The Enchiridion
By Epictetus

1. Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control
are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are
our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation,
command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.

The things in our control are by nature free, unrestrained, unhindered;
but those not in our control are weak, slavish, restrained, belonging
to others. Remember, then, that if you suppose that things which are
slavish by nature are also free, and that what belongs to others is
your own, then you will be hindered. You will lament, you will be
disturbed, and you will find fault both with gods and men. But if
you suppose that only to be your own which is your own, and what belongs
to others such as it really is, then no one will ever compel you or
restrain you. Further, you will find fault with no one or accuse no
one. You will do nothing against your will. No one will hurt you,
you will have no enemies, and you not be harmed.

Aiming therefore at such great things, remember that you must not
allow yourself to be carried, even with a slight tendency, towards
the attainment of lesser things. Instead, you must entirely quit some
things and for the present postpone the rest. But if you would both
have these great things, along with power and riches, then you will
not gain even the latter, because you aim at the former too: but you
will absolutely fail of the former, by which alone happiness and freedom
are achieved.

Work, therefore to be able to say to every harsh appearance, “You
are but an appearance, and not absolutely the thing you appear to
be.” And then examine it by those rules which you have, and first,
and chiefly, by this: whether it concerns the things which are in
our own control, or those which are not; and, if it concerns anything
not in our control, be prepared to say that it is nothing to you.

2. Remember that following desire promises the attainment of that
of which you are desirous; and aversion promises the avoiding that
to which you are averse. However, he who fails to obtain the object
of his desire is disappointed, and he who incurs the object of his
aversion wretched. If, then, you confine your aversion to those objects
only which are contrary to the natural use of your faculties, which
you have in your own control, you will never incur anything to which
you are averse. But if you are averse to sickness, or death, or poverty,
you will be wretched. Remove aversion, then, from all things that
are not in our control, and transfer it to things contrary to the
nature of what is in our control. But, for the present, totally suppress
desire: for, if you desire any of the things which are not in your
own control, you must necessarily be disappointed; and of those which
are, and which it would be laudable to desire, nothing is yet in your
possession. Use only the appropriate actions of pursuit and avoidance;
and even these lightly, and with gentleness and reservation.

3. With regard to whatever objects give you delight, are useful, or
are deeply loved, remember to tell yourself of what general nature
they are, beginning from the most insignificant things. If, for example,
you are fond of a specific ceramic cup, remind yourself that it is
only ceramic cups in general of which you are fond. Then, if it breaks,
you will not be disturbed. If you kiss your child, or your wife, say
that you only kiss things which are human, and thus you will not be
disturbed if either of them dies.

4. When you are going about any action, remind yourself what nature
the action is. If you are going to bathe, picture to yourself the
things which usually happen in the bath: some people splash the water,
some push, some use abusive language, and others steal. Thus you will
more safely go about this action if you say to yourself, “I will now
go bathe, and keep my own mind in a state conformable to nature.”
And in the same manner with regard to every other action. For thus,
if any hindrance arises in bathing, you will have it ready to say,
“It was not only to bathe that I desired, but to keep my mind in a
state conformable to nature; and I will not keep it if I am bothered
at things that happen.

5. Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions
which they form concerning things. Death, for instance, is not terrible,
else it would have appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists
in our notion of death that it is terrible. When therefore we are
hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us never attribute it to others,
but to ourselves; that is, to our own principles. An uninstructed
person will lay the fault of his own bad condition upon others. Someone
just starting instruction will lay the fault on himself. Some who
is perfectly instructed will place blame neither on others nor on
himself.

6. Don't be prideful with any excellence that is not your own. If
a horse should be prideful and say, ” I am handsome,” it would be
supportable. But when you are prideful, and say, ” I have a handsome
horse,” know that you are proud of what is, in fact, only the good
of the horse. What, then, is your own? Only your reaction to the appearances
of things. Thus, when you behave conformably to nature in reaction
to how things appear, you will be proud with reason; for you will
take pride in some good of your own.

7. Consider when, on a voyage, your ship is anchored; if you go on
shore to get water you may along the way amuse yourself with picking
up a shellish, or an onion. However, your thoughts and continual attention
ought to be bent towards the ship, waiting for the captain to call
on board; you must then immediately leave all these things, otherwise
you will be thrown into the ship, bound neck and feet like a sheep.
So it is with life. If, instead of an onion or a shellfish, you are
given a wife or child, that is fine. But if the captain calls, you
must run to the ship, leaving them, and regarding none of them. But
if you are old, never go far from the ship: lest, when you are called,
you should be unable to come in time.

8. Don't demand that things happen as you wish, but wish that they
happen as they do happen, and you will go on well.

9. Sickness is a hindrance to the body, but not to your ability to
choose, unless that is your choice. Lameness is a hindrance to the
leg, but not to your ability to choose. Say this to yourself with
regard to everything that happens, then you will see such obstacles
as hindrances to something else, but not to yourself.

10. With every accident, ask yourself what abilities you have for
making a proper use of it. If you see an attractive person, you will
find that self-restraint is the ability you have against your desire.
If you are in pain, you will find fortitude. If you hear unpleasant
language, you will find patience. And thus habituated, the appearances
of things will not hurry you away along with them.

11. Never say of anything, “I have lost it”; but, “I have returned
it.” Is your child dead? It is returned. Is your wife dead? She is
returned. Is your estate taken away? Well, and is not that likewise
returned? “But he who took it away is a bad man.” What difference
is it to you who the giver assigns to take it back? While he gives
it to you to possess, take care of it; but don't view it as your own,
just as travelers view a hotel.

12. If you want to improve, reject such reasonings as these: “If I
neglect my affairs, I'll have no income; if I don't correct my servant,
he will be bad.” For it is better to die with hunger, exempt from
grief and fear, than to live in affluence with perturbation; and it
is better your servant should be bad, than you unhappy.

Begin therefore from little things. Is a little oil spilt? A little
wine stolen? Say to yourself, “This is the price paid for apathy,
for tranquillity, and nothing is to be had for nothing.” When you
call your servant, it is possible that he may not come; or, if he
does, he may not do what you want. But he is by no means of such importance
that it should be in his power to give you any disturbance.

13. If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid
with regard to external things. Don't wish to be thought to know anything;
and even if you appear to be somebody important to others, distrust
yourself. For, it is difficult to both keep your faculty of choice
in a state conformable to nature, and at the same time acquire external
things. But while you are careful about the one, you must of necessity
neglect the other.

14. If you wish your children, and your wife, and your friends to
live for ever, you are stupid; for you wish to be in control of things
which you cannot, you wish for things that belong to others to be
your own. So likewise, if you wish your servant to be without fault,
you are a fool; for you wish vice not to be vice,” but something else.
But, if you wish to have your desires undisappointed, this is in your
own control. Exercise, therefore, what is in your control. He is the
master of every other person who is able to confer or remove whatever
that person wishes either to have or to avoid. Whoever, then, would
be free, let him wish nothing, let him decline nothing, which depends
on others else he must necessarily be a slave.

15. Remember that you must behave in life as at a dinner party. Is
anything brought around to you? Put out your hand and take your share
with moderation. Does it pass by you? Don't stop it. Is it not yet
come? Don't stretch your desire towards it, but wait till it reaches
you. Do this with regard to children, to a wife, to public posts,
to riches, and you will eventually be a worthy partner of the feasts
of the gods. And if you don't even take the things which are set before
you, but are able even to reject them, then you will not only be a
partner at the feasts of the gods, but also of their empire. For,
by doing this, Diogenes, Heraclitus and others like them, deservedly
became, and were called, divine.

16. When you see anyone weeping in grief because his son has gone
abroad, or is dead, or because he has suffered in his affairs, be
careful that the appearance may not misdirect you. Instead, distinguish
within your own mind, and be prepared to say, “It's not the accident
that distresses this person., because it doesn't distress another
person; it is the judgment which he makes about it.” As far as words
go, however, don't reduce yourself to his level, and certainly do
not moan with him. Do not moan inwardly either.

17. Remember that you are an actor in a drama, of such a kind as the
author pleases to make it. If short, of a short one; if long, of a
long one. If it is his pleasure you should act a poor man, a cripple,
a governor, or a private person, see that you act it naturally. For
this is your business, to act well the character assigned you; to
choose it is another's.

18. When a raven happens to croak unluckily, don't allow the appearance
hurry you away with it, but immediately make the distinction to yourself,
and say, “None of these things are foretold to me; but either to my
paltry body, or property, or reputation, or children, or wife. But
to me all omens are lucky, if I will. For whichever of these things
happens, it is in my control to derive advantage from it.”

19. You may be unconquerable, if you enter into no combat in which
it is not in your own control to conquer. When, therefore, you see
anyone eminent in honors, or power, or in high esteem on any other
account, take heed not to be hurried away with the appearance, and
to pronounce him happy; for, if the essence of good consists in things
in our own control, there will be no room for envy or emulation. But,
for your part, don't wish to be a general, or a senator, or a consul,
but to be free; and the only way to this is a contempt of things not
in our own control.

20. Remember, that not he who gives ill language or a blow insults,
but the principle which represents these things as insulting. When,
therefore, anyone provokes you, be assured that it is your own opinion
which provokes you. Try, therefore, in the first place, not to be
hurried away with the appearance. For if you once gain time and respite,
you will more easily command yourself.

21. Let death and exile, and all other things which appear terrible
be daily before your eyes, but chiefly death, and you win never entertain
any abject thought, nor too eagerly covet anything.

22. If you have an earnest desire of attaining to philosophy, prepare
yourself from the very first to be laughed at, to be sneered by the
multitude, to hear them say,.” He is returned to us a philosopher
all at once,” and ” Whence this supercilious look?” Now, for your
part, don't have a supercilious look indeed; but keep steadily to
those things which appear best to you as one appointed by God to this
station. For remember that, if you adhere to the same point, those
very persons who at first ridiculed will afterwards admire you. But
if you are conquered by them, you will incur a double ridicule.

23. If you ever happen to turn your attention to externals, so as
to wish to please anyone, be assured that you have ruined your scheme
of life. Be contented, then, in everything with being a philosopher;
and, if you wish to be thought so likewise by anyone, appear so to
yourself, and it will suffice you.

