THE RED BATH

I

I sit motionlessly, ensnared in perdition’s playpen, ground into a fine powder by the night’s gluttonous gravity. Drenched with darkness, the sown seed of silence grows into an intractable weed, strangling any competition to its kingly claims, crowding out the music of the room’s eclectic euphony, subverting and supplanting even the prismatic bouquet of my own thoughts. 

In the bitterly, bleak, cold winter of this moment, nothing but silence germinates. And the world, for all of its vastness, for all of its promise, for all of its majestic wonder, has become narrow, determined, contingent, and ordinary.

It is a silence that makes me disbelieve my own existence. A silence born from the memories of indomitable, dragon-like expectations, lying languid and bloodied, slain by the heartless, spiked lance of choice and consequence. Memories, my beloved pets with rabies! I am a sentimental owner. I find that I can neither keep nor kill the deranged animals. 

I have never been good at life! I simply do not understand it. And I am constantly confused by the apparent ease of others, who live and love and laugh as if they were born with a set of life’s rules tattooed somewhere on their DNA. While I exist. I breathe. I exhale. And I groan. I do not live! 

The mystery of life confounds me. Perhaps it is in the last chapter that we discover the “who-dun-it” of life, forming the foundations of the paradox of simultaneously wishing to discover the answer to all life’s secrets while, at the same time, seeking to avoid that final chapter that reveals it. It is not fitting for a coward to aspire to trespass upon the answers to riddles.  

I have heard that life is a gift from god. But I sometimes feel that life is god’s gift to humanity in the same way that a piece of cheese placed in a trap is my gift to a wayward mouse. To accept this gift is to accept the sharp smack of a cold, cosmic, steel bar. Any god who gives life is not to be trusted! Birth and death are messy and violent. Much of the time spent in between is equally distressing. I do not question god’s propensity to give. I merely question god’s ability to deliver without danger.  

I sit motionlessly -- muttering curses at the moths of time which have eaten my brain, retracing the path that has led into this black forest, stumbling upon the embattled ruins of my past, reciting the events which have woven the sad homily of my life, the glaring monument to divine neglect. 

I came from the womb howling, even before the doctor’s slap. The members of my family, experts at estrangement, displayed their expertise in the event of the birth of a firstborn child -- my mother on the table pushing out the parasite which had grown within her; my father in the bar drinking -- his only concern in the affair was that the name of his son be correct. And if it were a girl ... well, who cared? He appeared in the hospital long after I was born to give me a name. Then he retreated back to the bar where his true children sat collecting dust on shelves warped with age. They knew his name, and he theirs. And he went to them whenever they cried.

As the years passed by and I grew into childhood, I would go weeks without seeing him. His other children were never so deprived; they saw him nightly, knowing both his company and his loving touch. To me he was but a shadow, occasionally resurrected in the late hours of the afternoon, forsaking the family of his making for the family of his desire. I lived unknown and unloved. It was clear from an early age that I may have possessed his name, but they possessed his soul. It became clear to me that illegitimate children are sometimes born within the legality of marriage. I shared his genes and his name, but in his eyes, I was clearly a b*****d. 

Yet, I cannot fault him. He was a man of sorrows. Scorned by fortune. Belittled by time. Haunted by potential. What a hurtful word potential is! It is nothing more than one’s pronouncement of disappointment, masqueraded as praise! Convinced that no one understood him but his dear barroom babies, he clutched them close to his breast. And what is truly sad is that he was correct in his belief. He was the most misunderstood man in the whole of history, not because of the incomprehensible quality of his soul, but because he never shared his soul with anyone. Self-scrutiny and intimacy terrified him. So he drank. He drank for the intimacy that he could not foster on his own. He drank to ignore his reflection when he shaved. Each drink glued the splintered aspects of his life together, while concurrently making those broken shards more brittle. Each drink took his sorrows and swallow them deep inside to some unreachable place. He watched his sorrows drown as he swallowed the elixir. He listened to their pleas for saving as he chuckled at their demise. But one night his sorrows conspired against him. They rose up in the fury of madness, drowning him instead " and he was no more. All that remains of him is the name which he gave me. His name was Legion.

I sit"ensnared in perdition’s playpen. My thoughts turn to my great-grandmother. I was very young when she was very old. She was of the Lenape nation, the people who were the original inhabitants of New Jersey. The other tribes called them “the grandfathers” or “the original people.” But they simply called themselves “human beings.”  

My great-grandmother died when I was three or four, and I remember thinking that she was as old as the world itself.  She was an old river which moved both slowly and powerfully. When one is four, a nine-year-old child possesses the keys to wisdom’s vast vaults, a person in her eighties must have served  a tutor to god itself.  

I do not have many memories of her. In fact I have but two complete remembrances and a hazy amalgam of scenery in which she is a part. In one recollection, she and I were sitting next to each other on a rocking, swing-like bench, positioned under a tree. I do not know if it was her house but I seem to remember being there more than once. I remember that there was often an old man present when I and my mother arrived for a visit. I do not recall who he was, only that his occupation seemed to be sitting at the ugly, yellow, linoleum and chrome plated table, which occupied the central position of the kitchen, and wait for me to arrive. He sat there until he saw me. Then with surprising force, he jumped to his feet with such enthusiasm that I thought that he would bump his head against the ceiling. He then behaved as if we were long, lost friends who have not seen one another for twenty years. He always offered me a Coke, which I, of course, accepted with equal enthusiasm. Coke, in those days, came in thick, heavy, glass bottles -- I still remember the feel of the bottle after his gray hands pulled it from the equally old and gray refrigerator, handing it to me. It was remarkably cold and heavy, and the bottle had a bumpy, swirled design which felt huge in my tiny hands as I sipped the icy, ebony liquid. 

On one of those particular visits, my mother and the old man were not there; I seem to recall that my mother had to drive him to the doctor or some such place. My great-grandmother decided that it was too nice a day to sit inside, so we ventured out to the backyard, settling in the swinging bench, discussing the crucial matters which are of great importance to a fragile octogenarian and a four year old child. It must have been early autumn, for I remember the chronic blowing of the wind and the clicking, hissing sound it made as it wandered through the newly, drying leaves, rhythmically counting the moments, as if the world were breathing. The wind was neither hot nor cold. It carried a sweet aroma -- a smell that I would later come to associate with new books and school, Halloween and football, college parties and drinking beer on cool, dark nights, the smell of naive freshmen girls, away from home for the first time, the smell of Bob Dylan in the wee hours, the smell of new, volatile, and easily extinguished love, the smell of hope, the smell of death in pastel colors, the smell former things and new beginnings.

A crow began to caw overhead, shattering the hypnotic quiet. My great-grandmother looked up into the tree with a startled smile, touched my shoulder and said, “It looks like you have a friend. The crow is calling to you.” I looked up to where the crow was perched. It sat on a large branch, a mere ten or fifteen feet above. Her assessment seem to be correct for the crow was looking directly at me, occasionally cawing and rubbing the sides of it’s beak on the thick branch.

“It is talking to you! Say something to it!” she said with no hint of playfulness or pretense.

“What is it saying?”

“A simple greeting. Are you going to answer it?”

“I don’t know what to say to a crow!” I replied after a pause. It was true. Nothing in my few years of existence prepared me for ornithological interactions and conversations. I knew how to talk to Smokey, our German Shepherd, but those conversations were based upon a high degree of familiarity and shared experiences, and they were always rather one-sided. Her tone was not merely suggestive that I should simply say something to this black bird perching nearby, but that I should converse with it, as if I could learn something valuable from it. 

“Say something!” she suggested forcefully.

“What?” I replied.

