Fra Keeler - Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi (retail)

FRA KEELER
Copyright © Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, 2012

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

First Edition

ISBN: 978-0-9844693-4-5
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-9844693-6-9

Art on cover: dead tree © Elijah Burgher, 2012

Used with kind permission of the artist

Design and composition by Danielle Dutton

Printed on permanent, durable, acid-free recycled paper in the United States of America

Distributed by Small Press Distribution

Dorothy, a publishing project

PO Box 300433, St. Louis, MO 63130

dorothyproject.com
FRA KEELER

AZAREEN VAN DER VLIET OLOOMI

DOROTHY, A PUBLISHING PROJECT
1. "It's on the edge of a canyon," the realtor said, raising his eyebrows when I offered to buy the home without having looked at it first.

"Fine," I said, though I wasn't sure exactly what the realtor meant. Then I didn't say anything for a long time because I was thinking of Fra Keeler's death. And it seemed the realtor wanted to repeat what he had just said, his eyebrows even more tense. "Some things aren't worth looking into," I said, and the realtor's eyebrows slackened a bit. Then I asked, "Where are the papers?" "Here they are," he said. "I'd like to sign them," I said, and he pushed them across the table with his middle finger. What an ugly finger, I remember thinking while I signed the papers, and then I got up and left.

We are said to die of one thing on paper, but it is entirely of something different that we die, I thought as I left the realtor's office. And it is dangerous to take the discrepancy between the two for granted, what one actually dies of and what one is said to have died of on paper; there is hardly ever a correspondence. And I'm thinking now that some people's deaths need to be thoroughly investigated. I'm more than certain that I thought this then, too, as I left the realtor's office, but the thought wasn't as highly illuminated in my head. I'm thinking now, it isn't every day one comes across a death that is especially timely and magnificent, for example Fra Keeler's death. And then, one really has to wonder, one has to begin to think, to retrace the mental footsteps of the deceased person, e.g., Fra Keeler, since the chance that such a timely death would remain unexplained on paper is that much more significant.

And it is true that certain events of the unfriendliest category are now unfolding. I cannot put my finger on these events; I cannot pinpoint the exact dimensions of their effect. The truth is, I haven't been the same since Fra Keeler's death. Some deaths are more than just a death, I keep thinking, and Fra Keeler's was exemplary in this sense. And it is the same thought since I left the realtor's office: some people's deaths need to be thoroughly investigated, and, Yes, I think then, Yes: I bought this home in order to fully investigate Fra Keeler's death. And now that I own it, the home Fra Keeler used to own, I'm beginning to witness certain events. I can't help but think: he died just in time, Fra Keeler, he must have known certain things to have known to die just in time. Some deaths can only be understood in relation to the events that proceed from them. People pretend it is the affairs that lead up to a person's death that are most important. That life accumulates up to a point, the point at which one does one's dying, and that nothing after that is relevant to the life one leads. But no, I think. And the word No moves across my mind the way the realtor's finger inched its way across the desk. Things are illuminated retrospectively, I keep saying to myself. And it is these unfriendly events that will tell me the most about Fra Keeler's death. Only, they are still forming, they are still taking shape. I am only beginning to put my finger on them, as directly as the realtor put his finger on the papers when he slid them across the desk.

It is not for nothing that the reels in our minds start revolving at a speed we might find difficult to bear. And timely as it was, Fra Keeler's death raises questions unanswered by hospital records, or any other death-related paper there is. Hospital records do not reflect the whole truth, nothing close to it. How is one to make sense of the facts that are listed when the deceased person's place of birth and death are so distant from one another; how is one to know how the person got from one end of the earth to another? And more odd things are listed in the margins. Occupation at time of death—surgeon, butcher, logger, office clerk, etc.—listed on the one hand, and burial, cremation, removal, etc., on the other. It is not as if the person died in the midst of performing their job, or perhaps they did, perhaps they had a cardiac arrest while harvesting trees in the forest, and they looked up and thought, I am a logger, and then dropped dead. What an absurd list of facts. There are no complete sentences; how is one to conclude anything from a death certificate? And the reasons given for Fra Keeler's death are nothing short of nonsense, and if they do make sense, their sense is limited. Everything is listed as plainly as a chicken lays its eggs. All the death-related records indicate the same thing, they all point to the same condition. I have leafed through them all, traced Time and Place of Death with my finger—but who, I keep thinking, who would undertake such massive coordination, who would want to hide Fra Keeler's connection to the unfriendly events? Sheet after sheet the same thing is written, which means the same thing must be read: Fra Keeler died of lung cancer, cancer of the lungs, pulmonary cancer. And the handwriting is always the same, a low squiggly line resembling rolling hills with a dark horse or two traversing them. Cancer. Fra Keeler died of pulmonary cancer. And it's a squiggle, a line. Nothing else.

But no: I lied. To be fair, I omitted, I didn't lie, there is one record that does not match the others. There is one discrepancy. And how could I not have seen it before? The unfriendly events cannot hide forever. I must look for incongruities; I must probe them with my finger. The truth always gives way; I have heard the saying—hovering beneath one's nose. And it is true. I found the truth in the drawer. I opened the drawer and it was simply there, a sheet of paper like any other sheet of paper. Except a little tarnished on the edges, a little yellowed here and there. The ink smudged in certain places, so that I could tell which keys, while the document was being written, had been held the longest on the typewriter. But the words can still be made out. One never needs all the letters to make out a word—the word is there in the brain, an image of it one can pull into the light, and ah, one thinks, ah, that is the word that is written there, Death Certificate, and then Palma de Mallorca next to Place of Death.

Quite suddenly I am confused. Some things, I keep thinking, are unprecedented. And what can a person do? The name, Palma de Mallorca, as if it were a ghost, has taken hold of my tongue. Pal-ma, I keep saying, Pal-ma. The word lingers in my mouth, hums in my brain. I see myself opening the desk drawer as I opened it that day. I must have seen the paper and returned it to the drawer right away. Shut it out of my mind. Why else would it take hold of me this way? Things creep up on us when we deny their existence. And of all the papers, it is the only one that reads, Palma de Mallorca, Place of Death. The words peel off the page to sing brightly before my eyes.

I must retrace.

It was a few days after I had moved into the home, this home I had just bought thinking it belongs to Fra Keeler. Though I am now beginning to suspect that I am wrong, or that there are two Fra Keelers, the right one and the wrong one, and that the death certificate in the drawer belongs to one, and the rest of the papers to the other, but this is a matter for later. In any case, I had just moved in, I was grinding beans for my morning coffee when I spied from the kitchen window behind some trees a small, circular wooden cabin—a yurt. From where I was standing in the kitchen, behind the sink, looking through the window, it seemed the door to the yurt was unlatched. It was swinging to and fro against the wind. I decided to go and have a look. I crossed the yard and walked through the trees I had seen from the window. Their branches, interweaving, made a huge tapestry above me, and then, as if from nowhere, it was sky again: the trees were behind me and I was standing in a clearing with the yurt directly in front of me. It all seemed quite sudden, for when I was standing behind the sink and looking through the kitchen window the yurt seemed to be appearing from another time altogether, it was as though the yurt had traveled through time to make a momentary appearance and I couldn't reconcile this feeling with how close the yurt was to the house when I ventured toward it. There it was: right behind the cluster of trees. And the door to the yurt was creaking loudly, since the wind had picked up in the time it had taken me to walk toward it. I pushed the door all the way open and stepped in. It was pitch dark inside. No light from the world was creeping through. I still had a box of matches in my hand since right before spotting the yurt I had wanted to light the stove to make my coffee. I lit one, the wind blew. I lit another and held it right above my face, where one would hold a portable torch if one had one, and saw rows and rows of shelves on the walls. I wanted to walk toward them, but there was something obstructing my path—it looked like a wooden canoe, and then I saw an oar and the match blew out. I couldn't confirm anything. I lit another match and looked down at my feet. There was, in fact, a canoe, and I stepped into it and out of it on the other side, the wall side, and came close enough to the shelves that I was able to touch them. They were dusty. I was holding the match in my other hand, and I could see things only in small portions as I held the light of the match up to them. I must get out, I thought. And then the wind slowed and I could hear the leaves shuffle in the low breeze, outside, just beyond the yurt. "There is a reason for everything," I said to myself, "a reason for having come to the yurt." And then his name formed in my chest: "Fra Keeler," I murmured, I hummed, the wind picked up, "Fra Keeler," I said, and his name poured from my lips the way water pours from a fountain, in long streams, uninterrupted, and just as I said his name I was standing out in the clearing again.

I noticed the leaves on the trees looked greener, as though the bark had bled into them. I didn't know how long I had been inside the yurt. The sky was heavier now, a morbid color; I could feel it pressing against the back of my neck, folding me down to the ground. I pressed back against it and walked as quickly as I could through the trees. The air grew cold, and then quite suddenly everything was wet with rain. It was as though a tap had opened in the sky. Water was dripping off the leaves, pouring in streams, the way his name was pouring from my lips, uncontrollably, when I stood in the yurt.

Had I fumbled my way out of it without knowing? I turned around to look beyond the trees. I wanted to see it again, to confirm its existence. I looked hard through the clearing, to where the yurt had been. My boots were caked with mud from the rain. There was a streak of lightning. The yurt flashed before my eyes. I heard the door swing open. It blasted hard against something, the canoe, I thought, the hinges on the door must have loosened in the wind. I couldn't see clearly. I looked again through the trees. I was squinting in the wind. I looked down at my hands, to see if they were still dusty from the shelves, but they had been wiped clean by the rain. Water was pouring, violently coming down through everything. My face was burning now in the cold rain. The yurt flashed again before my eyes, silver and radiant in the lightning. But it was an image of the yurt, an instant, a flash, nothing else. It was I who was reproducing it there, an image of the yurt I kept projecting. Blood was swirling in my brain. I looked again, but this time nothing appeared, and I ran through the yard, toward the house. I pulled the storm door open. Inside, everything looked the same. Only it was a little dimmer than before, a dull, gray light had settled around the edges of things, and the countertops seemed heavier; all the machinery of the kitchen seemed older in the gray light, and rounder, more anchored into the ground.

Inside, I rested against the sink. I was panting. I reached to turn on the tap; water gurgled, then flowed in steady streams. Everything was in order: the coffee grinder, the cup, the sponge with which I had wanted to wipe the counter. I looked again, through the window, to the other side of the trees, into the clearing that lay beyond them, but could see nothing. Only the wind thrashing the branches of the trees. And it was then his name rose again to my lips. "Fra Keeler," I said, though this time more exasperated than before; I was wheezing from the wind, and I could hear myself hissing his name under my breath, "Fra Keeler," I rasped, "Fra Keeler," I said again, until I was hissing like the wind.

I awoke hours later. It was pitch dark and there were papers strewn all around me. I remembered standing by the sink, watching the trees thrash around in the wind. I looked on the floor. My clothes were scattered about here and there on the tiles. I had undressed myself. I sat up and reached across the floor. My clothes were still damp from the rain. There was a musty smell in the house, like something old had crept in and settled itself in the furniture, on the countertops, in the cabinets, between things. My head was throbbing. Any minute now, I thought to myself, it is going to explode. I couldn't remember falling asleep or undressing. The last visible point in my mind was the kitchen sink, myself standing over it, looking through the window for the yurt. I couldn't understand where all the papers had come from. I couldn't remember carrying anything back from the yurt. In fact, hadn't I looked down at my hands, weren't they empty? The papers did a wild dance around me, the room turned and turned. I closed my eyes. I drifted.

I woke up again hours later. It was light now; a very clear day was coming. The sun's rays were bronze, that early morning orange color, and they were piercing through my window. I lifted my head. I saw the papers again. Certain words were illuminated by the light creeping through the window, and the rays of the light, firm as needles, were pointing out certain words to me, and I thought, this is a clue, this is a sign. I lifted my head off the ground a little more, and it was pulsing, as though two hearts were about to leap out of its sides, but it wasn't throbbing like before. The room was steady. I reached across for my clothes. They were dry now. I put them on and leaned over the pages. Propped up on my elbow, I was halfway off the floor. I looked at the words with the needles going through them: the Netherlands, I read, and I thought: the Netherlands, low lands, lower lands, under something. And in such a handwriting: a low squiggly line resembling rolling hills with a dark horse or two traversing them. I followed the handwriting back and forth across each page. The words cancer, pulmonary cancer, cancer of the lungs, poured out toward me. And there it was: next to the Netherlands, the words Place of Death. Fra Keeler, I thought: he died of cancer in the Netherlands.

And I had to retrace again.

The papers, how had they come to me? But then the doorbell rang. It made the sound of a large rock hitting against hollow metal and the sound was violent through my brain, and I had to get up because I couldn't chance it ringing again. I fumbled across the living room and down the hallway to the front door. It was the mailman. He looked pink and happy and I could tell that someone had just ironed his clothes, a very loyal wife, I thought. The creases were perfect, straight lines and angles down to his sleeves. I leaned against the door.

"Hello," I said. I was still dizzy; my head was still throbbing a little.

"Hello," he said back. And then he handed me a package. "Here you go," he said. "Good day, sir," he said.

I said, "Yes," more in the form of a question than a statement. And then I took the package from him and saw that he looked slightly confused. And I was forced to say something. So I asked, "Do you hand deliver the mail every day?"

"No, that's a special package," he said. "You have to sign for it." And right as he said the word special, he placed his hands on his hips, and puffed up his stomach, as if saying so gave him a feeling of buoyancy.

I looked down at the package. It said EXPRESS in big, bold letters. "Oh," I said, "I see," and signed for the package.