24. Don't allow such considerations as these distress you. “I will
live in dishonor, and be nobody anywhere.” For, if dishonor is an
evil, you can no more be involved in any evil by the means of another,
than be engaged in anything base. Is it any business of yours, then,
to get power, or to be admitted to an entertainment? By no means.
How, then, after all, is this a dishonor? And how is it true that
you will be nobody anywhere, when you ought to be somebody in those
things only which are in your own control, in which you may be of
the greatest consequence? “But my friends will be unassisted.” –
What do you mean by unassisted? They will not have money from you,
nor will you make them Roman citizens. Who told you, then, that these
are among the things in our own control, and not the affair of others?
And who can give to another the things which he has not himself? “Well,
but get them, then, that we too may have a share.” If I can get them
with the preservation of my own honor and fidelity and greatness of
mind, show me the way and I will get them; but if you require me to
lose my own proper good that you may gain what is not good, consider
how inequitable and foolish you are. Besides, which would you rather
have, a sum of money, or a friend of fidelity and honor? Rather assist
me, then, to gain this character than require me to do those things
by which I may lose it. Well, but my country, say you, as far as depends
on me, will be unassisted. Here again, what assistance is this you
mean? “It will not have porticoes nor baths of your providing.” And
what signifies that? Why, neither does a smith provide it with shoes,
or a shoemaker with arms. It is enough if everyone fully performs
his own proper business. And were you to supply it with another citizen
of honor and fidelity, would not he be of use to it? Yes. Therefore
neither are you yourself useless to it. “What place, then, say you,
will I hold in the state?” Whatever you can hold with the preservation
of your fidelity and honor. But if, by desiring to be useful to that,
you lose these, of what use can you be to your country when you are
become faithless and void of shame.

25. Is anyone preferred before you at an entertainment, or in a compliment,
or in being admitted to a consultation? If these things are good,
you ought to be glad that he has gotten them; and if they are evil,
don't be grieved that you have not gotten them. And remember that
you cannot, without using the same means [which others do] to acquire
things not in our own control, expect to be thought worthy of an equal
share of them. For how can he who does not frequent the door of any
[great] man, does not attend him, does not praise him, have an equal
share with him who does? You are unjust, then, and insatiable, if
you are unwilling to pay the price for which these things are sold,
and would have them for nothing. For how much is lettuce sold? Fifty
cents, for instance. If another, then, paying fifty cents, takes the
lettuce, and you, not paying it, go without them, don't imagine that
he has gained any advantage over you. For as he has the lettuce, so
you have the fifty cents which you did not give. So, in the present
case, you have not been invited to such a person's entertainment,
because you have not paid him the price for which a supper is sold.
It is sold for praise; it is sold for attendance. Give him then the
value, if it is for your advantage. But if you would, at the same
time, not pay the one and yet receive the other, you are insatiable,
and a blockhead. Have you nothing, then, instead of the supper? Yes,
indeed, you have: the not praising him, whom you don't like to praise;
the not bearing with his behavior at coming in.

26. The will of nature may be learned from those things in which we
don't distinguish from each other. For example, when our neighbor's
boy breaks a cup, or the like, we are presently ready to say, “These
things will happen.” Be assured, then, that when your own cup likewise
is broken, you ought to be affected just as when another's cup was
broken. Apply this in like manner to greater things. Is the child
or wife of another dead? There is no one who would not say, “This
is a human accident.” but if anyone's own child happens to die, it
is presently, “Alas I how wretched am I!” But it should be remembered
how we are affected in hearing the same thing concerning others.

27. As a mark is not set up for the sake of missing the aim, so neither
does the nature of evil exist in the world.

28. If a person gave your body to any stranger he met on his way,
you would certainly be angry. And do you feel no shame in handing
over your own mind to be confused and mystified by anyone who happens
to verbally attack you?

29. In every affair consider what precedes and follows, and then undertake
it. Otherwise you will begin with spirit; but not having thought of
the consequences, when some of them appear you will shamefully desist.
“I would conquer at the Olympic games.” But consider what precedes
and follows, and then, if it is for your advantage, engage in the
affair. You must conform to rules, submit to a diet, refrain from
dainties; exercise your body, whether you choose it or not, at a stated
hour, in heat and cold; you must drink no cold water, nor sometimes
even wine. In a word, you must give yourself up to your master, as
to a physician. Then, in the combat, you may be thrown into a ditch,
dislocate your arm, turn your ankle, swallow dust, be whipped, and,
after all, lose the victory. When you have evaluated all this, if
your inclination still holds, then go to war. Otherwise, take notice,
you will behave like children who sometimes play like wrestlers, sometimes
gladiators, sometimes blow a trumpet, and sometimes act a tragedy
when they have seen and admired these shows. Thus you too will be
at one time a wrestler, at another a gladiator, now a philosopher,
then an orator; but with your whole soul, nothing at all. Like an
ape, you mimic all you see, and one thing after another is sure to
please you, but is out of favor as soon as it becomes familiar. For
you have never entered upon anything considerately, nor after having
viewed the whole matter on all sides, or made any scrutiny into it,
but rashly, and with a cold inclination. Thus some, when they have
seen a philosopher and heard a man speaking like Euphrates (though,
indeed, who can speak like him?), have a mind to be philosophers too.
Consider first, man, what the matter is, and what your own nature
is able to bear. If you would be a wrestler, consider your shoulders,
your back, your thighs; for different persons are made for different
things. Do you think that you can act as you do, and be a philosopher?
That you can eat and drink, and be angry and discontented as you are
now? You must watch, you must labor, you must get the better of certain
appetites, must quit your acquaintance, be despised by your servant,
be laughed at by those you meet; come off worse than others in everything,
in magistracies, in honors, in courts of judicature. When you have
considered all these things round, approach, if you please; if, by
parting with them, you have a mind to purchase apathy, freedom, and
tranquillity. If not, don't come here; don't, like children, be one
while a philosopher, then a publican, then an orator, and then one
of Caesar's officers. These things are not consistent. You must be
one man, either good or bad. You must cultivate either your own ruling
faculty or externals, and apply yourself either to things within or
without you; that is, be either a philosopher, or one of the vulgar.

30. Duties are universally measured by relations. Is anyone a father?
If so, it is implied that the children should take care of him, submit
to him in everything, patiently listen to his reproaches, his correction.
But he is a bad father. Is you naturally entitled, then, to a good
father? No, only to a father. Is a brother unjust? Well, keep your
own situation towards him. Consider not what he does, but what you
are to do to keep your own faculty of choice in a state conformable
to nature. For another will not hurt you unless you please. You will
then be hurt when you think you are hurt. In this manner, therefore,
you will find, from the idea of a neighbor, a citizen, a general,
the corresponding duties if you accustom yourself to contemplate the
several relations.

31. Be assured that the essential property of piety towards the gods
is to form right opinions concerning them, as existing “I and as governing
the universe with goodness and justice. And fix yourself in this resolution,
to obey them, and yield to them, and willingly follow them in all
events, as produced by the most perfect understanding. For thus you
will never find fault with the gods, nor accuse them as neglecting
you. And it is not possible for this to be effected any other way
than by withdrawing yourself from things not in our own control, and
placing good or evil in those only which are. For if you suppose any
of the things not in our own control to be either good or evil, when
you are disappointed of what you wish, or incur what you would avoid,
you must necessarily find fault with and blame the authors. For every
animal is naturally formed to fly and abhor things that appear hurtful,
and the causes of them; and to pursue and admire those which appear
beneficial, and the causes of them. It is impractical, then, that
one who supposes himself to be hurt should be happy about the person
who, he thinks, hurts him, just as it is impossible to be happy about
the hurt itself. Hence, also, a father is reviled by a son, when he
does not impart to him the things which he takes to be good; and the
supposing empire to be a good made Polynices and Eteocles mutually
enemies. On this account the husbandman, the sailor, the merchant,
on this account those who lose wives and children, revile the gods.
For where interest is, there too is piety placed. So that, whoever
is careful to regulate his desires and aversions as he ought, is,
by the very same means, careful of piety likewise. But it is also
incumbent on everyone to offer libations and sacrifices and first
fruits, conformably to the customs of his country, with purity, and
not in a slovenly manner, nor negligently, nor sparingly, nor beyond
his ability.

32. When you have recourse to divination, remember that you know not
what the event will be, and you come to learn it of the diviner; but
of what nature it is you know before you come, at least if you are
a philosopher. For if it is among the things not in our own control,
it can by no means be either good or evil. Don't, therefore, bring
either desire or aversion with you to the diviner (else you will approach
him trembling), but first acquire a distinct knowledge that every
event is indifferent and nothing to you., of whatever sort it may
be, for it will be in your power to make a right use of it, and this
no one can hinder; then come with confidence to the gods, as your
counselors, and afterwards, when any counsel is given you, remember
what counselors you have assumed, and whose advice you will neglect
if you disobey. Come to divination, as Socrates prescribed, in cases
of which the whole consideration relates to the event, and in which
no opportunities are afforded by reason, or any other art, to discover
the thing proposed to be learned. When, therefore, it is our duty
to share the danger of a friend or of our country, we ought not to
consult the oracle whether we will share it with them or not. For,
though the diviner should forewarn you that the victims are unfavorable,
this means no more than that either death or mutilation or exile is
portended. But we have reason within us, and it directs, even with
these hazards, to the greater diviner, the Pythian god, who cast out
of the temple the person who gave no assistance to his friend while
another was murdering him.

33. Immediately prescribe some character and form of conduce to yourself,
which you may keep both alone and in company.

Be for the most part silent, or speak merely what is necessary, and
in few words. We may, however, enter, though sparingly, into discourse
sometimes when occasion calls for it, but not on any of the common
subjects, of gladiators, or horse races, or athletic champions, or
feasts, the vulgar topics of conversation; but principally not of
men, so as either to blame, or praise, or make comparisons. If you
are able, then, by your own conversation bring over that of your company
to proper subjects; but, if you happen to be taken among strangers,
be silent.

Don't allow your laughter be much, nor on many occasions, nor profuse.

Avoid swearing, if possible, altogether; if not, as far as you are
able.

Avoid public and vulgar entertainments; but, if ever an occasion calls
you to them, keep your attention upon the stretch, that you may not
imperceptibly slide into vulgar manners. For be assured that if a
person be ever so sound himself, yet, if his companion be infected,
he who converses with him will be infected likewise.

Provide things relating to the body no further than mere use; as meat,
drink, clothing, house, family. But strike off and reject everything
relating to show and delicacy.

As far as possible, before marriage, keep yourself pure from familiarities
with women, and, if you indulge them, let it be lawfully.” But don't
therefore be troublesome and full of reproofs to those who use these
liberties, nor frequently boast that you yourself don't.

If anyone tells you that such a person speaks ill of you, don't make
excuses about what is said of you, but answer: ” He does not know
my other faults, else he would not have mentioned only these.”

It is not necessary for you to appear often at public spectacles;
but if ever there is a proper occasion for you to be there, don't
appear more solicitous for anyone than for yourself; that is, wish
things to be only just as they are, and him only to conquer who is
the conqueror, for thus you will meet with no hindrance. But abstain
entirely from declamations and derision and violent emotions. And
when you come away, don't discourse a great deal on what has passed,
and what does not contribute to your own amendment. For it would appear
by such discourse that you were immoderately struck with the show.

Go not [of your own accord] to the rehearsals of any
(authors) , nor appear [at them] readily. But, if you do appear, keepyour
gravity and sedateness, and at the same time avoid being morose.

When you are going to confer with anyone, and particularly of those
in a superior station, represent to yourself how Socrates or Zeno
would behave in such a case, and you will not be at a loss to make
a proper use of whatever may occur.