“Whatever you want to!” she was clearly becoming annoyed by my resistence. “Ask it if it would like some tobacco.” On her face was a broad smile, her eyes darting knowingly toward me and then the crow. She was not an adult playing a game with a child. Great-grandmother spoke to things. She spoke to things that nobody could see. She spoke to trees and plants. She spoke to animals. And they all apparently spoke back to her. I remember her saying once that all people can speak with the animals and the trees and the spirits but only the Indians take the time to do so. “White people,” she once said, “do not believe that they have anything to learn from a bird or a dog. They do not listen to the trees, even though the tree has seen the lives of many men, and has the remembrances of their successes and follies. They do not listen to spirits because to them, spirits are dead. The white man only listens to what he sees. And he sees very little. He believes in the great-god but does not listen to his counsel. The white man has taught himself how to be blind so that he does not have to listen to anything but his own desire. If a white man will not listen to a man he can see, why would he listen to what he cannot see? Or why would he listen to the counsel of a tree? Or a spirit? Or to the great-god, who he does not see?  White men only believe in what they can buy and spend.”

I continued to look at the crow. I felt conspicuous. “Crow, would you like some tobacco?  I know my great-grandmother has some that she leaves in the morning for the spirit that teaches her in her sleep. If you would like some, I’m sure she will give it to you.” I said meekly, almost in a whisper. The crow cocked its head to one side, possibly confused by my words, possibly unable to hear my words, or possibly considering a response. Then suddenly, it cawed forcefully a few times and flew away.

Great-grandmother seemed pleased with the crow’s pronouncement. “What did it say?” she asked me.

“I don’t know.”

“You have to learn to listen.”

“I did listen!” I blurted defensively.

“Not with your ears,” she said, pinching my earlobe, “but with your spirit. You must learn to listen with your eyes and with your heart. Just because your skin is white like your mother’s does not mean that your mind has to be closed.”  

We rocked in silence for a long series of minutes before she spoke again. “You can learn about wisdom from the crow,” she said. “The crow is the keeper of ancient knowledge. He can travel freely between this world and the world of spirits. He can be many places at once and he sees and knows many things. He will also show you the nature of wisdom. Wisdom never comes to you. It sits at a safe distance and calls to you. If you try to catch it, it flies away. If you move toward it too quickly, it retreats and may never trust you or call to you again. But if you are patient and worthy, and never try to possess it, it will be your lifelong companion.” She once more fell into a pensive silence. We swung back and forth, and the wind rattled the leaves many times before she spoke again, “I can see that you will be a friend to the crow.”

The second complete memory that I have of her is the night she died. Although, I am not certain if that memory is anything more than a dream. I suppose that it must have been a dream. I was sleeping soundly and was awakened by something. I sat up in bed and scanned the darkness.  At the foot of my bed stood my great-grandmother. She lived miles away and did not drive; and even if she could, she was bedridden for weeks. So seeing her at the end of my bed was startling.  

The official family story of her final days is that she “haunted” my parents’ bedroom for an entire week before she died. For some reason that I have never been able to figure out, she had a great affection for my father and was deeply distressed and hurt when he had not visited her during the last few weeks when it was clear that she was dying. My great-grandmother appeared at the foot of my parents’ bed for a week until they went to see her. The first night my mother witnessed it, she was terrified.  She shook my father awake and pointed to the end of the bed, saying, “LOOK!” My father looked, apparently unimpressed, rolled onto his side once more, burying his head into his pillow, saying, “Oh, that’s just Grandma. Go back to sleep.” My mother found that advice hard to follow. The next night the same thing happened. After a week, my mother was sleepless, spooked and irritable. She demanded that my father visit his grandmother before she died. He did so grudgingly and the apparitions ceased.

I began to speak, not certain as to what I was going to say, but she motioned that I should be silent. “It is time for me to go,” she said plainly. “My body has become too weak to contain my spirit. I am on my way to the spirit world. Your parents did not bring you with them when they came to visit me and I did not want to leave without saying good-bye.”

“Where are you going, great-grandmother?” I asked.

“I am dying. 

“Don’t die!”

“Nothing can stop it.”

“I don’t want you to leave,” I whispered pathetically, as only a child can.

“I will return. If you do not look with your eyes and do not hear with your ears, you will see and hear. I will only be dead if your mind is closed.  Look and hear with your spirit and you will see all the wonders of life. Do not let the color of your skin close your mind.”

“I... I...” I stammered, desperately attempting to understand the significance of what she was saying, desperately trying to change the situation with the force of my four-year-old will.

“Listen for my voice in the silence! And feel my kisses on the wind! And always listen to the counsel of the crow!” With that said, her image began to transform. The image of the frail but powerful woman in her eighties became the shape of a crow. It perched on the foot of my bed, watching me intently for a long passing of time. Then, it stretched its wings wide, cawed with such power that I felt the bed shake, and it flew out of the open window into the night’s deep darkness.

I sat in silence, fighting the tears that were forming in the inside corner of my eye. My nose burned at their forced incarceration and I sniffed loudly. A tear finally broke through the dam of willpower and slid down my cheek, quickly at first, celebrating its liberation in a mad sprint of decisiveness, resolved to get as far as it could from its former prison, but soon becoming confused as to the course it should take, resting in the center of my cheek until my hand wiped it from existence. 

“Good-bye Great-grandmother,” I whispered to the darkness that was too thick for shadows. I resolved to tell no one of the visitation. Hours later the sunlight assaulted my bedroom and I awoke to the news that Great-grandmother had died peacefully in her sleep.  

I went to her funeral a few days later. For some reason my father was proud of the coffin that the family had purchased for her. He spoke of it like a used car salesman trying to close a deal. I waited for her to sit up in the coffin but she never did. My mother told me that she was sleeping with god but I knew better. She was very much awake, flying between worlds, bringing wisdom to all who would take the time to listen.  

Then, as the years passed, I grew up. I became a man. And I forgot how to listen. Silence became the absence of noise. The wind became a meteorological condition. The crows began to keep their distance and their silence, offering no wisdom. And I became white-souled as much as I was white-skinned. My Great-grandmother has been dead for many years.

I sit -- ground into a fine powder by the night’s gluttonous gravity.

When I awoke this morning, I had no idea that the day of my death had arrived. But as the day drove relentlessly on, it was becoming clear that it was a good day to die. I spent the night defying the circumstances of my life by drinking pints of beer and shots of bourbon. I started drinking early and it was late when I arrived back at that place in which I live (I will not call it home). I hate this place and the people who dwell within its walls. There is no word in the English language that is emphatic enough to remotely capture the smallest iota of scorn that I feel -- a scorn for Boston, a scorn for people, a scorn for anything and everything theological and holy. Holiness is pretense! Most of all, though, a scorn for myself.

It is early October. I am thirteen months in Boston -- the first thirteen months of what seems a life’s sentence with no possibility of parole. And although it is a large prison yard, I limit my movement in and around Kenmore Square. I arrived in Boston in August of last year to continue my education " the pride of my family. No one had ever graduated from high school. I was the first. I was also the first to go to college, and beyond. I had lived in Louisville for my graduate work. I loved that city. In its borders I found life. Its air nourished my fragile soul; its waters irrigated my ignoble heart. And as I stumbled upon its landscape, I found my life in a face.

I find myself confounded by the limits of language! Her face was divine prophecy -- an oracle of god’s goodness and mercy, a promise that all the injustices of life, from the first slap at the hands of a detached doctor, the insanity of adolescence, the heartbreak of absurdity, the cold steel of the autopsy’s scalpel, the heartless precision of the coroner, the endurance of lies spoken at a viewing, had all been overturned and overcome by a god of life! Her face was gospel!  Needless to say, I fell in love.  

