele thought that having

advised Rita to go to a gynecologist once a year for a checkup might have

brought on this comment. Maybe the Rita/Lily person fabricated information to

keep a conversation ongoing. Maybe she needed continual conversation because it

blocked out the moods that were a catalyst for divergent and erroneous

perspectives and ideas. Gabriele's conjecture was that the split personality

was nothing but the Rita/Lily person's own way of justifying why she had shifts

in moods.

If she were sexually traumatized, it didn't come across with any more poignancy

than her reactions toward not knowing what to do when she could not find

anywhere to sit on the bus. She only became taciturn if she felt that too many

questions and too much scrutiny were being paid toward her statements. None of

the pieces added up. Gabriele thought that she did not know this person at all.

She thought that she did not know any person at anytime in her life really. A

person was never quite known. All one had were one's concoctions of plausible

scenarios about the person's history and how he or she might behave from

empirical personal experiences or what was witnessed when with others. It

wasn't the person. The fact that one never knew anything didn't bother her. It

was more of a mystery to walk around the planet in a loose blindfold.

"It isn't for everyone," Gabriele repeated.

"I want to go," said Rita. Will they tie me up until I make a vow of secrecy by

signing my allegiance in blood? Something like that was on TV."

"Hmm," said Gabriele. "One takes chances in this life for sure. Still, I'm

afraid it's more mundane-boring-- than that. You need to keep away from that TV

set, don't you think."

She giggled as if manic. "No spells?"

"No spells," said Gabriele, "and vegetarian recipes afterward. It is really

quite boring."

"It is just like any church?"

Gabriele thought of the Wicca services. They always reminded her of Catholic

masses but without the Eucharist. However, they tapped into a mystery of

spiritual forces without putting a human face on the creator or creation that

was continually reinventing itself with each new generation of flora and fauna.

She knew the guilt and fear of pouring oneself from the container of traditions

he or she was raised with. Most people needed to change containers to get any

perspective on how all of these beliefs were equal expressions of a wish for

more than one's silly temporal domain. Still, someone who was definitely

insecure and probably needed to project herself as crazy did not seem like

someone suited for an experience at Wicca. In Gabriele's judgment, Rita/Lily

was not in need of changing containers but rather, someone in need of finding

the liquid to put into a given container.

"Sort of," said Gabriele.

"They believe in God, don't they?"

"Heavens, you wondered whether they were devil worshipers a minute ago. Some

might believe in God and gods. I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't."

"And the devil?"

"No. No, I've been certain of that since I was 4 years old. People cause their

own evil."

"Why don't you believe in God?"

"The reason for not believing. The why," she spoke out loud although the

thoughts were really ones she meant to keep inside. She thought on this issue.

"Well, if my life is good-and I guess it is. I'm healthy, well-educated, have

food in my stomach and a roof over my head."

"And Adagio…your baby, Nathaniel"

"Him too," she sighed. "And my friendliness with you." It was often a stretch

to even say "friendliness" in association to the Rita/Lily person but she did

not know what else to call their association. "Well, if I am a happy

solipsistic person I might well believe in God and appreciate my dizzying

blessings but in doing this I'd be guilty of saying that this god cared about

me but didn't care for those he allowed to starve or be eaten by a cannibal or

forced into a predicament of having to jump out of a burning building-whatever.

I suppose he could care about some of us and not others, but wouldn't that

lower him to human levels? If I really believed in God, then this is the only

god there is; and yet to be such a god it is quite obvious that he or she is no

different than you or me…and I don't know about you, but I certainly can't

create the Earth and the universe no matter how hard I try, and believe me I

try." The baby began to scream. It pierced all the air of the bus. "I'll be

lucky if I make it to 90 and don't have to wear diapers. There is a chance he,

she, or it exists as a being that is not sympathetic about me or anyone else.

If he is this, he is so large and so eternal, with no sense of human time, that

a human life and its brief series of short-lived motions on one obscure planet

would be inconsequential. If so, he doesn't think about me any more than you

think about that last second you picked your nose. Yes, I'm watching." The

Rita/Lily giggled manically despite her depression. "Also, he isn't one I can

grasp so there isn't much sense in considering him. I'm just a fire ant

stinging anything that threatens me, cognizant of nothing least of all the man

that is there to squash me because of my sting. An ant might know about being

threatened but he knows nothing about the being that threatens him. So it is

with us and such a God." She could tell that the Rita/Lily person was not

understanding much of the conversation but her eyes seemed to register that she

was in a godless universe for fear had dilated her pupils.

Gabriele thought about this subject or quasi-subject of philosophy. She wasn't

even a philosopher and yet in a minute and a half she had formulated a treatise

and had proven it as much as was possible. She hadn't exactly proven that there

wasn't a god. She assumed that would take an additional three minutes. But she

had proven that it was not a worthwhile pursuit for humans to undertake.

Smoking marijuana from morning until wee hours of the night seemed a more

constructive use of one's faculties. She wondered how it was that Socrates

could lose himself for hours in a question that perplexed him when really all

he needed was just a few minutes.

"What did you eat today, Rita?"

"Lily."

"Whatever."

"I ate well."

"What?"

"Oh…" Lily said in a contemplative pose. A minute passed. Then, taking pride in

thinking of an answer that would satisfy Gabriele she said, "I did have an

apple…and I did have some peanut butter. That was good. Nutritious."

"Maybe it would be better if you went home to get something to eat. I don't

think you'd understand the implications of the ceremony anyhow."

"We are…we are still going, aren't we to…"

"The baby and I are going there," Gabriele interrupted, hoping to stop Lily

from saying the word "witch" on a public bus and relegating her life to strange

stares. "Maybe I'm wrong about God. I'm sure I am. What you can do for me right

now in my ignorance is to go home and think of different ways to discover him

like smelling a fragrant flower or putting coins into the Salvation Army tin

cans. If you were to hear someone preaching at you for two hours you would be

two hours from telling me all those ways to find God." Rita/Lily agreed and

began to get off of the bus. Gabriele got up and yelled toward her. " Wait a

second. Remember, you have to stand on the other side of the road to go home."

Rita/Lily smiled. Someone cared about her. Indeed there was a god.

Gabriele went to the service, which was held at the house of the new High

Priestess. However, being there, she found that the paternal yearning to

perform chants to Mother Earth and Father Sky a bit too much for her taste.

Tarot, crystals to ward off negative energy, the black attire, the candles, the

chants, and those god awful vegetarian recipes seemed outrageous. The only

dogma her contumacious mind could obey were her own ideas. Feeling at odds with

the day, she went home earlier than she had expected.

Chapter Sixteen

"He enjoys the pleasure. He is the man. The pleasure becomes the man. She is

wedged there in the sharp gravel of the alley littered with her videos. It is

good that she is there with the earth also digging in carbon to carbon. Face

juxtaposed to the trashcans, and mouth gagged with his strong hand that she

fears (hands that could twist a head and break a neck, and those that in

younger days and as a smaller size, had in fact snapped off the heads of

crawdads) she is paralyzed. She is obsequious to him, the man. Who would

dispute the naturalness of a woman being there for a man's pleasures? Who would

dispute the docile make of a woman to be ravaged? He thinks that even with

married couples the relationship is probably conceived by desperate thrusts in

a hole- thrusts of pleasure; thrusts against being denizen to one's isolated

sphere; thrusts against maternal domination when one was a boy; thrusts to have

some form of intimacy not related to the misinterpretations of language;

thrusts against loneliness; thrusts like the hands of a thrill seeking, dice

rolling gambler who enjoys the uncertainty on whether or not a conception would

take place; thrusts as copulative sports; thrusts to relieve tension; and

thrusts of aggression against the abstraction of nature that could efface the

memory of a man at any moment in sudden death. If family matters like the

intimacies of a man and his wife are restrained expressions of a man's

subconscious wishes, who could say that he is unnatural? Rape, not just sex, is

what he knows a man to really long for. It is as Genghis Khan believed: 'To

kill the villagers, rape their women, burn their villages, and run off with

their horses--this is the good life.'"

Sang Huin crumbled up the sheet of paper. Words were trapping him in their

clutter. He tried to use their thrust to be because they were all there was;

and yet as he tried to steer himself in them they were often nothing but bumper

cars obstructing his every move or regular cars piling onto each other in a

crash. He wanted to raze these walls of wrecked cars. Nathaniel would not know

of Genghis Khan. Besides, interesting as the thoughts might be, they weren't

applicable to Nathaniel unless he were to rewrite one of the earlier chapters.

How could he be raping the woman when he, Sang Huin, had written him in his

car, repressing his savage impulses like a good social creature? Also if he,

Sang Huin, were to interpolate such ideas, he told himself, he would be like

all those other writers who took pride in writing their salacious pieces. From

the point of instigating pain on the giver of life and the bloody cut of the

umbilical cord soon came the knowledge of mortality in the death of pets and

vicissitudes and the ephemeral nature of all things in childhood friendships

thwarted by the mutability of its members. Its hormonal promptings to socialize

more for meat to satisfy hungers, the voracious appetite for human flesh,

fornications to maximize its pleasures and gain its intimacies, its ambitions

toward money, power and status within this ticking of limited time, the deaths

of family members, its own gauche stumbling attempts at family as an auxiliary

and then an outright replacement for the deterioration of this first family,

and it (equally so in so-called saints and laymen) was graphic. It was

salacious. It was violent. It was the desperation of one in mortality who

wanted something for his short time on the planet. And of art, what was it

actually? It was not so much a reflection of the self in still waters as a

reflection of something deeper sensed in the rhythms of the falling rain and

the movements of fictional others in plotless lives plodding along as his was.

As another graphic creation appealing to the hedonistic pleasure receptors of

the brain he would have more readers if the violence were to extremes. Still,

did he really want to write something that others might imitate unwisely? He

laughed. This was a frivolous concern when he knew that nothing he might write

would be publishable.

And yet macabre as it was, he wanted to know the reason for his sister's death

through his creations. He still wanted to know what had brought her to that

park, if it had been her boss who had done this to her or a serial killer, and

the motivation. One could read profiles of serial killers on the Internet. He

had done so; but even if a serial killer had done this not all of them were the

same. He did not want a generalization full of inaccuracies. He wanted to know

the real person and what had caused him to act as he did. He wanted to know of

deep repentance, and deep psychological travail on the part of the man- whoever

this man was. Earlier he had been so certain that the accused had perpetrated

the act but then a jury had acquitted this person or quasi-person and as time

went on he did not know anything.

He went back to the making of kimchee maundoo. The flour had already been made

into dough that he had cut into pieces. Now he inserted the cooked pork and the

kimchee and pinched the dough of these cabbage dumplings into shape. He boiled

a little bit of hot water in his rice cooker and set them in there to steam. He

felt so restless. He wanted to be raptured from lonely nights that followed

hard work in this convenience store or for Seong Seob to call. Every time he

now called his friend's cellular telephone number there was no answer. Seong

Seob had a program that would instantaneously change letters into sound every

time the computer dialed into a server but every time he e- mailed him there

was no response. "So little did one know a person," he thought. Three days had

gone by and he did not know of any altercation that could have caused this

absconding. His mind was vertiginous. There was nothing worse than an

inexplicable rupture of a friendship, he thought to himself; and yet he knew

that this was not so. North Korean children were starving to death in a

faltering totalitarian regime and here he was playing in his personal life, and

in so doing, getting hurt. There were a lot worse things but a lot of good too.

There was good everywhere. It was in the atoms themselves: in the steam rising

above the rice cooker or the feel of the hot pipes under the floor, which

warmed his bare feet in the cold room. Man might miss the mark of kindness but

sometimes man tried for kindness since kindness was in the atoms although

self-preservation was in the selfish genes. This good was readily visible in

simple pleasures when one was sagacious enough to appreciate them like a child.

But Seong Seob would not leave his mind. What could have happened? Was this

friend hit by a car? After all, he was blind. Sung Huin did not know any of his

friends or relatives, so there was no one to call. Did this friend become busy?