He turned to leave, a little less light in his eyes than when he had first announced himself, and I wondered, what have I done to deflate him? Just as I was thinking this, he stopped, not quite facing the post office truck and not quite facing me either. He tilted his head to one side and opened his mouth like a fish, to show that he was thinking. Then he sucked in some air and puckered his lips a bit, but nothing came out, only silence. I watched him, a bit stunned and a bit weary, until he prepared to leave again, placed one foot behind the other and rocked backward and forward, not in a cautionary way, but to suggest that he was still thinking, that what he had wanted to say was still on the tip of his tongue, that he was just turning it over in his head. Then he tapped the tip of his shoe on the pavement as though his whole body was an exclamation point and came out with it:

"Those are some nice plants," he said.

I was surprised. If that's what he had wanted to say why had it taken him so long to say it? Maybe he had wanted to say something else, something along the lines of you don't look so good, Mister, but had regretted it, shoved the thought and all the words that went along with it back into his head and said the thing about the plants instead.

"Yes," I said without a pause because I didn't want him to know I was thinking all those things while I was watching him. "Cacti," I said, "they're my favorite." He walked down the driveway alongside the prickly plants, inspecting them sidelong. I took a step out of the doorway and thought, this is no ordinary mailman, and watched him some more.

"They don't take much," I said as though I were speaking from my chin, because I was holding my head up high and looking down at him and it was difficult to move my lips while holding my face in that manner. But he didn't say much in return, so I said, "They're easy to take care of, especially in this weather." He just nodded his head yes, like he was still deep in thought, and I couldn't tell anymore if he was thinking about the plants or about the thing he had wanted to say but had never said. And then he climbed into his truck, and I caught a glimpse of his hand releasing the brake, of his foot pressing the gas, a limp foot on the accelerator. I saw his arm go up and I followed the crease of his shirt from his shoulder down to his hand. He was waving goodbye. What a fat hand, I thought from the doorway, because I had stepped backward into it now. With his limp foot he pressed on the accelerator and did an about-turn with the truck and left.

"What a strange man," I said to myself, and closed the door and the living room darkened. I looked up at the ceiling, a high ceiling with a dusty skylight. I debated for a second whether I should dust the skylight or just let it be what it wanted to be: a surface for dust to settle on, a dust town. I decided it was better off the way it was and let it be. Anything that's been a certain way for long enough is difficult to alter, and any alterations to it could be interpreted as nothing short of a manipulation, either by the thing being altered or by the person doing the alteration, even if all you're talking about is dusting a skylight, I thought, and went back into the kitchen. The papers were still strewn about on the floor as they had been ten minutes ago when I had gotten up to open the door. I walked over them, one leg then the other, carefully; I didn't want to step on them. But then the room started to turn again, ever so slightly. Curse of the kitchen, I thought, or these papers, and then the blood rushed out of my brain and returned again, a mere second later. It occurred to me that this time I could have gone dizzy because of the skylight. Or more precisely because of my thoughts about the skylight. It always makes me queasy to think of manipulation as a general category, I thought, and bent over to pick up some of the papers. Maybe if I stack them, I thought, and managed to stack the papers without the blood swirling again in my brain. When I bent down to stack the papers, I thought the sensation I had had in my brain earlier was the same sensation I had once felt when I shook a pomegranate near my ear. Or, not exactly a sensation, but a sound. That when I shook the pomegranate it had made the same sound as the sound my blood made when it swiveled in my brain, and that both sounds led to the same sensation: of something having dissolved where it shouldn't have. I went over the memory, from when I picked up the pomegranate to when I shook it near my ear: I had squeezed the pomegranate by rolling it, had pressed into it with my thumbs, juiced it without cracking it open, because it's the only way to juice a pomegranate without any special machines. All the juice was swiveling about inside the shell of the pomegranate, channeling its way around the seeds the way river water channels itself around driftwood. When I put the pomegranate down I could still hear the juice working its way around the seeds that were dead without their pulp. I had squeezed the pomegranate till the pulp was dead. I could invent a machine to juice pomegranates, I thought, and not just pomegranates but persimmons too, some very basic, cheap tool people could use in their homes, and then I imagined a thousand people, all wearing their house slippers, juicing their pomegranates and persimmons for breakfast, and I thought, never mind, no doubt someone has already invented it. I took the stack of papers that I had collected off the floor, along with the package, and placed them on the counter. To one side, I thought, to one side to be done with them.

I decided to open the package the mailman had delivered. I went over to the stove, because that's where I keep my butter knives, right next to the stove, and I wanted to use one so I wouldn't have to bother peeling the tape off the box, because it bothers me to watch the skin of the box come off with the tape. It's a death worse than the pomegranate's, to be skinned alive. But then again, it's just a box, I thought, and not a person, and if I wanted to I could go on like that forever, about all the different mechanisms of dying, all its nooks and crannies; I could create some kind of death pyramid, and there would be a pyramid for each object, and every kind of person too, and from top to bottom I would figure out the range of deaths each thing or person could suffer, from unlikeliest to likeliest cause of death and be done with it once and for all. Then I told myself either to shut up or drop dead and took a drink of water from the sink and looked out the window.

But my heart stopped because it was a clear day and I could see the trees, very round and close. Somewhere in the back of my brain I heard the door of the yurt creak shut. Suddenly there was a faint smell of rust in the air and I could hear the hinges on the door creaking, but I couldn't see the yurt. Everything dimmed in the peripheries, the way everything dims when the sun gets blocked by clouds, and its rays are cut off, instantly. I looked around. There wasn't a rusty nail or old hinge anywhere near me and as soon as I thought this the smell faded, retreated back into whatever mystery it had emerged from. I was beginning to grow dizzy again, and thought, the oxygen in my brain is being sucked out by whatever is on the other side of that door, and then his name crept up, Fra Keeler, but I managed to push it down because I remembered the mailman looking at the plants sidelong, and then his name crept up and I managed to push it down, pink and happy as a shrimp that mailman, I thought, and then his name crept up again, sidelong, and I felt compelled to stare at the trees because in addition to oxygen trees are supposed to give you peace and quiet, and maybe that's what the mailman was thinking when he was staring at the plants sidelong. "They really do accomplish their objectives," I said to myself, those trees, and his name crept up, because the leaves on the branches are good to look at, bristling in the breeze, shivering—giving a small shudder and then staying still—and his name crept up, and I remembered the butter knife and grabbed it and walked back over to the package and pressed the knife against the tape just like I had wanted to, and sliced the tape through and the flaps opened and I pushed them down, wings of an underdeveloped bird, I thought, and his name crept up.

Inside the package there was a bright pink flyer. Nothing pushes things out of the mind like reading, I thought, and read the flyer. Welcome to Ancestry.com, it said, his name didn't creep up, but something else did, something old and stale, a thing like a worm; not a worm itself, but shaped like a worm that had died inside me and that I needed to throw up. But I couldn't throw it up because I couldn't put my finger on exactly what it was, and I thought the hell with this, the hell with the package and the flyer and decided to go out to buy some beans because one can never have enough beans in storage. I grabbed my jacket and stepped out, but the sky darkened in a strange flash and it was purple instead of blue and I thought I don't need the beans after all and turned around to go back inside. But just as I stepped through the doorway I heard the voice of the mailman behind me. He was saying something about the nature of plants, but I couldn't quite make it out—that they were sensitive or prickly or a combination of both—and I turned around to see what it was he was saying, but it was dark, because the sky had gone purple, and my eyes were still adjusting so I couldn't see anything. When my eyes adjusted I saw that no one was there; just pitch silence and the sky, vast and heavy as a rock.

I stepped back inside, swung the door shut and turned the lock. I looked up at the skylight: it hadn't changed, not a trace of purple, and I thought, it's dirty... it's too dusty... but I didn't want to have any redundant thoughts so I didn't look at the skylight for long. I just stepped inside the kitchen, very matter-of-factly because that is how you move on. I went straight to the package and picked up the flyer and placed it face down on the countertop, and I thought it strange that a Web-based company would be using regular mail to introduce itself, and the thoughts about the skylight were gone. I dug further into the package.

Under the flyer there was a series of instruction manuals. I flipped through the pages, not one by one, but the way you would shuffle a deck of cards, using your thumb and index finger, so that all the numbers go flying by and start to blend together because you see the six so quickly after the nine, or the jack of clubs so quickly after the queen of hearts, and so on. At any rate, I flipped through the first manual this way. How many manuals could the company need to explain its services, I thought. And out of the corner of my eyes I caught the words flying and put them together in my head to make a sentence because some words organize themselves predictably into sentences. What they were getting at was a list of suggestions. How to determine who would be the most lucrative person with whom to start your research. It seemed the ancestor with the most public life would yield the most information, because I saw the words public life so soon after the word yield, and by a public life it seemed they meant a life at the center of which there was a war, because then a list of wars flew by, right under my eyes, from the Civil War to the First and Second World Wars, and the Vietnam and Gulf Wars too, and I thought, these people, whoever they are, are obsessed, there's more to a public life than wars, and dumped the manual in the trash and closed the lid on it.
2. The phone rang persistently. I let it ring a few times. Imagine, I thought, the possibilities on the other end. Another seed, all of this leading to Fra Keeler. Fra Keeler, I thought, and his name did an about-turn in my mind. I reached for the receiver. Death, I thought, it is so sudden. I picked up the receiver. One minute, I thought, one is going along, "Hello," I said, and the next, there is nothing with which to do one's going along, because one is horizontal somewhere, or lying dead in a pit, "Hello," I said again, but there was no one on the other end, or floating downstream in a river, I said, "Hello," one minute, I thought, and the next; it must be the mailman, stubborn horse of a caller.

But why would he be calling me? The mailman. I glanced over at the package. The wars, I thought, the mailman. And the wars spun in my brain like numbers in a lottery bowl, blasphemy, I thought, the mailman. He must have seen me throw the wars in the trashcan. And it wasn't only him who could see me, I thought, because with my mind's eye I could see him, sitting on a solitary chair holding the receiver with his fat hand. "Hello," I said, and thought, his hand is like a boiled lobster. "Are you calling about the wars," I thought to ask, but there was no one on the other end. Not a word out of his mouth. "Cat got your tongue," I said to him, "Mr. Mailman." And my ears got hot. I cursed him: "Dumb as a lobster," I said, "you are, Mr. Mailman," and hung up the receiver.

A minute later the phone rang. This time I picked up right away, half a ring, nothing more, and heard a clicking noise on the other end. An automated voice came on: "Welcome to Ancestry.com," it said, and I said, "Thank you," and hung up the receiver. And then the phone rang. I picked up right away, half a ring, nothing more, a load of white noise on the other end, "Welcome," the voice said, and I felt my mouth fat and milky around my tongue. I thought goats, a thousand goats, walking across my mind, milk the goats, I thought, and they kept walking across my mind. "Welcome to Ancestry.com," said the voice, and I thought what the hell is this, and I threw the receiver against the wall and then the phone rang, two rings, nothing more. I picked up, "Welcome to Ancestry.com," the voice said, "Press one." I said, "You piece of shit mailman," and heard the words come out of my mouth. "Welcome to Ancestry.com," said the voice, I hung up, and then the phone rang.

"How can we assist you?" It was a real person now.

"Thank you," I said. The mailman, I thought, playing games with me now.

"We would be happy to be of assistance if you have any questions," he said, "sir," he said, swallowing to smooth out his voice.

"Assistance, sir," I said, "I think I'm fine."

"In the event that your research is not progressing at an acceptable rate," he said, "sir," picking up force in his voice now.

What madness is this, I thought. "Thank you," I said, and hung up the receiver.

And then the phone rang, two rings, nothing more, "Press one," it said, the voice, and then the phone rang. And I thought, the mailman, the goats, the trashcan, the wars, and the voice started again, "Welcome to Ancestry.com."

"Yes," I said. "Sir, thank you." It was a real person now.

"We would be happy to be of assistance if you have any questions," he said, "sir," swallowing now.

"Assistance, sir?" I asked.

"Yes," he said, "in the event that," and he was getting ready to increase the force in his voice and then the phone rang. "Welcome to Ancestry.com," it said, and I thought what madness is this, and the wars started spinning faster in my brain, a long list of wars flattened against the sides of my brain. And I thought: it hurts: the words, and then the phone rang and my blood was boiling so I threw the phone against the wall and shattered the receiver, and I thought the hell with this, the hell with the seeds and the connections, and crawled onto the couch and went to sleep.

In my dream I could see the receiver. At first it was huge, monumental. I felt my eyes were inside my brain, small as pearls. Then slowly my eyes got bigger. The size of marbles and then a pair of dice, they rolled back into my sockets, and it was as though my eyes had their backs to the receiver, so that the receiver got smaller and smaller, until it was tiny, curved like the tail of a lobster and I was very far away, with my eyes in the right place looking out of my brain. Then it faded. The receiver faded and my eyes rolling around the receiver faded and it was all world again and I was just a person in it looking out of my brain: I was in a theater. There was a woman on stage. There were red lights in the background; they cast a dull, pinkish hue over the stage. She said "Come closer," the woman on the stage, and I thought she said "Fra Keeler," but I couldn't be sure so I got up and walked closer. It was dark, even under the pink light in the theater, and an acid smell took over, then it was her face, and she said, "Come closer," and I thought she said "Fra Keeler," and I walked closer, and she said, "You did this," pointing at her face, and I said, "No, no I didn't," because I could see her face was burnt. Hardly anything left of it. And she said, "You did this," as she continued to point at her face, and I thought, this is a monologue, she is performing, and then again she said, "You did this," pointing at her face, and I said, "No, no I didn't, you did this to yourself," and then she covered her face with a black cloth and walked off stage, and I thought, it's mother talking to me in my dreams. I wanted the curtains to go down so I said "Curtains" but they wouldn't go down, and all I could hear was, "You did this, you were the one who did this to me," and I woke up and immediately drew the curtains and outside everything was as calm as a sparrow—the sun, the trees, the grass, the mailboxes: it was a new day.