Love is such an inconvenience! If I do not understand life, I certainly do not understand love, neither do I trust it; though, for a brief while, I believe that I was good at it. The only time. The short of it is that commitments were made and there were promises of marriage. But the promises of lovers seem to be as barren as the promises of politicians and infomercials --  and almost exactly two years to the day we met, we went our separate ways.  

I continually try, but I will never forget that last night together. She and I sat on my livingroom floor, arriving at the conclusion that we both knew, that we both danced around, holding each other, afraid to let go, knowing that we must let go. I hate that night! The murderous words finally slipped from her lips. And I wept as if I mourned the death of all who ever, and who would ever, move upon the earth. I remember the sound of my weeping, carried upon the worst groaning I have ever heard, which came from some place within me, the location of which, I had up to then, been unaware. I pray to the god in whom I do not believe that I neither make nor hear that sound again. Eventually the tears stopped long enough to make love one last time. As we lay entangled, catching our breaths, I knew for the first time that I was in bed with another man’s wife. 

After that night, she quickly flew into the arms of another; I flew into the chains of Boston. She told me once that “It is for the best.” What a scornful word “best” is! My whole life I have been denied “the best,” now I was receiving it when I neither asked for it nor wanted it.  

I often find myself wondering if we were ever truly in love. It is probably more honest to simply state that we needed each other for a while. Perhaps love is merely the institutionalization of mutual need. People do not fall in and out of love. They fall in and out of need. Yet, even though I force myself to lean in this direction, I must admit that there is a great mystery in the human heart. A person’s heart is never really his (or hers) to give. We do not own our heart but people come into our lives and purchase pieces of it. Some acquire the pieces through time, others through commitment, others with love, and others with something known only between buyer and seller. I don’t know if it is possible to run out of heart; but I am certain that it is impossible to ration one’s heart or sell to the highest bidder. Capitalism does not apply to the heart! Only chaos! Wildness! Untamed passion! If it were possible for me to give my heart to whomever I wanted, then I would not have given it to most of the people that I did. People have “squatter’s rights” when it comes to the human heart. That is why it is so often the case that people whom we have known our whole lives do not seem to have much weight upon us, and others, with whom we have only spent a few hours, can occupy our hearts and minds for the rest of our lives.

Nevertheless, my reaction to the whole situation was not good. I was determined to follow in my fathers footsteps and drink myself to death. I would be true to the name he gave me. Yet, after a year I was beginning to realize that the bottle is a far too slow and painful method of suicide. And for the last few months, it was as if I were already dead but could not stop moving. And I could feel the cuts on my wrists, like dotted lines -- taunting me, biting me, daring me to make the incisions, goading me to release both my blood and my life. 

Why has the universe spawned me with so much indecision? Why have the fates condemned me to this hell? Hell is indecision! Hell is the inability to choose for or against. I would choose to be among the saved but I was predestined to be the uncommitted. The universe exerts its will upon me and I can neither embrace it nor reject it. I am the universe’s b***h!

And so I sit motionlessly in the night’s black hole, saturated in silence, molested by memories, devoured by discontent, and I know that at long last a decision must be made...

I reached for the phone that was resting on the floor and rested it in my lap. I dialed her number. I knew she would not answer. Even though it was two or three o’clock in the morning, even if she were home, she would not answer. It had been months since she answered a call from me. I listened to the familiar buzzing ring. The answering machine picked up and I listened to the generic, robot voice offer the generic message. My message was brief: “You don’t have to worry about me bothering you any more.”

I returned the receiver to the phone with some force. Placed the phone back on the floor next to my chair, and spent a minute or two in silent reflection. The with a suddenness and swiftness that was unexpected even by me, a swiftness that is born from purpose, I rose from the chair and moved toward my door. 

I shared a house with about twenty other graduate students. I was on the third floor. The kitchen was down below the ground floor. It was an old mansion designed for servants and masters. Places where the servants would dwell were far away from the portions of the house where the owners would dwell. There was a separate stairway for the servants that opened on all the floors, and descended into the basement-dungeon-kitchen, laundry, and other rooms that were originally designed for the help. 

I opened the door to my room and moved toward the grand stairway that led to the first floor. It was early in the morning, late at night for me, and even though others were sleeping, I had not interest or concern about being silent. I stomped my way upon the hardwood floor, passing a series of rooms and turned right, into the bathroom and shut the door behind me. There were other bathrooms in the house " another on that floor for that matter -- there were bathrooms that were more out of the way and inconspicuous, but that was the bathroom I used most often, unless chance or timing made me have to use another one. I went to the tub and turned on the water. I knew how far to turn the faucet knobs to get the water the way I liked it. I passed my hand under the rush of water. It was cold. It was an old tub in an old house and it took time to warm up. I passed my hand under the water again -- warmer. I turned the knobs to that there would me a little more hot water than I like and a little less cold water. The hotter the better, but not too hot -- I had to be comfortable enough to get in it. I flipped the switch in the tub that stops the drain and let the water begin to collect in the tub. I then moved back to the door, opened it, exited the bathroom, shut the door behind me, and moved toward the direction of the stairs.

I descended the stairway, bouncing against the wall a few times, down to the second floor, crossing the space of hallway, down the large stairway, walking across the foyer on the first floor to the back servants’ stairs. Stamped my way down the back stairs, turned into the hallway at the bottom and maneuvered into the kitchen. 

In the kitchen I began opening drawers, fishing through the utensils and contents housed within, occasionally frustrated and tossing something or all of the items across the kitchen with a crash, sometimes dumping the entire contents of the drawer onto the floor. I systematically went through all the drawers until I found the drawer that housed the knives. I had never cooked anything in the kitchen other than what I could make in a toaster oven, and the everyday eating utensils and knives were in the part of the kitchen where I started my search. But ordinary butter knives were not going to help, neither would the every day steak knives. I needed something more pronounced and decisive.

I found what I would describe as a large butcher knife. I am sure there is a more precise name for it, but I have never been interested enough in such things to find out. The closest comparison I had was that it reminded me of the knife that the killer in the Halloween movies used. I lightly ran my thumb along the blade. It was sharp. I felt the tip of the blade with my thumb. It would do. 

I slammed the drawer shut, turned and moved to the doorway of the kitchen, left into the hallway, right to the stairs, crossing the foyer and ascending the grand stairway, crossing the hall on the second floor, going up the last bit of stairs to the third floor, and crossing the wide open hall toward the bathroom. A door opened from the room next to the bathroom. “Do you really think that this is the best time to take a bath?” He said irritated to have been awakened by me. He then noticed the knife. “What are you doing with that knife?”

I ignored his statement and his question. I did not even look at him or in his direction. My eyes were focused on the bathroom. I opened the door, went inside, and locked the door behind me. My housemate knocked on the door a few times and spoke my name as if it were a question. Then I heard him walk off toward the stairway. It was an old house, and once you know the sounds it makes, every movement someone makes is like they are singing a song narrating what they are doing. 

I heard him knock and call for me, but I was busy undressing. The tub was had been steadily filling with water and the watermark was fairly high by now. I stuck my fingers in the water. It was hotter than I expected, but not unbearable. I stepped over the edge of the tub, plunging my foot into the hot water. Then I stepped my other foot into the tub, positioned myself and sat down into the burning liquid. 

This was happening. I was doing it. I reached for the knife that was on the floor next to the tub. I placed it there while I was undressing. I had to lift myself out of the tub a bit to reach it. I am ambidextrous, though not in a way where I do many things with both hands, but in a way where I do some things with one hand and other things with the other hand. I write with my right hand and I eat with my left hand. Sometimes I notice which hand I am using to do something and I am surprised by the fact that I am right-handed or left-handed in that thing. I am apparently right-handed when slicing my wrists.