Did Seong Seob decide that the relationship was not for him? Had he, Sung Huin,

personally said anything at all to cause this? He reexamined their last

conversations. The only thing he could remember was that he mentioned to Seong

Seob his own need to make more friends, but that wasn't meant to negate the

friendship that he had. He didn't know. He turned on the television to obstruct

his thoughts.

"Oh, no," thought Sang Huin. His customers had talked about buildings on fire

in New York. He had been so busy all night that their words and horrified

expressions hadn't penetrated him. Moslems (the speculation was Al Queida) had

flown two jets into the World Trade Center in Manhattan. The American military

channel was showing CNN coverage of people jumping out of hundred story

windows. Their bodies were flailing against the winds as if they were having

second thoughts. He sat down on the edge of his bed. The quandaries of his

personal life vanished and he became numb. He kept saying to himself, "Oh, my.

This is the empirical evidence that there is no god." Solipsistic for a second,

he then thought, "It is as if God is proving to me that he doesn't exist-that I

am right in what I recorded in the Gabriele and Lily chapter." The incident

itself shouldn't have been altogether shocking. America was an arrogant

country. It thought that it was the godly power that was allowed to prosper

while God subjected heathen people to dire circumstances. America felt it was

entitled to bully all nations and befriend Israel beyond human decency to keep

the Christian constituents, brethren of Israel, happy. Its political

engagements were for its own economic and military hegemony instead of fairness

and the greater good. It would be understandable, he thought, how the Moslems

might think of this as a reckoning of justice. In ways it was no surprise. The

real surprise was that there was no large palm of God out there hovering like a

cloud capturing these falling people within it. What was incredible was that

the power that would make a universe couldn't capture a few humans into its

clouds like nets. Numb, he knew without thinking of himself that this numbness

would continue on for many weeks and, to less extreme levels, for months and

years. It was an eternal sting. When he did look at his manuscript again to

expound upon it he thought, "Gabriele, sitting in the living room and waiting

for a customer, jotted down some notes about how to live godly in a godless

universe. However, at present her time to really write it was being usurped by

Adagio." Then he deleted it.

Chapter Seventeen

Out of the bus, she trudged back home in early evening through the marshland of

the melted snow that was refreezing treacherously. Then she detoured a block

west from the trailer park to the apartment complex where Rita/Lily resided.

Gabriele heard popular music playing in Lily's apartment. She knocked.

"Uh...just a second," said Lily. Gabriele heard the movement of papers and

magazines being suddenly assorted and things being scooted.

"Who is it?"

"It's me. I don't give a flying f-- what your apartment looks like!"

"G-a-b-r-i-e-l-e!" Lily said the name like music. "Please wait a minute,

please," she said with childish delicacy.

For a few minutes Gabriele waited and listened to the rustling. During a minute

of that time she was interested because the rustling was the rustling of a

mind, and the mind was interesting indeed. "I'm leaving, Lily. In the bus you

dropped one of your gloves from a pocket in your coat. I'm leaving it right

here." The radio music suddenly changed to classical music with a National

Public Radio DJ. Gabriele waited a couple more minutes. "Goodbye," said

Gabriele.

"Oh. I'll come over and get them." Gabriele did not know what that meant. She

heard the unlocking of the door bedizen with many bolts. The door opened.

Gabriele handed her the glove without eye contact and turned away. "I'm

working," she said coldly.

"Thanks so much. Thank you, Gabriele...well I could fix you some coffee if

you'd come in...well, I'll -- " Gabriele was already walking away and did not,

by choice, register the rest except for that redundant word, "please." The word

was projected in such a melancholic and extinguished tone that it caused her

German heart to thaw for human suffering. After descending a couple flights of

stairs she paused, thought, and then returned to the apartment. She knocked on

the door and Lily opened it while trembling and in tears.

"Are you okay?" asked Gabriele.

"I'm nutty. Don't hate me. Please don't hate me."

"I don't."

"Everybody turns away from me. Why wouldn't they? I wash the same plate over

and over again for an hour. I just want to not be hated. I just need a friend.

I'm so scared like I'm falling in a dark pit and no one cares about me."

Gabriele knew. The dark pit was the anxiety of cognizant man who knew of

imminent death. It was an anxiety exuding into the bleeding of loneliness and

only interaction with others repressed that anxiety. That was for normal

people. For those others who did not fit easily into normality or categories of

abnormality and who could not capture or claim the illusion of self the

loneliness was all the more inexorable.

"I haven't turned away," said Gabriele. Lily hugged her clingingly. Gabriele,

not knowing how to really touch her, patted her on the back. She felt as if her

body were being traversed by a colony of ants; and yet as repugnant as it felt

being hugged in such a way, she kept this feeling enclosed deep in her inner

self for the purpose of going beyond it and perhaps illustrating some sense of

human kindness. "When you do obsessive acts it isn't exactly nutty. You are

trying to seek order in past trauma. It's okay. It will be okay."

Gabriele let her sob on her back until the catharsis was complete. She then

looked at her once again and a restoration of manic energy was taking place.

Still bleak and baggy from tears, Rita/Lily began to smile. Gabriele thought

about how vulnerable the human condition was. Rita/Lily was an extreme case but

the vulnerability was ubiquitous in the species. She knew that it stretched in

a diminutive way even into her self. "And you know something," said Gabriele.

"You are probably the only person in New York State to have germless plates.

Yours also have an extra coating of soap on them to kill any forthcoming germs

that might land upon them. That's good especially with Saddam Hussein on the

loose. Visitors won't mind eating with you at all." Lily released her grasp of

Gabriele's figure and laughed manically.

"Sit down, sit down my good friend," said Lily. "Let me hold the baby."

Gabriele released him from the pouch and held him. "No, I've got him." She sat

down. She did not trust her friendly acquaintance holding the baby. Also, she

disliked those eyes, which were like those of her aunt: eyes of needing to be a

mommy. A responsibility toward any child was to raise him or her to be a good

and independent creature. Motherhood wasn't for gaining a purpose in life nor

for having adoring beings who would bring one a lifetime of "love" as well as a

crutch to get through life's lonely void. Real love, if it were possible,

should not be self-serving. No sooner had she thought this than Rita/Lily said,

"I wish I had a baby."

"Believe me, they aren't toys. If they were toys I would have returned this one

months ago and gotten my money back. They are needy human beings. They are a

lot of thankless hard work and believe me you don't want one. If you think you

are nutty now, a baby would make shambles out of your biochemistry and throw

you off the deep end if being in love with a man didn't do it. Besides, this

one is too temperamental."

"He looks angry now, doesn't he? I've never seen an angry baby before."

"Huh…good observation. I've been thinking the same thing. I had never seen an

angry baby until I had this one. He was yelling so horribly in the WICCA

service that I had to gag him with a pacifier. He keeps spitting out this thing

like a missile. Who can blame him? I often do the same thing myself." She knew

that in reality a baby couldn't be angry for to have anger one needed a self.

Since self was the product of thought and thought was the product of language

her creature could not be angry per se. He was feeling discomfort. That was

true. But there wasn't a possibility of Adagio thinking of himself as a bona

fide individual that was distinct from other selves nor was it possible for him

to hate outside forces for the indignities they caused him (although it was she

who changed the diapers so she wasn't sure what indignities there could be).

Still, it was indisputable that he appeared to be angry.

She thought of her Aunt Peggy revolving pathetically around all the

self-centered members of her family like the Viking orbiter. Peggy had even

orbited around Gabriele's parents gregariously. Gabriele had been excluded from

that whole bunch. With the exception of Peggy to some limited degree, she had

been banished to the companionship of her books and to learn of greatness away

from their commotion. In childhood and adolescence she kept the invisible

pacifier in her mouth. Then she went away and when she rarely returned on brief

visits she was as obdurate as a Nazi. Her rebellion had not been a disgorging

of the pacifier, like Nathaniel, but a subtle insurrection that would not cause

Peggy's tears. She was partial to calculated and unemotional reactions. They

were less theatrical. Their performances had more reality and substance. Also,

such planned and subtle rebellions never brought emotional counterattacks to

make one feel guilty. Now that she was a Mommy herself, orbiting her life

around her own beloved, they could not accuse her of abandoning family.

Photographs of Nathaniel sent in the mail once every few weeks seemed to be

enough to get them off her back.

"Hello, little Nathaniel. Maybe he understands us and knows we are talking

about him. Do you think so? Do you think that could be making him angry?"

"Be careful. He's got a tooth now. You don't want him to bite you. Did you eat

anything nutritious earlier?"

"Of course."

"No Ramen noodles this time?"

"No. A salad-a wonderful nutritious salad and some nice nutritious lithium.

Like you're always saying, I need to keep away from chocolate and…what do you

call them…oh, yeah, carbohydrates. And there are those bad cholesterols too.

You are smart. Like you say, you keep me from bouncing off of the walls. That's

what you always tell me. 'Sit down and don't bounce off of the walls, kid. I've

already got one bouncing baby. I don't need a second.'" She gagged her mouth

with her hand and then disgorged her laughter.

"Okay, okay. No more mocking of me," said Gabriele with a bashful smile.

"Yes, I did what you told me to do, Gabriele. I had a salad." Her voice leapt

like a spark of electricity on a coil. "I followed your directions. I always

follow your directions. You are my good friend-my best friend. I always want to

follow your directions." Suddenly it dragged in a moment of unpleasant

thoughts. "But when I ate it I was first thinking about you. I was thinking

that maybe you didn't like me. I mean, you sent me away. You didn't want me to

go with you." Gabriele frowned. She felt bored and she didn't want to rehash

this petty incident. She wanted to go back home. "You've got good reasons. It

doesn't matter. And since I came back I've been thinking about all the

different things you can see God in. Do you remember? You told me to do that

for you. I'm still working on it."

"Gee, thanks," said Gabriele indifferently. "Well, gotta go."

"Please wait. Here's what I want to tell you. You'll like hearing this." She

knew that to some degree she needed to interest Gabriele in order to have her

compassion. She feigned a smile but from her manic energy it changed and became

real. Anecdotes were ready to disgorge from her mouth. "When I was eating the

nutritious salad I started to feel lonely. You know how lonely I can get with

my head thumpin' at thinking what my grandfather did to me all drunk and

pressing against me like he often did -- so I tried to call Gary-you know the

guy in the orange trailer -- but there was no answer. I wanted to tell him I

was sorry about everything that happened this morning -- Oh, you do not know

what happened this morning. You've gotta hear what happened this morning! I

wanted to say I was sorry but I wasn't sorry, you know, because what happened

was so funny and it was just like a blessing because I prayed for it, you know.

I prayed for this type of a thing and then it happened. You don't know what

happened this morning-Oh, you've got to hear it. Do you want to hear

everything?" She began an ongoing laughter as she narrated her anecdote,

pausing in certain moments to release her manic chortles. "He came by this

morning-you should have seen him-'Rita, my darling,' he said-and I said,

'Rita's not home. Lily is here so maybe you should come back when Rita

returns.' 'When will she return?' 'Next year,' I told him. I told him next

year. I guess I was playing with him…what do you say…flirting -- I don't know.

Maybe it was a little naughty, but men like that sort of thing, don't you think

so Gabriele? I said, 'She's starting up a cosmetic company in Africa.' He said,

'Oh, that's too long to wait. I like both of you. You're both Italian

sweeties.' So then I invited him in. He kicked off his shoes, rubbing his feet

together like he was trying to make fire, wiggling toes on the footstool. Those

feet were so cute in his white socks so dirty on the soles of his feet. I guess

that sounds strange, doesn't it -- thinking a man's dirty socks were beautiful,

but they were. I think so. Maybe I'm crazy, but I was thinking so then-his

dirty souls. Do you think so, Gabriele. Then he said something like, "Before

long, I'm gonna actually believe there's a second girl. You've got that

influence over me, you know. Africa?" he laughed like someone who doesn't

believe something somebody says. I told him that I guessed that they needed

cosmetics in Africa. He said that he was sure they did. "Which country," he

asked. "Timbuktu," I said. "Is that so?," he said. He was playing with me. "Too

bad I never get to see both of you at the same time. Nothing better for a man

than boobsy twins." I fixed him breakfast and when we were eating some pancakes

--- actually black round things because I burnt them but he ate them like they

were still pancakes -- he was lookin' at my boobs. 'What big boobs you have,'

he said. 'Each one jiggles independently like two girls talking and dancing at

a disco. They seem to be talking to me.' 'Don't look at them. It makes me

nervous,' I said. 'How can I not?' he said. 'Look at my face when you talk. Not

down there or I'll think you are a dirty boy' 'I am,' he said. I said to him

that he was like the soles of his feet. "You are like the soles of your feet.