When you are going to any of the people in power, represent to yourself
that you will not find him at home; that you will not be admitted;
that the doors will not be opened to you; that he will take no notice
of you. If, with all this, it is your duty to go, bear what happens,
and never say [to yourself], ” It was not worth so much.” For this
is vulgar, and like a man dazed by external things.

In parties of conversation, avoid a frequent and excessive mention
of your own actions and dangers. For, however agreeable it may be
to yourself to mention the risks you have run, it is not equally agreeable
to others to hear your adventures. Avoid, likewise, an endeavor to
excite laughter. For this is a slippery point, which may throw you
into vulgar manners, and, besides, may be apt to lessen you in the
esteem of your acquaintance. Approaches to indecent discourse are
likewise dangerous. Whenever, therefore, anything of this sort happens,
if there be a proper opportunity, rebuke him who makes advances that
way; or, at least, by silence and blushing and a forbidding look,
show yourself to be displeased by such talk.

34. If you are struck by the appearance of any promised pleasure,
guard yourself against being hurried away by it; but let the affair
wait your leisure, and procure yourself some delay. Then bring to
your mind both points of time: that in which you will enjoy the pleasure,
and that in which you will repent and reproach yourself after you
have enjoyed it; and set before you, in opposition to these, how you
will be glad and applaud yourself if you abstain. And even though
it should appear to you a seasonable gratification, take heed that
its enticing, and agreeable and attractive force may not subdue you;
but set in opposition to this how much better it is to be conscious
of having gained so great a victory.

35. When you do anything from a clear judgment that it ought to be
done, never shun the being seen to do it, even though the world should
make a wrong supposition about it; for, if you don't act right, shun
the action itself; but, if you do, why are you afraid of those who
censure you wrongly?

36. As the proposition, “Either it is day or it is night,” is extremely
proper for a disjunctive argument, but quite improper in a conjunctive
one, so, at a feast, to choose the largest share is very suitable
to the bodily appetite, but utterly inconsistent with the social spirit
of an entertainment. When you eat with another, then, remember not
only the value of those things which are set before you to the body,
but the value of that behavior which ought to be observed towards
the person who gives the entertainment.

37. If you have assumed any character above your strength, you have
both made an ill figure in that and quitted one which you might have
supported.

38. When walking, you are careful not to step on a nail or turn your
foot; so likewise be careful not to hurt the ruling faculty of your
mind. And, if we were to guard against this in every action, we should
undertake the action with the greater safety.

39. The body is to everyone the measure of the possessions proper
for it, just as the foot is of the shoe. If, therefore, you stop at
this, you will keep the measure; but if you move beyond it, you must
necessarily be carried forward, as down a cliff; as in the case of
a shoe, if you go beyond its fitness to the foot, it comes first to
be gilded, then purple, and then studded with jewels. For to that
which once exceeds a due measure, there is no bound.

40. Women from fourteen years old are flattered with the title of
“mistresses” by the men. Therefore, perceiving that they are regarded
only as qualified to give the men pleasure, they begin to adorn themselves,
and in that to place ill their hopes. We should, therefore, fix our
attention on making them sensible that they are valued for the appearance
of decent, modest and discreet behavior.

41. It is a mark of want of genius to spend much time in things relating
to the body, as to be long in our exercises, in eating and drinking,
and in the discharge of other animal functions. These should be done
incidentally and slightly, and our whole attention be engaged in the
care of the understanding.

42. When any person harms you, or speaks badly of you, remember that
he acts or speaks from a supposition of its being his duty. Now, it
is not possible that he should follow what appears right to you, but
what appears so to himself. Therefore, if he judges from a wrong appearance,
he is the person hurt, since he too is the person deceived. For if
anyone should suppose a true proposition to be false, the proposition
is not hurt, but he who is deceived about it. Setting out, then, from
these principles, you will meekly bear a person who reviles you, for
you will say upon every occasion, “It seemed so to him.”

43. Everything has two handles, the one by which it may be carried,
the other by which it cannot. If your brother acts unjustly, don't
lay hold on the action by the handle of his injustice, for by that
it cannot be carried; but by the opposite, that he is your brother,
that he was brought up with you; and thus you will lay hold on it,
as it is to be carried.

44. These reasonings are unconnected: “I am richer than you, therefore
I am better”; “I am more eloquent than you, therefore I am better.”
The connection is rather this: “I am richer than you, therefore my
property is greater than yours;” “I am more eloquent than you, therefore
my style is better than yours.” But you, after all, are neither property
nor style.

45. Does anyone bathe in a mighty little time? Don't say that he does
it ill, but in a mighty little time. Does anyone drink a great quantity
of wine? Don't say that he does ill, but that he drinks a great quantity.
For, unless you perfectly understand the principle from which anyone
acts, how should you know if he acts ill? Thus you will not run the
hazard of assenting to any appearances but such as you fully comprehend.

46. Never call yourself a philosopher, nor talk a great deal among
the unlearned about theorems, but act conformably to them. Thus, at
an entertainment, don't talk how persons ought to eat, but eat as
you ought. For remember that in this manner Socrates also universally
avoided all ostentation. And when persons came to him and desired
to be recommended by him to philosophers, he took and- recommended
them, so well did he bear being overlooked. So that if ever any talk
should happen among the unlearned concerning philosophic theorems,
be you, for the most part, silent. For there is great danger in immediately
throwing out what you have not digested. And, if anyone tells you
that you know nothing, and you are not nettled at it, then you may
be sure that you have begun your business. For sheep don't throw up
the grass to show the shepherds how much they have eaten; but, inwardly
digesting their food, they outwardly produce wool and milk. Thus,
therefore, do you likewise not show theorems to the unlearned, but
the actions produced by them after they have been digested.

47. When you have brought yourself to supply the necessities of your
body at a small price, don't pique yourself upon it; nor, if you drink
water, be saying upon every occasion, “I drink water.” But first consider
how much more sparing and patient of hardship the poor are than we.
But if at any time you would inure yourself by exercise to labor,
and bearing hard trials, do it for your own sake, and not for the
world; don't grasp statues, but, when you are violently thirsty, take
a little cold water in your mouth, and spurt it out and tell nobody.

48. The condition and characteristic of a vulgar person, is, that
he never expects either benefit or hurt from himself, but from externals.
The condition and characteristic of a philosopher is, that he expects
all hurt and benefit from himself. The marks of a proficient are,
that he censures no one, praises no one, blames no one, accuses no
one, says nothing concerning himself as being anybody, or knowing
anything: when he is, in any instance, hindered or restrained, he
accuses himself; and, if he is praised, he secretly laughs at the
person who praises him; and, if he is censured, he makes no defense.
But he goes about with the caution of sick or injured people, dreading
to move anything that is set right, before it is perfectly fixed.
He suppresses all desire in himself; he transfers his aversion to
those things only which thwart the proper use of our own faculty of
choice; the exertion of his active powers towards anything is very
gentle; if he appears stupid or ignorant, he does not care, and, in
a word, he watches himself as an enemy, and one in ambush.

49. When anyone shows himself overly confident in ability to understand
and interpret the works of Chrysippus, say to yourself, ” Unless Chrysippus
had written obscurely, this person would have had no subject for his
vanity. But what do I desire? To understand nature and follow her.
I ask, then, who interprets her, and, finding Chrysippus does, I have
recourse to him. I don't understand his writings. I seek, therefore,
one to interpret them.” So far there is nothing to value myself upon.
And when I find an interpreter, what remains is to make use of his
instructions. This alone is the valuable thing. But, if I admire nothing
but merely the interpretation, what do I become more than a grammarian
instead of a philosopher? Except, indeed, that instead of Homer I
interpret Chrysippus. When anyone, therefore, desires me to read Chrysippus
to him, I rather blush when I cannot show my actions agreeable and
consonant to his discourse.

50. Whatever moral rules you have deliberately proposed to yourself.
abide by them as they were laws, and as if you would be guilty of
impiety by violating any of them. Don't regard what anyone says of
you, for this, after all, is no concern of yours. How long, then,
will you put off thinking yourself worthy of the highest improvements
and follow the distinctions of reason? You have received the philosophical
theorems, with which you ought to be familiar, and you have been familiar
with them. What other master, then, do you wait for, to throw upon
that the delay of reforming yourself? You are no longer a boy, but
a grown man. If, therefore, you will be negligent and slothful, and
always add procrastination to procrastination, purpose to purpose,
and fix day after day in which you will attend to yourself, you will
insensibly continue without proficiency, and, living and dying, persevere
in being one of the vulgar. This instant, then, think yourself worthy
of living as a man grown up, and a proficient. Let whatever appears
to be the best be to you an inviolable law. And if any instance of
pain or pleasure, or glory or disgrace, is set before you, remember
that now is the combat, now the Olympiad comes on, nor can it be put
off. By once being defeated and giving way, proficiency is lost, or
by the contrary preserved. Thus Socrates became perfect, improving
himself by everything. attending to nothing but reason. And though
you are not yet a Socrates, you ought, however, to live as one desirous
of becoming a Socrates.

51. The first and most necessary topic in philosophy is that of the
use of moral theorems, such as, “We ought not to lie;” the second
is that of demonstrations, such as, “What is the origin of our obligation
not to lie;” the third gives strength and articulation to the other
two, such as, “What is the origin of this is a demonstration.” For
what is demonstration? What is consequence? What contradiction? What
truth? What falsehood? The third topic, then, is necessary on the
account of the second, and the second on the account of the first.
But the most necessary, and that whereon we ought to rest, is the
first. But we act just on the contrary. For we spend all our time
on the third topic, and employ all our diligence about that, and entirely
neglect the first. Therefore, at the same time that we lie, we are
immediately prepared to show how it is demonstrated that lying is
not right.

52. Upon all occasions we ought to have these maxims ready at hand:

“Conduct me, Jove, and you, 0 Destiny,
Wherever your decrees have fixed my station.”
(Cleanthes)

“I follow cheerfully; and, did I not,
Wicked and wretched, I must follow still
Whoever yields properly to Fate, is deemed
Wise among men, and knows the laws of heaven.”
(Euripides, Frag. 965)

And this third:

“0 Crito, if it thus pleases the gods, thus let it be. Anytus and
Melitus may kill me indeed, but hurt me they cannot.”
(Plato's Crito and Apology)

Twenty-fourth Street

I used to live on Twenty-fourth Street. It was the first place I stayed after graduating from college: a commonplace, brick, flat-roofed, two-story apartment building. The woman I rented from said it was built in the 1920's. I lived on the second floor. My neighbors were friendly but I rarely saw or spoke with any of them. The only real evidence that anyone else lived on my floor was the occasional sound of someone traipsing up or down the staircase and sometimes a television set turned up too loud. Below me lived a guy named Manny who spent entire days sitting on the front step with his cat named Nesta.