I exposed my left wrist and lowered the blade onto its skin. The knife was so sharp that only a little pressure and a slice would do the trick " a push and a little back and forth and then the blade, the hot water, and my circulatory system would do the rest. I sat frozen, unable to finish what I had started. Trying to push the blade into my wrist; trying to make the slice; trying to force the incision. 

I was afraid -- not simply of dying, but of it hurting. I did not want to die, not really. What I really wanted was to die like in video games. I lose this life, but I immediately get a new life and try it again. It was not like I was thinking that death was permanent, but more like a reset button. It was like if I only cut my wrists, I could reset the world and try again and maybe this time I would succeed. But now, as the sharp blade dug into my wrist just enough to feel its commitment to the process, but not enough to draw blood, I knew there was no reset, there was only oblivion " or worse. Yet, that is not what stopped me. I hated life more than I feared death or even more than I feared the potential of eternal punishment. I hated life and wanted it to end " I just did not want it to hurt while it was ending. 

I groaned a disgusted groan. I hurled profanity at myself. I called myself names that are worthy of cowards. I ordered my hand to “Do it!” but my hand would not comply. Maybe suicide is a left-handed business after all. 

Then, since I decided that the slicing of my wrist may hurt, I needed a quicker remedy. Without trying to think about what I was doing, I raised the knife above my head, and forcefully and quickly stabbed at my wrist. I made four good, deep stabs. My fear was realized. It hurt! The blood instantly began to pour from the wounds. I took the knife in my left hand as the blood was coursing down my arm and I stabbed at my right wrist. I could only get about two good stabs. The knife handle was slippery and slid from my hands. I figured it was enough.

I settled down into the tub so that my head was just above the water. The quickly moved from clear to pink to red. There was a cloud of deep, dark, almost black of a red floating throughout the tub amidst the lesser red portions. 

I was drunk. I was dizzy. I was bleeding. I was hurting from the stab wounds. I settled into a comfortable position to pass out one last time. I could feel that tingly sort of feeling just behind the eyes and in the back of the head. I was beginning to lose consciousness. It is amazing how quickly the blood flows when the will is there.

I heard a pounding on the bathroom door. My housemate had awakened the Resident Assistant for the house. Some others had awakened by now as well. They were out in the hallway, beyond the locked door, occasionally trying to turn the door knob, pounding on the door loudly, shouting my name loudly. Telling me to unlock the door. But it was too late. I could not move even if I wanted to. I was weak. 

I lost consciousness to the echoing symphony of the sounds. My name echoed eerily over and over as it eventually faded away.

I awoke violently in the tub to the sound of a booming knock on the bathroom door and my name spoken sharply. The door opening and she walked in casually, partially dressed, positioning herself before the mirror, applying makeup, looking at my reflection off to the side behind her. “You fall alseep?”

I looked at my wrists. They were uninjured. I glanced around the bathroom. It was different; yet, it was my bathroom. Already, the images were fading. “Yeah, I guess I did. I was beat.”

II

I sit motionlessly, ensnared in perdition’s playpen, ground into a fine powder by the night’s gluttonous gravity. Drenched with darkness, the sown seed of silence grows into an intractable weed, strangling any competition to its kingly claims, crowding out the music of the room’s eclectic euphony, subverting and supplanting even the prismatic bouquet of my own thoughts. 

In the bitterly, bleak, cold winter of this moment, nothing but silence germinates. And the world, for all of its vastness, for all of its promise, for all of its majestic wonder, has become narrow, determined, contingent, and ordinary.

I have always been good at life! I do not understand it. There have been a few struggles, but somehow I always seemed to rise above the struggle and crisis or issue would disappear, or it would lead me to some better opportunity. Whenever I did not get what I wanted, it was so something better could come along. I know that is not how it works for everyone " maybe not for most people " but that is how it has worked for me. 

I was born in obscurity and poverty, to an abusive, alcoholic father who cared more about his drinking than about any of us for whom he was supposed to provide. But fortunately he disappeared when I was young. It was painful at the time, but it turned out to be the best thing for all of us in the long run. With him gone, life slowly became more stable, until, after a few years of his disappearance, I could hardly remember the chaos and heartbreak of those early years. They had simply become a string of anecdotes we occasionally told each other at certain family events when we were all gathered together. 

The point is that I was born to high school drop outs and manual laborers and drug addicts and alcoholics; and yet, somehow, I became the youngest person ever to be named the head of the Theology department at Harvard. I performed some manual labor over the years, but it was not a life, merely a means to an end as I worked my way through high school and then college and then grad school. By the time of my second Masters Degree, my flirtation with manual labor had ended. I often have traced the line of history from where I began to where I am now as proof of the existence of God " frankly, you can’t get here from there, so the only reason I am here is because God put me here. Now, if I only knew the reason for that...

The mystery of life confounds me. I often wonder if there is a reason for anything that happens. Perhaps when it is all over, we get to see and understand what all this was for " and perhaps we will discover that knowing why does not make much of a difference. 

I have heard that life is a gift from God. But frankly, I find such sentiments too saccharin " artificial, overly sweet, and probably bad for one’s health. I mean, I will be the first to admit that my life stands as a monument to divine grace and care. I am the first of my family to be educated " and not just educated, but extremely educated " I did in one generation what many families have done in two, or three, or even four. As a Professor of Theology at Harvard I have the job of my dreams, which became accentuated all the more when I was made the head of the department last year " the youngest person to achieve that distinction. I married the girl of my dreams, who is a very successful lawyer. We have plenty of money and live in a beautiful condominium in Brookline, just off of St. Mary’s Street in Boston, around the corner from my favorite pub in the whole world " O’Leary’s Pub. We do not have children, but we do have, Pepsi, a three-legged wonder dog that I have had since my first year in seminary. She was old, but lively.

Life is good! Yet, I often have a nagging feeling that I am living someone else’s life " that none of this is real. Every once in a while I have this overwhelming suspicion that I am a fraud about to be exposed. I sometimes have a dream that I am on stage with a famous band. Everyone is cheering and I begin to play a song, only to remember that I do not know how to play the instrument I am holding.

More than that, I had a crazy dream about a year ago that felt so real, that even though I do not really remember the details, it has haunted me all this time and felt more honest and true than the life I have been living. 

I found myself waking with a start in my bathtub. I had been awaked by a knock on the door and the sound of my name spoken by my wife. As I splashed in the tub disoriented, the door opened and she casually walked in. She was partially dressed and positioned herself in front of the bathroom the mirror, and began applying makeup. She spoke to my reflection off to the side behind her. “You fall alseep?”

I glanced around the bathroom, trying to figure out where I was. I had a particularly disturbing dream and for a second or two, I was surprised to find myself in my real life, rather than in the life I had been living during the span of my sleeping. “Yeah, I guess I did,” I answered after a moment, and then I felt the need to further explain, adding, “I was beat.”

“Well hurry up and get dressed. We’re going to be late.”

“I just had the craziest dream. We had broken up and never got married and I was miserable.”

“You better be miserable without me,” she said with a playful voice as she smiled. 

“It was more than just that. There was something about my great-grandmother and a crow.”

“You mean the one who turned into a crow when she died?”

“No, the one I used to believe turned into a crow when I was a young child. That’s why I was a child " because I believed in stupid things. But the dream was all so real. It felt totally real. I wish I could explain it, but it’s already gone.”

“What’s real is we only have an hour to finished getting dressed and get to Harvard. You know how long that takes.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll get a cab.”