You have dirty souls.' Then he persuaded me to take off my shirt so that he

could hear them better. He wanted to pull off my bra but I wouldn't allow him

to do it - - not at the kitchen table, not anywhere ever. He said that we could

be more private in the bedroom and I said no. 'Come on, sweetie,' he said. I

did want to kiss him-I've done that before…just that, a little. I didn't want

to get caught kissing or being without a shirt and near a man. And he kept on

saying, 'Come on, sweetie." So I went back there with him but only after he

agreed that we would just kiss. Anyhow, in the bedroom he stripped into his

underpants. I was so scared and I kept telling him, 'No, No, I don't want that.

We can just kiss' but his fingers kept going up there and down there but never

around me in a nice way. Then we heard the door open and I knew it was one of

the Semi- independent counselors so I had to hide him in the closet. The

counselor stayed for over an hour and when I opened up the closet there he was

with a round wet patch on his underwear. He'd peed his underwear. I laughed and

pointed at his hole."

"I hope you told him that with a hole he was now the woman," Gabriele

interjected. Rita began laughing so hard that she choked on her saliva. "You

know, all of us have to be cautious -- not just with men and sex (both of which

are confusing and should be off limits TO YOU) but everything and everybody.

You have to realize that in everything people use each other even though it

isn't altogether bad. Think of it this way: if they don't use each other they

would have no use of them. You just need to define if that person's use in

yourself is your use in him, her, them, whatever. If they are the same, a

relationship can ensue. That's my idea."

"Oh, you're so smart. I wish I was smart like that. Do you need to use me?"

asked Rita/Lily with hopeful childish innocence.

Gabriele could not think of a use for her. Simple compassion had plagued her

here. She wanted to be home "Sure," she lied. "Something like that. Of course

you are one of my few friendly people." She looked at her watch. "My customer

will come in another hour, Lilian." Names shifted like tectonic plates. "I

really should leave and put Adagio to bed." She knew that Rita was still

wondering to herself why Gabriele did not teach her these German shoulder

massage and acupuncture techniques so that she could have her own customers.

She knew that Rita yearned for a vocation and a bit of pocket money.

Rita/Lily's thoughts could be read easily from her eyes. She was so ingenuous

and without guile or calculation except when men made her nervous. It was for

this that Gabriele actually liked her.

Rita picked up the pacifier that had just flown out of the screaming child and

handed it to Gabriele. "I'll make some hot coffee before you and Baby Nathaniel

go out into the cold."

"Oh, all right," said Gabriele. She was not capitulating to outside pressure

but only to the sense that she could not entirely part from the discomfort of

compassion, which was the only good trait of man outside his creativity and

intelligence. Compassion was half rational. The rest of its composition was

that other version of love, the highest of all primordial feelings. Compassion,

according to Gabriele, "flared up at the damnedest of times," and as

inconvenient as it was to have it, she knew better than to forsake it. She had

her distasteful coffee in a soapy cup, and once it was drunk she was pleased

that by her compassionate act she had made herself into a better creature; but

she knew that enough was enough. She needed to treat herself to compassion by

"getting out of Dodge".

In the trailer she took a shower to prepare herself for relieving a customer;

finished her session with him; laughed uncontrollably at his angry grievance

over the fact that in zipping up his pants with one hand and reaching the other

hand over to play with the little boy's fingers, the baby had bit him; and then

she had another shower. In the second shower she kept remembering his words,

"You'd better put that kid ina cage if you want any men to step over'ere. I'd

better get me a tetanus shot." Her own laughter was so inordinate that it soon

gave her a headache. After swallowing some aspirin, she began her other job.

She preferred making a living on weekends to the rest of the week since it was

so much shorter. Outside a little physical prostitution, on weekends she would

freelance her "bull shit sketches"(her "mental prostitution) that went with the

little "asinine" sentiments that Hallmark Greeting Cards sent to her; and then

the week's work would be, for the most part, over. At least she terminated the

workweek after Sunday. She loathed "prostituting" herself "to assholes" but the

way she looked at it, everything was a form of prostitution from the time that

one washed and blow-dried her hair that was cut in such a way that was

aesthetically pleasing to "Western farts controlling economic institutions" to

rolls that bound human thoughts in its limited pages, the social interaction

one engaged in to stay sane, and the tricks one did to get one's little bowl of

Alpo dog food. It was her belief that physical prostitution was less of a

deleterious moral injustice to oneself than any other kind. Done with a condom,

its physical discomfort was also fairly safe and brief. Done enough times with

strangers one did not care for, it serendipitously shaped her into a regular

Buddha reducing her desires and appetites.

She cut the list of maudlin mottoes into myriad strips; put paper clips around

each strip, and then attached each one around a tarot card. She lit the four or

five candles that were on the kitchen table; shuffled the deck; drank four cans

of beer quickly; and then mumbled a bitching mumble about having to prostitute

herself. With her visual perception more mobile and her brain in a buzz, she

unevenly laid out the whole of this partial motto-mottled deck in a larger than

Celtic layout beginning with the cards patterned out as a cross; meditated on

each motto; and then drew her designs. The first motto that she encountered was

"Happy Birthday To A Grandson Who Has A Wonderful Personality, Good Looks And A

Fine Character. I Guess There Are Some Things That Are Just Hereditary."

Suddenly an image flashed through her mind and she began to draw. For a moment

she was completely stunned by what she was drawing, and completely incredulous

that this was coming from her mind.

As she became aware of bearing this unique, full, and outrageous creation so

effortlessly, she fell into hysterical laughter at the sketch of an old woman

in a party hat, who smiles on sweetly as her grandson, abandoning all of the

packages surrounding him, lifts her skirt curiously. But then for the

non-pornographic version she made a young man with a girlfriend bound

hand-in-hand and a second hand reaching out to his grandmother who stands near

the birthday cake. By drawing this second version she was providing Hallmark

with sentimental froth for those who did not see that humans were replaceable

in one's own life and that the whole of a life, itself, was more froth splashed

up in the washing of time. On a deeper albeit subliminal level she was stating

that one could go forward in time and still retain childish affections. She

knew it was not so. Only minds like Parmenides and Plato (a mind that she had)

could conceptualize changeless eternity within the entity. Such unique

individuals did not need to reminisce about the past. She never kept a

photograph album apart from her corpus of sketches. She didn't want to be one

of the masses. They were like school children trying to find their loose-leaf

homework that had been taken from their hands by the winds and scattered behind

them.

After she picked up the twentieth Tarot card to begin another preliminary

sketch, she became aware of the fact that the flickering candles were making

her extremely tired. She knew that being tired all the time was more from the

monotony of being a single parent and had little to do with a full night of

prostitution that she hadn't even yet begun to complete. For a moment she

blamed a woman's susceptibility to become a mother for her blas? existence but

it had been her choice to remain pregnant and it was her choice to raise this

being whom she could have easily given away for adoption. Likewise, it was her

choice to not seek employment. She had striven for isolation; but she hadn't

done it with absolute perfection. She had given birth to a child and driven him

into her shadows although she might have done it all alone. She knew that she

had that capacity. Human society was for her a boring fair ground with the same

quick-thrill rides and the same clones in freak shows. The war of the "Kuwaiti

theatre" and Saddam Hussein were freak shows that Americans entertained

themselves with from their television shows. These freak shows bored and

sickened her and yet she listened to war broadcasts from her radio with the

gluttony of other news junkies. She liked radio. She could imagine news more

accurately without the visual images.

Apart from what important minds could vaguely construe to be permanent truth,

human society was bereft of ontological meaning; the West was on a collision

path with the environment and Islamic extremists; more and more societies

possessed weapons of mass destruction that had the potential force that was

beyond her imagination to conceive; and all societies were full of lies and

manipulating fables disguised as truths-their own Moseses parting their own Red

Seas. To be God's appointed bully of world events and His proponent of

capitalism and democratic tyranny was the American myth. She often asked

herself how she could even take on a janitorial job and sweep away the dirt of

a capitalistic institution. How could she do functions that would keep it nice

and operative looking? How could she empty its trash, and change its burnt out

light bulbs when that institution was one of a billion which would bring about

the destruction of the environment, the vitiation of curiosity and innovation

among pampered capitalists, and often exploited third world workers. How could

she contribute to society when she did not believe in it?

The telephone rang. "Hello, Lily"

"Rita speaking. How did you know it was me?"

"I'm a supersensory," said Gabriele.

"What is that?"

"I'm a psychic-witch, Rita."

"Really? Witching allows you to know who is on the phone?"

"I'm just joking."

"Oh. Am I disturbing you?"

" No, actually I was wanting something to keep me from falling asleep. What can

I do for you?"

"Gary called. He wants to see me tonight"

"It is nearly 10. You aren't supposed to have visitors after 10. Isn't that

what those group home counselors of yours tell you?"

"He wants me to go to the convenience store and talk to him. He wants to meet

me now. I told him I was in another call and that I'd call him at the number on

his pay phone booth. I don't know what to say to him."

"I think you want to see him, don't you?"

"I want and I don't want."

"So you want to stop wanting to see him."

"Right. What do I do?"

"I don't know. He'll only look as he does for a short period of years. If you

really want to not want a man picture him in what will be his permanent

state-the broken skeleton of another hundred and fifty years. That always works

for me."

"Oh, thank you, Gabriele."

"Sure, Lily --- Rita/Lily. Bye now." She hung up the telephone and turned on

the radio to keep herself awake. As she was listening to the classical music of

Gabrieli's Canzoni and her own internal voice gabrieleishly, she left the table

and began to warm the bottle containing the baby's formula. She fixed herself a

large salad. She ate it and a piece of cold leftover pizza while feeding the

baby the bottle of milk. As she was doing this she heard the news announcement

of Saddam Hussein deliberately flooding the gulf with oil and igniting some of

the Kuwaiti oil fields. Her mind was filled with the painful images of a whole

ecosystem made into black and tarred corpses. She put her hand over her mouth

and ran into the bathroom. She felt like vomiting and attempted to do so but

nothing came up. It was nothing but heartburn from the pizza. She sat down and

stayed emotionless in her director's chair until the heartburn subsided. And

once it had she fell asleep.

She dreamt of her Aunt Peggy. In the dream Peggy and Gabriele stepped inside a

grocery store. Both were wearing oxygen masks. All the visible items of the

store that were on the shelves were locked away behind glass. All of the

cashiers, grocery stockmen, and other personnel were dead at their stations.

Gabriele was around the age of five. She hid her face in Peggy's dragging

skirt.

"That's no way for a young lady to act," said Peggy as she reached over to the

shelves, and conducting pantomime, bent her hand as if it were grasping an

item, and then put it into a non-existent cart. She was trying to save money by

purchasing invisible items. Stinginess was what had made them rich all of these

years. "What is wrong with you?" condemned the aunt. Gabriele pulled away from

her, once again realizing that only in reticent and hardened expressions would

her inner sensitivities be fortified from the real world. Looking at her aunt's

hardened expressions toward death that abounded everywhere she realized that

she should not expect anything new and kind in the state of Kansas. After all,

humans were adaptive animals. The world was survival of the fittest, and man

surviving within the perils of his environment. Why should society be

structured differently? Why should being in Kansas under the auspices of an

aunt be different? She glanced down at the corpses at her feet unflinchingly

and then over to where Peggy was supposedly picking up vegetables and fruit.

She could see decapitated Turkish heads locked away behind glass. They were on

the refrigerated shelf where the cantaloupes should have been. The more she

looked at the Turkish heads the less impact they made upon her. They were no

different than any other form of food.

"They are always locking up the cantaloupe. I don't know why they do that,"

complained the aunt. They moved toward where the pastry section should have

been.