I opened the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk. The dream, it was a flash in the pan, just an instance. I stared at the sidewalk, the plants, all in a row in the soil. I thought of the mailman, his pink, happy face staring at the plants, and the word sidelong inched its way toward me like a worm. Plants, I remembered thinking, they are good to look at, and I had thought this ahead of him, the mailman, because he had said something to that effect shortly afterward. Ideas get in the air, I thought, and looked up and saw the mailman down the street knocking on someone's door. He knocked on the door for quite some time. I know because I stood there for a while, long enough for the word sidelong to inch its way toward my foot and crawl up my pant leg too. And for a moment there were two mailmen: the mailman as I remembered him staring at the plants, and the mailman knocking on the neighbor's door, until the first of the two images faded, and adjusted into one mailman, mailman supreme, with his fat lobster hand knocking on the neighbor's door. What a clear day, I thought, looking down the street toward the mailman. Any more sunlight and everything would have been whitewashed. I could see clearly. The mailman down the street, his boiled hand, and I took a step toward him, and I could have taken another hundred, and then someone answered his knocking, and the door swung wide open, and his hand did a cartwheel where the door was. I was still very disoriented from my dream—"you did this," her voice echoed, drumming against the sides of my brain—and then his hand came back down to rest by his side.

I wasn't very far away down the block. I had taken a few steps and could have taken a few more. There was an old lady standing in the doorway where the mailman's hand had been. She was standing in the doorway holding a candle in broad daylight. I took a step closer, and with all my steps accumulated I was two thirds of the way down the block now. Her entire house was pitch dark, and I thought, it's the dark ages, it's the dark ages through her doorway. Her hand trembled. I took a step closer to see if there were any red lights in the background, but there weren't any, and I thought, upstairs, there could be a reddish light upstairs, and I leaned over to see. I could see the edge of her staircase. There was a glimmer of white light, then the old lady handed the candle to the mailman and with two free hands took the package in exchange. "You have to sign for it," said the mailman. "Yes, sir, I have to sign for it," she said, and put the package down by her feet. I could see the mailman was very pleased; his whole posture relaxed when she signed for it. Then he handed her the candle, "A shame to be out of lights," he said, and she said, "Yes, indeed." I could hear their entire exchange. With all my steps having accumulated I was very close behind them. The mailman turned around to take his leave so that suddenly we were two men face-to-face. I thought, what a great frame, the mailman with the door shut behind him, and the old lady on the other side of the door with her candle and her package by her feet. Then I looked straight at the mailman because there was no escaping the situation.

"Hello," he said.

"Hello," I said back.

"It's a good day," he said.

"Very clear day," I said.

"Well then," he said.

"Well then," I said, "it's a good day."

"Yes," he said, and stepped aside to leave.

And then I stepped aside. In the opposite direction. And we both did what we had to do: leave. I thought for a moment, that was the wrong mailman. Not the wrong mailman, just not the right one, or the usual one. I turned around to look at him again, but he was already in the postal truck, pulling out into the street, and all I could see was the back of his postal truck, square as a nun. Maybe he is sick, I thought, the usual mailman. Or on leave. Or I hadn't studied his facial features enough. I should have asked for his name. I walked down the sidewalk, through the row of plants, then right past them into my house. Inside, I looked up at the skylight. I thought, it's as dull as it was before, flat and dull as before, the skylight, even if it's a new day.

There are certain surfaces from which nothing gets removed, nothing more accumulates. A steady humdrum of nothingness. And if anything accumulates it does so at an infinitesimal rate, so the next person to notice is a few lineages down, or not at all, I thought, because you'll never know if that person will stop to look up at the same surface, and if he does there would be no guarantee that he would have the same thought. But then thoughts get passed around from brain to brain, so that our thoughts are only ever a repetition of someone else's thoughts. A thought that came before us and planted itself in our brain as though it belonged to us, inextricable from our being. And that is exactly what the skylight is, I thought: inextricable. I thought of Fra Keeler polishing it, dusting it off, and then going to stand beneath it to see if the light shined through. Meanwhile the old lady in the dark with her candlestick, her package, and her near-death. Thoughts, you walk through them, they exist before you, I told myself, picking the thought up again, and by some trick of the mind you think it was your thought, and you drag it out, a thread as long as your DNA, and you push at it with your finger and you say, "Ah, yes: This is my thought," and it breathes back against your finger, and you are very satisfied, you and the thought together, you thinking the thought is yours and the thought thinking back at you, right up against your finger. What an idiotic thing to think about, I thought, as I slammed the door shut. I imagined the thought getting stuck in the doorway along with the finger I had imagined pressing against the thought. I walked into the kitchen and took a drink of water by the sink. Death unto both of them, I thought, the finger and the thought, and swirled the water in the glass a few times because I was trying to pause the thoughts or redirect them, the finger along with everything else slammed out of the house by the door slamming shut.

I looked out the window. It was begging to rain. A drizzle, a light rain through the sky. Then a bit harsher, more temperamental. I saw the trees, their leaves ruffled in the wind. A thousand ants, I thought, and swirled the water in my glass some more. I could see the wind through the window, egging the clouds along in masses as though they were sheep, the clouds, in masses, dimming everything below. I took a drink of water. Someone has amputated the rays of the sun, I thought, cut them right off, because the light got sucked out of the window. Suddenly I was looking at myself, because with the light sucked out of the window, the window was less of a window. I swirled the water in my mouth. Some things are worth looking at double, I thought, and placed the glass on the counter so I could see it reflected in the window. I grinned, then went back over to the papers to leaf through them with my finger. With my finger, I thought, I will leaf through them one by one. And when I thought one by one I remembered the light coming through the window, illuminating the Netherlands, low lands, those under-lands, point of a needle. Fra Keeler, Time and Place of Death, I thought, and the sky clammed up. I could see through the window now. All the clouds had accumulated in one spot. Dirty avalanche, all those clouds rolled into one, and then the clouds released all their humid weight; the rain was torrential. I wanted to give out a laugh. To laugh at the water, the water I had swirled in my mouth near the window, the water falling from the sky in wide, cascading sheets. Yes, I thought: Yes! I could laugh at the light too! The dream, I thought. I wanted to laugh. I began to give out a light chuckle. I took a step toward the papers, and I wanted to take another, a hundred more, the needles, I thought, the Netherlands, but I couldn't get the other leg through, one leg and the other wouldn't follow, everything, I thought—the ground wobbled, and I had the distinct feeling of walking on the slant of a wave or a sand dune—and then I felt the blood rush out of my brain.

How many steps had it taken me to get to the neighbor's door, to the yurt, etc.? I should have counted them, I thought. The room spun around me. How would my house, I thought, which was Fra Keeler's house... the skylight, I thought, dirty... after it was clean... position itself in relation to the yurt... the neighbor's home... the old lady in the dark? Now it was a cold, fast rain. I felt wet, drained to the bone even though I wasn't outside. A triangle, I thought, the neighbor's home, the yurt, Fra Keeler's home, and then the phone rang. I ran out into the garden and counted the trees. A triangle, a triangle of trees, I thought, I should go through them, through the trees. I thought: the dream: the old lady in the dark down the street—and the two things began to revolve around each other: the old lady holding the candle and my mother with her face burnt off, saying "You did this." And it was spinning, the room, and I thought, it's a good thing it's raining, there are some fires to be put out. Her face grew more and more burnt until it was paper-thin. I could see her sockets, her cheekbones, high as a horse's, I thought, and then her face revolved faster and faster until it was a charcoal grin. Then, it was as though I had my eyes closed or blinders on, because all I could see were the slim trunks of the trees. I was wet to the bone. I heard a door creaking, the wind whistling, sharpening itself on the hinges. The yurt, I thought, and it flashed before me like lightning, silver and radiant in the rain. I took a step, one leg then the other, and walked into the yurt. I leaned over, the bottom of this, I thought, I will get to it, but then I heard a banging. I thought, I can't handle this, a banging in addition to everything else, the distant echo of the phone, the wind sharpening, the phone ringing inside the house, but I couldn't get up, I was lying down, flat inside the canoe with my arm out, reaching for the oar, and I thought it's raining, it's raining, like the end of the world, and then I felt the canoe lift up to the surface of the water and drift away.
3. What madness is this, I thought, when I awoke in the midst of the woods. Not the woods per se, but the trees at the far end of the garden. Everything seems larger when you are looking at it from the bottom up, I thought, and since first looking to the side I could see the trunks, and then looking up how they branched out into trees, it was as though I awoke in the woods, when really it was in the garden that I awoke, at the far end beneath the trees. I thought, why am I lying here, hadn't it rained? And then I said to myself, "It has something to do with quantity," as though I were reading out loud from a page. I looked at the roots on the trees. They were mostly underground. But then again, I thought, the roots are not entirely underground. Only that they are more underground than overground, I concluded. My eyes were still adjusting. Because at first I couldn't open them, let alone see the trees.

Open your eyes, I thought, and I thought I had opened them, but I couldn't see. Because a certain part of my brain was numb, the part that had to do with my eyes, and I knew it was numb because all around I could feel more than a normal amount of feeling. I thought, I am blind, or not exactly blind, but I couldn't open my eyes to see. And when I tried to pry them open with my fingers they would not open or they would open but it was only darkness around me so, I thought, I must be going blind, or I am already blind. I fell asleep and woke up blind, I thought. And then I tried to pry my eyes open. This time I saw my feet, but only vaguely, and more out of one eye than the other, and it was like I was seeing my feet at the bottom of a well, through the center of a ring of ripples on the surface of the water. I thought, I am blind, how can I be blind? Because when I fell asleep I certainly wasn't blind. And then I thought, perhaps I am not awake yet, and I let the question go, blind versus not blind, and surely half an hour later I was awake, because I opened my eyes and I could see the trees: first the trunks and then following the trunks upward I could see the leaves.

And this is when I came to the question, Why am I lying here, hadn't it rained? which is the question I had asked myself when I opened my eyes and saw the leaves, but could not answer, so that instead of answering the question, Why am I lying here, hadn't it rained? the sentence, It has something to do with quantity kept reappearing in my head as though I were reciting it from a page. And to what, I wondered, is the sentence referring? Because certainly it wasn't clear to me. Then a wind passed through, and the leaves ruffled a bit overhead. Quantity, I thought. I thought, quality. That the two are inextricable from each other. And that you have to have enough of something in order to determine its exact quality. And then I thought, it must have rained yesterday, or some hours ago, some time before this point in time when I find myself lying here under the trees.

Then the wind picked up again, and the leaves rustled even more loudly on the trees. It could have been only minutes ago, I thought, that it had rained. There is no way of knowing. But on the other hand, if a long time had passed since it had rained—days perhaps, or months—then there would positively be a way of knowing. Because a long time is more easily felt, I thought. Which is to say that I would know if a long time had passed between the two events: between me lying here under the trees as though in the woods, and the rain which has now passed, I thought. But what does all this have to do with blindness? With having gone to sleep one way and woken up another? Which is to say not blind and then blind, with no event in between except for sleep.

But then again, I thought, I didn't wake up blind, I only thought I was blind in my sleep. And then it occurred to me that waking up inside a dream is the same thing as waking up in a place of nowhere, and that I only thought I was blind because in that space, in a place of nowhere, there is nothing to be seen.

Just then I propped myself up on one elbow, and saw a puddle a few feet away. It had certainly rained. The fact that it had rained, and that I had suspected as much, gave me courage. I should get up, I thought, and then I thought the light from the sun is amber, even though when I was lying down it was more see-through gold, but now, propped up on my elbow, I thought to myself, I can see that it is amber, thick and dense as honeyed milk.

But I couldn't get up, despite the light and all its tricks of color, because the realization that I could go to sleep not blind and wake up blind stirred in me a severe distrust. Because when something happens once, I thought to myself, there is no telling that it will not happen again. Because that something has carved a pathway for itself in the world, regardless of consequence or prior event. As in, an event can happen without any prerequisites, which is to say that one can go to sleep not blind and wake up blind. Which is to say there is such a thing as an event without predecessors, a phantom event, an event out of nowhere, I thought, and sealed my lips.

I wanted to pick myself up off the ground completely, but then I began to think again. I thought, it cannot be: there is no such thing as a phantom event. There is always a sequence. One just has to come to be aware. All events happen in relation to other events. And if they don't happen in relation to other events, as in, if in the first instance of germinating an event doesn't happen apropos other events, it doesn't even matter. Because eventually every event will take its position in relation to other events. So that there is no such thing as an event out of nowhere. Surely, I thought, my going blind has to do with something that came before it. Only something very subtle, negligible, minuscule, hardly present. But in fact not at all negligible, only seemingly negligible at first. It isn't until you look back, I thought, picking myself up, that you see how each thing layers itself over the thing that came before it. In a few days even the event of my blindness will establish its relationship to the things that came before it. Not my permanent blindness, I corrected as I strained to get up, but my momentary blindness. Because it was only blindness in the midst of sleep, so at first I experienced the event of my blindness and later realized that what I had taken for blindness was in reality the nothingness I witnessed.

In every situation, I thought, standing up now to feel my legs, there is a way to take advantage. A way to control how one situation lines up against another situation, how one event layers itself upon another. One event stands in relation to another in the same way that it is also in relation to a third event. And a fourth and fifth as well. So that your whole life is a string of events taking form in a backward manner.