“Traffic is just as bad as the T,” she said, pausing the application of her makeup to make her point more forcefully. Then after the she felt the pause had adequately added the appropriate volume to her words, she continued to apply her makeup once more. “You’re the guest of honor. You need to show up.”

I climbed out of the tub, dried myself and wrapped a towel around me. I moved toward the door saying, “If I’m the guest of honor, then I can get there whenever I want. And they’ll just have to deal with it.” When I arrived at where she was standing, I paused and brushed her curly Irish hair from her neck, wrapped my arms around her waist, kissed her neck lightly and then, resting my chin on her shoulder, I looked into her reflected face and asked, “Do you want to fool around?”

She smiled, looked hard into my reflection and said emphatically with a hint of playfulness, “GET DRESSED!”

“Alright, alright,” I said as I moved out of the bathroom into our bedroom. “I may be the new head of the Theology department at Harvard, but you call all the shots around here.”

“That’s right, mister, and don’t you forget it.”

“As if you would ever let me,” I joked. 

I dressed quickly. She was still applying finishing touches to her appearance. 

“I’m going to take Pepsi outside before we go,” I said as she burst into the bedroom to finish dressing. 

“Now?”

“She’s giving me the look.”

“Make it quick!”

“I don’t think that part is up to me. Don’t worry, I’m sure she’ll be done by the time you’re finished dressing.” I called to Pepsi, who was lying on the bed. She stood, wagging her tail. Then she hopped off the bed and followed me to the door of our condo, where her leash hung on a hook. I snapped the leash onto her collar and we descended the steps that led outside. I led her to a small patch of grass that ran along side of our building. 

I was October and it was already dark. The streets of Brookline were illumined by the succession of streetlights that lined the sidewalks. Pepsi seemed more interested in sniffing and smelling than doing what we were outside to do. I let her lead me down the patch of grass along our building. She sniffed her way into the walkway that leads the alley on the other side of our condo, where there were some parking spaces for the few residents who chose to have cars, and the large trash bins. I decided to lead her down the alleyway, back to the front of the building and then try the grassy spot again on the side " sometimes she needed a walk to get started, and sometimes she seemed aware that the sooner she did her business, the sooner we would go back inside, and it was clear that she occasionally wanted to milk being outside, so she would hold it as long as possible. 

As we were passing by the trash bins, I was startled by a noise and then a movement. A crow popped out from within the bin and perched on the edge, watching me pass. It surprised me because I do not remember seeing a crow when it was this dark, but then again, the city lights make day and night relative. During the day you can hear the crows in the alley cawing and clamoring for food in the trash, but at night they were usually quiet.

The crow just perched there. I could feel it watching me. I tried to ignore it and encouraged Pepsi to come along. The crow barked loudly once, and then cackled a few times quietly. From the front of the building and man appeared in the entrance of the alley. He paused for a moment when he saw me. Then he started moving toward me purposefully. There was something about him. I told myself that many people use this alley. I myself was proof of that. I must have startled him when he first saw me. Yet, the more I told myself these things, the more the hair on the back of my neck began to rise. I had been in Boston for years. No one had ever threatened me or accosted me. I have walked down dark streets in Boston alone in the middle of the night and never once was threatened. Why did this man fill me with dread and foreboding?

He had only taken a few steps into the alley when the crow started cawing loudly. I heard the flapping of wings behind me. The crow swiftly darted past me toward this stranger. When it reached, it attacked his head with its claws. The man began swatting at it and yelling profanities at the crow that flapped around him, clawing at his face and head. His hat fell to the ground as he turned out of the alley and ran off with the crow noisily following him.  

I stood stunned for a moment, replaying the scene in my head. Then I exhaled a short, aggressive sigh as a laugh leaked from my mouth. “Man, this is a weird day!” I concluded as I tugged on the leash, encouraging Pepsi to follow.

I sit " ensnared in perdition’s playpen. My thoughts turn to Nikki. I was no longer young when she was still very young. She was a bright grad student who caught my eye sometime over the previous year. She started appearing in all my classes and eventually became my TA, allowing us to work closely together. In spite of the fact that she was young, she possessed, what the hippie members of my family would term, an old soul.

Nikki was already at the party when we arrived. I did my best to pretend that I did not notice her at first, though she was the first person I saw, and the person I was looking for, as soon as we walked through the door. She and I maintained the pretense of a professional relationship whenever we were in a position to be observed. She maintained a distance, both in terms of physicality and emotionally, when we were in public, and she always referred to me by my title when others were around. I, for my part, pretended that she was just another student, just one I worked with.

My wife and I made the required journey around the room, greeting all the people who required it. I thanked the assembled trustees and others for elevating me to my new position. I received congratulations from my colleagues and others. There was even a contingent of students present who congratulated me, one presented me with a cigar. That was an inside joke. My mentor used to always begin the first day of class telling students that there are two ways to get an “A” in his class " one way was to do everything exactly as it was outlined in the syllabus, the other was to buy him a box of fine cigars, and if you did not know what constituted a fine cigar, he was more than willing to offer them suggestions. I often told that story on the first day of classes that I taught, adding that I did not think I could be bribed, but it did not mean that they should not try to bribe me. I took the cigar, rolled it in my fingers, squeezing it lightly, and then sniffing it. I smiled and nodded, “A plus work, Mr. Brewster,” I joked as the gaggle of students laughed along with us. 

After about an hour of chatting politely, I decided that I was a good time to smoke that cigar. It was a Hemmingway Short Story " designed to last about twenty minutes, so that lawyers could smoke a cigar during a recess in courtroom proceedings. I made my way to the veranda just outside the large room of the party. The double doors muffled the cacophony of noises and conversations bleeding from the party. I rested my drink on the railing that enclosed the veranda, pulled out a pocket clipper " I always carried a pocket clipper for moments such as this " snipped of the end of the cigar, lit it, and then leaned forward on the railing, scanning the dark, grounds that encroached upon the patio on which I was standing. 

I puffed the cigar slowly as my eyes scanned the landscape until I saw it. Sitting in a tree off to the side, about thirty feet away, a crow was perched in a tree. Its gaze was fixed upon me. I was startled, but I simply responded by appearing to be overly casual as I puffed my cigar and slowly released the smoke into the night. It was curious that I would come across two active crows in different parts of the city in the same night. I wondered if it were somehow the same crow. The crow began cawing and barking. I was so focused on the crow that I did not notice that the door behind me opened and that someone joined me out on th veranda. 

“It’s talking to you,” I heard over my left right shoulder. I stood erect with a jolt and looked behind me. It was Nikki. In response to my confused expression, she pointed to the crow with her eyes and her expression and repeated, “It’s talking to you.”

“Oh, that,” I laughed sarcastically as I leaned back onto the railing.

“What is it saying?”

“I don’t know,” I dismissed her question, “I don’t know how to talk to a crow.”

“Oh, you’re good at talking. Maybe you just don’t know how to listen.” She moved closer, and while keeping a respectable and professional distance, held up her drink, saying, 

“Congratulations on your new position as head of the Department of Theology.” She moved her glass toward me a bit, and I raised my glass, clinking it against hers.

“Thank you,”

“How does it feel?”

That was a good question -- a simple question; yet, a question I found hard to answer. I reflected on it for a moment before I replied. “It’s not what I thought it would be.”

“What do you mean?”

“I spent my whole life working for this moment. This is what I’ve wanted since my second year of seminary. Everything I’ve done regarding my career was to get right here, right where I am now. And yet, I feel like I want to run away. It feels empty.” She just looked at me. It was clear that she needed more information to understand what I was trying to convey. “It’s like in my head, I built this up to be this huge thing...”

“It IS a huge thing,” she interrupted.