The aunt used gestures as if she were putting a large cake into an invisible

cart. "They don't seem to have a chocolate cake with vanilla icing. It is

vanilla and vanilla or chocolate and chocolate. Now, you remember that no one

is to eat any of this cake until the dinner guests have not only arrived but

have finished eating their dinner and any business conversation is completed.

Some important people have scheduled a meeting with your uncle so they'll be at

your birthday party. To wine and dine them, as our family should, is very

little to do when they can help bring more business to your uncle. Don't pout

over your friends not being allowed to come. Your uncle wouldn't have much luck

with business if children were tearing through the place. No pouting about the

fact that we can't find a chocolate cake with vanilla icing either. Cakes like

this don't have any taste so I can't see how you'd know the difference if it

hadn't been for you shopping with me now."

After they walked around the store using gestures of picking up items, they

walked up to the cash register. Gabriele thought, "They're dead!" but she

remained taciturn. Peggy put the invisible items on the belt of the counter

that remained still. Peggy tilted up her chin toward nothing and smiled

affectedly as if she were responding to a nonexistent cashier. "I'm very well.

Thank you," said Peggy. Then her face tilted back toward the invisible items

and the smile deadened. Gabriele felt the slapping of her back. Peggy put her

mouth toward Gabriele's ear. She whispered, "Stand up straight. I don't want

you to look like one of them" (meaning the cashier that was supposedly ringing

up the purchases although her corpse was obviously rotting on the floor with

maggots swarming in and out of it.

"Give me that candy bar," scolded Peggy. Gabriele looked at her right hand. It

was curled with the fingers almost touching as if she had a candy bar in her

hand. "You thought you would put a smart one on me. Hide it behind the laundry

soap when I'm not looking. Nothing gets by me."

On their way home through the empty streets they quickly arrived at their

neighborhood when suddenly Peggy honked on a horn and slammed on the

brakes-ding-dong. A young Korean boy and his sister were on the road.

Ding-dong. The girl had run in front of the car in an attempt to get the ball

that her brother had overthrown. It was too late. The car slammed against her

body. Peggy Peggy Ding-dong Peggy Ding-dong.

Gabriele woke to the sound of the doorbell. At first her mind tried to grasp a

concrete image that could go with the sound. Then she knew it, and the cause of

it. "Shit!" she said out loud. Now did she once again have to prostitute

herself in the physical domain with some stranger at the door? She didn't want

to work. People worked for money and they worked to escape the void. They

abhorred the void that they would fall into if engaged in inaction. There were

times that doing nothing did nothing for her either. There were days when she

was a little lost in her lack of valid employment. But more times than not

being completely paralyzed on what she needed to do or would like to do with

her day was advantageous. Doing nothing but sitting in her living room staring

up at the walls and letting the void overtake her made her all the wiser. She

seemed to be unlike the rest of humanity who had to desperately see someone or

go somewhere to escape slipping into themselves.

She did not want to see her clients any more than she wanted to return to work

as a staff psychologist in a high security prison on the outskirts of Ithaca-a

good job that she had taken upon graduating from Rice University and had

brought her here. Eight months doing that had been enough. Eight weeks in a

following job as an assistant director of a girl's home babysitting "women

creatures" who, gaining their freedom at the age of 18 perpetuate the

"classless undergrowth of society" had been worse than the prisoners. Girls and

prisoners were often like comparing rotten apples and rotten oranges. There

were times when she thought that the prisoners had been worse. Their sexual

man-on-the-make innuendos had often frustrated parole assessments. In contrast,

eight weekends with her clients (give or take a weekend) was a lesser

prostitution. By the fifth ringing of the doorbell she decided to answer it so

that it would stop ringing.

Two of them stood there: men. She knew she had an appointment with one client,

but here were two of them. She gave a seductive smile and then informed them

that she would only allow one of them at a time into her domain. The other

would have to wait in the vehicle until his buddy came out. As one of them came

in she thought to herself that she was really performing an important social

function. Being a prison psychologist or a girl's group home supervisor had

been paperwork jobs. The positions had not helped anyone. Here, at a discount

since she was not beautiful, she relieved men of aggressive tendencies and

stress. They were less likely to beat up on their wives or open fire in a

McDonald's Restaurant as a consequence. She even argued to herself that by her

service she was a bit like the Buddha who claimed that one should take the

middle of the road. To her, that was the Buddha's tacit endorsement that a

little bit of prostitution was needed to sustain oneself physically although it

should never be taken to excesses.

Chapter Eighteen

Within the relationship he had not even been tempted to wander in the

labyrinths of dark hallways of bathhouses in the hope of stumbling across that

perfect form. There had been less discontent even if the passionate response

had been the same. The suicidal risk-taker drawn to darkness, that

relinquishing to the self-consumption of shadows, had been somewhat tamed. But

now with this partner gone Sang Huin's mind was slipping back into decadence.

Meandering and not feeling that the ground one walked on was the least bit

stable, desperate yearnings prompted him to find pleasure and hope in appetites

that swelled as obsessions, burst, and were quickly gone no different than the

instinctual promptings that were within the dumbest of animals. He hadn't yet

gone back to his desperate habits of bathhouses and the R- rated petting in the

gay movie theatres of conservative Soul but he could still sense himself

slipping away.

To have the monogamous prototype of a gay couple for others to emulate there

needed to be something giving it at least the suggestion or illusion of stable

ground. And yet there was no higher entity to suggest such a bonding. There

were no symbolic marriage certificates suggesting that society and the creator

of the universe gave their implicit endorsement of such mergers to which logic

would say that they would be no more preoccupied with than a man the mating

habits of a rat in a city park. Also, within this alternative channel of one's

sexual energy there were no children to rear, not that children remained such

forever. Instead, for one who was gay there were only appetites and one's

erratic but less illusionary emotional responses as the substance of a

relationship. These were one's only sense of being in a gay relationship and as

such they were the only compasses to find one's way around. In some ways it was

worse than a bathhouse labyrinth of complete darkness for being in a

relationship of this nature was not walking around lost and trying to find the

perfect form. It was being disgorged in passionate love for another human being

and only this--this spray of molecules, which lasted as long as the spray. That

is not to say that heterosexual couples did not experience the sense that these

foundations of relationships, family, and reality could never be shaken. They

too were sentient beings. They too knew that they were constructing homes in

the San Andreas Fault Line. The shaking was quite palpable but what could they

do other than pretend that what they were creating was forever? They too felt

the rumblings of the separating earth that they stood on. Had it not been

signatures on tenuous pieces of paper and the responsibilities of children who

again would not be such forever more of them, thought Sang Huin, would feel as

he did. What he was experiencing, he told himself, was the exemplification of

the human condition itself and so he comforted himself that he was not strange.

One evening on his free day when the cello would not play for him anything

other than just notes and Gabriele was nothing but words of clutter like the

dirty socks he seemed to strew across his room, he tried to avoid the callings

of desperation and the wish to escape his lonely malaise by changing a few

florescent light bulbs that had been flickering in the convenience store. He

was changing the second bulb on the ladder, absconding from his temptations to

go to a sauna, when he heard a flurry of tapping as if the limbs of a tree were

knocking against a window. It was a tapping or a light knocking. He got down

from the ladder and followed it into his room. He opened the door and there was

Saeng Seob. Sang Huin's bereaved mind had already buried him as one more corpse

of friendship that had amassed in a huge burial hill since early childhood. He

did not know what to say.

"Can I come in?" asked Seong Seob.

"You came all the way here by yourself?" asked Sang Huin.

"I'm blind but I'm not ignorant of how to tell a taxi driver an address," said

Saeng Seob.

"Sure, come in," said Sang Huin indifferently. He paused. "Where have you been?

I didn't know what happened to you. I didn't know if you were hurt. I didn't

have a telephone number to call anyone and ask about you. I didn't-"

"I was busy," said Saeng Seob.

Sang Huin thought about leaving this idea alone. He thought about just letting

such a topic of discourse die there without comment. The wisp of air and the

positioning of the tongue to begin, "So, what do you want with me" was at the

roof of his mouth.

"Maybe we should move in together," said Saeng Seob.

"Here?" asked Sang Huin.

"I don't know. Somewhere."

"My job here means that I have to live here alone."

"You have a college education from America. You shouldn't be wasting yourself

working at a convenience store. Go back to what you were doing before. I can

get you private lessons. It is Seoul. There is gold in them there hills."

Sang Huin laughed. He felt at home within this American Hillbilly

colloquialism. "All right," he said; and so this was what they did. They stayed

together that night and then looked for an apartment the next morning. And then

a year passed in living together: Seong Seob finding jobs for him as one might

find errands for schoolboys. There wasn't gold in the hills but there was

plenty of silver and paper to come into such wealthy homes bringing to families

and sometimes their businesses pure American English in the mouth of a Korean.

And each morning, exuded from the little time not consumed in a personal life,

a quasi-professional life, sleep, and various bodily mandates, he worked on

Gabriele. He found it interesting that their two worlds were now converging in

the respect that she was taking care of a baby at the time of the first Gulf

War with Iraq and he seemed to be living at the inception of the second one

that had even more of a chance of exploding into something quite large and

horrid within the presence or ghost of Osama Bin Laden.

One day they went to visit a boy of one of those families, who also had the

name of Seong Seob. He was suffering at Soul's Yonsei University Hospital. The

boy's mother, who was in the hallway, grabbed Sang Huin's hand and

enthusiastically took him into the room. The boy's legs and feet were in casts

and elevated. His face, bored and withdrawn, brightened slightly as he said his

first English word of the visit: "Toy." Sang Huin laughed as he walked further

into the room presenting the board game to the boy. The hospital room looked

almost the same as an American hospital room except that there were four beds;

no curtain partitions; and cushioned benches next to each bed.

There were not many differences between American and Korean lifestyles from

what he could see. Korea was like living in the Ozarks with high hills

everywhere. He had lived in both Missouri and Texas depending on the needs of

his father's work. They had homes in both places. Both countries seemed to be

arrogant and fortified within their cultural expressions. One certainly could

never part a Korean from his kimchee. Here women strapped babies behind their

backs but even in a rural town like Umsong many carried cellular telephones in

their purses. Pagers were only slowly becoming obsolete. Koreans' love of

making their country into a high tech Mecca was only secondary to their

continued devotion to their obsolete pagers. When a college student's pager

vibrated with activity he or she would still run into a coffee shop to call his

or her friend on the table phones and wait for that person there. There were

video pangs (VCR rooms); table tennis rooms; noripangs (Karaoke singing rooms);

outdoor vendors and restaurants; crippled singing beggars and vendors who

crawled down pedestrian streets like worms as they pushed their carts that

blared traditional music from small speakers, and sang into microphones; more

mom and pop stores on each block than one could count; and tight department

stores with small supermarkets underneath.

One could find in Chongju a McDonalds with an Internet caf? underneath, Pizza

Hut, and Baskin-Robbins Ice cream shops. One could always find M&M chocolate

candies and shirts displaying American university logos. One could find

American and Hong Kong movies, which intrigued Koreans with their violence.

Koreans lived under the insecurities of North Korea and their students always

found a subject for protest but the country did not foment and fray in

violence.

Sang Huin did not know why he was thinking this. He had always hated Chongju

and Umsong in particular. And yet rural scenes (like the traveling markets in

Umsong) were sort of sweet and real. The only vestige rural traditions in Seoul

were the traditional weddings at the Korean Folk Village and traditional

dancers no longer on the street corners but contained in a theatre.

He thought about once when he and Yang Kwam were shopping for clothes in

Itaewan Dong of Seoul on that same street where he worked at a convenience

store. It was raining and cold and his sickness was getting worse. Yang Kwam

was wearing a shirt with the American flag on it. Dizzy and disoriented, Sang

Huin had followed that American flag in subways, underground transfer

corridors, exits, and sidewalks. He was acting the same way now only he wasn't

sick. He was following Seong Seob into a relationship blindly to have concrete

experiences and happiness that could only be obtained in shared experiences.