So what a lie it is, the present, because it doesn't even exist. There is only the moving forward of events and the moving backward of one's understanding over those events. To say there is a present, I thought, is to say there is a platform where events accumulate and then stop happening so one can evaluate their effect. It is what people do, I thought, feed themselves lies. Everything is a lie in the first instance. Then the lie is purified, smoothed out, turned into a truth, because the present is always cycling into the past, or transforming into a future moment. The notion of the present is a purified lie, because in the time it takes to say the word present the moment has already passed and you are just a fool running out of breath trying to pin down the moment to evaluate. What misery, I thought to myself, rocking back and forth on my legs. A whole system of lies, a whole system of belief.

Even the trees are duplicitous, I thought, with their bark and their under-wood, and began to walk away from them. And if I think about it, I thought, both my blindness, and my walking away from the trees with no memory of having walked toward them, are marked by phantom events, events out of nowhere in between: my walk toward the trees, my walk away from the trees, the event in between. Just as I had two elongated moments of not being blind on either side of my being blind, which was in between. Then I thought, the hell with it. It is pure misery, the tracking of things. Because some things are willfully intractable, I thought, some things go against the grain. One moment, and then the next, I thought, with no event in between.

I left the trees behind. Now I could see the kitchen window across the garden just a few yards away. It had grown opaque under the glimmering light of the sun and I could see myself on its glossy surface: I was just standing there, fresh out from under the trees. How odd, I thought, the window darkened from the intensity of the light, rather than brightened, and I took a step closer. I stumbled on something. I caught my reflection in the window as I collapsed to my feet. There was a weighty stick on the ground, and I thought, who would have planted this here, a stout stick? Or, thicker than a stout stick, because certainly it was less a stout stick than a club. I picked it up and walked closer to the window. I wanted to know if I could see through it, to the other side, to the kitchen sink.

I pressed my face against the window. But it was only a vague outline that I could see: the kitchen sink immaterial, a sketch just beyond the glass and the light. I dropped the club and placed both hands like blinders against my face, and with both my hands blocking out the light I could see clearly through the window: the papers stacked on the counter across from the kitchen sink. For a moment, the papers did a wild dance, because the light was heavier one second than the next, and I thought, everything is this way, there is no escaping it, even the papers, one minute illuminated, twirling in the light, the next having died a sudden death.

When I pushed away from the glass I could see my reflection in the window. I was holding the club. I thought, it isn't me holding the club, it is only my reflection in the window. Just as I was only blind in the space of my sleep, I am only holding the club in the space of the window. Clearly, I thought, the window is more alive than anything else, because one moment it is a flat surface full of reflections and the next it is as transparent as a translucent sheet of skin. As opposed to the skylight, I thought, the window. A flock of birds flew overhead and I thought, more alive than the flock of birds and the skylight, the window, and swung the club overhead, because I wanted to see if I could catch my reflection swinging the club toward the window. But the clouds were still there, sucking all the light out of the window, so I didn't see myself, and I thought, really the skylight is dead compared to the window. Because the window is always capturing the light and stirring it about in different directions, versus the skylight which is just there, unchanging and inextricable. Nothing should be inextricable, I thought, and grabbed the ladder, which was on the side of the house, to get up onto the roof. "Why not?" I asked. A moment later I found myself standing on the roof, staring down at the skylight with the club in my hand.

Surely the skylight is dead, I thought, because it is the same as it was before; nothing removed, nothing more accumulated. I raised the club over the skylight just as I had raised it over my head near the window. I thought, everything is a lie; things evaporate, they should be made to show how easily they can evaporate. It is a lie when everything that is always about to evaporate gives the impression that it is doing the opposite, not evaporating at all. And the skylight is the epitome of all lies, I thought, because it goes on and on as though nothing were deteriorating, nothing were evaporating, as though things could be permanent. One minute you're blind, the next minute you're not. The duplicity of things is unbearable, I thought, and with the club gently tapped the skylight. Goat-skin, a sheer, light skin, I thought, and tapped the club a second time against the glass. Then I raised the club over my shoulder. I wanted to gather force in my swing, to come down onto the skylight. Everything accumulates strength just before it goes down, I thought, and tightened my grip on the club. Then I thought, what madness is this, because suddenly I remembered the old lady in the dark. And I thought, what was she doing there all alone in the dark? Surely she was up to something. I tightened my grip on the club. I am not going to let the skylight get away, I thought. Only the next moment someone was standing in the middle of the driveway, waving an arm up at me, saying, in the form of a question, "Hello, sir?" and not once, but over and over again so that I had to respond.

I thought, the hell with this, the hell with trying to get anything done around here, and yelled down to the person whose hand was still mid-motion through a wave. I climbed back down, dropped the club at the foot of the ladder. How very impatient, I thought to myself, because when I walked into the house, the person who was standing in the middle of the driveway was already ringing the doorbell. I imagined a woman on the other side of the door saying "Yoohhoo, Yoohhoo, somebody let me in please," and I had a sudden urge to go back out and grab the club, but she kept ringing the doorbell and I walked quickly through the kitchen instead, into the living room, right up against the front door, and I thought, very quickly and one after the other: the plants, the mailman, the old lady in the dark, Fra Keeler, and opened the door to let her in.

A broad-shouldered woman was standing there staring at me. Her face was stern and kind at the same time, I couldn't quite make it out, and she had a name-tag pinned to her blouse right below her left shoulder. I said "Hello." She said "Hello" right back at me, and asked if she could come in. "Yes," I said, "come in." Then I peered over her shoulder to see if the mailman was standing behind her. I thought, this woman and the mailman, they must be connected, and the pair of them to the old lady as well. But all I could see were the plants, sitting there, bored as light bulbs, sticking out of the ground, and I thought, they could use some water, the plants, only I must have said this out loud because the next moment the woman was saying, in the form of a question, "Excuse me, sir?" and I responded by saying, "There is no one there," like I was shrugging something off my shoulder. The woman quickly took her place in the middle of the living room, and I thought, who the hell is she? What is she doing here? But before the questions had occasion to close in my mind, she said, "The phone, sir." And I said, "Yes, the phone, what about it?" And she said, "The phone, sir, I am here because you asked for me over the phone." "For you," I asked, "in particular?" "No," she said, "not in particular." And I said "Oh" and looked over at the phone. It was sitting on top of the table, and I thought, the phone, and I remembered the dream and the ringing, high as a horse's, her cheekbones, and I thought why is the phone intact? Because certainly I remember having shattered it.

"Would you like to further discuss the issue?" she asked. Discuss what? I wondered, because I couldn't remember having talked to her in the first place. "Sir, we could discuss your research," she said. "Discuss my research?" I asked. She is out of her mind about my research, I thought. And then I asked, "What research?" To which she replied, "You requested our services, sir." And I thought, how is the phone intact when surely I had shattered it. "Discuss my research," I said. "That would be good," I said, because I wasn't getting anywhere without lying to her. "Where would you like to start?" she asked. "Anywhere," I said. One moment you are on your roof, I thought—but then I turned over to address her because her eyes seemed to have widened, "Anywhere you would like to start," I repeated, "Very well then," she said, relaxing her eyes—and the next, I thought, you are standing in your living room with a broad-shouldered woman asking you questions about your research.

She pulled out her clipboard. Things are getting serious, I thought. Then she repeated herself: "Very well then," she said, "I am going to ask you a string of questions." "A string of questions," I said. "Are you mocking me, sir?" she asked, and her eyes tightened into two little screws. Clearly, I thought, I had shattered the phone against the wall earlier. "How long have you been doing your research?" she asked, and her voice tightened to match the screws. "Research?" I asked, because I wanted to buy time to think about something else. A panoramic view, I thought. "Sir," she said. Because once one event takes shape the rest line up alongside it. "Sir," she repeated. "Yes," I said, "sir." Then I thought, have your thoughts quickly, speak your thoughts quickly or get out of here, but I didn't say this out loud because some thoughts are better kept private. "I am not a sir," she said. "Clearly," I said, looking at her, and I wanted to tell her more. You are a strange specimen, I wanted to say, but she had already walked out the door.

I shut the door behind her and went over to the receiver. Hadn't it shattered? I thought. Hadn't I thrown it against the wall? The receiver. But there it was: whole, entire, not a part of anything else, but something in and of itself, and I thought, it is an act of rebellion, the receiver is acting out against its own death. And death, I thought, is more present than life. Because it is always near, right up against the edge of one's skin. Where one person's skin ends, I thought, that is where their death begins. And it is the same with tables, and telephones, I thought, picking up the receiver, because despite being objects they all have a finite existence. At any moment a table could break, at any point the telephone could shatter. Only it could not shatter then recompose itself, not of its own will, I thought. In this way objects are different from people, I thought. Because people could recompose themselves, if they wanted, although to what degree remains unclear. I put the receiver back down, and thought, objects decompose in stages, they inch slowly toward their own death. Only much slower than humans do, because most often objects outlive the people who own them, even though death, in every case—in the case of objects and in the case of people—is always very near. I leaned over to unplug the telephone line, and sitting on the floor stared at the stub of the cord for a moment. Because the world, I thought—blowing into the outlet to clear out any particles that might have been caught in it—by virtue of existing beyond us, is the space of our death. Only, not our exact death, but our potential death, I thought, and plugged the phone line back in. Because our exact death annuls our potential death, I thought, and got off the floor to check the telephone again. Our potential death becomes irrelevant once we've enacted our exact death, I thought. Nothing exists beyond itself. So that everything beyond our skin points to our eventual disappearance. As in, at every moment we are both here and not here, I thought, we are at the same time both present in the world and not present in the world, because the space that we occupy is limited. And it is not only limited, I thought, picking up the receiver a second time, because everything beyond the space that we occupy represents our death. So that we are doubly limited, I thought, listening to the dial tone. The space that we occupy is limited, and everything beyond the space that we occupy reinforces the fact that we are limited by virtue of containing our potential death. So that in every moment, at the same time that we exist, we also do not exist, because our potential death, and within it our exact death, is right up against us. We are continually disappearing, I thought. Evaporating, becoming more and more a part of our exact death, and less a part of ourselves. I put the receiver down.

Then a large thought came to me, in a flash, and I surrendered to it the way the sky surrenders to lightning. I thought, life is not a movement toward death, as though death were a single, containable event waiting at the end of life to close down on everything, as though everything that came before one's death were a linear progression toward it. No, I thought, impossible, abominable stupidity, for death to be there, at the end, waiting in silence. Everything before it sound, everything after it silence. Ha! I thought. And how to explain the noise long after Fra Keeler's death? Because what we are doing, I thought, as I surrendered to the thought the way the sky surrenders to lightning, is a side-by-side living out of life right alongside our death. At every moment there is the moment of our living, and the moment of our potential death, I thought, right alongside the moment of our living, the moment of our potential death. Until the moment of our living is unable, in a particular situation, to evade the moment of our potential death, and our exact death takes over, like a hollow wave rising, curving, gathering force, I thought, the wave of our exact death. Our bodies, I thought. And next to our bodies, the lack of our bodies, I thought, because one is no longer able to put one's body in motion. Just like that, one moment and then the next. And it is the same for objects, I thought, coming back down from the large thought, because who can sustain lightning for very long? I moved away from the living room, from the front door, because when I came to I realized I was still standing there, senselessly under the skylight, frozen up after having checked and rechecked the receiver, the lady having gone, appeared and disappeared seemingly out of nowhere.

Only then there was a knocking on the door, just as I had prepared to move away from it. And I heard her voice again, "Hello, I know you are in there," she said and I opened the door just as she was making a fist with her hand to knock again.

"Hello," I said. And I wanted to add, It's you again, but I kept the words to myself.

"I left my clipboard here," she said.

"Yes," I said, "you did," looking at her clipboard on the table next to the receiver. Isn't that a sign? I wondered, her clipboard next to the receiver, and offered to let her in. She headed straight for the receiver and grabbed her clipboard like a creature in distress.

"I will be on my way, then," she said, but just then one of her business cards fell away from her clipboard. She reached down to pick it up, and I thought, I should have that, it should be mine just in case.

"Clearly there is a connection here," I said.

"A connection?" she asked, and I realized immediately that I had given myself away. The mailman, her, I thought, the old lady down the street, the receiver, but it was difficult to review things in her presence. She is a nuisance, I thought to myself, only not altogether, just in that particular moment when I needed to review her connection to the rest of the events.

"May I hold on to your business card?" I asked, ignoring her question. "In case I should have to make a phone call to you in the future," I added, "but for now you can be on your way." I faced the palm of my hand toward the door so as to motion her out of it. She walked out the door. Only, at the moment when she was two thirds of the way turned away from me, I could see the edge of her face had contorted.

So much noise, I thought, Fra Keeler, even after the time and space of his death. And I thought, it's senseless to stand here under the skylight contemplating her departure, her fanfare and contorted face. Who is she, in any event, to have left her clipboard beside the receiver that had shattered then recomposed itself? I felt as though my brain were being drawn up by a series of strings. Some things, I thought, are to think about later. The receiver, the clipboard. Everything comes in pairs. And here I am, I thought, standing under the skylight by the door when clearly I have thought it senseless to stand under the skylight by the door, contemplating her departure. Only not senseless altogether because every piece should be put in its proper place: the clipboard, the receiver. But there is a time and a place for everything, and then I thought, I must extract myself! So that I did, from under the skylight, and thought: I will come back to this, one pair and then the other, I will retrace. But so much noise after a death, so much sound to a death, and it was calling me, the noise of it all, drawing me out from under the skylight and into the kitchen, beyond the kitchen into the garden, beyond the garden through the trees, and there I was again: the yurt brave and stout as a horse in front of me. And the skylight was so far, the woman with the contorted face farther, and I could see them revolving around each other, sheets of paper in the wind. I thought, I should go in, I must—there is information to be gathered. Pal-ma, I heard myself say, Pal-ma de Mallorca, and then the Netherlands, those under-lands, low lands, lower lands, and the handwriting: a low squiggly line, a hill with a dark horse or two traversing them. Another pair, I thought, another square in its place: Palma de Mallorca, the Netherlands. And the yurt flashed like a cloud, a misty white cloud, it billowed and went through me.