“It is, but it isn’t.” I retorted. “It’s like my whole life has been for this, and now that I have it, nothing has changed. It’s the same old world. It’s just another day.” I glanced at the crow perched in the tree and decided to amend my previous statement, “Although, it has been a very strange day.” The crow, as if in response to my statement, cawed loudly three times and flew off. 

“You have everything you could want. This is what people like us live for, and you have it. 'This is the day that the Lord has made,' She concluded forcefully. Then sympathetically added, 'Rejoice, and be glad.'

I turned to face her, leaning on the rail with my left elbow. “You don’t understand,” I concluded.

“Oh I understand. Do you understand? That’s the question!”

“Do I understand what?” I demanded.

“Are you so narcissistic and egomaniacal that you cannot enjoy this without the whole world stopping to acknowledge it?”

“This isn’t about my narcissism!”

“That is EXACTLY what this is about. You’re incapable of experiencing joy, unless the whole world is there to tell you how amazing you are. Well, let me break it down for you. All of the people in your life that matter are here, right now, celebrating this huge accomplishment while you set off by yourself talking to crows and smoking cigars. As far as you should be concerned, everyone in that room IS the whole world -- they are certainly YOUR whole world! The world HAS stopped and come to celebrate you and your achievements. Can’t you see that?”

I had no response handy other than, “I wasn’t talking to the crow,” but that seemed to lack both the required force and relevance.

I glanced into the party and saw my wife chatting easily with someone. She looked quickly out onto the veranda and then looked back at the person to whom she was talking, the plastic smile never once leaving her face.

“She suspects that there is something between us,” I said to Nikki.

Nikki turned carefully to peer at my wife, and then back at me quickly, as if she were afraid to get caught looking at her. “I’m not surprised. She’s a smart woman. Has she said anything?”

“No,” I said in a manner that dismissed the idea, “She hasn’t said anything. But I know her. I can read it in her eyes. She suspects, but she’s not sure, and she prefers to ignore her suspicions.”

“Well if you were my husband and you were sleeping around, I would be devastated. I don’t know if I could keep it to myself, or ignore my suspicions.”

“I’m not sleeping around!” I interjected.

“Oh really? What would you call it?”

“Sleeping around implies that I’m running around with all kinds of people. You’re the only person I am having sex with.”

“Regardless of how you want to label it, you’re being unfaithful to your wife.”

“I’m not being unfaithful. I am very faithful to her. I love her more than anyone or anything in the world. She’s my best friend. I’ll never leave her. I am not being unfaithful to her, I am just having sex with someone else.”

Nikki coughed a laugh that made it clear that she was offended. “Glad to see that in the midst of your existential crisis you haven’t lost your amazing powers of rationalization.”

“It’s not a rationalization! You provide things that she can’t. She and I have never been compatible in the sack. It doesn’t mean that our marriage is bad, or that we don’t care about each other. It just means that we just can’t seem to fulfill each other in the bedroom. Now you and I, we’re very sexually compatible. And we can discuss things that she cannot. So I am not being unfaithful. I am not sleeping around. I am just addressing a need. I’m making up for a deficit in our relationship. It’s a supplement.

“And you don’t see that as being unfaithful at all?” she asked in a way that both challenged and expressed doubt. 

“I don’t think I’m being unfaithful to a pair of pants when I patch up a hole. I don’t think I’m unfaithful to my breakfast because I take a multivitamin to supplement it. For me to be unfaithful to her would mean that I replace her entirely. I haven’t replaced her. I’m not going to replace her. I am just making up for those needs for which she cannot provide.”

“So that’s it? That’s all I am to you?”

“Look! I care about you. We have something special, but it’s not what she and I have.”

“So you’re just using me. I’m just an itch to scratch. Nothing more.”

“Come on! I never said that. You’re putting words in my mouth. I’m just saying that whatever you and I have, it has limits. I love my wife. I will always love my wife. You and I have sex and some intellection stimulation. Let’s not make what we have more than what it is.”

“Wow!” she said in a manner that betrayed a sense of being both hurt and offended, coupled with a tone that proclaimed both irony and disdain, “You can be one charming sonofabitch, you know that?”

“Hey! I never lied to you about what this is. So if you’re hurt by me telling you what you should already know, that’s your fault, not mine. You know what this is.”

“No,” she said acrimoniously as she turned and stormed back toward the party, “I know what this was!”

She opened the door to go back into the party just as my wife was opening it to come out onto the veranda. She saw that Nikki was clearly upset. “Is everything alright?” she asked Nikki while looking at me. 

“Yeah,” Nikki responded, pausing in her march away from me.

“What’s wrong?” 

“Your husband! He’s the only man in the world, who can be offered the world on a silver platter, who would then complain that its not round enough, or blue enough.” She stormed off, vanishing into the crowd.

“What was that about?” my wife asked.

“We had a difference in opinion. She was overly committed to her own perspective and could not accept mine. Then she got upset.”

“You intellectuals,” she said with exasperation, “you’re more temperamental than artists! Anyway,” she added competently, “it’s time you come back to the party.” I agreed and rejoined the party. For the rest of the night, I seldom left her side.

I sit -- ground into a fine powder by the night’s gluttonous gravity. When I awoke this morning, I had no idea that the day of my death had arrived. But as the day drove relentlessly on, it was becoming clear that it was a good day to die. I spent the night trying to ignore the circumstances of my life and hiding in plain sight by drinking pints of beer and shots of bourbon. I started drinking early and it was late when I arrived back at the condo. 

The emptiness within me had been growing for months. It was like a black hole in my soul, sucking in and destroying everything and everyone that got too close. I had everything I wanted and I no longer wanted any of it.

In my emptiness I walked.

 

Without a single word to anyone, even myself, I rose from my bed and slipped into a pair of familiar, unwashed jeans that were marred by the doodles of past days. I pulled on a tee-shirt which was lying on the floor near my bed. I then covered it with a beige wool sweater, which I had owned for years. It was comfortable and warm. At once time it was fine enough to wear to parties and important outings, but now it was worn and deformed by time and use, only worn while lying around the condo, or with casual weekend attire. Stepping into a pair of old sneakers, I exited the condo, descending the marble steps that led to the main door, burst out onto the sidewalk, and walked in no particular direction.

 

The cool of the autumn morning pierced my clothing, pricking at my skin. The chill of the October morning brushed against my exposed face as I thrust myself forward. The streets of Boston were still mostly quiet and I found myself focusing on the sound of my sneakers scraping and slapping the cold concrete sidewalk. The air was filled with distant rumblings of activity that were occasionally submerged in the sounds of sparrows and finches which resented the closeness of my approach. Pigeons frequently wobbled around me, looking for a handout, and I found myself eavesdropping on a one-sided conversation of a crow barking a message to something or someone that did not appear to be listening.

 

After a while, I noticed I was heading toward the river. At its bank, I turned and walked parallel to it, tracing its edge with my path, my back turned to the heart of the city. I had yet to utter a single word, syllable, or grunt to myself. If I were asked what I was thinking as I walked, I would not be able to answer. I was without thought, without expectation, without destination. There was nothing within me at that moment but a profound sense of nothingness. I was filled with emptiness. Yet, the vacuum-filled vessel that was me was propelled forward by some unknown and nameless force. I was like a balloon without a knot released by a mischievous child, and I walked.

 

The cool October morning gradually became a hot October afternoon. I tore off my sweater without missing a beat in the sound of my footfalls. It spent the afternoon migrating under one arm, then the other, then over one shoulder, then the other, never finding a comfortable place to rest. As the sun began its descent in the west, I found myself burrowing into the sweater once more as a chill began to return.