Sang Huin (Shawn most of the time to Seong Seob) grabbed his blind friend by

the arm and awkwardly yanked him nudgingly to the child's bed. It was a cocky

American gesture with the sotto voce of one insinuating by touch an inhibition

to touch at all. The tepid force of this gesture was, in part, of someone who

had been abandoned inexplicably before. Seong Seob had felt Shawn's awkward

half-hearted attachment and reticence for a year now. He couldn't blame him

since he realized his part in bringing it about. He had thought that living

together would smooth over everything and felt dismayed that a year later Sang

Huin still touched and spoke to him with the uncertainty of the two belonging

to each other. And yet in bed it was compensated by desperate and passionate

thumping which was the best kind of love making there was. Seong Seob needed to

feel that another person hungered for him for this was the contract. This was

the binding of love. It was a covenant with this relationship-being that

virtually all people deemed as higher than themselves. It was a belonging that

all humans sought.

Sang Huin's mind questioned the legitimacy of human feelings and the meaning of

others' presence in his life, which without exception seemed so fleeting. His

mind was in a torture chamber of its own making. He yearned for harder

realities outside of one's experiences and yet finding none he did not retreat

to the limits of his feelings and the input he got from his senses. Headstrong,

he believed that there had to be something that he was missing and so he went

on searching like a madman batted about in erratic thoughts.

"I wonder when he will leave again," he thought. "I wonder what little thing

will be too much for him and cause him to hide like a coward never to return

again. Will I get a hateful text message on my cellular telephone? Will this be

how it will go awry? It's bound to go bad. Everything changes. How can a

relationship change to be closer than what it started out initially?" Although

the present often stood free without a guard, within the infliction of memory

it roamed no further than the prison gate that its imagination conjured up from

past ruins.

And yet the ruminator that this "Shawn" was, he was still the product of his

culture that was not too keen on ruminations. One's culture was prevalent in

every thought even within an introvert like himself. Culture was a cookie

cutter pressing out shape in the amorphous dough of one's thoughts. It was the

re-legitimization of Marx. It was as Aristotle stated ambiguously as form

shaping matter. It was the American in him that had cajoled and coerced Seong

Seob to the hospital against his will according to the characteristics of his

nationality even if it had been done diffidently.

"I sarem i irum Seong Seob imnida. I sarem i Seong Seob imnida." He paused and

turned to the older Seong Seob. "Go ahead. You've been introduced. You both are

each other. Ask him how he is. I can't speak Korean as you well know every

minute of everyday." The older Seong Seob laughed and then began to flutter

within the native language that animated him most. Sang Huin watched as the

three creatures (his friend, the mother, and her son who was also named Seong

Seob) expressed their color and movement in Hanguk-mal. He felt as if he were

in a flower market instead of a hospital. Flowers encompassed the boy in all

directions. Sang Huin remembered being sick himself and hearing the cryptic

language that his mother and sister spoken around him. That cryptic language

was now there in the confines of the walls of this hospital room and unable to

escape it he felt as if he were a minority within it. It was the ethereal

language that had soared his family above and away from his terrestrial

boundaries.

Sang Huin thought about that time at the English winter camp when he first met

this now hospitalized boy, Seong Seob. Everything proceeded fine for a few days

and then one night Seong Seob scathed his knees in play and suddenly pulled off

his pants in front of the school children and staff. The boy exposed his

vulnerabilities. He showed the flimsy mortal creature of man for what he was.

Horror and tempestuous hatred toward the mincing of one's boyhood innocence was

in his animated eyes and it mixed into his cries of despair. Five seconds

earlier he had been running and wrestling with the other boys and then with a

little pain and the rolling of a small stream of blood came the memories of

being run over by a truck and all of its ensuing surgeries.

Saeng Seob had not wanted to come; and even in the hospital room he and the dog

wanted to stay aloof. Despite his more gregarious tendencies and his smile so

wide to compensate for the lack of expression in his sunglass-confined orbs,

Seong Seob and his dog stood away from the railing of the bed. The dog

perceived its master's nasocomial fears but instead of looking at the

atmosphere as something that might alert its senses, its face, every few

moments, made movements toward the door not much different than the master. It

had led the way through outpatient units of hospitals before. It knew its

master's aversion to places of suffering and could sense the gloom that

pervaded all rooms and corridors in a hospital. The surgeries on Seong Seob's

eyes had been performed when he was a boy to no avail. The dog had escorted the

master from the ages of 12 to 15 on subsequent visits that procured nothing but

the dread of hospitals.

The fear of hospitals seemed to be a fear of death. Even a cockroach was afraid

of death and so to be afraid of such a thing, thought Sang Huin, was natural.

And yet death itself was natural. It might well be liberation instead of

annihilation. It seemed absurd to prejudge such a natural occurrence that

living creatures knew nothing about. It might be as beautiful as all the

flowers that surrounded the bed of the boy, Seong Seob, who was playing with

the board game that he had unwrapped and opened from the box. What did a

cockroach know? For it perceived nothing outside of its own physical survival.

What did a dog know? For it perceived hospitals as containers of human

suffering instead of deliverance from illness?

Sang Huin understood that Seong Seob was pursing a relationship that was more

than a bit at odds with the world in even the most libertine culture. He also

acknowledged that Saeng Seob was visiting a suffering boy whom he wanted to run

away from. Sang Huin could not do much of anything to fill in the crevices of

time and in awkward moments of not knowing what to say he just stood there

uncomfortably but with a degree of appreciation for Seong Seob. Sang Huin had

empathy as deep as the gods.

Chapter Nineteen

Had it not been for her youth that allowed her to engage in prostitution, she

would have been at the welfare office every month. Each month she would have

spent a day slowly making her way through the queue to that ultimate goal of

staring through a translucent partition and into the faces of intake workers.

Necessity would have compelled her, each time, to submit her documentation of a

driver's license, social security card, and statement of approval through a

hole within the glassy wall. As a reticent and less than proud potential

recipient of food stamps and Aid for Dependent Children, she would have

silently deposited her artifacts depicting the reality of her existence and

watched these worker bees document her documentation and re-scrutinize what had

already been scrutinized and approved.

Monthly she would have been in a situation of needing to minimize her

imperturbable haughtiness so as to give cordial answers to questions without

being a formidable foe. She would have been in a situation of needing to be

sociable enough to give gentle but feigned smiles that might have a hope of

expediting the process of gaining benefits. In front of the intake personnel

her eye contact would have needed to be constant but not so much so that it

would have intimidated them. Poised and courteous, but with the intelligence of

her eyes aimed like lasers for the incineration of the layers of their hearts,

she would have wanted them to quail without realizing that she was the culpable

one causing them to quail.

Had she gone into the welfare office each month she would have needed to check

her haughty disposition above all else since the uneducated chattering clients,

the wait, and the lowly workers abounded and it all was such an indignity. Her

tacit repugnance of the apparatchik would not have been something that she

could have restrained fully. She would have needed to let bits of it ooze out

gradually and undetectably or the intake workers could have forced her to go

back to the IM worker's office and explain why she hadn't gone on very many job

interviews and why someone with a Master's degree from Rice University would

need assistance at all. She would have hated them not for any petty personal

grievance (she didn't "give a flying f--" what they thought of her) but for

reasons totally outside herself: if it weren't for derelicts and freeloaders,

these welfare workers would have been unemployed so it was outrageous of them

to be condescending if not outright hateful to the monthly recipients; and if

it were not for such do-nothings, breeders of illegitimate children,

iconoclasts, and antisocialites (all which summarized her in such a unique

blend) these client-intake workers would not have known the difference between

being indolent and being industrious. Not having anyone to compare themselves

to, they might have lived their lives in ignorance as to the meaning of such

concepts, or worse, found their own paper producing jobs as the lowest tier of

the caste.

Had it not been for prostitution, she would have been leeching onto public

assistance as a menace to herself and society at large. Each month Gabriele

Sangfroid's hard expressions would have probably intimidated the intake workers

more than the useful amount and she might have found herself forced to wait all

morning and afternoon on an income maintenance worker whose only wish would be

to avoid dealing with such a mad woman. Then in late afternoon a supervisor

might have called her name and she would have needed to encounter hateful

stares for being a flagrant mutineer of the American work ethic. There might

have been the undulating of the tongue reminding her that she was a Master's

degree holder. Such a supervisor, or a brave IM worker, would have shot

missiles of time consuming bureaucracy and lack of kindness at her and

Gabriele's laser eyes would have needed to shoot them down gently, cordially,

and politely. "I understand that someone with a Master's Degree from Rice

University could be gainfully employed. I realize that there are professional

jobs available to me. Right now I'm poor and I have a baby. I'm searching for

the right job that will allow me to continue to devote as much care for him

that I can do. You know the way it is with mothers. It is hard to find that

employer who is sensitive to the fact that one is a mother." Something like

that might have been what she would have communicated. It would have been

coordinated with the usual amount of artful guile and smiles to get her through

life.

She knew a little about the Department of Social Services from firsthand

experience with them when she first moved to Ithaca. It was in a day in

December as cold and merciless as February when she went there. Nathaniel or

Adagio was a newborn at that time. Back then, resigned to the fact that she

needed assistance so that she might continue with her contemplation of life,

she went into the New York Department of Social Services with him in a

bassinet. She discovered how her laser beams went through bullet proof glass

separating the intake workers from the waiting area and seemed to set fire to

the cubicles housing the IM workers.

In her first hour there she considered this agency a demeaning place in all

respects and that she shouldn't be partaking of services here; and yet her

feelings were muted by logic. and Gabriele was, after all, a very logical

person. She told herself that being here with illiterate, drug dependent, and

lethargic characters was not all that different than her work as a staff

psychologist in parole assessment at the state prison. Encountering client

abuse or being in the thickets as one of the worms were just two equally

uncomfortable situations. It was really nothing more than a substitution of one

form of abhorrence for that of another. Examined further, she couldn't see any

difference between being a freeloader and a worker apart from the worker's

obsession to think that his manner of wasting time was respectable. Since they

were the same apart from the means by which they chose to fritter away their

existence-the bums wanting to spend their time getting something and the

workers in producing it--she couldn't see any sense in feeling more abhorrence

from being behind the glass than in front of it. Besides, this experience here

also provided her with a new perspective of what life was like to be one of the

besmirched masses on the opposite side of the fort. Knowing multiple

perspectives made her contemplate the entity like Parmenides and contemplating

the entity brought her more in the realm of truth.

Looking onto it now, she did not think that these clients of hers were any more

or less degrading than collecting food stamps or in having worked as a

counselor in social services. It had only been the need for money that made her

deign to any of this prostitution.

She owed a lot to the male need to be touched, to dive into the high of an

orgasm, and to have innate aggression exorcised by thrusts within a subservient

woman. It was a good profession that took little time and no mental

prostitution thereby allowing her to contemplate God when the kid wasn't crying

for bottles, changed diapers, and swift rides in her arms. It was also useful

for society since men needed to be exorcised of aggression. After all, an

excess of testosterone had kept the planet in a type of marginal nightmare. It

certainly did not need to be plunged into it further by a lack of prostitutes.

Before she ever worked again as a psychologist avowing the criminality of

criminals or giving nice little labels on Lilys, she would go back to the bad

girl group home. Before she returned to the click-of-the-heels logic of girls,

she would become a janitor, a supermarket cashier, or a digger for bottles in

trashcans. And to keep away from all of it she would continue with the present

line of work as long as Adagio wasn't traumatized by strange men drifting in

and out of a trailer. A child needed the illusion of stability more than anyone

else; but bills also had to be paid.

And so time ran on like a shell-shocked soldier. Already the boy was four years

old and precocious regarding one thing: the emotional state of perplexity.

Strangers continued to come into his mother's domain and like always he watched

these unknown men come in and mysteriously pat him on the head in passing. Many

of her men felt a twinge of awkwardness as if they had to go through a

premature and impotent little sentinel to get to her. He was not sagacious

enough to understand that. He just wanted them to stay to talk with him instead

of always passing on to her. Ostensibly she looked more pleased to see them

than she did him. He noticed this, but little did he know that after having

changed diapers for three years and having given him baths, she was as

disinterested in the male anatomy as a female could be; and so not wanting sex,

love, or godly companionship from them, all they had to give her was money.