I was standing inside, enveloped by the yurt. There was a strange light inside, the kind of light, I thought, that would come through the skylight if it were polished. A drained yellow bordering on soft white. I looked up. I looked around. There was nothing. I was entirely enclosed by the yurt. The light, I wondered, where could it be coming from? Infiltrating the walls as though they were not walls, but thin sheets of tracing paper exposed to a faint, comforting light. And I could see him: he was there, just beyond me, his two glassy eyes blue as ice: "Fra Keeler," I said, "Fra Keeler," he called back. And he was an old, frail man, all shriveled up, moving his wrist through the air. "Wars," he said, and I thought to myself perhaps he is explaining the strange light in the yurt, or comparing the light in the yurt to the light of wars, because just as the yurt is drenched in a particular light so are wars, with all the explosions and the fires that are endemic to them. I reached my arm out, Fra Keeler, soft as a dove toward him. I thought, either I will touch him or I will go through him, one or the other, and just as I reached toward him I was confronted with sheer emptiness. Just as quickly as he appeared, he disappeared. The world of the yurt closed down harshly on him.

The yurt faded. Just as it appeared it faded. I must take a walk, I thought. Then I spied the yurt again beyond the trees. There it is again, I thought, impossible to go to it, impossible to leave. But alas, this lasted a mere second, because then I opened my eyes, and I was back in the house again, in the bedroom, with no recollection of having arrived there. The curtains were drawn, and the faintest light was filtering through them. This is dawn, I thought, because the birds were chirping and the light was a delicious faint wave of yellow trickling through the curtains, a silken soft white light falling onto me. I could see the birds beyond the curtains, their shadows flickering, I could hear them chirping. This is morning! I thought. This is a new day! But what, what was I doing in the bedroom? How did I get here, I thought, from the yurt, through the kitchen, up to the bedroom—when had I gone to bed? I sat there, upright and still for a moment. I turned away from the window and the birds. I spied an image of myself in the mirror as I turned away: sitting on the edge of the bed, the white morning light washing over me, the curtains, the sheets, the birds chirping in the trees. I looked at myself in the mirror. I thought, that is me, or that is not me, but a reflection of me according to the mirror.

Suddenly I remembered standing by the window, swinging the club. A handsome figure, I thought, a handsome image, me standing by the window swinging the club. I got up and walked to the mirror and posed as though I were holding the club, the same way I had been holding it, practicing my swing in the mirror, then tapping the club to the skylight. Again, I thought, staring at myself in the mirror: the skylight is inextricable. One of those objects, passed down, owner to owner, I thought. So that Fra Keeler stood beneath it, just as I stand beneath it every time I open the door. The same inextricable object: the skylight above my head just as it was above Fra Keeler's head when he would go to the door. I bounced the club around from hand to hand a few times, I practiced my swing. Certain objects are interminable, I thought. Because just as you can take the legs off a table, I thought, as I found my grip, you can put them back on again. Or chop the table up, use the wood to make a new table, altogether new and exact in an entirely different way. Certainly a person cannot be made from a chopped up person, I thought, and released the imaginary club. Because even though I wasn't actually holding it, I thought that if I had been holding the club, by then I would have grown tired of its weight.

I walked back over to the bed and sat down again. Ultimately, I thought, it is impossible to tell to what degree the skylight is my skylight, to what degree Fra Keeler's. And just as objects are passed around from person to person, one is handed thoughts from all sides, thoughts one asks for and thoughts one doesn't ask for, and they become inextricable from each other. One could destroy one's own thoughts, just as one could destroy one's own objects. And why shouldn't one choose to destroy oneself, when wars, I suddenly thought, are a massive choosing out of one's death, an entire mass of people choosing out their own death, only without knowing it, without fully being aware? War is a coward's death, I thought, and caressed the edge of the bed. A coward's suicide: war, that is all it is: a mass of people walking like sheep toward their own death. The whole world, I thought, full of decrepit corpses. Because war is everywhere, I thought. The war in our brains, and actual wars: over land, and by sea, and even through the air above the land, I thought, because one way of killing isn't enough, one gets bored of it, so many strategies, I thought, one must have tactics. I wanted to smash the mirror. To take the club to the mirror and smash it. Only not the invisible club, not the pretend formulation of a club I had been holding earlier, but the actual club. Shatter the mirror, I thought, because there is no other way to stop it from capturing so many images, doubling things where they don't need to be doubled—objects, I thought, myself.

The whole world, I thought, standing up from the edge of the bed in a sudden gesture, devoid of persons. The whole earth! I went over the earth with my mind's eye as though I were a camera floating through the air. I saw landmass after landmass completely devoid of persons. On a mountain, a table. By the ocean, a chair. Just like that. Nothing else. I waved my hand through the air so as to say: Aha! I have made a circular motion with my hand, the same motion with my hand as I have made with my thoughts about death. Everything is mirrored. Thoughts coordinated with the motions of one's body, and vice versa: the motions of one's body coordinated with the thoughts in one's head. So that one is always synchronized.

I walked to the curtains and split them open with my finger. I couldn't just stand there any longer between the mirror and the bed. One is compelled to do something. To take advantage of the things that don't make sense: the yurt, I thought, Fra Keeler, waking up in the bedroom as though all of a sudden. And to attempt to make sense in regards to all of this is senseless. Rather one must attempt to make senselessness. "Because senselessness," I whispered to myself, "is sense at its peak, sense when it can no longer bare itself." A flock of birds emerged from the top branches of the trees. They flooded the sky; the horizon disappeared behind their black bodies. It is a life I am retracing, I thought, as I watched the birds form a disc with their miniature bodies and fly back and forth between the trees. Then I remembered his wrist, his hand moving toward me soft as a dove in the yurt, disappearing. Fra Keeler, I thought, "Fra Keeler," I whispered, moving my wrist in circular patterns through the air.
4. Gathering of knowledge, I thought, is the only thing that makes the inevitability of one's death worthwhile. So that I should get to the bottom of this. Fra Keeler, I thought, the yurt. I was standing in the kitchen now. I should trace every event back to its source, because everything has a source, even if the source is hidden, rather than exposed to broad air. Because at the same time that it has a source, every event has a destination. Every event lands in a place. Through time and space it lands and makes a home for itself. So that every event is constantly in motion. Until each event gathers enough consequence and with consequence a destination as well. Like a giant hot air balloon the event lands, heavy with destination, heavy with consequence, and makes a home for itself. Comes home to roost, I thought, and chuckled to myself. A half-hearted chuckle, because it is only a slight pause, a temporary landing, the event making a ramshackle of a home for itself. There is no ceasing of things. No. No once-and-for-all of anything. Just event after event: one event landing, another setting off.

So that one needs to gather knowledge. To trace every event back to its source, go through the source as one would go through a minefield, make a map of it. To say, "Aha, here is what this event will lead to once it has come home to roost!" Because folded within the entrails of each event is its own consequence, a source for a future event. An exact future event amid a thousand potential events, I thought, and laughed out loud to myself. Because at every point in time there are a thousand imminent events, just as there are a thousand potential deaths, waiting to roost as I have been roosting here—I looked around the kitchen—roosting to my heart's content. The past, I thought, versus the present, versus that which is imminent. Because perhaps the possibility exists: the present a brief moment, a pause, one event coming home to roost before setting another into motion.

I shuffled through the recent events as one would shuffle through a deck of cards; at first slowly, then a little faster, until all the events flew past me, from one side of my mind to the other. So many events have gathered force, I thought, as I shuffled through them: the clipboard next to the receiver, the trees next to the yurt, the mailman handing me the package, the old lady down the street, the representative from Ancestry.com standing beneath the skylight, pointing at the phone. But I cannot think of the events now. I turned as though quickly away from my thoughts. I felt myself enter a rare pause: standing in the kitchen, broadening my shoulders, evaluating the events from a space of repose. A moment of respite, a rare pause: the space between events. I drew in a breath. Some events roosting while others are imminent, I thought. So that I should go for a walk. A walk in the canyon. If not now then when? A long pause, I thought, in total peacefulness I will take a walk.

I reached for a slice of bread. An honest slice of bread, I thought, before a walk, and after a walk as well. Then it was as though my brain returned like a loyal dog to its thoughts, because all of a sudden I found myself saying, good little ducklings, all in a row, a source here, a consequence there, event after event. I moved my hand through the air as though I were tapping little ducklings on their heads. Because bread—I thought, coming back to my moment of repose—an honest slice of bread and a walk in the canyon must be among the greatest of morning rituals! And if not now, then when? I poured myself a glass of milk and dipped my bread in it. "But what must I think about while I walk through the canyon?" I asked out loud, because I wanted to hear the question take form between myself and the bread, the bread and the walls, the wall and the garden and the trees at the far end. Certainly I could use the walk to my advantage. One must make decisions for oneself, to be active in one's life process. Thinking is pure misery, a job assigned to the miserable and the wretched, to think each thought to its horrible and suffocating end. That is it, I thought, swallowing the moist bread. I stretched. I broadened my shoulders. The canyon awaits, now that I have had my morning bread. I must go to it, right at this moment before I am flooded with events that are now only imminent. The present, I thought, full of peacefulness, full of resolve. I grabbed my jacket and walked out the door and slammed it shut.

The entry to the canyon was at the far end of the street, behind some barren bushes, hardly any leaves on them. There was a soft wire fence around the perimeter of the canyon, and a narrow opening, a narrow slit in the fence. It looked as though someone had clipped the fence and pried it open. I pushed through the opening, walked gingerly down into the canyon. A few rocks kicked up from under my feet. It was a warm day; I hardly needed my jacket. The sun was nearly at its zenith. I felt like a new person. This is fabulous, I thought, this is just great! A walk in the canyon after a slice of bread. Before my walk a slice of bread, and after my walk a slice of bread as well. Because this is how one lives against one's dying, I thought, and smiled kindly to myself. Clearly the sun is at its zenith, I thought, because every minute it was getting warmer. A flock of birds flew overhead. A few more rocks kicked up and I watched them roll down into the canyon. What a strange man, I thought, the realtor, for having warned me against the canyon. I remembered his eyebrows tensing, his unfriendly finger inching the papers across the desk. Poisonous finger, I thought, poisonous snake of a finger. Then I saw a hummingbird fly by, zapping its wings. This is life, I thought, this is peacefulness. I bent down to see if there were any snakes hidden under the bushes. I looked under one bush, but found nothing. Perhaps another bush, I thought, and kept on walking. I was nearly down into the canyon. Why haven't I done this before? A walk in the canyon, the whole sky above me. A puffy, white cloud floated by, followed by a much narrower one. Very snakelike, the second cloud. I gained courage that there might be snakes in the canyon, so I looked under a second bush, but found nothing. Just a few rocks, a spider crawling over them. I turned around to see how far I had walked. I thought to myself, it will be a steep ascent, a good climb back up to the street. But regardless, I thought, this is good, a wonderful idea to take a walk in the canyon after having eaten a slice of bread in the morning. Soon I was whistling, because I was fresh out of thoughts. I skidded a few times on the descent and almost took a fall, and each time it broke my whistle, then I started it up again. Because that is how one postpones death, I thought. Or entertains oneself while neglecting the idea of one's death, a harmless, peaceful whistle. I looked up a few times as I whistled. I scanned the sky from side to side, from one point of the horizon to another. Not the horizon exactly, but the points of the canyon—where the canyon reaches up and then dies out into the sky. The air was clear. Pure, white oxygen, and the sky was a broad, blue infinity above me. Nothing like it. Nothing like breathing in pure oxygen so early in the morning. Then I thought, I might get lost in the canyon. In the guts of the earth, wander until I've lost all sense of direction. It will be a new life. I had stopped whistling now. I was just ambling down the hill, very pleased with the day, very pleased with myself. Because surely, how one feels about the day is inseparable from how one feels about oneself, I thought, and stepped right off the hill and into the canyon.

I was on flat land now, all the way down in the canyon. Not a very deep canyon, or a very wide one, but a canyon nonetheless. But who am I to judge it? I felt as though I were dangling from a thread. The blood was pulsing in my legs; I was slightly out of breath. My mind was as vast and infinite as the sky above, as though the sky had doubled itself inside my head. We are what we see, surely, I thought, that must be the case. Because now that I see the sky, I thought, my mind is another sky alongside it. What a miserable wretch—a miserable wretch I had been, thinking endlessly, one thought after another, because thoughts, I remembered I had been thinking, bleed into each other. For a moment I grew sleepy. No, I thought, and took in a deep breath. Life is this vast, blue expanse above me. It is simple, I thought, life, and the whole time I have been missing out on its simplicity. A pang went through my chest. I looked around at the bushes, some close to the belt of the canyon, others farther back amid the shrubbery. A crow darted from the branch of one tree to the branch of another, then took off, stooped low, glided over a row of bushes, caught air, lifted itself up again. It circled above the canyon: one ring, then another—or is it an eagle I am seeing? I wondered. No, they are two separate birds. The eagle circling high above, majestic, while the crow, its minor counterpart, flies deep inside the canyon, darting from one tree to the next.