Perched neatly across the street was a little white bungalow occupied by a family of four. The lawn was always uniformly cropped and well groomed. Otherwise, the lot was nondescript except for that it played home to a small grove of a gorgeous, stout, medium-sized variety of Red Maple trees that lined one side of the driveway and sporadically adorned the front lawn. In the spring, the trees bore reddish-orange drooping clusters of flowers and throughout the summer their dark scarlet-green leaves cast a cool shadow over the yard, the house and its porch. It might have been because the spare time afforded to someone living alone was new to me, or maybe because I didn't work much, or maybe because I didn't have a lot of money, but for whatever reason, I used to watch the family. Two kids lived there, one boy and a little girl, with two adults.

One summer day I watched as the boy, maybe ten or eleven years-old and wearing a beach towel cape tied around his neck, flew back and forth through the lawn sprinkler, head down and arms stretched out before him. He stopped and picked up the garden hose that supplied the sprinkler with water and began swinging the damned thing in circles around his head. He danced as water sprayed in a great arch around his little freckled body and splattered the front windows of the house and the silver luxury sedan parked in the driveway. I laughed with him as I observed with interest the woman who lived in the house storm out the front door, her face flushed and yelling. He dropped the sprinkler and tried to run as she grabbed his arm with a firm yank that lifted him from his feet and swatted the back of his head. She released her grasp and chased the screaming boy up the steps into the house. After slamming the door behind him, the woman marched across the porch and delicately patted the windows dry with the skirt of her dress. She lifted the dress high, exposing first her calves and then more and more meaty leg, stopping just below the thick of her hips.

The man living in the house-the father, I assumed-used to get up early on Saturday mornings to wash his car. I was usually up at the same time that autumn reading every José Saramago novel I could get my hands on. On one particular cloudy, dank morning in November following a night of steady rain, the man was up and enthusiastically hosing off his car. A tree, its limbs stretched out in a canopy over the extravagant automobile, had dropped the bulk of it's load: broad, deep wine-brown autumnal leaves that carpeted the driveway and car. The man appeared annoyed and soon frustrated in his ill attempts to remove the downed foliage. The leaves were plastered and adhered, in an almost reactionary stand, stubbornly to the otherwise shining silver body of the car. He set the hose down and proceeded to pick the wet leaves off one by one with his hands. The man looked up at the tree and cursed it as he scrubbed the residual bits of tree waste with a soapy rag.

As he rinsed the suds from the then shining-again car, the sky began to spit a light drizzle and the wind matured in gusts. A new shower of leaves rained down and cemented themselves to the car and the man scurried around it, spraying off the fucking leaves in near panic as they continued to fall, ruining his laudable effort. He threw down the hose and shut the water off as the wind continued to knock down more and more debris. After a contemplative pause, he marched to the detached garage and lifted the door that hid a stockpile of accumulated junk filling it to the front. The man looked with puzzlement at the garage, hands on hips, and glanced back at the trees littering his driveway. He slowly started carrying out boxes to make room for his car, but apparently changed his mind in lieu of a grander idea. After disappearing into the chaos of the garage for a moment, he reappeared with a ladder slung over his shoulder and a chainsaw dangling from one hand.

He backed up his car, propped the ladder against the unsuspecting tree and fired up the saw. Its roar sounded like the choppy rumble of a helicopter from my window. After climbing the ladder with purpose, the man began whittling away at the lower branches as they whined when they met the saw, each falling with a crack followed by a heavy, faint thump. Having taken the ladder to its top rung, he left it and climbed the stubbled remains of branches to cut limbs from the tree from the bottom up. Once he had gone as far as the tree's height would allow, he awkwardly climbed down, his balding head of thin hair a mess, sweat spilling from his round flaring face, and he finished the tree off with a gouge to the trunk that caused it to snap and fall across the driveway and into the yard. He stepped back and revealed no outward signs of emotion, yet obviously exhausted, and breathed heavily as he surveyed his deed.

To my amazement, the man started up the saw again and proceeded to work his way down the drive. I watched for the remainder of the morning as he downed each of the trees bordering his driveway. And after he finished with the drive, then strewn with fallen dismembered tree parts, the man worked earnestly and with purpose as he set out to remove every last Red Maple from the yard. In the end, he turned off the chain saw, dropped it to the ground and stood with rounded shoulders in apparent tired satisfaction amongst his empty yard scarred with crude stumps and littered with fallen trees.

I'm driving. The low, western-lying autumn sun is reflecting yellow-gold on the windshield. As I drive into the blinding horizon I have to close my eyes. My head, bent slightly to the side so that I can see, hangs partially out the driver's side window. The wind blows past me, funnels through the car and out the passenger side. The headliner waving above and behind me. Tonight, like other nights, I'm content with just getting in my car and driving.

I think of Eliza. She moved out only a few weeks ago. Often in the morning on my drive to work along this same street, I imagine that I see her walking or sitting under a tree in the low-lying mist of the park. At night on my way home, I see her there again. Sometimes I pick up the phone and call her. I call few people. Lately, though, phones ring unanswered. I hear the familiar voices I've grown to depend on only in hollow, recorded messages instructing me, just another stranger, to leave my name, number and a brief message and they'll get back to me. They never get back to me. I'm alone.

There's a place just down the road. A little neighborhood bar. Eliza and I found it not too long after we after we moved here about a year ago. I've been finding myself there a lot lately. Tonight as I leave my apartment, I tell myself that I don't know where I'm going. But I do know where I'm going, and I end up there. They call it Dusty's. Dusty owns the place. I've never met him. Usually it's just Sandy behind the bar and a few others bellied-up on the customer side. They're all friendly enough. Sandy is always ready to pour one, and even though I've told them many times before, the others always ask my name.

As I pull up to the bar, Dusty's looks as it always does from the outside. A small, aged brick building, a single neon beer sign glowing in the dark windows. The door is held open by a brick. I walk into the dark bar and look around. It appears empty. Slow night, I suppose. I sit down in one of the high, worn stools at the corner of the bar and wait for Sandy.

My eyes scan the room. The jukebox is blinking rainbow colors in the back corner next to the men's room. Every pool cue, with the exception of one, is resting in the rack on the wall. The other is laid out on the worn green felt of the table. Speakers positioned in three corners of the room hang silent. The smell of stale butts hangs somewhere close in the uncirculated air. I glance at the Olympia clock on the wall; a blue river glistens through mountains flaked with gold and flashy green trees. Seven o'clock.

Sandy doesn't come.

I lean back in the stool and kick the bar to launch my seat into a spin. Hopping up and making my way from the barstool, I traverse the premises, poking around for signs of Sandy or Dusty.

Pushing the door to the men's room open, I find a dim room only slightly larger than the sole closet in my apartment and the biting acrid smell of urine burns in my nostrils. It's vacant, as is the women's.

There's a door in the back painted black that I've only barely noticed before. Sandy may have stepped out to discard the empty bottles that undoubtedly accumulated during happy hour. I press against the door but it doesn't open. I notice the deadbolt, turn it, push the door ajar and peer outside into the alleyway. The sun is falling behind the backdoor canyon of street-front buildings and trees. No one.

"Hello?" I call and get no response.

There's a pronounced rattling around the door next to the building. Startled, I turn my head in the direction of the noise and watch a matted-tailed squirrel hop off the lid of a Dumpster and scurry down the muddy alley, dodging brown pothole puddles. It comes to a sudden stop in the center of the narrow lane. Falling back onto its hind legs and appearing alone and lost, it stands as tall as it can and looks around. The small brown animal carefully drops from its upright position to stare back at me on all fours. It tilts its head and examines me, frozen, with bead-like black eyes. I wonder what the squirrel thinks as it looks at me with those fixed eyes. In not more that an instant it barks, scrambles up a fence, bounds to the trunk of a tree, and is out of sight.

As I make my way back inside the bar, I notice how I've never known it to be this quiet here, or in any bar for that matter. The only sound to be heard, besides my sticky footsteps on the black tongue-in-groove floor, is the rackety hum of the cooler keeping the stocked bottles of beer, a few sodas, and several plastic jugs of juices cold.

I walk over to the tinted front window and glance down the sidewalk in both directions, up and down the street. It doesn't look like anyone else is on their way to Dusty's. I wonder where all the people are. Surely someone has just stepped out. The place, even with its lack of occupants, is obviously open. What the hell, I give one more quick gaze across the room and help myself behind the long, tired-out maple bar.

Opening the chest I've seen Sandy pull the frosty mugs from, I reach inside and select one from the back that is delicately encased in a thin coat of ice. They only have one beer on tap at Dusty's, so I don't have much of a decision to make. That's fine with me; I've never been much of a particular person. I pull the tap toward me and fill the mug. Foam flows over the sides and spills onto the counter. Lifting the cold, full mug of beer, I smile with satisfaction and resume my position at the bar.

The barroom is comfortable, even in its presently vacant state. I visualize in detail all of the old men that sit here night after night, quenching their desire for conversation or silent companionship, putting off going home to the women they can no longer make love to, or to old empty houses with nobody waiting for them at all. In them I see stoic and wise archetypal figures. They're fathers and grandfathers. Gentlemen for the most part, not usually too many ladies. Occasionally, a white-haired woman sits alone at the corner of the bar smoking long cigarettes and drinking beer. Nobody bothers her or approaches her any differently than they would anyone else. There usually aren't too many people of my age drawing up a stool this old place.

It wasn't that long ago that I sat in this same seat with Eliza next to me. Her long chestnut hair tangled and frayed-and she was beautiful. She drank vodka and tonic, always vodka and tonic. Vodka would settle first in her eyes; they'd become soft and slightly lazy when I could catch a glimpse of them through small slits. Eliza had always been that way. I never knew her to be anything else. In the weeks before she left, though, I sensed her discontent. With what? I don't know. This life, I suppose. There wasn't an explanation. When she left, I sunk. We moved here to start our life together. Turned out we ended it here.

Beyond the arena of my contemplation I hear footsteps and spin around. A small, wiry, worn-out-looking man is making his way toward me without me having noticed his entrance. He has deep wrinkles embedded in still youthful-but pale-topaz skin, pointed sable eyes and dark brown, untamed hair to match. The newcomer glances around at the walls of the room through large thick glasses, yet he pays no attention to the fact that, other than me, the bar is empty. I've never seen him here before.

"How goes it?" he asks in a quiet, confident voice as he takes a seat at the stool beside me.

"Not too bad. Not a whole lot going on here."

"Yeah, it looks that way. What are you drinkin'?" He asks as he tips one shoulder and turns to look at me.

"Sullivans," I say into the mug, drink all of what remains, and set it down on the counter.

The man stands up and walks behind the bar, grabs a frosted mug from the chest below, fills it to the top, slides it my way, and turns around to take a bottle from the cooler for himself. He turns back around and surveys the back counter. With his back to me, I watch his face in the bar mirror as he ponders the bottles in front of him under a string of small gold lights. "What have they got here?" he says to himself as he grabs a bottle of whiskey, shakes it and looks at the label. "This will work." He pours two rocks glasses half-full and brings them back around the bar to where I am and sits back down.

He hands me one of the glasses.

"Thanks," I respond, not sure what to make of the stranger.

The alcohol warms my chest, my stomach clenches slightly, and my mouth waters as I pull my chin to my neck to keep from grimacing and set the empty glass on the bar.