He was her human subject: and she wanted to keep all primitive and barbaric

impulses of pop-culture and unoriginal dogmatic religious premises from

influencing his brain. She did this partly from the wish to make him into a

good person and partly from a scientific curiosity about what would happen if

she mixed strange chemicals together. She was very curious about the outcome of

child rearing; but more, there was fun in the manipulation and fun in the

unknown of what he would become each year.

She trashed her television set into the back of a closet and in his bedroom she

began daily puppet shows of a simplified self-made Hamlet or King Lear

adaptation and she would have him dance to the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven in

unique movements she called the sangfroid. She grew pumpkin gardens and allowed

him to feel the weight of the largest ones against his small frame just as she

had done for the past two years. Now, for him, they had become gigantic balls

that he couldn't pick up to bounce or the wheels of tanks. They were no longer

the objects of wonder they had been a year earlier. She knew this inevitable

truth but she didn't mind it terribly. Losing the wonder of small things in

ones adventure to know bigger truths was the act of growing up and there was

nothing she could do to stop it. She knew: the loss of wonder came upon a

child's innocence like a Turkish beheading. She hoed around the 10 feet patch

of garden and imagined the texture of one pumpkin she had detached for him

recording itself onto his psyche as he rolled on it and scooted it around. She

grew flowers so that molecules of smell and sight could make sketchy replicas

of flowers in his brain. She wanted benign if not benevolent influences to make

him special. "There will be no battery operated cars for this boy," she often

told herself, for they would lead to a preoccupation with movement, and from

movement to targets. She did not want to nurture the hunter within him. Instead

she wanted to make him into a god for being alone in the celestial realm was

lonely business. The materialistic, hedonistic, shallow specimen of movement

had to go.

And yet they were not sedentary Buddha statuettes sitting on shelves and so she

often took him to an outdoor pool or a heated indoor pool depending on the

season. In earlier years, splashing in a baby pool large enough that he could

not easily see an end to its greatness achieved the same aim as the oceans her

father had taken her to. Within a large body of water one could always find

Parmenides' entity and Aristotle's Prime Mover as one pursued that innate human

need for physical movement. The realization that he was distressed about older

boys going into the large pool when he wasn't permitted to do so caused her to

lead him into deeper waters. He floated on a swimming board and sometimes on

her palm under his chest as she treaded water beside him and allowed him to

experience the tide when the whales of human bodies plunged in toward them

They also found mother and son bonding activities when lugging plastic

containers into an environmentally friendly grocery store. From her example she

wanted to nudge onto him a respect of Mother Earth, or at least a reluctance to

be reckless with her. She wanted him to gain the habit of being the least

environmentally destructive that was humanly possible. One of the bins had

animal crackers and she would fill a small plastic container with these dead

carcasses. She abhorred the drug of sugar and its impact on him but then she

did not like enduring the choleric displays of a drug addict who was being

blocked from getting his fix. He always craved for them like oxygen and there

was little one could do with cookie or animal cracker cravings but succumb to

them in the hope of getting some peace of mind. Always following the grocery

expedition she would take him to the zoo and feed him the cracker carcasses

only after he matched the animal cracker replicas to the beasts they were

approaching and could say the names of the zoo animals in English, German, and

Spanish. He couldn't sputter out the Latin so she had to give up on pushing

that language into his head since she couldn't pull it out of his mouth. They

spent Sunday mornings listening to church bells chime from their seats in a

Laundromat. Around 10:30 the adjacent diner opened for business and from a

window in one of the walls they would place orders for French Cream Cheese

sandwiches. They were the oddest creatures in the Laundromat, dancing the

sangfroid to a cassette recording of Evard Grieg's Peer Gynt with bread and

cream cheese gushing in their mouths as they waited for their laundry to dry.

One day they went downtown to pay utility bills and afterwards they walked

around the campus of Cornell University. At a bookstore she became intrigued by

a biography of Alfred Adler and for a couple minutes she became fully immersed

in the reading. During this time he bypassed her despite the fact that she had

been trying to keep him tracked in the corners of her eyes. Imagining ethereal

voices calling to him, he veered out the door and went to follow the Sun god

that was descending into the crevices of buildings. The display was, for him,

an obvious invitation of hide and seek. Pursuing the joy of the present moment,

his imagination interwove him in the tangle of one's sense of direction and the

deception of nature whose beauty belied its true disinterest in man since it

had no intention of obeying any mortal calls. Each building became a whole

forest, which overwhelmed him in vastness and darkness.

For over an hour she ran around like a mad woman frantically asking strangers

if they had seen a child. She felt like Achilles chasing the tortoise and she

scolded herself for not having put him on an arm leash the way she had when he

was three. When at last she saw him staring down at a gas lamp god reflected

into the waters of a lifeless fountain she at first wanted to pull down his

pants and give him a beating with her hard, powerful palm but she was taken off

guard by his emotional embrace and by her own unusual reactionary embrace of

him. She held onto him tightly even though she had never wanted to hold onto

anything. A lucid and excoriating speech was in her parched mouth but she could

not say it. She only said the idea in her mind:" A bad man could have taken

you. Don't you know that you can't run away from me?" A tear even slid down a

cheek. She was a needy creature enmeshed in another being, vulnerable and

susceptible to his actions. It was an uncomfortable state that she had never

wanted.

At last she said, "You little scoundrel."

"Yes," he said. "I am your little scoundrel," and she laughed. It was as if he

had read Nathaniel Hawthorne and he had cast himself into the part of Pearl.

That night she had dreams of Achilles chasing a tortoise and of different

geometric shapes that were before her soon eluding her. She woke up the next

morning in a cranky mood. Everything seemed to be aloof and impalpable. She

burnt the pancakes like Rita Lily and called him to breakfast indifferently.

His wishes that the orange juice be put into his new Mickey Mouse mug were

fulfilled. It was just the dumping of one liquid content into another

container. She did this without saying a word. She ate with him but she was

hardened to his complaints about the taste of the meal. She was frowning and

despondent the whole time.

Chapter Twenty

There was a triangular pack or trinity of stray dogs listlessly wiping snouts

in whatever might possibly be edible as they interweaved around pedestrians'

feet. Even the sniffing of its members was listless. A foot kicked one dog and

there was a high-pitched breathless squeal that was scarcely audible. The dog

pushed its weight and movement toward its right side the way a boy might sink

into genuflection when the wind is knocked out of him and then it slunk off the

sidewalk. Motionless for a moment while still standing, it then opted for

movement although it could only stagger. It was not alone. A smaller dog from

the trinity followed disconcertedly. It too veered in a right curve to the

mirage of a refuge on the edge of the road as if it were the mean between two

risky states. One hobbling and trying to yelp from a bit of a second wind and

the other accustomed to follow that which had secured its sustenance at

previous times, they walked together for a minute before being flattened by a

truck and swallowed into the pot hole mouth of the pavement. The road, from its

swallow, bloated and curved up like a hill before its true form materialized.

Ostensibly, it was a road on an emerging hill but really it was the mutant

growth of a head and a face. Out of nowhere it inexplicably gained animation

and being. It was with life and without purpose. It was naked existence. The

road would swallow much more again and again, get bigger, replicate more of

itself, and die. "Mutations of the carbon of the planet are everywhere! I see

it now: species are cells mutating over time; planets are clusters of cells;

the galaxies are mere organs; and the universe is an organism. Individuals play

their parts, thinking themselves autonomous as does any nucleus of a cell, but

it isn't true." These were her thoughts as she opened her eyes.

Gabriele woke up from a startled Heraclitus-flux of a nightmare the way she had

the previous night. Like then, the only pressing logic contained within such a

strange dream was a geometric leitmotif that was an insensible riddle. It

occurred to her how the subconscious was composed exclusively of chaotic winds

and not what she had at one time thought of as a cryptic but sensible Nubian

code for the astute transcriber. It was nothing but vehement typhoon spirals

with all sensory input and significant long and short-term memories blowing

erratically inside of them. It was a wonder that civilization existed at all.

Humans were great wonders unto themselves to be able to carry such a stir with

a degree of poise. It was amazing that over so many millenniums Homo sapiens

found some degree of cooperation to exist. It was a wonder that Homo sapiens

were able to develop dimensions of themselves outside the frenzy that was

trying to suck them back into it. Rational ideas and decisions might well be

influenced by the stir, but still to get through the day thinking one's benign

little ideas, evaluating and rejecting most truculent impulses, and trying to

make sense of issues beyond ones instincts, hungers, fears, and anxieties was

an absolute miracle. It was the greatest poise and magnanimity to forfeit the

compulsions of one's stir of night and to develop some semblance of civilized

society, benign and sensible. How strange, she thought, that the subconscious

was not universally declared as empirical as a fingerprint, DNA evidence, or a

signature on a sheet of paper showing one's intent. Any startled awakening from

a dream was the tangible proof of her claim that the subconscious was not

merely theoretical.

On her pillow she leaned toward the end table with the idea of picking up an

alarm clock to look at the time when she saw a handkerchief belonging to one of

her anonymous clients laying beside it. He had dropped it out of a pocket when

putting on his pants hours earlier and she remembered that she had found it

after he had gone away. She could see the large initials embroidered on it. It

was no doubt the embroidery of his special little lady. The initials were MF.

Was M for Michael? she asked unto herself, that high authority that answered

all of her questions. "Maybe it is," her higher authority said, "But I wouldn't

be able to decipher what F means unless the first initial stands for Mother."

She laughed out loud but she put the end of the pillow up to her mouth to keep

it muted. She did not want to wake up the boy. So content within herself like a

child, she could entertain herself so easily.

She was sure that this internal voice was most illuminating in intellectual

luminaries but it was not unlike what Rita Lily had. It existed even in the

most idiotic of people. Was a split personality a real concept? She had her

doubts. There were many erratic whims in any human being. It was only by

divorcing oneself from certain whims that one might assimilate two or more

spurious personalities, which would only come about from being abused in

extreme torturous cruelty. What was thought as split personalities existed, she

theorized, to reduce one's interaction with others whom have brought him or her

horrific trauma.

She thought about this MF. He had been polite to her and there weren't too many

like this. He had been the one massaging her. He had wanted her own pleasure as

much as his own. There weren't many like this either. He had even succeeded in

making her tingle and have orgasms. Even now, so many hours later, just the

thought of him made her tingle. She sniped at herself for entertaining this

absurd tingle that women often have long after the sexual stimulation is over.

"I am a female," she told herself, "but I'm no lowly woman." She picked up the

clock. It was 3:00 in the morning. She told herself that if a client was giving

her spurious romantic notions she needed to distance herself. She needed a

break from physical prostitution.

Before Hallmark removed her from their list of freelance artists for

accidentally mailing in one of her profane sketches, she had had this as

another form of income. Now the clients were all there was. The income was

sufficient to pay the bills and, more importantly, she was able to afford

canvas and a wide array of paints each month. This type of prostitution was in

many ways treating her well. It was instrumental in giving a burgeoning artist

canvas and contemplation but she had to admit that the boy was becoming jealous

of her time with these men and she was losing professional objectivity. She

decided that she should not go into work for a day or two. She needed to not

work in her bed but instead to go on vacation outside of it.

In the morning as she was burning French toast for the boy she told him that

they would go to the beach. After breakfast they made a straw hat and wire and

tissue paper sunglasses for Mouse to match the ones she had once crafted for

the boy months earlier. Then she put leashes around both of them. They got into

her old brown Ford and drove to the Entity.

"Why's Rita/Lily not coming?"

"Well, I didn't invite her."

"How come?"

"Well, with the two of you and the two of her that would be two too many.

Wouldn't you agree?"

He giggled as the jawbreaker moved from one part of his cheek to the other.

"Do you really think that thing in your mouth tastes good?"

"Same as a sucker," he said. "Do you want?" He pulled it out of his mouth. The

jawbreaker was coruscating with saliva. It was like a gleaming moon.

"Gee, thanks, but I'm on a diet. That is just too lovely but it would be all

the more so back in your mouth."

"Okay."