This is how one postpones one's death, I thought, by walking. I spotted a cactus a few feet away. The stems were bowing down toward the ground. Not like a light bulb, I thought, this cactus, and I walked one full circle around it. It is a green mass of death, I thought. I stood there for a while, the cactus occupying the whole space of my brain, just as the sky had occupied it a moment earlier. I mused over the shape of the cactus until a chubby, toothless old lady formed in its place. She stared at the horizon. She said, "Take a good look, because this is me now, this is me as I am dying." I felt a second pang go through my chest. I didn't know if it was the cactus talking, or the old lady. Weren't they one and the same, hadn't they emerged from the same entity? Then, I thought, what rot, the things in one's head. Because images just appear, an old lady out of nowhere, where the cactus had been. One minute, and then the next, and what is the use of these things?

Suddenly everything was at a standstill; I felt myself light, lifting. I was near a stream. I turned to look at the cactus, but the light was blinding. I sat down near the stream. The image of the cactus burned in my mind. I had caught sight of a blinding light when I had turned around to see it. I leaned back against a large rock. Emptiness, I thought, and the image burned to ashes in my brain. Not a cactus, nothing. Only the pure, black light after something has burned to the ground, to whatever surface had held it up in the first place. I grew heavy with sleep. I caught a glimpse of the sky, blue and vast above me.

Everything slowed down. There is a last time, I thought, for everything. I began to dream. In my dream, everything faded. A last moment, a last breath. The world closing down around the thing. A mouth closing around an object. The sky closing in on a body. Everything folds into darkness. People die, objects cease to exist, trees vanish. I felt my heart skip up to my throat in the space of my dream. I am choking, I thought. From my own heart, I am choking in my dream. My heart unleashing itself from its arteries, its plump, pink muscle rising through my chest, clogging my esophagus the way garbage clogs streams. I swallowed. I spun around in my dream with my arms extended like wings. I opened my mouth to the sky, I leaned my head back. Leap out! I said to my heart in the space of my dream. I am already dead, I thought, I am no longer dying. I made a few shapes with my mouth. Clouds rolled by. I grew cold in the shadow of my dream. I was lying down now, as though I had never been spinning. The ground was cold against my skin. I am in a steel coffin, I dreamed, the whole world is a coffin. I lay there, still as a block of ice. I could feel the dirt settling on my skin. I looked up. The sky was grim in sections, vibrant in others. Even in my coffin, I thought, even here I am haunted by her, because I could see her face spinning, her cheekbones—high as a horse's—the acrid smell of her skin burning. And it started again, "You did this to me," she said, and I said, "No, no I didn't," talking back to her in the space of my dream. Then I thought, what use is it? Now the sky was the color of a fire I had never seen. I am only a voice, I thought, a thread of words strung together the way particles line up to make a ray of light through the leaves of a tree. A thin voice stacking words together. "No, no I didn't," I said, gently now in the space of my dream. "Look," she answered, pointing at her face in total defeat. And I thought, Yes: "Yes," I said, because it was simple to see. Her eyes shifted from side to side as though they had come loose. I wondered, is there a person in there? Because it occurred to me that I could be speaking to a person who was dead. A non-person pointing at her face. "You did this to me," she said, "look what you did." Finally, I said, "Yes, it was me." A string of tears rolled down her face, and I thought, water, it is only molecules lining up a certain way, only atoms, I thought, a ray of light here, a sentence there, all pointing at the same thing. Blame. We are here to blame each other, to point at one another with blame.

I came out of my dream. The sky was blue, though a little less light, a little less warmth to the vastness above me. My back was numb from leaning against the rock. There is nothing like the sound of water sliding over rocks. The light in the sky gave a shudder, clouds rolled in. It is cold, I thought, in a minute it will be raining. I grabbed my jacket. I put it on. I tucked my hands into my pockets, my elbows into my sides. I opened my mouth to take a deep breath, but my breath broke into pieces, it shuddered down my throat. I felt a slight sting at the base of my lungs. I thought, now I am walking. This is life, I thought, walking in a canyon, or on the street, under the sky, just walking under the open sky. In the shadow of the clouds I could see the colors of the canyon more clearly. The leaves in the brush were taut; there was no soft foliage. Just the tough, deep green of low leaves, bushes. I saw a rabbit dart across the path. It stopped halfway, frozen in place, mid-path. I could see the nervous ring of white around its eye. Terror, I thought, is a combined state. Because the rabbit was still as a rock, and yet I could see its body shivering, every half-second casting side-glances at me. All the confusion of motion, smoothed over with the stillness of death, I thought. Move! I wanted to say to the rabbit, because I couldn't stand for it to be there staring at me. Leap! I wanted to say, and suddenly the dream closed in on me. The sky dropped down against my chest, and I thought, no, not while I am walking, not her face again, because walking in a canyon under an open sky is supposed to be life-affirming. The rabbit darted all the way across the path, to the other side of the canyon. I watched it hop under some bushes. I felt myself fold over, drift away. I could feel the blood boiling in my legs somewhere far beneath me.

Suddenly it occurred to me: wasn't it her, the old lady down the street? My mother's high cheekbones suddenly aligned themselves with the old lady's hand. The two began to revolve around each other, two parts of a single element: the old lady down the street, she from my dream. Surely they are somehow connected. I leaned against a tree. I remembered the old lady's hand shaking as she reached for the package through the darkened doorway. "Thank you," she had said meekly to the mailman, when she had placed the package between her legs, pretending her lights were out, because how could her lights have been out when all the other neighbors' lights were still on in their driveways? Then it came to me: it was the same size, the package, the same size as the package I had received from the mailman. My heart did an about-turn in my chest, like a small fish, my heart turned, head to tail in my chest. I could see clearly. I thought, how could I have not seen clearly before? The events, one after another, a whole constellation of events connecting. Her freckled hand shivering, her meek voice, it was hers—it came to me—the handwriting: a low squiggly line resembling rolling hills with a dark horse or two traversing them. I saw her hand move across the page, across the packages, it was her, I thought, the whole time, all this time, I thought, and wasn't it strange? The sky released a loud thunder, it started to rain. I dashed deeper into the side of the canyon, under a cluster of trees. A few drops rolled off the leaves. I was sweating. How? I thought again, and my breath bubbled upward, the wrong way around, breathing out when I should have been breathing in. I pulled my jacket over my head; I caught my breath. Clearly, I thought, there is a connection, and started running.

The canyon was beginning to give off a suffocating smell in the rain. The loose earth on the surface was turning to dust. I started to run faster. It was hard to see. I spotted the cactus some hundred yards away; it cut through my brain as though it were a blade. Wouldn't it be funny, I thought, if I started to bleed from an image here in the middle of the canyon and the rain? I thought, perhaps if I saw the rabbit again I would laugh. If it crossed my path, dumb as a sausage. But the rabbit was nowhere to be seen. I stood for a moment, panting. The canyon was a reddish-brown haze in the rain. I thought to myself, I am lost, there is no emerging alive from this place. I was sure I was dying, the image of the old lady flashing in front of me, confusing itself with the image of my mother from my dream. And I wanted to laugh at myself, to slap my legs in the middle of the canyon, to roar with laughter. To be loose, I thought, to loosen my brain. I imagined a thousand threads spinning out of my brain. Tentacles, fingers drawn out, pointing to a thousand different things. And what would be a more proper response, I thought, than to let myself become unhinged? Because this is sheer madness, all along it's been madness, events hiding when they should have been seen.

The rain lightened up a bit. Now that I am soaked! I thought. I stood there, acutely aware of having been soaked in the rain. How else, I thought—my clothes burdensome now, heavy against my skin—but with sheer madness could one explain? The old lady, thoroughly interconnected, yet making herself impossible to be seen. All along, I thought, if I had matched the madness of the events. All along I would have seen them the way they needed to be seen. Because just as one cannot discover a treasure without a map, one cannot use reason to find events that are maddening. I should have matched the madness, I thought, I should have maddened myself to match the madness—events hiding where they should have been seen. Proof of their unfriendliness, I thought, and began panting again in the rain. One needs madness in the mind, I thought, and chuckled to myself—a slight twitch, I thought, on my lips—in order to detect madness in the world where it needs to be seen. The thrill of madness, I thought, and began to walk again in the rain. I raised one hand to slap against my knee, but stopped myself, because the sun gave a light shudder behind the clouds, and the rain ceased, and I heard a bird or two chirping. Just like that, I thought. One minute it is raining—devilish sky!—the next the birds are chirping. "Imbecile birds," I said out loud to nothing, because I could hardly walk with my trousers sticking to me.

Then I thought, no. Another thought inched itself into my brain. A spear of reason. I thought, one has a choice, in life one can choose between a mind of reason and a mind of madness, and which of the two will allow me to make the quickest sense of the unfriendly events? Madness versus reason, I stopped to weigh in my head. Suddenly I realized I had walked too far, that I would have to turn back and walk in the opposite direction. "Madness," I muttered, "versus reason," and turned around so that the ascent was ahead of me again. I felt time wasting away. I should walk a calculated walk so as not to pass the ascent again. I would not want to miss my mark just as the events line themselves up for my taking. At once, I thought, I must do something! And with a mind of reason, I thought, because as I turned to face the right direction the decision congealed inside of me. A mind of reason, and I repeated this calmly to myself to confirm the decision. I walked quietly, calmly, looking up for the ascent every few strides. Not to miss it again, I thought, because the old lady is there, down the street, due her proper portion of the blame. Yes, I thought, it was her the whole time, maneuvering the mailman, this way, that way, old maverick, I thought, old trickster. I could hear the stream. I looked over my shoulder. "Aha!" I said, because at once I saw the ascent. I stepped off the belt of the canyon, onto the incline, amid the bushes. I took one last look at the canyon, one last look, with a mind of reason. I scanned the bushes, the trees, the rocks near the stream. I looked overhead for birds. I saw a flock align itself slowly into a V, and thought, in every instance there is a leader, a decision maker, the precision of a mind sifting through time and all the events time has to offer. How helpful the slice of bread had been, the walk in the canyon! An honest slice of bread in the morning to keep the mind tethered, securely fastened to all its potential and logic. The birds disappeared into the eastern sky, beyond the canyon. Yes, I nodded, a very good decision, a slice of bread followed by a walk, and I began my ascent. Only I turned, turned and faced the canyon again. "One last look," I said, one last look, I thought. My clothes were damp against my skin. I was all calm, all logic. All laughter had evacuated itself. My chest was flat and level, nothing roaring inside it, and I thought this is life, this is peace of mind, when one is able to line up the events and point one's finger at them, draw a line—from here to there—and I drew my finger across my mind, a constellation, I thought, every event in relation to another, my finger going over the events as though over the shell of a snail on gravely terrain. I stood there staring at the canyon, balancing my form on the ascent, facing the canyon without taking anything in. Everything lines itself up, I thought, full of resolve and confidence.

I tugged at my shirt. It peeled away from my chest, tightened at my armpits. I was beginning to grow cold. A clear sentence dashed through my mind like a strike of lightning. I wanted to read the sentence out loud. It was as though the sentence did not belong to me. I grew feverish. Greatness, I thought, comes at the strangest of moments. Because I was anxious to get up to the road, change my clothes, and further pursue my findings on the old lady. I grew impatient trying to recover the sentence that had dashed through my brain like lightning. I thought, if I don't recite it out loud it will burn a hole through my skull, and where would that leave me? A sparrow landed under the bushes, pecked the dirt for berries. I felt the ground give way underneath me. The canyon tipped to one side as though it were a giant ship sinking and then righted itself again. "Recite," I whispered to myself, calmly. So that I caught the tail end of the sentence, just as it finished its second dash through my brain. Greatest failure, I read, and I thought, if the sentence has anything to do with failure it should be known to me. The sun was strong now, after the rain. I could feel the back of my neck burning. What's this? I thought to myself, because my mind followed the sentence to its earlier scene, and I saw the whole phrase in my brain.

Impossible, I thought to myself, how could it be? Because I read the sentence, recited it out loud, word for word and in total disbelief: the moment of our greatest impulses—I read, parsing out the words—is the moment of our greatest failure. I slapped the back of my neck so as to awaken myself from a dream. The sentence, I thought, is pure madness. I looked around the canyon to see if anything had changed. But everything was crystal clear, accentuated even; I focused on the tip of the sparrow's wing. It twitched, then the bird fluttered into flight, so that my eye followed it from tree to tree, then farther up to the edge of the canyon, its limit. Above the canyon, the clouds were disappearing into the western sky just as the flock of birds had disappeared into the east. Beautiful, I thought, the canyon, to see it in such a precise way. I took a few deep breaths to calm myself. "This is beauty," I said, "this is persistence." I felt a weight drop down into the base of my chest. A mysterious thing, I thought, the sentence. The weight settled in my chest. The feeling congealed itself. Sadness? I asked. I investigated, but came up empty. I wanted to probe the feeling with my finger, to see what it would yield. Only more sadness, I thought, one layer of sadness giving way to another. I grew heavy; I slouched like a pear. I felt too weary to keep standing. Our failure, I thought, and lowered myself to the ground. Just on the other side of our success, our failure. That is what the sentence is saying. And not altogether wrongly, I thought. I picked up a few rocks, rolled them around in the palm of my hand as I sat there. At any moment now, I thought, I could burst out crying. Because our greatest impulses are the under-face of our worst, and vice versa too, our worst failures married to our greatest impulses.