"My name's Ephraim," he says as he pushes his glass away with one hand and holds the other out to me. His grip is firm.

"I'm Jonas. Nice to meet you," I reply.

Introductions having been made, I notice the silence in the bar once more.

The man nods his head, seemingly to himself, and then reaches into his pocket. "Hey, do you know what this is?" After feeling around in his jeans for awhile, he grins, pulls out a small, polished brown, stone-looking object and rolls it between the tips of his fingers as he shows it to me.

"No, can't say that I do."

He smiles, showing yellowed and slightly irregular teeth, shrugs his shoulders and puts it back into the pocket of his old jeans.

"You don't either?"

"No, I do. I just always ask people to see if they do. I haven't run into anyone yet who does."

"What is it?"

Ephraim pulls the object from his pocket once again, looks at it with interest and explains: "It's called a bucknut or something like that. I'm not sure. A friend gave it to me. I guess they're rare. He said to carry it in my pocket and rub it for good luck. It's worked so far. Ever since he gave it to me, I carry it wherever I go."

A bucknut? I've never heard of such a thing. From what he has said, I wonder if he meant to say luck nut instead. "Is it a real nut?"

"Yeah. I keep looking around for another, but still haven't seen one."

"Do you know where it comes from? I mean, what kind of tree does it grow on?"

He looks at it as though he's not sure and responds, "Some sort of walnut, I guess."

It looks nothing like a walnut, but I nod in affirmation anyway. "I'll have to keep my eye open for one." He places the nut back in his pocket and rests his elbows on the counter.

We sit without speaking, drinking our beers in the silence of the bar. After many minutes, I tip back my head and hold my mug to my mouth, allowing the transfer of the last bit of now warm beer to my tongue. Placing the mug on the bar, I ask Ephraim if he would like another.

"No. Thanks, though. I appreciate it." He hiccups silently. "You're a good man, but I better get on my way."

I nod, glance down at the bar to pick up my glass, turn to bid him well, and find him already gone. Surprised by his speedy and immediate departure, I turn all the way around and scope the bar. The turn of his stool slowly comes to a halt. I shrug my shoulders at his sudden disappearance, walk back behind the bar, pull the tap and look outside as the mug slowly fills. It's dark now and the moon is illuminating wispy slivers of high, gray clouds in the sky. Despite the clouds, the night is relatively clear and the stars shine bright, even through the darkly tinted windows of Dusty's.

Instead of sitting back down right away, I go for a walk around the bar to give it another once-over. It still doesn't make sense that the place is empty, but instead of concerning myself with it, I think I'll take a look at what they have in the jukebox. I've played it before. My selections are usually made with the assumed tastes of others in the bar in mind. Tonight I guess that doesn't matter much. I plug the jukebox with a couple quarters and make my selection, an old Richie Havens song. The jukebox lights switch to a new pattern and I hear the mechanism in the old hibernating machine come to life. The disc begins to play:

...Well, she's flying so freely in the sky.

Lord, look at me here,

I'm rooted like a tree here,

Got those sit-down,

Can't cry, Oh Lord, gonna die blues.

Inspired, I smile and shake my head. Another shot is in order. I go around to the back counter and peruse the selection of booze. Being alone and able to choose anything to my liking, I still settle for the house well. A cheap whiskey is best suited for this particular occasion. I pull a glass off the shelf, pour myself a few fingers worth and turn around to the serving side of the bar. Lifting the glass to my nose, I don't bother to wince and quickly toss it into the back of my open throat. This time I allow my face to contort slightly, my mouth waters profusely, and I fight it down with a large pull from a freshly drawn half-glass of beer. The alcohol heat burns through the cold beer and emanates as I slam the glass down with content.

A wave of loud commotion from the street outside the bar snatches my attention, and I turn around. Standing on a bench is a black-haired man, his finely-groomed mustache bouncing with the vigorous opening and closing of his mouth as his arms flail about. There are a few onlookers surrounding him and he glares at them, spouting words I cannot hear. In an instant he his staring me in the eye through the window, gesturing toward the bar and in curiosity, albeit somewhat scared, I push the empty glass of beer aside and walk outside.

The few spectators have moved on. In fact, as I look around, everyone else is gone. The man steps down from the bench and points a shaking rigid finger at me, his dark eyes piercing into mine, the blackness of the night seems to envelop him. With spit spraying from the corners of his pursed lips, and through the alcohol fuzz in my head, I hear the man declare with all of the vengeance, angst, and hate that a human can muster: "...and here this man sits in the bowels of Hell, rubbing shoulders with sinners." I look to my sides, glance over one shoulder and then the other in an expression of confusion and observe no one. What is this guy talking about? Can't he see that there's nobody else here, that I'm alone?

In awkward discomfort, I turn away and walk quickly down the sidewalk to my car. The man still yelling behind me, "Rubbing shoulders with sinners!" Focusing my eyes directly in front of me, I hurry to my car, fearing turning around and seeing that flushed face hollering at me. I cannot shake the echoing words from my head, and I contemplate the accusation as I start my car, back out into the street and drive myself home.

Pulling along the curb in front of my apartment building, the dismembered exhaust system of my car clamors as I come to a stop. I put the transmission in park and the exhaust bellows as my hand turns the key in the ignition and the engine shuts off. I open the door to the sound of the cold October wind shaking dry, spent leaves in the tree above me. As I step out of the car and onto the quiet neighborhood street below me, my shoes crunch through the leaves on the pavement, and I look down to find myself stepping on large marble-sized stones. I crouch down to examine the stones more closely, pick up one of the glossy brown spheres, and roll it between my fingers. At closer examination, it looks and feels more like a nut than a stone. It's very light in my hand and oily smooth as though it's been rubbed smooth over countless years. Scanning the ground at street level with the object in hand, I realize that surrounding me in the shadowy half-light of the silver moon and yellow streetlight are what might be a hundred or so of what Ephraim called bucknuts. I lean back and rest on my heels to take in the sight and try to make sense of it. With a sudden outburst of laughter, I scramble to gather up as many as my pockets can hold.

Making my way up the stairway to my apartment, I hold one of the nuts in my hand. I unlock the door, walk through the darkness of the small, square apartment to my bedroom in the back and turn on the lamp at my bedside. I empty my pockets and lay the nuts out on the night stand, sit amazed, and play with the one I've been holding between the tips of my fingers. Shaking my head in disbelief, I think of Eliza and manage a smile. After setting the bucknut on the stand with the others, I undress, turn off the lamplight and pull the covers up over myself.

 

A warm and extremely intense sensation located in my midsection began to emanate and take over the rest of my body, and I started to experience distance from the dream. The dream was still there and I was still in it, but within sleep arose both the partial realization of being alone in the reality of my own bedroom and that I was, in fact, dreaming. A surge resonating deep from within me built, and pounding energy woke me. My eyes opened to moonlight. I was hot and damp with sweat.

I threw off the bed sheets and quickly sat up to examine what I; or rather, what my body had done. My face flushed not with fear, but rather, with adolescent embarrassment. My heart hammered as I quickly slipped out of the shorts, used them to wipe myself clean, and then hid them under the bed and put on a fresh, dry pair. Resonant light of the vernal season moon glistened on my abdomen and arms.

I flung myself back into bed, leaving the sheets drawn back, and turned over onto my stomach; my arms wrapped tightly around the pillow, squeezing it and making it bulge to fit my head and shoulders just right. My insides reeled and a peculiar new sensation settled in me as I drifted again to sleep.

"Joshua, get up! You're gonna be late!" From the bathroom at the end of the hallway, Mom yelled at my closed bedroom door for close to half an hour.

I rolled over and out of bed and checked to make sure the night's first pair of underwear was well hidden. My bare feet slapped the cool linoleum floor as I stumbled into the kitchen, and my eyes squinted in reaction to the blinding sunlight flooding the room through the window above the sink.

"You're not going to have time to eat now. Hurry up and get dressed," Mom mumbled with a scowl and without looking at me.

I turned without responding and proceeded lethargically back to my room. I passed Dad on his way out; neither of us exchanged a word or glance in the other's direction.

Returning from my bedroom moments later, I guzzled a glass of watered-down orange juice and grabbed a cold slice of toast left sitting on the kitchen counter and left our newly rented home. "Bye," I half shouted. Dad was already gone and Mom couldn't hear me from her room, but I said it anyway. I walked to school like it was any other morning, and even if I had someone to tell, I wouldn't have mentioned what had happened to me the night before.

Uncle Will, my dad's only brother, talked my parents into moving from the city and going into business with him. Uncle Will was tall and lanky with short, permanently messy hair and a wiry thin and absurdly long, upturned beard. His appearance completely contrasted my father's physical stature: dwarfish, with a rotund fleshy face baring barely more facial hair than my own lack thereof.

Uncle Will was serious about starting a nursery-a plant nursery-and for whatever reason, wanted my parents to be a part of his endeavor. He never would have sold my father on the idea of growing plants for a living if there hadn't been talk of a mass lay-off at the factory where Dad had worked. Plants were a hobby of Uncle Will's and by the time he secured a decrepit vacant lot to build two greenhouses on, he had also secured the support of my mother. Mom never maintained the same job for more than a year when she was actually working. She said we might finally make it after all those years if Uncle Will's plan took off, and that would be good for all of us. I had no aspiration to move, not that I had any reason to want to stick around in our worn out apartment house, the only place I had ever called home. Still, I didn't have any reason to want to stay, but had I, I wouldn't have had say in the matter anyway.

I'm almost sure Uncle Will's experience with horticulture started with growing marijuana in his basement. Childhood visits to his house were marked by the peculiar pungent odor of cannabis wafting up from the padlocked door that peeled gray lead paint in sheets. The door led downstairs to a hollow I was never allowed to venture.

He lived in a small town about a day's drive from the city, and I didn't see him but once a year until we moved. He insisted that my parents let me stay with him for a week each summer; a week spent building blanket forts, making ice cream, picking dandelions, and tiling his bathroom walls kaleidoscopic patterns of colors. Uncle Will, who made a career of serving coffee for a part-time wage, exuded what most might consider maniacal behavior, but I was unaware if anyone noticed it but me. His left eye would signal an abstract thought or pending unconventional comment, his left eyebrow would lower and the eye would go crooked. The first time I witnessed the bent eye was during one of my summer stays with him. He woke me during the night, and I opened my tired eyes to see Uncle Will's long, bearded face inches from mine, almost frightening in the shadows of lamplight, and he was waving paintbrushes in the air. "Josh," he whispered, his scalding breath poured across my face and his eye flew sideways. "Get up. This room is officially yours. I've got mother-loads of paints. What do you want to do with it?" The rainbow assortment of polka dots was my idea and we spent the rest of the early-morning hours working on the walls. I woke up in my polka-dotted room every morning I stayed with Uncle Will since.

Wherever the money came from-probably from less legal endeavors than the coffee gig-Uncle Will managed to save enough to buy the land and build the greenhouses that launched his legitimate entrepreneurial interests into business. He dabbled in exotics and hand collected both rare and wild plants, but it was when he started successfully cultivating carnivorous varieties that he realized the potential for making an honest living of his hobby.