When they arrived she attached mouse to a stick stake that she wedged deep into

the sand. Anywhere her boy wanted to roam he took her with him because the two

were shackled to each other. Running around with the feel of wet sand

plastering into the crevices of his toes in its grounded rock and mud texture

she could again see that sense of awe and wonder that he had had when he was

three. They began to twirl each other around and the two of them fell down like

dizzy drunks. As she sat up she noticed that her son was staring directly at

the sun.

"Adagio, don't look at the sun like that."

"Why?" He turned to her. He was still wearing his tissue paper and wire

sunglasses just like the cat.

"Why? Because you don't want to be blind!"

"How can it blind me. It is the sun."

"Does it feel good to look at it directly?"

"No, not really"

"Well, gee, the proof is in the pudding. If it hurts to look up at it directly

that is a prime indication to not do it."

"Huh?" he asked.

"Don't be so asinine. Don't look at it directly," she scolded.

"It wants us to see it," he responded.

"Not directly! Maybe metaphorically," she said. "Why do you think that God put

stupid animals like Mouse on four legs? Have you ever thought about this issue?

Well, I have and let me tell you the reason. If God hadn't forced dumb

creatures like that to keep their front limbs as feet they would be looking up

at the sun and all of them would be blind. Put simply, Mouse can't look up at

the sun because God forced him to stand on four legs; and with a person, he is

usually brighter than a mouse. He is usually a little smarter than an animal so

God encourages him to buy sunglasses, suntan lotion, and to look down toward

one's own business: earthly matters like what you need to wear, the food you

need to fill your belly with, the story you are going to read, so on and so

forth." Each dour day of having to give the reasons behind things to keep this

little guy in one piece was exasperating and she felt that she was falling into

the mire of a never-ending story.

She wondered whether, in part, the religious stories (later to be cut down into

the book sized collections of scripture) had happened for the same reason.

"Ambulatory two legged individuals need to have less of an ethereal

concentration. That's my take on it."

"Huh?" he asked. He looked down at the sand, pulled up his glasses onto his

head, and said, "Let's make a house for the sun. Maybe it will get little and

stay in there and we can stare at it through the windows."

"Sounds good to me," said Gabriele. "You can do that while I set up house." She

got up and pulled him toward the area where Mouse was pacing in parched

emptiness nervously. She laid out a large rug near the staked cat, erected an

umbrella, and took out suntan lotion, a book, Coka Cola, a CD player, and

chewing tobacco from her large bag. She put on a hat that made her look like an

Asian rice farmer. Then she began to listen to Paganini's Caprices. Meanwhile

her son chose an area for the construction site. She wondered why he had chosen

one plot of sand over another plot. Sure, he was on a leash and so he did not

have a wide area to choose from; but a bigger question was why anyone would

choose to sit in one chair over another one in an audience where the seats were

not assigned. When one wasn't mandated to a table by one of those restaurant

hosts, why would a given customer choose one table over that of another? That

was a mystery. Did the mind fool a person into believing one spot was better

than another one so that action could be implemented without lots of

hesitation? She hadn't ever thought about this point before. Her son brought to

her many thoughts. "That is one good reason to keep him around," she kidded to

herself.

"The sand won't stick."

"Well put enough water on it to make it sticky and not so much to make it

runny. Same as cement. You really should begin the foundation of your castle

closer to the water-only not so close that the waves get to it. That way you

don't have to use so much bottled water."

"Well, then I need more rope," he said.

"Okay." She unraveled some of the rope from the leash that was wound on her

arm. She allotted to him more freedom for his imaginary worlds.

"I want a house. Not a castle. I want it to have a bed and its own room. The

closet will be in--"

He droned on and on. In some respects his little ideas were charming but she

had to turn off a great deal that he said to stay sane. "Castle, house, house,

castle--who gives a flying f--" permeated through her brain tissue. She loved

this egocentric being that had pulled out of her body and she did not consider

him too boring. She watched him work against the odds of crumbling sand and an

avalanche of shoddy construction, sculpting out some edifice that he attributed

as having meaning and a link to a civilized creator. She watched this little

individual who was a microcosm of all the worker ants sculpting their tunnels

of dirt that would ultimately collapse. None of them thought of the ultimate

corollary that human life and endeavors would go back to nothingness and the

entity that brought it all about. She felt compassion for him, for all of them,

like a goddess looking on her pathetic children. To some degree, she was

pleased that he emulated her myth of the sun. Within moderation it was a good

and humane fabrication. The creation of her version of the creator was a

meaningful and benevolent lie of universal brotherhood and it seemed to her

that the ultimate goal of motherhood was to nurture humane behavior even if one

had to lie upon occasion.

To escape a violent world daydreams, liquor, and hallucinogens were always

warranted. To counter innate violent inclinations there needed to be a

benevolent god to emulate-one that was palpable and touched everyone and one to

whom there weren't stories or rules to be brainwashed in to gain membership.

She did not know. There were no guidebooks for rearing children. One ad-libbed

the best that one could do. It was a daily chore and one where there weren't

any vacations that would allow objective contemplation of past mistakes.

She put away her book, Why I am not a Christian, by Bertrand Russell. The book

needed to be perused deeply but she couldn't do that because she needed to keep

a part of one eye on the boy and a part of the other eye on the cat. She went

over to help him with his futile task. Within an hour they had constructed an

elaborate castle. Fulfilling his intentions, this peeping Tom became fixated on

looking through the windows of the Sun house in the hope of seeing an

anthropomorphic sun god shrinking himself into its corridors. Finding nothing

but prolonged darkness, he returned to staring up at the clouds and the bright

intensity that was the sun.

She wanted to kick the sun castle. She wanted to destroy it, to blast it away,

and to bring it back to its initial matter. She even contemplated a more debase

act. She thought about unleashing Mouse and tossing it onto the roof of the

castle when Nathaniel was not looking-- however, she rationalized that a mother

who blamed her actions on a cat would be more despicable than a worm. This idea

of framing culpability on the cat swiftly left her consciousness to decompose

back into whatever neurotransmitter combinations and neurological circuitry had

come together to formulate it. She felt irritated at herself for ever

reinventing Aten and for being Akhenaten forcing one more damnable myth into

the world. After all, this one, for its merits, could ruin a boy's eyesight.

Her desire to kick the sun god house had been, in part, from the very desire to

cling to it. She wanted to keep Nathaniel in a state preserved from society's

lies, guile, opportunism, greed, and barbarity. She also wanted this private

and personal experience with him that no one had shared since Aten's extinction

in Egypt many thousands of years earlier.

From her most selfish inclinations she wanted his companionship to avoid a

loneliness that was so stagnating on her energies. Common sense told her that

he was a separate person and that his young and curious being, enveloped in the

freshness of experience that was part of childhood, did not exist to free her

from moments when the world just looked old and musty; and yet there were times

when feelings did not succumb well to common sense. More altruistically, she

wanted to keep him from having to witness Turkish beheadings and other real

world models that would vitiate ideals to the realization that it was every man

for himself. And yet he would be entering school soon: all innocence in a

bubble had to finally break.

She took him and the cat to the area where one could rent out inner tubes.

After paying for one, she re-staked the cat and pushed her son onto the waters

where both son and mother were assailed by the rays of the sun. "Nathaniel,"

she said, "No more of that looking up into the sky like a dreamy baboon. Just

watch the waves whisking us around." As she felt the undulations, she forgot

about the Entity and vaguely recalled that sexual exhilaration with MF. Moments

of Frenzy lived with one no longer than any of the passing winds against one's

face. They were pleasant sensations, boosts of fuel, giving one a positive

outlook toward more tangible encounters. With the exception of the best one,

they were never remembered. But, rising up and down with the waves, she was not

remembering any encounter, but rather the best one.

In later days and weeks she avoided work and clients more than she should have

done and took Nathaniel to Niagara Falls, tiny falls in rural Ithaca, and on

little rides in amusement parks in different areas of the state. Except for the

local falls, which were free, she just said, "Charge please" and handed out a

credit card to venders, ticket salesmen, and hotels. She handed them her bit of

plastic although she knew this action would make her, even more, into a slave

of her own brothel. She wanted to take him to Lake Placid in the Adirondack

Mountains too but common sense prevailed. She had second thoughts about the

matter for she knew that she needed to cut back on her spending. She had done

these other things with him from a gluttony to celebrate those rare whole days

when mother and son were fully together because she knew that they would not be

endless. In short it had been a desire to hold onto him. The poet, Lucretius,

was in her head. It was he who said, "The generations of living things pass in

a short time, and like runners hand on the torch of life."

He was now nearly the age of six and the near emergence of the school year

agitated her progressively. The vacations could not last forever and had not

lasted forever. One reality after another budged into a human's life pushing

the former one into a surreal dream. For an hour, each night, she would lock

herself in her room, change into a black negligee, write her fears in a journal

by the light of a candle, and often find her thoughts discombobulated by the

sound of his voice.

"Gabriele," he whined one night behind the door. She ignored him in the hope he

would go away. She was trying to perfect the doggerel she had written in her

journal the previous night. "Don't yell/for you can tell/I am myself/ to no one

else/ and like an ocean that says I am,/ an ocean by the name of Pam/and an

unmarried feminist named Sam,/ I am so large that you can't see all of me even

if you are traveling in a Pan AM./I just slap my waves on the shore./ I behave

according to my inner nature and don't ask for more./ I am an ocean and so

sometimes with my unfathomable depth it seems as if nothing touches me/ but it

does you will see./ Water evaporates from me./ Sailors sail in me./ It is my

glee/although I'm sometimes saddened by what is me." She rather liked the

alliteration and the variations of the feet. She thought that her word choice

was rather masterful although she wondered if the rhyme scheme wasn't a bit

excessive.

"Gabriele. Will you play checkers with me?" he said through the door

"I'm working," she said mildly

"There's nobody in there with you."

"I'm thinking. Thinking is working."

"There's nobody in there with you. You're not working," he said loudly

"Working can be thinking. It isn't always--" She stopped herself. She was about

ready to say, "It isn't always fucking."

"Mouse went to the bathroom in that fern thing and now there is shitty dirt

everywhere."

"Good God. Go clean it up."

"I don't know how."

"You know how to use a broom and a dustbin. Can't you sweep it into the

dustbin? You remember how!"

"It smells so really badly. If I go near it I'm gonna puke."

"I changed your diapers. It can't be worse than that. Plug your nose and try to

do a little. I'm tired of being the maid around here."

"I'm not a maid too."

"It's your cat."

"It's older than me. How come it's my cat?"

"My dear, when it goes to the bathroom in areas it shouldn't it becomes your

cat."

"How come?"

"Because I'd--" She stopped herself. She was ready to say, "Because if it did

that and I were to own it alone I would stuff it." Instead she said, "Because

it likes you better." That was a solid argument. The only thing he could ask

would be why the cat liked him better; and to ask such a thing would not have

been beneficial to his argument. She was eager to see if he was intelligent

enough to say nothing and he was. He just paused.

"I feel lonely."

"I'll be out soon"

He jiggled the knob. "How come you got that thing locked? I wanna play

checkers." His egocentric words grated on her nerves no different than barking

dogs in the trailer park. "I'm gonna ride my bike over to Chuck's."

"Not this late you're not."

"You gonna play checkers or am I gonna gota Chuck's?" Chuck was a neighbor boy

from the trailer park who recently moved into a house three blocks away. At

first she got up from her seat in a huff of anger to prune such insolence but

she couldn't help feeling amused by it so she sat back down on her chair at the

desk and smiled at the door. She wondered what happened to the mild natured

child of a month ago--the child that was 5 but seemed like 4. This one seemed

much older. She wondered if the formation of his first ultimatum was the

emulation of an ultimatum she had given to him and could not remember or if it

was from some innate incorrigible tendencies. She spent an additional half hour

on the poem. She couldn't see that she was making any improvements. "Maybe it

is perfect after all," she thought.

"Are you going to clean up the mess for Mommy?" she yelled. There was no

answer.