I wanted to burst out crying, except I couldn't. Not capable of shedding a tear, I thought. Miserable wretch, I said to myself, pitifully, so as to make myself cry, but my mind was racing away with thoughts, and the sadness was small as a rock at the base of the canyon compared to the vast sky above. Tears, I thought, not worth a thing. I was shivering. To hell with it, I thought, and stood up and took a step farther up the incline. It must be five o'clock, I thought, because the air was growing raw and cold, and the sky was dimming, slightly more gray than blue as the day surrendered to the evening. It is only a matter of neglecting my resources, I thought—the yurt, the trees—I could go back to them. No failure could ever be permanent. I felt the weight begin to lift from my chest. I felt I could begin to walk. Strange, the impact of a sentence. My mind had reeled itself in. I was thinking with a mind of reason now. I felt odd to have stood there for such a long time reflecting on a random sentence. One for that matter that was pointing at me with blame. After all, the canyon had helped me to gain perspective. I had seen a bird, a stream, a sparrow, slept leaning against a rock listening to the sound of trickling water. What more could a person want? Nothing. I hugged my elbows to my sides; I began walking.

Back in the house I changed my clothes. Dusk had fallen. How, I wondered, had I gone for a walk in the canyon? I took a drink of water. It is not for nothing—I thought, leaning against the kitchen counter—that one has one's thoughts. All day in the canyon the events had lined themselves up. Now everything felt magnetic in the kitchen. I swirled the water around in the glass. The sediment rose, did a wild dance through the water, then settled again. Suddenly an image of the skylight flashed before my eyes, sliced through my skull like a razor. I stirred the water again. The sediment rose. A faint, evening light filtered through the window. The water appeared as a white cloud, a fine mist amid the kitchen's darkness. The light was trapped between the water particles.

A thread of hope produced a warm sensation in my chest. A ray of light, I thought, responding to the hope with childish excitement. I thought, what if I were to hold a flashlight up against the skylight? To climb up onto the roof? I could leave the flashlight there, with the bulb against the glass, climb back down, walk through the kitchen, into the living room—my heart was racing now—and stand beneath the skylight and watch the light from the bulb filter through. Surely the light would break through the sediment-encrusted skylight, just as the sediment in the water appeared to expand, plump and golden under the light. I grinned with happiness. It is not for nothing, I thought again, that one has one's thoughts, not for nothing, all day in the canyon the events lining themselves up. This is peace and happiness, I thought, the humdrum of the everyday. Sorting through one's life, one's immediate past, sifting through one's life minute by minute. I leafed through my day at the canyon as though through a book, event after event, and felt very satisfied. Everybody—I nodded my head to reaffirm the thought—is in the midst of an investigation. A certain project. And if not a project, then to say the least in the midst of probing their lives. Melding them, molding them, one way or another bending their lives, stacking their days, straightening their hours, one minute and then the next, lining their seconds up, pointing them in a very specific direction. Only no one will admit it, I thought. So that suddenly I felt proud and honorable for admitting my own agenda. My own agenda, I thought, and his name floated through the room as the feathers of a bird would float through the air, very softly, very gently, tapping the ground. What pleasure, I thought, and his name rolled off my tongue, "Fra Keeler," I said, "Fra Keeler," I sang and ran over and stood under the skylight. I lifted my voice to the glass, I sang, I screamed, I thought, I will crack the glass with my pleasure—but suddenly the lights went out. I paused for a moment under the skylight. I was utterly disoriented, totally and utterly confused. Had I touched the light switch, flipped it by accident as I walked into the living room? Had I brushed up against the light switch as I ran under the skylight? But no, it couldn't be, I thought, because at all times I have been far away, equidistant from the walls. I stood there in grand amazement, his name drying on my tongue. Again the scene with the mailman flashed before my eyes. "The mailman," I screamed in the darkness beneath the skylight, he is in on it! "Indeed," she had said. "Trouble with the lights?" the mailman had asked. The whole time pretending to hand her a package, talking to her in a special tone so as to make it known to her that he was suppressing any knowledge of her plan. It wasn't I who had ordered the package. Infiltrating my research, I thought, the pair of them. I ran to the kitchen window, and pressed my face against the glass. It was difficult to see. I squinted, lifted my hands and cupped them against the sides of my face. The glass grew foggy, I wiped the moisture with my sleeve, I looked again. In the distance I could see the edges of the trees, but nothing beyond them, only a silhouette, I thought, the trees, their leaves bouncing on the branches in the breeze, nothing else.

Life, I thought, and everything that goes with it, is nothing but trouble. Very troublesome, I thought, indeed. And without thinking, I grabbed my jacket and walked out the front door. Because in situations like this, I thought, pushing out my chest, one needs to do something, to pick oneself up by the bootstraps, to look people in the face, to face one's demons, to grab the bull by the horns, to push oneself to the edge of one's courage, to call it like it is. I stopped short just outside my door so as to pause respectfully at the end of my sentence. Then I shoved my hands into my pockets, leaned forward as though into a harsh wind, and walked down the sidewalk. The light, I thought, the package, chuckling. Imbecile of a lady, I thought, chuckling some more, because she couldn't even do her own job, using the mailman to infiltrate with a package. For a second I deliberated, then withdrew my hand from my pocket, made a fist and knocked harshly on her door.

She must be deaf, I thought, because already a minute had passed and she hadn't answered the door. Suddenly my mind was running away again. Events—I paced back and forth by her front door—get in the way of knowledge, wedge themselves intrusively between oneself and one's knowledge, and not just that, I thought, pacing very rapidly back and forth. New events introduce themselves, become involved with other events. So that one morning you wake up and find yourself tangled up in them. Events become inextricable from you, you inextricable from them. Just as thoughts bleed into thoughts, events run amuck, in the most disorganized state. One event inextricable from the next, a past event indistinguishable from a future event, I thought. I was facing her door again. Just like that, I chuckled angrily to myself, one's knowledge is procrastinated, one's investigations left in suspense. I raised my fist—like splitting water, retracing events—and brought my hand down onto her door again. I knocked louder. Now she will see, I thought, calming myself. I took a deep breath, and as I took in the breath I witnessed a brilliant image: I saw myself sitting near the yurt, pulling event after event through the eye of a needle, as though life were a single continuous golden thread.

"How can I help you?" she asked. It occurred to me that she could have been standing there for quite some time, staring at me with the door open. I took a curious look at her hand. She wasn't holding her candle. She is trying to pretend, I thought, that living in the dark comes naturally to her. I leaned in to take a peek over her shoulder.

"Excuse me," she said, repositioning herself in the doorway, "Is there something I can do for you?" And I thought, really, I could shed a thousand tears for you. An old lady asking such inane questions, and I leaned in a little farther, because I had spotted a lamp around the corner. She shifted uneasily. I was close enough now that I was breathing down on her. Perhaps I should use a different strategy, I thought.

"Hello," I said, trying to smooth things over. If she is going to pretend, I said to myself—I was standing on the steps now so as to give her more room—I should pretend as well, make the best of this little game. Then, without thinking, I said, "I was only wondering if you had any special antiques, and if you might have a mind to sell them." I had no idea how the thought had come to me, and was surprised myself for having uttered it without flinching the slightest bit.

"Excuse me?" she asked, looking as though she was about to blow out a puff of air. I felt my eyes roll back in my head, because I was utterly at a loss for what to say next. An old anger boiled up inside me, the same feverish chill that had come over me in the canyon. She held the door open with one hand and nervously bunched her nightgown with the other. Now, I thought, is the time to muster up all my strength, because I couldn't—but I lost my train of thought, she interrupted me:

"How can I help you?" she asked.

"By letting me in," I said, very directly. Because it seemed to me she had ironed her voice, forced it straight, a narrow spear of a voice darting forth, out of her mouth to dangle in the air and frighten me. For a moment, I had the vague feeling of something crawling up the back of my neck. I felt an old shiver in my brain. Everything was drawn up as though by a hook or a bucket—feelings... anger, or something less... and there it was: sadness, as though from the bottom of a well. Because the old lady's cheekbones were impressing themselves upon me. My eyes began tearing. Something, I thought, has gone dead inside me. I looked at her. My thoughts shuddered in my brain. I felt utterly disoriented. What am I doing here? I thought. I looked around. How did I get here? The club, I thought, the skylight, and remembered the feeling of lying down amid the trees. I grew dizzy. I couldn't tell if I was lying down or standing, though I could clearly perceive her form in the doorway, turning her words over and over on her tongue, her "excuse me?" still lingering in the air. I took hold of myself. I watched her. I thought, ah, I have come to observe her. Because, knowingly or not, she is at the center of so many things. I felt a strange love sprout in my veins. Look at her, I thought to myself, shrugging my shoulders kindly. Because she was simply standing there, waiting with all her patience and her anger, holding the door with one hand and blocking the doorway with the other. What could I possibly say to her? I thought.

Behind her I saw a cat jump from a bar stool to the edge of the couch. "Why," she asked—the cat positioned herself, stretched one paw out to its limit and began to lick herself clean—"should I let you in?"

"Because I've seen you," I said, suddenly.

The cat curled into a ball and went to sleep.

"Excuse me?" she asked again. I had a strange feeling she was trying to get the upper hand. You love someone one moment, I thought, and the next they render themselves suspect. What would it have been like, I thought, if I had something to offer, some flowers, a gesture so that she would let me in—because certainly we had been intimate with one another, all along—and then quite suddenly my thoughts stacked one upon another more clearly than ever: she has been sending men and women to my door at all hours of the day to throw my research off course, I thought. I rode the wave of lucidity. I thought, it is she who planted the papers in my kitchen, she who twisted the mailman's arm, she who sponsored the phone calls from Ancestry.com. The mailman, I thought, puffing, the broad-shouldered lady with her fish-mouth and waving arm.

I reached up one hand to lean against the doorway; I was sweating just thinking of her sowing her thoughts into plans and orchestrating them from her dark abode. The love drained from my heart.

"Perhaps," she said, "you could be more specific as to where you've seen me," and she slackened her arms and stood straight as a pole in the doorway. I looked behind her. The cat was sleeping. Nice cat, I wanted to say, and noticed that a strange gray light filled her home, a plump, sad light had taken over her things—the couch, the chairs, the round of the cat's back. I didn't say anything, only stared at her. "In the garden," she continued in the softest of voices, "or perhaps checking the mail, because I do that often."

I felt as though she could see through me, as though she was softening her voice to wrap around my sadness, because suddenly I had the distinct feeling of being transparent. Sweet old lady, I thought, I could love her, but something turned ever so slightly at the base of my chest—the love reeled itself back in—because it occurred to me that it was a strange suggestion, a distinct suggestion, not at all innocent—that I may have seen her checking her mail—because certainly, I thought, she has used the mail to interfere in my affairs. I grew nervous with anticipation. I swallowed a few times, shifted my position. I am done for, I thought. I felt his name rise up, and I wanted to push it down, but it rose again, shivering in my throat like a tiny bird. A tiny bird, I thought, tiny lump of bird, and I felt the tears well up in my eyes again. "Fra," I said, because I couldn't push it down; his name came out like a nervous shudder. I stopped myself.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing," I said, and looked behind her. "Your cat," I said, "it isn't there. It was on the couch just a second ago, and now it isn't there."

"Oh," she said, turning around to look for the cat. "There she is," she said, because she spotted the cat on the stool, in a new position, licking itself. "But just now," she said, "you said something else."

"No, I didn't. I was just—"

"Certainly you did," she interrupted, "I heard you," and she paused thoughtfully for a moment. "Fra," she said, "just now, I heard you say it."

"Not exactly," I said, "that isn't"—but I couldn't finish because she interrupted me again, what a habit, I thought, she has of speaking over everyone else.

"It's an old song," she said, and suddenly she was very invigorated, because a second later she was singing it, "Fra la la la, Fra la la, Fra Fra," she sang, "but I can't seem to remember the rest of it."

Certainly, I thought, she has come undone in her head. And she must have noticed the expression on my face, because she stuttered. "I'm sorry," she said, "I used to be an opera singer, it seems I can't help myself," and I thought certainly, most definitely duplicitous, she is, and turned my face into a screw to examine her.

We stood there for a moment staring at each other. "Would that be all?" she asked. Then she said, "It is getting late." She closed the door, but just before she shut the door I caught a glimpse of her twisted face: certainly, I thought, it is she who is behind it all.
5. I was standing there all alone. I thought, this is not the end of it: her singing a song, making a mockery of it all. I paced back and forth on her doorstep. I looked down at my hands, then quickly at the doorknob. My hands were cold. The skin around my knuckles was burning. I thought, I have to get in; I have to go through her door. And if not through her door then a window. I snapped my fingers at the thought. An image came to me of the lamp I had spotted at the end of the hallway. I imagined her cat curving around the lamp, her tail illuminated under the bulb. Warmth, I thought, and light. But I couldn't remember if the lamp was on when I had seen it, or if I had just imagined it to be—a soft, yellow light calling me through her door.

The wind picked up. It was slightly colder than it had been all along. I rubbed my hands together. I stuck my hands into my pockets. I withdrew my hands. I touched one finger to my temple, then another. I looked up at the stars. They were flickering. There was a yellowish hue around the moon. A bird darted across the sky: slick and black and singular. The sky, I thought: infinitely deep, infinitely dark. I wanted to cup my hands around the stars, pluck them out of the sky once and for all.

Suddenly, I remembered the dull, black surface of my dream. Everything burns to ashes. Lives out by whatever machinery, whatever injustice, then burns down to the very surface that held it up. The hand—I thought—the face in my dream! She was getting in the way of everything, her trembling form redoubling itself in my sleep. Wretched old lady, I thought, I will show her. Because in addition to putting up with her in life, I thought, I should not have to put up with her in my dreams.