He wanted to name the nursery "Willy's Wild Weeds," which I thought both absurd and brilliant, but as a condition of the partnership, Dad insisted on something that sounded more professional and less dumb, something to the effect of "The Exotic Plant Company." I know these things from listening to their conversations as I sat on the floor in our old living room while Dad and Uncle Will smoked cigarettes and hashed out the plan.

I usually went straight home after school. None of the kids at the new school had anything to do with me, probably because I didn't have anything to do with them, but regardless, I didn't fit in. Delusions of other kids staring at me preoccupied my thoughts to the point I would sit in a cold, uncomfortable sweat most of the day wishing I could just be alone. I'd take my time riding my bike home and used streets that the other kids didn't. I'd return to an empty house, eat cereal and watch television all afternoon. That was the extent of my extra-curricular activity for the first few weeks in our new house: Lucky Charms, Mountain Dew, a raggedy couch in the basement and a TV. But things changed when Mom quit her menial job with Dad and Uncle Will.

One afternoon I came home to find her in the living room, drinking wine, the television silently glaring in the corner of the room, and an old cassette tape playing on the stereo. She glanced up from the television through a smoky, dense haze pronounced by dim sunlight that poked through thick curtains in soft rays.

I didn't say anything at first, walked through the living room and ignored her. Then I paused, turned and confronted her: "Why are you home?"

"I quit," she replied, blank-faced.

Frantic and angry, only because it meant I now had to share the house and because it was her idea that we move in the first place, I stepped aggressively toward her and shouted: "What?"

"The job. I quit. Your father's a fucking idiot. And as far as your Uncle, well..." Her voice trailed off in mumbles.

I stood with an honest look of fervent bewilderment, but when I realized that I wasn't at all surprised, I retreated and threw an insubstantial fist into the frail drywall on the way down the neglected stairway to the basement.

Every day following, I came home to the same scene: Mom sitting in her recliner with a half glass of wine, the eye-burning staleness of a spent pack of cigarettes and the underlying sweet, burnt redolence of weed. I had no reason to expect anything different on the day following the dream; however, to my surprise there was no sign of her.

Good. I headed straight to my room, threw my backpack in the corner, knelt down and felt around under the bed for the boxer shorts. Nothing.

"Joshua, is that you?" It was Mom calling from the bathroom.

"Uh, yeah." I threw myself to the floor and peered under the bed in terror, but crumpled in the shadows against the dusty floorboard on the other end of the bed was the underwear.

The bathroom door opened. Panic rose in me as I sprang up, boxer shorts in hand. Quickly, I pushed the contraband beneath the sheets on my bed. She walked through the hallway without so much as a glance in my direction. I stood absolutely still until the stereo came on and I heard the thud of the chair in the living room thrown back into reclining position.

I shoved the underwear into the front pouch of my hooded sweatshirt and quietly sneaked out the back door. It was late in spring and the sky that had been bright and warm that morning was then gray, and the air was cool and smelled slightly of sweet flowers and rain. The garbage can sat next to the garage. I looked around to be certain none of the neighbors were watching, removed the lid and buried the shorts beneath a brown paper grocery sack full of trash and spoiled vegetable waste and replaced the lid, quickly covering up the warm, wet stench of rot.

I picked up my bicycle, which lay half-rusted in the yard, straddled it and took off for the bridge.

Out at the edge of town, several miles from the house my parents rented stood a bridge that stretched out across the interstate highway. Uncle Will drove me there soon after the move. He told my parents we were going downtown and as far as I knew, we were. I climbed into his mustard-colored station wagon and we drove out of town.

I looked at him, confused. "Aren't we going the wrong way?"

He smiled, his crooked eye half turned on, and said he was taking me somewhere better. I shrugged, put both feet on the dashboard-something my dad never let me do in his rusted pick-up truck-rested my head on my shoulder, and gazed out the side window. If I kept my attention just far enough up the road, my eyes kept with the motion of the car and stayed focused, but when I looked down at the roadside, the town gave way to country in blurry streaks of speckled ashen gray concrete, brown earth and green grass smeared with impressionistic bursts of wildflower color. I slouched further in the seat, trained my eye, and played with each perspective for the rest of the drive.

The station wagon slowed and crept to the bridge as Uncle Will pulled off the road, onto gravel that popped under the car's tires, and into the tall grasses of the shoulder. The bridge, poised, passed over the interstate and spanned two conspicuous

man-made hills. He shoved the automatic transmission into park and turned the key; the engine rumbled to silence.

"Come on," he said, leaving the keys dangling in the ignition and the driver's-side door thrown open.

I stepped out of the car into weeds that scratched my ankles and calves as I followed him to the side of the bridge. Most of the land around us lay flat with the exception of where we stood. The cobalt sky splayed out vividly before us in stark contrast to the drab cityscape my family had moved from and that I was accustomed to. The tract of land was all but treeless and lay uninterrupted to the thin crisp line of the horizon where the ground ran abruptly into the sky. Low fields shimmered in multiple shades of green. Large, bright clouds with shadowy underbellies hung and passed with great rapidity in front and above us. The sky was alive in staunch opposition to the dead, dingy, gray smoggy haze of the city. It moved, with or without purpose, but with a sort of urgency. Bits of gravel and sand blew up in gusts and stung my exposed skin. The sight from where we stood was mesmerizing in all its openness, rhythmic motion, and silence. Steady winds pushed Uncle Will's beard flat to his neck, his shirt splayed in ripples against his gaunt chest and the clouds rushed behind him as he gazed from where we stood aside the bridge. He spoke and his wild eye came back to life: "You know, sometimes you can see the wind."

His utterance, directed at me though his eyes were stuck somewhere else, snatched me from my own stare. "What?"

He went on, his eyes still fixed on something out in front of us: "Sometimes if you're not really looking, you can actually see the air move around you." Sensing and responding to my confusion, he responded: "You can feel it right?"

"Yeah, I can feel it, but what do you mean see it?"

The crazy eye straightened but did not dim. "Someday you'll see it Josh." He changed the subject: "Follow me."

I followed him from the bridge and halfway down the embankment.

Laid out in a slightly barren parcel of land showing tan parched earth, dispersed among weeds and other lower-laying plants, stood several woody green stems topped with sparse clusters of little elongated dark, trumpet-like flowers with skinny wing-like sepals, bathing in the late afternoon light, shaded intermittently by the sweeping shadows cast by overhead clouds. Uncle Will kneeled, slightly bent one of the twiggy stems and let it slide up through his hand until the blossom of one of the flowers found itself delicately nestled between his

fingers, and he offered it for me to look at. I knelt next to him.

"Do you know what this is, Josh?"

I looked at it and then at him and answered in a sarcastic tone: "Um, maybe it's a flower?" Admittedly, the flower had an interesting and strikingly symmetrical shape, but it still just looked like a flower to me.

Unamused, he scrunched his face into a mock smile. "It's an orchid. Man," his voice divulged increasing excitement, "there are literally tens of thousands of different species of these things in the world. Some people spend their whole lives hunting rare ones, and some breed different types in order to create their own crazy hybr-" He stopped talking, his attention suddenly diverted, and let go of the flower so that it sprung back to attention and shook slightly. In doing so, he grabbed my shoulder so abruptly that I fell from my haunches and spilled backwards into the dusty hill.

Uncle Will pointed at a wasp hovering around another of the purple-black flowers. Seated in the grass, my arms wrapped around my knees and my hands folded, I listened. He spoke quietly: "Check this out. That orchid is toying with the wasp. I mean, you can't see it, but the flower has evolved to play with the horniness of that little wasp to its own advantage. It's

trying to trick him by mimicking the color, shape, and even the pheromones of a female wasp." I had no idea what pheromones were, but he talked so excitedly and fast that I didn't want to interrupt, and I let him go on. "Sometimes the orchid can be so beautiful, especially in a wasp-like way, that if a female was to fly up next to it, this guy couldn't tell the difference between the two and might even reject her in favor of getting it on with the flower." He smiled perversely. "See how it resembles the wasp?" I figured the wasp must be pretty damn stupid but admitted, with a nod, the remarkable similarity.

The wasp we watched left the flower it was crawling all over and digging into, and Uncle Will went on: "So check it out, the wasp obviously failed in his attempt at copulation, but the orchid succeeded in getting pollen all over him. He'll fly away, only to be fooled again by another orchid pulling the same trick, luring him to it, and he'll end up transferring pollen all over from flower to flower. Depending on how much nectar the flower has to offer, the number of wasps seduced by it will increase, as will the amount of time each wasp spends fondling and probing it, which will lead to higher and higher levels of pollen transfer." He took a deep breath, smiled, and picked one of the trumpeted flowers from its stem and peeled away layers of petals. I leaned in so close our shoulders touched. In the center of the flower were two tiny, bearded purplish petals tinged with extraordinary varying shades of the same color. He pulled them away and exposed the hidden reproductive parts of the flower and grinned. "See, it's just a guise to attract the wasp. After the wasp gets in there and impregnates the flower with the pollen of another, these parts of the orchid start to develop into ripe dust-like seeds. When they're mature, the wind will shake them away, carry and scatter them all over the ground. You know the rest. Crazy, huh?"

"That's freakin' weird. Cool, but weird." I looked at it, amazed, and shook my head. "I don't get it though, the flower doesn't know it's doing all that. Does it?" He smiled and with a shrug of his shoulders, stood up and started digging several plants from the ground. It was strange that he knew such things and that he thought about them as he did. After he dug up a few flowers, he draped an arm over my shoulder, orchids in hand, and we walked up the hill.

Back in the car, the collected orchids between us, Uncle Will paused, apparently intent on absorbing whatever he could of the panorama before we left, and he began to speak. "Josh, there are lots of places like this in the world, even around this town, but there's something special here. And honestly, I don't even know where the bridge goes, but that doesn't really matter. The fact that it's here does." The words perplexed me, and I didn't really know what he meant, but I believed every word he said. And with that, he spun the station wagon in a slow, wide turn and started back in the opposite direction.

All of the car's windows were rolled down on the drive home, the radio remained off and Uncle Will didn't talk; the only sound to be heard was that of air rushing in, and I closed my eyes. A slideshow of images accompanied the visceral sensation of the wind at the bridge: the vivid blue sky slamming down on the waving emerald fields in the distance, the drifting buoyancy of the clouds, the tall grasses, the orchids, the wasp, and the bridge stretching out steadfast into it all. It was at that moment that I realized I was going back.

With Mom home after school, I road to the bridge nearly every day. I went the first time the day after Uncle Will took me there. The bike ride took longer than I had expected-much longer than the drive there. I raced; later, rides were more leisurely, but that first day I pedaled with urgency. My bicycle tires spit up used clouds of blanched gray dust and miniscule bits of gravel as I skidded to a curved stop, leaving two long ruts behind me. I was greeted by emptiness, only this time the silence was interrupted by seldom cars traveling the interstate.