She wrote a few sentences in her journal. For the first time she jokingly

admitted, in its pages, the desire for MF to become a returning client. It

wasn't really so much good sex that she craved as the companionship of a male

friend or friendship in general. She had not exchanged perspectives of adult

realities (such as so and so sending a resume through email on this advent

called the Internet) nor had she engaged in racket ball competition since her

friendship with Betty at Rice University. She had not had a steady boyfriend

since early in her undergraduate education when she decided that men were

special creatures who were uniquely loathsome in no lesser degrees than women.

She felt a stagnancy of a life with little personal inside of it but her books,

paintings, and the child who would be going away to school fairly soon. It was

a bizarre version of stagnation in a life that by its prime purposes should not

have been stagnating at all: by being a mother, she nurtured; by reading she

was nurtured in the profound, and the profound was so unlike the pointless

levity of socializing with living creatures; and by painting she rose into

Godhood in the realm of ideas. And yet being wholly purposeful was such a

solitary domain relegated to gods and not to creatures of movement who needed

frivolity and interplay of ideas of the most shallow domain to feel alive.

Between the need for a physical feeling that one man had bewitched upon her and

that need for frivolity and friendship in the adult domain, she realized that

such a recipe could very well be a toxic combination of ingredients. It was the

baking of a vulnerability and she was not prone to consume vulnerabilities.

Women meandered around as gadabouts while consuming their chocolaty

vulnerability like bonbons but, she told herself, she was not a lowly woman.

She opened the bedroom door and walked out. She saw the fern in the living

room. That one plant was intact, stagnant and alive in the purpose of its pot

as she was in hers. She did not see any dirt anyplace. Even if Nathaniel had

cleaned the floor it wouldn't have been done so neatly. Mouse stood there in

front of her boldly. "Mouse, did you do something bad?" The cat looked at her

dumbfoundedly. "Hmm, I didn't think so," she said. So, the boy had lied to her

about the cat defecating in the fern's soil. "How did he learn to lie?" she

asked herself and her higher authority said that a boy did not need a model: he

would use logic like a sophist. He would display his rationale like fireworks

for dazzling and dazing one in darkness. He would dazzle and daze others into

believing that such brevity of lights was a firm reality. Her higher authority

said that using logic to one's advantage was an instinct no different than

sucking and biting. Then she saw that the door was open.

"He didn't!" she said, knowing that he had. She put a bosky robe over her black

negligee. In ways she was dressed as a soldier and as a witch and yet neither

role seemed too germane. Mother Earth, Father sky, and her own wrath would do

nothing to solve this situation. For five minutes she ran out of the trailer

park and a block down the road but acting like a lunatic got her nothing but

the split soul of a slipper. She swung a fist in the air and, as if she were a

female version of Zeus, the lightning pierced the sky. Still, this did nothing

for her. Would she act the maternal part of worrying, crying, and feeling angry

and betrayed? Such a part was too ludicrous to conceive. "What if he gets lost?

What if he gets hit by a car? What if he does?" she thought to herself. "I'm

not linked to him forever. Even good mothers can't monitor a child's movements

every second of the day. A child obeys his own self-centered little voice

despite a guardian's best intentions. The world is a risky place. That's not my

fault either. I've done nothing wrong." She locked all doors and windows but

the window in her bedroom that she left half open. When he crawled through it

like a thief hours later she gave him the spanking of his life. She was not

sure if spanking was for the benefit of the child through negative

reinforcement or to release the stress of a child's guardian. She couldn't see

that it mattered.

Chapter Twenty One

As the first days of the school year came and went, Gabriele still vied for

time through the sheer act of forgetting. Whatever apprehensions or misgivings

she was experiencing about sending her child to school, they were such that

she, nonchalant, would never claim them to be fears nor acknowledge any malaise

about the inevitability of external influences on her son. And yet subliminal

fears were pulling her away unaware like a sleeping motorist who gets towed

away with the vehicle for the impounding. She simply forgot about the date for

the school registration even though school buses were roaring about everywhere

in the city. Hearing buses from a distance, she should have easily remembered

failing to enroll him in kindergarten the previous year when he was five; but

her denial was a thick opaque fog and what she didn't do last year slipped from

her no differently than enrolling him into school this year. The higher

authority of self remained her goddess; and it was keeping her wrapped in

swaddling innocence. It was innocence consisting of a belief in the present

moment that she had serendipitously fallen into the previous autumn.

During last autumn, Adagio was particularly insistent on getting her to do what

Chuck's parents had done. Restive, she had to bite her lip and say nothing.

Emulating or just imitating someone else, even if it were done for her son,

made her feel awkward and look disconcerted if not gauche; and yet, thinking

about it for a moment, she had to admit that raking leaves into piles was not a

big request. She knew that it would take some scavenging to pull together a

pile or two of leaves but she decided that she could do this in her own unique

way. She didn't mind simple challenges like this as long as she did not have to

rake someone else's yard. She didn't want to meet neighbors for their small

talk would be too unbearable. Those she had met before never used small talk as

a step in the ladder toward more engaging topics. Each conversation was as if

the previous ones never happened. Also these neighbors would pose personal

questions to her and ask why she had so many male friends coming to the trailer

at all hours. They would be pure hypocrites as if they weren't having sexual

relations in their own trailers; and she would be there smiling at them but

looking totally baffled as to why these superficial matters of what one did

(action) instead of who one was (entity) were all that germane. She knew her

relations were more innocent than theirs. Hers were for that needed substance

called money but theirs were for the sleaze and pleasure of the moment; and if

they were monogamous that showed an unnatural behavior indicative of

psychological dependency. She could state boldly, "I think you are trying to

ask what I do with these men who come to the trailer. Right? Of course, it is

what you think. I'm a prostitute. Be sure to tell all your buddies." She could

look them in the eyes and smile during the ensuing discussions. She would be

able to declare such things and then talk affably about one neighbor's

burgeoning tomatoes with superb poise but such frankness might wind up with a

policeman on her doorstep, a short jail term, and a fine. She told herself that

she would rake only in her own confined space clearly demarcated by a wooden

fence and that such action would involve just a little imitation. She told

herself that a little imitation was fine. After all, she could not claim

herself to be 100 percent original. Even she imitated other people in myriad

actions she never even considered from buying fashionable shoes to not running

butt-naked in the streets.

The action of raking was at first a begrudging fulfillment of a simple request.

Then it became merely using the scanty resources of the tiny plot surrounding

the trailer to indifferently concoct what Chuck's father had done easily in the

yard of that new double-wide trailer with its many and varied trees. A

half-hour into the raking it refreshingly became an eagerly anticipated foray

into childhood, which so many years ago had been smashed under the metal belt

wheels of a metaphorical tank. With her son, she dived into piles, which she

had raked for him in tandem. Inferior to the mellifluous smelling orange piles

at Chuck's home (so she was told), these smaller, much greener, and dirtier

mounds were a scanty mixture of dried leaves with freshly mowed weeds, sparse

grass, and a couple bags of mulch. The piles were concocted but the experience

of falling into them was anything but concocted. Her son, and the summons of

fulfilling her role as a mother, inadvertently led her to the feel, taste, and

smell of the present moment. During those times of last autumn, not yet

experiencing the anxiety about necessarily having to send him off to school,

she fell into the entity; and surprisingly, it wasn't something that one stared

at from a beach. Mouth half open while plunging head first into the itching and

asphyxiating pile of elements as dark as death, this ostensible foray into

childhood belied the fact that the dive was really into the main artery of the

heart of the entity. In that moment of seeing, feeling, smelling, and

accidentally tasting the present moment other aspects of it were equally

enlightening. She was surprised that for all her walks on various beaches,

trying to make sophisticated judgments about life to match the thickets of her

adult neurological connections, by comparison these had been wasted hours. Such

attempts at staring at the ocean had never brought her as close to the entity

as this. They didn't give her much peace of mind. The oceans might have

untangled some of her twisted logic but they always tangled her in a new set

like seaweed adrift. Surprised that the entity had not been in the string of

sacrosanct words one concatenated silently in the corners of the mind to catch

truth the way a spider makes a web to catch its prey, she had found it to be in

simple experiences gained from one's senses. What was even more surprising was

that the entity could be sensed, for this empirical experience refuted the

theories of Parmenides and Plato. Also, she was surprised that it was her son

who, by this leaves-jumping, was leading her into a Gabrielish discovery and

yet she told herself that being so surprised was rather foolish in a way. After

all, how surprised should one be that the entity was grounded in simple

pleasures? To be any merit at all to a life, truth had to be more than mere

abstraction. And considering that insatiable and avaricious desires of

adulthood for higher and more intense pleasures was a loose debris of

discontentment only in the realm of the child (only of running to the feel of

the wind, grass poking through the toes of the feet, the fascination of changes

of division in light and shadow, and all considered in the pejorative as

childish and foolish) was one on a solid form of happiness.

"Is it as simple as jumping in a bunch of leaves?" she posed to herself

incredulously. But it was inevitable that with having had craven parental

defectors and deserters march in and out of her nativity, having been run over

by a tank, and having seen a Turkish beheading, the simple pleasures had eluded

her. Violence had caused her to build her fort and look onto the world as a

sentinel and sentinels were not equated with childish sentiments." She laughed

in that strange Gabrielish mixture of profound and morbid levity after rising

up from her second plunge into the pile and brushing off the leaf, grass, and

weed concoction.

Now, with four days into the school year already passed, she was still avoiding

the purchasing of groceries in the afternoons. She told herself that her

artwork was more poignant when the sun was at its fullest; but really it had

been from an avoidance of the yellow school buses that she would have

encountered. Subconsciously she wanted to spend as much time with him as she

could so she began to disregard the policy of him going to bed at 9:00. She

would allow him to play games until he fell asleep on the sofa forcing her to

carry him off to his bedroom. Since that autumn of a year ago she was living in

the present moment through most of each day and disregarding the future as

entirely as a mortal could. She repudiated any reality that went contrary to

the motif of finding the entity through simple pleasures of the senses

experienced in the present moment. She told herself that simple pleasures were

the real and the true foundation of happiness but from them arrogant and greedy

man made preposterous edifices--complete skyscrapers of selfishness and avarice

that would fall down from any jet being slammed into them (any life crisis that

tenuous carbon creatures of mortality were always bound to have).

[Sang Huin was seated on his bed with a laptop computer burning his skin. He

realized that the World Trade Center metaphor was an anachronism for the story

of Gabriele and yet it seemed to him that an omniscient and omnipresent

narrator might well be 6 or 7 years ahead of the time.]

On this day, as all others, she was mixing various vegetables into a potpourri

of soup that required as little culinary sense as an undomesticated female

needed to have. With vegetables being dumped in a crock-pot with a bit of water

and pepper, it seemed to her that it was impossible for much to go awry. The

lunch might have been monotonous but having little else from which to make a

negative judgment, her son didn't complain about this point. His only

experience was soup, pasta, and scrambled eggs that usually came out all right

and pancakes and French toast that had a 50 percent chance of being burnt

beyond recognition or going awry in the most unforeseen ways. Outside of giving

objections about burnt comestibles, he was a truly ignorant savage; and

concerning matters of culinary taste that was how she cared to keep him. When

she asked him to wash his hands he went over to the sink and exclaimed, "Oh

wow, chocolate."

"Get your hands out of that water! That's nasty looking stuff. Diarrhea

looking, it seems to me."

"What's that?"

"The runs, my dear, the runs."

"The sink has the runs? It's sick?" She chuckled at his animistic thinking.

Everything was alive in his judgment and, apart from some wild untoward

behavior, he was a creature who was sensitive to the feelings of the whole

world. She wished that she could keep him like this forever. The water pressure

became inconsistent and unevenly went on and off in thrusts. "Diarrhea and

constipation at the same time-- hard life for the poor sink. Well, until they

solve the problem here-- whoever the they are--use bottled water. Scrub with

soap." As she stirred the soup she saw a yellow school bus drive into the

trailer park and a kindergartner leaving it. Her half-day was over. "Do you

know that girl?" she asked.

He looked out of the window. "No, she's new; but anyway, I don't play with them

girls. They don't know how to play catch. They don't know what to do with balls

of all sorts."

"How would you know that?"

"Chuck told me."