Better to take a walk around her house, I thought, to take a good look before going in. Certainly her house could be just as deceptive, just as duplicitous as she herself: one countenance on the outside, another altogether on the inside, with no connection between. I leaned over to scratch my ankles. There were mosquitoes everywhere, flying frantically in the wind. Just as I leaned over to persuade them away from my ankles, the blood drained from my brain. But it wasn't dizziness I experienced. Rather a feeling of disorientation, because just then an image of the club I had dropped in the yard behind my house appeared in front of my feet. How, I wondered, has it made an appearance so suddenly, and directly in front of my feet? But slowly, as I stood up, it all made sense: yes, I thought, the club—it is exactly what I need. I dashed over to my yard and grabbed the club. By now the wind had died down, the night was quiet and still. I thought, nothing could be more perfect than silence on a night like this; the stillness of dying, the silence of death, and a rush of excitement filled my veins.

I returned to her doorstep. I practiced swinging the club. I swung with one arm, then the other. Definitely, I thought, my right arm is the stronger of the two. I was feeling more lighthearted than ever. This is joy, I thought, this is happiness, all my investigations taking form. With a decisive air I jumped off her front steps and turned the corner. I entered her backyard. There I saw a goose waddling away. A goose in her backyard, I thought: under the light of the moon, a goose waddling away! My blood froze. All I could think was: a goose in her backyard, stark in the middle of her yard, a goose. For a moment, I raised the club over my head. Perhaps the goose is an omen, I thought, and my blood started to move again. The bird waddled into the trees, which were slim and silver under the light of the moon. The goose released a loud honk. The sound returned my attention to the world. I found myself standing directly above the goose behind a row of trees. I placed the club down and leaned my weight into it as though it were a cane. I could ring its neck, I thought, looking at the goose. Then it occurred to me: I could spy into her house through the skylight on her roof. Now, in my distraction, the goose waddled away. That is what I'll do, I said to myself, maintaining a line of thought: I will climb directly onto her roof. And a moment later I was standing there, club in hand, staring down at her skylight as I stood on her roof.

Was it real? I thought, and looked down at my hands.

The cat walked cautiously by the wall.

She arched her back, pointed her tail up to the sky. Her eyes narrowed into slits. She began to lick her right paw. The pale pink of her tongue makes a pleasant picture, I thought, against the soft pad of her paw. But the next moment she leaned away from the wall. She wound between my legs, rubbed her body against the club. One moment the cat is cool and distant, I thought, the next all warmth.

I walked over to the kitchen counter. I had dropped the club. The cat followed me. I took a seat on one of the stools. The cat jumped onto the counter. From a distance she inspected my face. I looked out the window. A few leaves ruffled slightly in the wind, gave a small shudder. A bird gave out a low whistle, then took off into the night. Everything went still. Everything went silent. I looked around. The house was quiet, motionless except for the cat. I reached out to touch her and felt her breath against the palm of my hand. Could it be, I thought, and by whose hands? I looked at the club. I had left it leaning against the couch. I couldn't differentiate the club from my hands. Ten fingers, I thought, two hands. I inspected the furniture. Deep reds and browns, floral patterns. Ten fingers, I thought, as I looked at my hands. They could be performing any gesture: playing the keys of a piano, digging soil, folding a napkin.

No, I thought. It couldn't have been. Because certain things are of a category that one remembers. Not a lot of time, I thought, has gone by. Minutes, organized into units. How many minutes had gone by?

I wondered.

An image of the shards came back to me. I watched the skylight shatter as I relived the memory. I looked up to where the skylight had been, then traced the rectangular chunk of sky down through the opening to the floor, where the shards were glistening with late-night rain. I shrugged my shoulders, puckered my lips. No matter, I thought. Because everything has already been done. Everything, I thought, in this room, and beyond this room, everything has already happened and been done with, dealt with. There is no doing, I thought, no matter, nothing left to do in this world. I felt my heart die down. Now the cat was walking among the shards. I thought, she must be taking pleasure, avoiding the sharp triangles, the pointed edges. Because she was extending her paws, licking them intermittently as she tiptoed around the shards. I looked back up at the skylight. One moment, I thought—and then my mind was a flood of memories, because I saw an image of myself standing over the skylight, staring at my reflection, which is to say: I saw myself twice. It was a slight pause in time, an interruption. Everything shattered: tiny bullets of glass flew through the night like shooting stars. Now I could see the shards, a few feet from where I was seated, scattered across her living room floor, and, seated on her stool, a version of myself reflected in the shards, just as I had seen myself, only whole, in the skylight as I stood on her roof.

I walked out of the kitchen, down the hallway. In her bedroom everything looked wounded. There was a purplish hue on the walls, over her bed, on her furniture. I looked down at my hands. I felt my arms detach from my shoulders. I watched them float away. Could it have been? I thought, and imagined her gaping mouth form an answer. I saw a reflection of myself in the bedroom window. Couldn't I get away? I was standing in her doorway. Was it real? I wondered, and backed away. A moment later I was in the bathroom, kneeling on the tile floor.

I turned the tap, stuck my head under the spigot, scrubbed my neck. Couldn't I have imagined it? The water ran over my head. Her two eyes: icy, blue lakes drifting farther and farther apart from each other as though her face were a humid land being stretched to its limits. I walked back into her bedroom. I left the water running in the bathroom. I turned her body over. A sudden urge. A mass of mangled branches. First to one side—I inspected her back—then the other. There was a streak of blood running from her mouth to her neck. I pulled up her hair. The blood, I thought—looking down at my hands—her wet flesh. I heard the water spill over the tub and spread across the bathroom floor. Lovely, I thought, in this moment, the sound of water pouring over a tub. I pulled the covers over her frame. I walked back to the couch. I left the water running. I thought, let the earth sink.

A sedentary feeling grew at the base of my chest. The cat curled onto my lap. Everything faded. Was it me, I thought, wasn't it me? I heard the water trickle out of the bathroom. I imagined the water being absorbed by the bedroom carpet. Then, as though in the distance, I heard a door slam, I heard voices. I heard a man draw out a roll of tape. I stroked the cat. Everything, I thought again, has already happened, even the end. I heard a loud noise. I felt my body stiffen. The room turned. It spun around. Everything spun with it: Fra Keeler, I thought, the papers, her trembling hand. It was a mere instance. Because one moment—then I felt someone turn me over, clasp a cold thing around my hands—one moment, I thought, and then the next.

The car drove quickly. I saw three park benches, a sparrow on a branch. The lights turned from green to red. Each time the car stopped, I counted the seconds. Up to forty, then back down again, until I was pushed down onto a metal chair. A heavy-set man stood in front of me. A few other men stood behind him. I heard: "Yes, Sir." I heard: "No, Sir." Then there was a clicking. The door slid open. The men left. Everyone except for the one heavy-set man, who by now had moved closer to me. How much time has gone by, I thought, since I have been here? Minutes, I counted, years. Anything in between. I looked down at my hands. I hardly recognized them.

"Are you going to talk this time?" the man asked.

Talk? I thought. Now versus when? I looked around the room. There was nothing familiar. A room, I thought, like any other. A plain room with a buzzing noise circling inside of it.

He took a step closer. I felt something tighten at the back of my neck. Death, I thought, wars, it is all the same thing. Because wars—and I felt a blow hard against my face—wars—and just as I picked the word up, it trickled down my lip.

The heavy-set man stepped back. He lit a cigarette, took a big puff, then let the cigarette hang between his lips. As I looked at him, I recalled the smell of burning flesh. I remembered the mosquitoes buzzing everywhere, settling on the corpses. His lips, they were sealed. He was silent. He turned around, but only halfway, then looked at me again.

"Nothing?" he asked, hanging his head from his neck.

"Nothing," I responded.

He took a long, sweeping look at me, the same way he would have looked, I thought, at a good mass of garbage.

"Now, how," he began to speak, but stopped himself. His voice, nothing but peeling bark, I assured myself. I watched him remove the cigarette from his lips. He lit another, and made a gesture as if to say this one is for you.

"I don't smoke," I said.

"A lot of refusal you got going," he responded.

Son of a bitch, I said to him in my head. And I must have looked at him hatefully because the next moment he said:

"If you're going to curse, you should really commit to cursing. Out loud," he said. The yurt flashed before my eyes.

"You're putting up a good fight," he said.

"No fight," I said.

"That's not what I would call it," he sighed. "You're monosyllabic, you're silent; it's a fight. Like it or not that is what it is."

"Yes," I said.

"Sir," he responded, "there are ways of talking, and this isn't one of them." And I thought, really, he is quick to jump to conclusions. Perhaps I will receive another beating. I rolled my eyes into two tiny bullets. He took a step toward me. There was still a bit of blood trickling down my lip. I shifted. I looked away.

"You're afraid," he said. "What are you afraid of?" he asked, having taken all the mockery in the world and stuffed it down his larynx.

"Nothing," I said, and he took a step back and lit another cigarette.

"Nothing?" he asked.

"Nothing," I responded.

"Not even your own death?" he asked and slid a stack of papers across the desk.

"Take a look at these," he said, "and tell me what you think." He tapped his index finger against the papers, as if to say look here, and I spied near his finger something very familiar across the page. The death-related papers, I thought, forgery, murder, and the lights went out in my head.

"No," I said, shrugging the feeling off, "not even my own death." I couldn't stand the way he was drumming his fingers against the papers.

"Now we're talking," he said, drawing his hand to his hip.

"No," I said.

"No," he responded. And then he said: "Do you think this is some sort of a game?"

"No," I said, "no game." And I felt the blood drain out of my legs.

"How long have you been living there, in that house?" he asked.

"An indeterminate period," I said.

"Don't be a smart ass," he responded, and then he picked up the stack of papers and he left.

A sudden departure. Truly, I thought, life is one fickle moment. I slid my hand across my lip. Blood, I thought, murder, the unfriendly events. Because, I thought, wasn't I already dead? I looked around the room. Hardly anything was making sense. I had the distinct feeling of having cut off various parts of myself. I am empty, I thought, my core is dead. For a moment the buzzing sound in the room died down, then resurfaced again. The door slid open. The detective walked in. Three other men walked in behind him. I remembered parts of a body scattered across an arid piece of land as though its trunk and limbs had always been separate elements. My eyes refocused. One of the three men stood behind the detective and fingered his belt. He had a gun tucked into his trousers, another hoisted on his belt. The detective walked over to the table. He put down a tape recorder, and a glass of water next to it.

"Drink up," he said. And I lifted the glass of water and drank it.

"Now," he said, and I saw the man behind him drag his finger across the gun he had hoisted on his belt. Death, I thought, another set of unfriendly events. I felt a blow across my head. The buzzing in the room subsided. My neck tensed. My head snapped back; everything faded. I felt some blood trickle down the side of my face. The blood crystallized, it made a distinct sound near my ear. This, I thought, must be the sound of death.

The yurt reeled in front of my face, like a wild horse caught mid air.

I walked in, one foot in front of the other.

I stumbled across something: a body, I thought, and then I realized, no, it couldn't have been, because I suddenly remembered the canoe inside the yurt. Outside, the rain began falling, at first softly, then a bit more harshly. I lay down, I reached for the oar, I grabbed hold of it. The rain fell through the trees. The ground soaked up the water. I felt the canoe rise. A great body of water, I thought, above the earth. I watched the water gather. One moment, I thought, and then the next—and I couldn't tell if it was blood or water—I let everything drift away.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

AZAREEN VAN DER VLIET OLOOMI is an Iranian-American writer of fiction and non-fiction. She received her MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University, and is a recipient of a Fulbright Grant to Catalonia, Spain. She is co-author of the Words without Borders dispatch series ArtistsTalk: Israel/Palestine and is at work on a second project entitled The Catalan Literary Landscape, an exploration of notions of journey and the intersections between landscape and literature. She currently teaches in the MFA program at the University of Notre Dame, and lives in Indiana with her husband.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Brian Evenson for his tireless guidance during the writing of Fra Keeler. Very special thanks to Robert Coover for his generosity and support. Deep gratitude to Michelle Latiolais and Carole Maso for their unwavering faith. A heartfelt thank you to my dearest friends and visionaries Claire Donato and Jeff Johnson. Thank you to the editors who previously published excerpts from Fra Keeler in Harp & Altar, Paul Revere's Horse, and Dewclaw. Very special thanks to Kate Johnson.

Fra Keeler would not have been possible without the following constellation of films and books: César Aira How I Became a Nun, Attila Bartis Tranquility, Thomas Bernhard Three Novellas and The Loser, Roberto Bolaño Distant Star and By Night in Chile, Luis Buñuel Diary of a Chambermaid, Éric Chevillard Palafox and Crab Nebula, Brian Evenson The Open Curtain, Max Frisch Man in the Holocene, André Gide The Immoralist, Jean-Luc Godard Breathless, Nikolai Gogol Diary of a Madman, Witold Gombrowicz Cosmos, Knut Hamsun Hunger, Alfred Hitchcock Vertigo, Anna Kavan Ice, Imre Kertész Kaddish for an Unborn Child, Abbas Kiarostami Close-Up, Jim Krusoe Iceland, Patrice Leconte Monsieur Hire, Doris Lessing Memoirs of a Survivor, Clarice Lispector The Hour of the Star, Jean-Pierre Melville Le Circle Rouge, Marie Redonnet Hotel Splendid, Forever Valley and Rose Mellie Rose, Eric Rohmer Six Moral Tales, Daniel Paul Schreber Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, Muriel Spark The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Magdalena Tulli Dreams and Stones and Moving Parts, Lynne Tillman This Is Not It, Trajei Vesaas The Ice Palace, Diane Williams Romancer Erector.
DOROTHY, A PUBLISHING PROJECT

1. Renee Gladman Event Factory

2. Barbara Comyns Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead

3. Renee Gladman The Ravickians

4. Manuela Draeger In the Time of the Blue Ball

5. Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi Fra Keeler

6. Suzanne Scanlon Promising Young Women

DOROTHYPROJECT.COM