After dropping my bike into the weeds and goldenrod, I walked to the side of the bridge and sat in its shadow.

I stared off into the distance, into the tawny tinge of soft light seeping into the afternoon, and experienced a wave of content. High distant clouds, more white than gray, stood fixed behind a multitude of other mere tufts, more gray than white, that moved low and closer to me. The closer clouds were simply alluded to and defined by brilliant outlines offered by a hidden sun. I laid back into the weeds and clasped my hands behind my head. Wisps of white light shone down with serenity as though nothing less than divinity lay just below the flat line of the horizon. I closed my eyes briefly and when they reopened, tumultuous clouds that held within them the power to ignite storms lingered low in the lazy, haze-filled distance. A rich alkaline smell hung in the air, and the ground lay solid and cold under my body. Still, blue sky lay peaking from behind, revealed through broken layers of ocher clouds half the distance to the horizon, and the closer low, exaggerated clouds, foreshortened, moved steadily toward me.

At first it was just after school, but soon I was going to the bridge on weekends and at night. Nighttime offered an entirely different perspective of the bridge. It was illuminated, reflecting silver moonlight, and the dim expanse of interstate carved itself through the middle of all that darkness. Sneaking out and being somewhere I shouldn't have been-especially at a time I shouldn't have been-added not only to the adventure but also to my certain newfound sense of autonomy. The bridge soon became my sanctuary: from home, from school, and from the overwhelming uncomfortable chaos that was otherwise my life. I allowed myself to get lost in the serenity the bridge offered, the sovereignty, the innocent wonder and thought, and the peace revealed through true, uninterrupted solitude. It wasn't long, though, and things began to change.

One evening, well past sunset, I was sitting at the bridge, looking out at the world from what had become my safe perch from which to view life, struck by the boundless starry sky when the thunder of an eighteen-wheeler broke the spell and woke me from thought. I looked down at the truck as it sped by and shook the girders supporting the bridge, and in its midst there was movement on the other side. A person. Where before there was no traffic at all, cars swarmed in a long procession without end. I raised myself to a crouch and tried to see through the blurred passing of cars that obstructed my view. When finally the traffic subsided, there was no one left in the wake across the interstate from me. My head spun frantically and found no one. But there had been someone there-I was sure of it. There was absolutely no movement. Everything, in fact, was eerily still.

I heard what I thought were footsteps above me on the bridge, my heart slammed into my shallow rib cage and adrenaline pumped in thin, branching bolts through my body, and the light hairs on my arms and the nape of my neck stood erect. The footsteps slowly grew nearer; but as abruptly as the sound had come, it disappeared and joined the silence of everything else-except for the pounding in my ears and the deep rhythm in my chest.

With my knees pulled up under my chin, I sat without moving in the cold shadows below the bridge. Cars slowly began passing in front of me again, my pulse and breathing eased, and I got the nerve to inch my way to the side of the bridge and poke my head over the short wall. Nobody. I ran to my bike, jumped on and pedaled quickly, never once sitting down on the seat; instead, running on the pedals until I was home.

The next day was my fifteenth birthday. Because of what had happened at the bridge the night before, I opted to stay home after school, bored in the basement watching television. Then came the sound of vehicles in the alley behind the house, automobile doors slammed and the voices of arguing men. The arguing grew louder and nearer to the house, but before I could get up to peak between the curtains draping the window, Uncle Will and Dad entered through the basement door. There was obvious tension between them, but the quarreling stopped in my presence. My Dad carried a scowl on his face and a quart of beer in his hand as he marched up the stairs. Uncle Will's expression changed to a friendly smile as the sound of my dad's stomping work boots faded. He carried a domed terrarium under one arm.

"What's up?"

"Not much."

Uncle Will sat down next to me. One of the casters broke as he did, and the couch rocked back and settled-crooked. I laughed, but he acted like he didn't notice.

"I can't stay long, bud-your dad's kinda pissed. I just wanted to bring this by for your birthday." He held out the clear plastic dome that housed a plant from which appeared to hang multiple little cone-shaped leaves turned upward with puffy red lips. I knew enough about female anatomy to be immediately struck by the resemblance of the leaves to female genitalia, and all I saw as I sat gazing into the plastic dome was the pouting red vulva lips and slender, silky, dangling tubular vaginas. I leaned forward, crossed my arms and pressed my wrists into my lap to conceal a sudden and robust erection.

Keeping one arm firmly against my pants, I held out my free hand to receive the gift. "What is it?"

"It's a pitcher plant. They're crazy. The leaves," he took off the plastic lid and pointed with his middle finger, "have a series of glands that secrete sweet liquid and extend from the lip down into the bottom." He went on to explain that the plant had an alluring odor and stunning physical presence, both of which seduced insects. "Once in the plant," Uncle Will continued, "the prey tumbles down into a liquid pool at the bottom of the pitchered leaf, drowns and is digested by the plant."

"Cool!"

"I thought you'd like it." He ruffled the hair on my head, but his expression altered and showed concern again. "I hope things are going okay, Josh." He seemed to nod in the direction of my parents upstairs.

I looked away and the virility that had so quickly been raised within me just as suddenly rushed from my body leaving me feeling cold and empty. "It's cool." I suppose didn't sound the least bit convincing, but he didn't push the subject.

"Well, anyway, I'll be around again soon. I promise. Happy birthday."

"See ya."

And with that, he was out of the broken couch, turned and left.

I set the terrarium on the coffee table in front of me, shut the television off, and laid back down on the couch waiting for a fly or a gnat to find the pitcher plant.

A couple nights later, I was lying in my bedroom and couldn't sleep. Without giving the act any critical thought, I quietly got out of bed, and after putting on the clothes I had thrown on the bedroom floor just an hour or two earlier, I headed for the bridge.

As I approached it from a distance, the bridge looked as it always did at night. Light gray expanse of concrete, shadows, and stars resting on and stretching out into the massive dome above everything. Birds that had gathered for the night scattered as the rubber soles of my shoes scratched gravel into the ground. It was late, about midnight. The sky was clear, but the air was so thick I could almost see it in the moonlight. You know, sometimes you can actually see the wind...Sometimes, if you're not really looking, you can actually see the air move around you...You can feel it right? I stared into that which makes up so much around us but doesn't appear to be anything, the empty void wherein air hangs and winds loom. I watched cars rush by sporadically, momentarily droning out crickets chirping their songs. I leaned back against the slope of the ground and with my hands behind my head, I breathed in the air. Exhaled.

"Hey, you there," a woman's voice called out.

I bolted up, nearly slipping and rolling down the embankment.

"Yeah, you."

My eyes tried to focus on the figure of a woman across the four lanes of interstate highway. She was standing on the shoulder. I wanted to run, but instead, I froze and shuddered.

"Yeah?" I whimpered and my voice cracked.

It was hard to see her face or to give her an age. All I could tell was that there before me, across the interstate, stood a woman. My little world was suddenly invaded again. I was scared, and all I wanted to do was get on my bike and get out of there, and then I'd never come back, I promised myself. But I didn't go anywhere. I just sat there, motionless, and I listened.

"Boy, you've been coming here for some time now," she spoke in a deep, almost raspy voice. "I know. I've been watching you.

You sit over there alone, by yourself, lookin' around. You sit there thinkin' and lookin' at the world. Like I says, I've been watchin' you. Why don't you come over here and talk to me?"

Oh shit. "Sorry, lady. I gotta go!" I turned my back and jogged to my bike.

"Hey!"

I turned back around.

"You're more polite than that, I know you are."

I ignored her and hurriedly picked my bike off the ground.

"Joshua," she said in a firm, yet not loud voice.

I froze. When I turned around again she was on my side of the interstate.

"What? How'd you know my name?" My voice split with puzzlement, and I slowly crept toward her. It was too dark to see her well. "Who are you?" I tried to examine her better with squinted eyes, but it was a failed effort. I started crying. "Leave me alone!"

"Joshua, I understand you're scared but you shouldn't worry."

In tears, I insisted again, "How do you know my name?"

She continued to avoid my question. "I know." That was it. "I know." What kind of bullshit answer is that?

"What are you doing here?" I was screaming.

"Honey, relax."

"I'm leaving." I ran back to my bike scared and angry.

"You won't be gone for long Joshua. You can't stay away from here; this place is magic and you know it, even if you don't realize it. I'll be waiting and it will be okay."

And with that I took off and was gone. I rode home through fog. The ride was quick, and soon I was home in bed and asleep.

The next morning I didn't say a thing to anyone about the woman at the interstate. Who did I have to tell anyway? And how could I? Nobody knew where I'd been spending my idle time, let alone going in the middle of the night. My recollection of the night before was blurry anyway. It even crossed my mind that maybe it was all a dream. That was the only logical explanation for it. But it wasn't a dream, and with only a tinge of doubt, I was sure of it. It didn't matter anyway. That lady is fuckin' nuts. She could have killed me. There was no doubt in my mind; they'd find my dismembered body spread out all over the ditch. I was never going back there again.

The shirt clung to my back in the heat of the afternoon as I rode my bike home from school. Humid, unconditioned air from inside our rented house reached out to greet me with sounds of my parents arguing in the living room as I opened the front door. My mom was sitting in her recliner, her burgundy glass of wine clutched in a white-knuckled hand, a disgusted look on her face, but she was nodding agreement in response to whatever my dad had just said. I looked down at my worn shoes, shoes that would have been replaced months ago by parents who noticed such things, and ignored them both as I walked through the living room behind them.

"It just won't work. We have to get out before we lose everything," my dad said, the sound of his voice more quiet than when I first came in.

"You call the landlord then," Mom belched back and continued with an afterthought: "Did you tell Will?"

"He knows," I heard Dad say as I came to the bottom of the basement stairs and threw myself onto the couch.

For the next couple days I was too frightened, and my mind was too preoccupied, to think about going back to the bridge. I went to school as usual, sat through each day with my signature indifference and was left alone. I spent long, detached days considering the woman who confronted me at the bridge, as well as the reality of what my parents' argument had meant, and both echoed in my head. I couldn't quell the nagging anxiety reverberating in my chest that sought calm, and I once again tried to convince myself that everything that happened that last night at the bridge was an invention of my own fantasy. It was possible; my entire life was starting to feel like nothing but an illusion anyway. Deep down, I didn't accept this contrived notion of shrouded truth, but regardless, the unease grew to near panic as I lay in bed and it drove me to ride out and seek the bridge. I recognized no regard for whatever consequence may await, for in the befuddlement that resulted from the swell of emotional exhaustion within me, I thought nothing of it.

It was eleven o'clock and the air was thick with moisture. When I got to the bridge, I sat beneath it where the steel beams above met the ground, aside the concrete gully of interstate highway. My lungs were wearied from the muggy, hot air. I was tired. Just being at the bridge brought a blanket of calm upon me, and I laid back at the top of the sloping concrete embankment, closed my eyes, fell asleep and dreamed.