 

I continued to walk all that evening and night. I never stopped once that day to eat, or to rest. I did not sleep that night. I just walked. By morning, the city has receded far behind me. I had been walking for a whole day. The river had tired of our acquaintance long ago. It had turned off in another direction sometime during the night. The concrete sidewalks had transformed into soft, damp ground. I had moments when I realized how tired and hungry I should be, but I was neither. So I walked.

  

I did not know why I was walking or to where I was going �" I just kept walking. I was so far from home, so lost, so directionless, but I could not stop. I did not try to stop. I walked. I walked all that second day. My body was beginning to resist. It began to stream that I should stop. I ignored it and pushed forward. I lost my balance frequently; yet, I stumbled forward and managed to stay on my feet, and I walked.

 

I awoke in a field. A cold drizzle was tapping my face. I deduced that I had passed out. My clothes were soaked and I was lying in mud. I inspected my body with my fingertips. I attempted to push my body up from the mud, my hands sinking into the mire until they found a firmness that could be used to push myself upward. I positioned my right food under my waist and ascended toward something like an erect stature, but my legs were rubbery and unsteady and I fell back into the muck. I made a second attempt, and caught myself as I fell forward, my feet eventually catching up with the force of gravity and I resumed my walking.

 

 Something dark was hovering in the wind above me. “Probably a vulture,” I scoffed to myself. It was the first thing I had said since I set out on my trek to nowhere, and the sound of my own voice was startling. The dark shape hovered in the sky behind me like an ominous shadow. Once my footsteps found a steady pattern, I forgot the shape that seemed to be following me.

 

The morning spilled into the afternoon and the wet ground dried quickly. The shape, seemingly tired of being ignored, made its presence known once more. The shape drew closer and began quacking. I knew from its voice that it was crow and it sounded as if it were laughing at me. The crow continued to haunt the sky above me, circling, quacking, barking, cawing. At times I thought it was saying words, though I knew that was impossible and I consoled myself by explaining to myself that I was beginning to hallucinate from the physical exertion and lack of food and water, as well as a lack of any quality sleep for more than a day. Yet, even though I was rational enough to know this, I found it impossible to dismiss the crow, which was circling above me, cawing over and over in a way that to my exhausted ears sounded like, “Woe! Woe! Woe!”

 

I lifted my eyes heavenward to inspect the bird, and as I did so, the toe of my sneaker caught a piece of earth and I flew forward, crashing onto the unyielding ground, landing with a dull thud. I issued a series of expletives as I once more tried to lift myself off of the ground. I was too exhausted and my body was too heavy. I lay in field inhaling topsoil, choking on the thick earthworm air. The sweat on my brow made the dirt cake on my forehead. My walk was finished.

 

I may have passed out again, but I was soon stirred by the flapping sound of powerful wings. I strained to raise my face from the ground and looked out in front of me. The crow strutted back and forth about a yard away from me. Its glossy black wings reflected the sunlight, allowing its feathers to take on an aura of a rainbow. Its eyes constantly on me as it paced, wielding its sharp beak like a threat. It waddled back and forth, fixing me in its relentless gaze.

 

“I hate to break it to you, little fellow, but I’m not dead yet.” felt in the dirt for something to throw at it. I was gripped with a fear that it would try to eat me while I was passed out or sleeping. The crow, for its part, never broke its stride, never unfixed its gaze.

 

“Fool!” I thought I heard the crow speak. It is hard to explain because it sounded like a crow. It was not speaking in any conventional sense. It was barking and cawing and making normal crow noises; yet, somehow, those noises were understandable. I was hearing the crow as it made its crow sounds, but it was also as if I were hearing it speak, not with my ears as audible words, but with my chest �" with my heart �" as if I were sensing its words. But make no mistake, somehow, the crow was communicating with me, and it seemed less than impressed with me.

 

My natural reaction was to ask it if it had just spoken to me, but then I realized the absurdity, not only of thinking that a crow had said something coherent, but also that it was more absurd to ask it afterward if it had said something cogent. Asking a crow about what I had clearly imagined is crazier than imagining it in the first place.

 

“Fool!” it repeated.

 

“Ah,” I suddenly had a flash of insight, “you’re one of those pet birds. I’ve heard about that. Some farmer catches a crow, slices its tongue or something and teaches to parrot certain words. Phew. For a second I thought I had lost it.

 

“Fool!”

 

“Didn’t they teach you any other words?” I found the strength to push up my upper body and moved to a sitting position. “Well, I’m alive, so shoo! Shoo!” I began to wave my arms and fling them in its direction.

 

The crow stopped pacing. I thought it was because it was going to fly away, but it just stopped, looking at me with an expression that could only be described as disdain. “Disappointment!” it barked.

 

“Disappointment? That’s a big word to teach a bird,” I mused.

 

“Fool!” the crow replied sharply. “Nobody has taught me a thing. I am not mimicking word! I am creating them! And you, mortal, are a fool and a disappointment.”

 

“What the…?” Nothing could have prepared me for this. “What are you?”

 

“You and I are acquainted.”

 

 “Acquainted?” I parroted the crow. “I don’t think so,” I concluded with a sarcastic laugh. “I think I would remember a talking crow.”

 

“We met many years ago. You were on a swing with an old woman. She was very wise and such high hopes for you.”

 

My mind instantly found itself thirty years before. I felt myself on the swing. I saw my great-grandmother. I smelled the smells and felt the breeze. I heard the rattling rustle of the wind in the trees, and I saw the crow.

 

“That was you!” I said in a way that was partly and exclamation and partly a question.

 

“You were a fool then, and you are a fool now. The only difference is that then you still had promise, but now you are just a disappointment.”

 

“Look, where do you get off telling me I’m a disappointment?”

 

“I have watched you your whole life. I have watched you all your lives.”

 

“All my lives? Lives? What does that mean?”

 

“I am crow. I am wisdom. I fly between worlds. I fly back and forth between life and death. Death is wiser than life, and I am made alive by eating death.”

 

I was completely out of my depth. I did not understand anything that was happening. I did not understand how any of this was possible. I was not even sure it was happening at all. And lives? What was that supposed to mean?

 

“You mean like reincarnation?” I asked.

 

“Fool!”

 

“What do you mean lives if not reincarnation?”

 

“There is not only one world. Your lives are not one after another, but all at once. You do not reincarnate. You are incarnate in many places at once. You are living in many places at once.”

 

“That’s impossible!”

 

“Fool! Where do you go when you dream?”

 

“I don’t go anywhere.”

 

“Where does your mind go?”

 

“My mind does not go anywhere.”

 

“Fool! Your mind goes everywhere. When you dream, your mind ventures to another world. Why do you have memories in your dreams that you have never experienced? Why do you know people in dreams you have never met? It is because those memories and those people exist, right now, with you, somewhere else.”

 

“I guess that makes a kind of sense,” I concluded. “But everyone knows that dreams are just the subconscious working out issues while we sleep.”

 

“I am standing in hundreds of worlds at once at this very moment. Are you going to tell me what is real when you only know one tiny part of one tiny world?”

 

It was then I realized I was insane. I must be. Nothing else made sense. Whether it was an insanity brought on by extreme conditions and malnutrition, or something more permanent, the one thing that was clear was my insanity. “I’m not buying any of this!” I yelled in the crow’s direction. “I’ve been walking for days. That alone is crazy, right? And whatever mental breakdown I had when I started, it has clearly been exacerbated by the long walk with no food or water or sleep. I’m hallucinating. My brain and body are shutting down and I’m seeing and hearing things. That’s all this is.”

 

“Tell me, mortal, do you believe in God?”

 

“Sometimes,” I confessed after some thought.

           

“This God in which you sometimes believe, is it all-powerful? Can it do anything?”

 

“That’s what I have been led to believe.”

 

“This God, where is it? Is it everywhere?”

 

“That’s what my mother told me when I was a child.”

 

“If this God is everywhere, then it must be in all things. If it is not in all things, then it is not everywhere, yes?

 

“I guess so.”

 

“Am I not a thing?”

 

“What?” I was suddenly confused.

 

“Am I not a thing?”

 

“Well, that’s kind of the issue, isn’t it? If you are real then you’re a thing, but if you are just a product of my mental breakdown, then you are not a thing.”

 

“Wrong, fool. I am a thing either way. It is simply a question of what kind of thing I am. A hallucination is a thing, just as a crow is a thing. So the question is still before you: Am I a thing?”

 

“Well, I guess if you put it like that, then you are a thing, yeah.”

 

“So, mortal, this God in which you sometimes believe is in everything, everywhere and all things are possible for this God, yes?”

 

“Yeah, that sounds right.”

 

“Then if all things are possible for this God of yours, how can you dismiss me as impossibility? If this God of yours is in all things, and I am a thing, then how can you decide that God is not in me, speaking to you through me?”

 

“You are a hallucination. You’re a mental breakdown. You are the product of overexertion and malnutrition.”

 

“Would a miracle be any less miraculous because you can explain it away? Does a vision cease to be a vision simply because you know what conditions that may cause or contribute to the vision?”

 

“Well, yeah,” I concluded more as a reaction rather than as a product of reflection. “Doesn’t it?”

 

“This is what the old woman wanted to avoid. You are white.”

 

“What’s wrong being white?” I demanded to know, offended by the judgment.

 

“Things are dead to the whites. There is so much they miss because they refuse to see it. They decide things are dead, and so they are to them.”

 

“Come on, that’s just unfair. Dead things are dead. Things that are not real are not real. It’s stupid to think otherwise.”

 

“Was the old woman stupid?”

 

“No. She was not stupid. She was just misguided in her beliefs.”

 

“And when she visited you the night she died, did she not transform into wisdom?”

 

“No she didn’t. I dreamed she visited me. I dreamed she changed into a crow. It was a child’s dream. Nothing more!”

 

“I think it is you who are misguided in your beliefs if you can convince yourself that what is real never happened. You are so certain about things you know nothing about! You are so arrogant! But you are dust!”

 

“Hallucination or not, this is stupid,” I eventually concluded after much reflection. I forced myself up and staggered forward. I would have stomped on the crow on my way, but at the last minute, it jumped out of the way with a shriek and pecking hard at my leg with its beak.

 

“FOOL!” I heard behind me, followed by the sound of flapping wings, as I walked forward, refusing to look back.

 

 “Mortal! Mortal!” I heard as I awakened. My walking had led me into a forest. My body could no longer endure and I collapsed. I have no idea how long I was out. “Mortal! Mortal!” I looked up and found the crow perched on a branch above me. 

 

“Mortal!  Mortal!” Stand and look!” 

 

I obstinately rose, stretching as I did so in an attempt to ease away the aches that plagued my body. I looked around. “What?” I asked, seeing nothing.

 

“Look!” 

 

I scanned the forest again but still saw nothing.  “What am I supposed to be looking at?” I asked impatiently.

 

“Look!” 

 

I slowly and deliberately rotated three-hundred-sixty degrees, intensely scrutinizing the wood as I turned.  There was nothing except what looked like an endless array of trees in every direction. “What exactly and I supposed to be looking at?” 

 

“Mortal!  Mortal!  Who are these?”

 

Suddenly two figures emerged from behind some trees.  I recognized them at once. “It’s . . . they’re my parents,” I said, my voice moving from impatience to surprise. 

 

“Mortal!  Mortal!” the crow spoke again after a moment, “Who are these?” 

 

Four more individuals came out from behind trees. “Those people are my grandparents.”

 

“Mortal!  Mortal!  Who are these?” The crow’s tone seemed to have a mocking quality.

Another group of people advanced from behind trees, eight of them this time. I scrutinized each one of them, immediately recognizing a face that I had not even pictured in my mind for years. “That’s my great-grandmother! I’m not sure who the other people are, but that is my great-grandmother!”

 

“Mortal!  Mortal!  Who are these?”  

 

Now there were sixteen more. “I don’t know them,” I confessed.

 

“Mortal!  Mortal!  Who are these?” 

 

I now saw a diverse crowd of people emerging out into the open. Some of the people were white, some were not. Some were wearing clothing and a manner of dress that I have only seen in old photographs of European immigrants. Others were clearly Lenape from long ago �" the younger men with shaved heads or Mohawks; the older men wearing long-haired wigs; the women wrapped in deerskin wraps. “I don’t know any of those people. I’ve never seen any of them before.”

 

The entire assembly of thousands of people stood silently. All of them, my parents, my grandparents, my great-grandparents, the host of strangers, white, tan, and red, all looked at me disapprovingly.

 

Then the crow repeated again, “Mortal!  Mortal!  Who are these?” I cringed when I heard the question once more. I wanted it to stop. I wanted the crow to leave me alone. I wanted all these people to go away. I felt shamed and exposed and I did not know why. But the crow kept repeating over and over, “Mortal!  Mortal!  Who are these?  And who are these?  And who are these?”

 

Every time the crow asked the question, a new gathering of people were added to the assembly that had been slowly congregating before me. “I don’t know,” is all I could honestly reply. “I don’t know,” I said over and over as the crow paraded more and more people in front of me, all of whom looked at me with an expression of condemnation and menace. The entire forest seemed to be swollen with people and I was beginning to feel smothered by this synagogue of scorn that had assembled in response to the crow’s unrelenting questioning.

 

“I don’t know! I don’t know! Why are you doing this? Who are these people?” I demanded in desperation.

 

“These are all the people it took to make you,” the crow said bluntly. “These are your ancestors. These people are who you are. They have labored hard through harsh lives for generation after generation, just so you could be �" and they are all disappointed with you.”

 

“Disappointed in me?” I asked, wrestling with the words, “Why would they possibly be disappointed with me?”

 

“How could they be otherwise?” the crow replied in a way that pained me.

 

“But why?” I implored, “Why is everyone so disappointed in me?”

 

“Because you seek to go where you have not been invited.”

 

“What does that mean? Where have I gone? Not invited for what?” My mind was desperately trying to unravel this riddle, but the more I failed to make sense of it, the more distressed I became.

 

“It is not polite to go where you have not been invited.”

 

“I don’t know what that means! Tell me what you want from me! What do they expect of me? How have I failed them?”

 

“Mortal, what is on your hands?” The crow’s question was cold and unfeeling.

 

I looked down at my hands and saw that they were covered and dripping with blood. I suddenly felt frightened and nauseous. “What the...?” I exclaimed. “Where is that blood coming from?” I noticed that the sleeves of my sweater were stained. I rolled back the sleeves hastily, and I saw deep gashes on both my wrists and the underside of my forearms. I pulled off my sweater and tried to apply pressure to the wounds. It was impossible. I dropped to my knees as I attempted to rip the sweater apart and wrap strips around the lacerations. I rocked nervously and felt as if I were about to vomit. The blood flowed out of the cuts so forcefully that whenever I attempted to inspect the wounds, I was baptized in blood. “What is happening?” I shouted at no one

           

The crow, apparently unmoved by my horror, calmly stated, “You should not seek to go where you are not invited.”  Then it hopped from its branch and flew away.

 

I lay on the forest floor, hemorrhaging. The silent chorus of thousands broke their silence and began repeating my name, first as whispers, but it grew in volume until they were all shouting my name. Some of them were banging against trees with clubs and other objects. I lost consciousness to the sound of pounding and the repeated shouting of my name.