I was in a forest. The trees were alive; they were reaching and jumping at me from another dimension only revealed in dreams. Alive and green. I walked down a path-a trail, a dirt trail, then a golden road that once more transformed itself into cobblestone beneath feet. Colors liquid and vivid-animated. I was lucid; conscious of the dream and that I was, in fact, dreaming.

I walked down the stone lane, woodland walls flanking me; the narrowing pathway disappeared into all that green.

My instincts and senses were heightened, and I was attacked by all that surrounded me. The air, I saw it, I felt it, and I breathed it. In the dream, I actually breathed the air, tasted it on my tongue and felt the cool mist of it in my lungs. Tall, thin, woody bamboo shot up and jutted out into the leafy, wooded canopy. Gigantic ferns, hundreds of times larger than the ones in our living room. There were trees with huge deciduous leaves the size of large cars. Monkeys swung in the trees, cackling. My head flew from side to side to absorb everything around me, everything that was living and reaching out to me: moths, droplets of mist, birds, sloths, pigmies, crocodiles, flying gray squirrels, and acorns crunching beneath my feet.

Phallic mushrooms poked up little domed heads that broke ground in patches before me. A single white butterfly danced with a flower of the same color that arched its stem back and fluttered its own winged petals in mirrored response to the swoon of the courting butterfly.

I felt as I did as a young boy, but though I was living childhood all over again in a strange new world. The sky was swirling gray, white, blue and surreal. And there was something different about me, something I hadn't felt or known before. I was changing. There in my dream, I was changing into something else-the world was stretching and I was shrinking in scale. I was experiencing the beginning of something new, and I realized it.

All along the path I observed, tucked away and scattered among reeds and various thick blades of foliage, scarlet and green-mouthed flytraps crushing insect prey, long-leafed and oozing-tentacled sundews and sticky little butterworts with bloomstalks boasting an array of violet flowers. A loud, droning hum drew my attention to a dark cloud spinning and hovering over a cluster of reeds off to my side. I left the path and drew closer and realized that my bare feet were sinking into swampy earth. After parting the tall, sharp reeds, I discerned a colony of bees buzzing and diving as it attempted mass fornication with a patch of yellow Spider Orchids perched on a floating log. I crouched down and watched for a moment that lasted hours before I returned to the path.

Filtered white light began to expose more and more of itself and the blue-gray sky opened up before me as I came to a clearing. Before me was a pond-a real pond, with real water-that held within it a single largely exaggerated lotus flower, in full bloom and seeding. It was rooted in mud on the shallow floor of the pond, its beautiful blue flower reaching up to the swirling clouds. I looked over my shoulder at the sandy footprints behind me, turned around and reached out, two of me leaned out-my self and my reflection. We took the seeds of the flower and stole them away, broke the hard shell open with a jagged rock and took the inner stone into our mouths. It tasted of chestnut. We cupped our hands and sipped water from the pond and drank. I looked down, my reflection looked up, and I leaned back and watched my image withdraw as well. The sky began to drizzle, shower and then storm, and I disappeared with my reflection in a splattered haze.

Thunder and the sound of rain slowly aroused me. I opened my eyes to find the woman sitting next to me, so close that her hip was touching mine.

"Hello."

Pure unadulterated fear and the instinct to flee tugged at me, yet I was drowsy-languid. She held firmly to my ankle and I realized I wasn't going anywhere.

"Let go of me!" I yelled as I shook my foot, trying to free it, my knees scraping the concrete and starting to bleed. "Please! Leave me alone!"

"Settle down, Joshua. I promise I'm not going to hurt you. Trust me."

"What do you want from me?"

"I want you to just sit here with me, Joshua. I want you to look out at the world with me. I want you to not say anything and I want you to listen. Not to me, but to everything else."

Despite being afraid, I was unexplainably mesmerized and justifiably confused.

"Who are you?" My voice broke. "Why do you keep coming here?"

"Why do you come here, Joshua?"

"I like it here," was my simple and honest answer.

"I like it here, too." Her voice was deep, less rough than before, and enchanting.

I looked out into the storming night sky and forgot feeling afraid for a moment.

She reminded me she was there: "Lay back down, Joshua, I want to tell you something."

Her hand was free from my ankle and I no longer felt trapped by her, and slowly, although unsure, I laid back down.

It was the first time I had been close enough to really see what she looked like, and she was beautiful. Her cheekbones were wide and the most dominant feature of her face, sitting high, directly beneath the socket indentions of her dark brown eyes. Her face was perfect, an inverted teardrop, completely symmetrical. Her eyes were wide, bright and crisp. She must have seen the world with unparalleled clarity. The lashes of her eyes were long and black and curved upward, and her lips soft and full. Her skin was tight and smooth; the only lines were the gentle creases in her eyelids. She wore no make up, yet the delicate tissues of her face were full of subtle color. Her flesh was the hue of creamy rich earth, and her shortly cropped hair that of coal. She was dressed in simple clothes that smelled mildly of jasmine. She was much less frightening than before; however, no less mysterious.

The woman slowly laid down on her side next to me, propped her head up with one arm and rested her free hand on my stomach.

I was calm.

Her hand started moving in slow circles and casually pushed the front of my T-shirt up to my chest. The muscles in my meager abdomen quivered, but I didn't try to get a way.

I listened to her tranquil breathing against the backdrop of the pattering shower of rain falling outside the shelter of the bridge. There was an entire curtain of rain of which sight could not penetrate. It became suddenly cool and everything in my mind relaxed.

With her hand, she unbuttoned my shorts and slowly, with no exaggerated movements, unzipped the fly. I didn't know what was happening. I should have, or at least you'd think that I would have, but I didn't. In fact, I wasn't thinking at all, except of the constant rush of the water against the earth, the cool breeze, and the feel of her hand-the hand that slowly slid its way between the cotton of my boxer shorts and the moist flesh of my body. Her hand was small and smooth, and moved gently-so very gently-until my hips moved in circles. I couldn't control it and didn't want to fight it. My entire being was involved in something that I had neither the will nor the desire to do anything but let happen. My buttocks and legs tensed in a way they never had before, my head lurched backward, my back arched, and I vehemently climaxed. With thunder crashing and rain pounding the earth, I drifted off to sleep.

When I woke, it was no longer raining. I slowly slid my hand from beneath the waistband of my shorts and sat up. I was alone. I stood up and walked out from the darkness of the

bridge. The air was still cool and the sky was powdered with soft midnight pinks, violets and blues amid the black of night.

Mom sat undisturbed in the living room as I quietly unlocked the backdoor and walked in. I made my way to my bedroom around used cardboard boxes half packed with family possessions, across the worn brown shag carpet of the hallway and past my parents' bedroom where Dad lay quietly sleeping.

I gently pulled my bedroom door shut behind me while Mom sat in the dimly lit living room taking rips from her steamroller. As I settled into bed, I could still see her in my mind, sitting in her recliner. She'd hit it, roll her tongue back and close her eyes, listening intently to the deep hollow thump, thump of the raspy bass rumbling through the small plastic stereo speakers. Guitar soaring in three-dimensional sound over the lower tones that she visualized. Thick, burning clouds of smoke plumed from between her slightly parted lips as she exhaled; so much white smoke it didn't seem possible it could've come from just one set of human lungs. And she just sat there with her eyes closed in the smoky haze she had created.

That night I fell asleep to the music and visions of the bridge, alone, out where the rest of the world started, sitting a solid silhouette against the dusky light of the moon.

The night was cold; it wasn't freezing, but cold enough to watch my breath turn to steam and dissipate into the surrounding nocturnal air. The sky was clear and the city lights shined in competition with the stars, dimly illuminating the heavenly canopy high above the rooftops of the crimson and brown brick buildings all around me. The night was growing old as I walked down the crumbling concrete sidewalk, and my book bag full of textbooks weighed heavily on my shoulder as a constant reminder of all I had yet to do.

When I opened the door of my destination, I was greeted with a blanket of warmth and the dark earthy aroma of fresh beans and scalding water. A low to mid-level chatter filled the room. More people seemed to be present than there were seats to fill, yet I found myself a small round table toward one side of the room. I took off my coat, draped it over a wobbly chair to claim my place, set my bag on the table and walked over to the counter.

The girl who waited on me had very close cut black hair. She had a pretty face, a soft white complexion and soothing velvety herbal-green eyes.

"A tall Columbian please," I told her as I looked into her eyes.

She turned around and in a few seconds returned with a steaming cup of coffee. I thanked her and walked back across the wooden floor to my table. When I raised the coffee to my lips, it quickly fogged my glasses and burned the tip of my tongue. As the steam slowly faded from my lenses, my eyes wandered around the room. Seated against the wall across from me was a young student who seemed to be studying adamantly. He leaned hunched over his textbook, one leg bent up beneath him on his chair. His shoes were ragged and worn, the rest of his clothing nice and in good shape. The boy's wild, untamed curly hair matched his espresso eyes. Sitting at the table directly next to mine was a heavyset older man. He had eyes of coal and wore a large wooly white beard, but he had little hair on top of his head. The bearded man was an artist, or at least I assumed so from the sketching he seemed to be doing. I leaned in order to see what he was drawing when I was suddenly distracted. Although, it was more of a sense than a distraction-the natural feeling a person gets when he knows that he is being watched. I instinctively turned my head and looked over into the corner that the sense drew me toward. For the most part, the room was dim, but that corner was extraordinarily dark. Because of the poor lighting and the distance between us, I could not make out the figure sitting there, yet I found myself feeling oddly attracted to it. Still though, the face and body were nothing but a shadow to me.

Not wanting it to seem as though I was staring, I turned my head back to my table and pulled a book from my bag. The girl who worked there walked through the room, straightening up newspapers. The student across from me glanced up, and his eyes followed her around the room. He looked at me and then diverted his attention back to his books.

The textbook in front of me drew my interest for only a brief period of time, and then my eyes bounced back up into the world. I noticed the artist looking deeply into the corner with his sharp coal eyes, his hand rigidly dancing his pencil across the whiteness of the paper in front of him. I tried once more to nonchalantly spy over to his table to get a view of his drawing-especially now that it seemed he was drawing the shadowy figure in the corner. Just as I was about to catch a glimpse of his work, the young student walked between us and obstructed my view, and my eyes transferred to him as he walked over to the counter. He ordered a double cappuccino.

As I sat there with the sounds of milk being frothed and the chattering of the anonymous customers in the background, I still could not see an exact figure in the corner, but I could tell when its eyes met mine, and I quickly looked back down into my textbook. I pretended to read, but I was actually fantasizing about the shadowed person. Abruptly, I was jolted in my seat and hot coffee, a double cappuccino to be exact, splashed onto my hand and into the pages of my open book. I quickly tried to maneuver the rest of my things out of the way as the boy with espresso eyes hurried off to get paper towels.

"I'm so sorry," he said as he returned, his face a nervous red.

"Don't worry about it." I shook my scalded hand.

I was suddenly aware of the countless pairs of eyes focused on the young student and me, among those were eyes of coal and of velvet herbal-green. There was also a pair from the dark corner-I couldn't see those, but I could feel them.

As the two of us finished cleaning up the spilled coffee, the girl came out from behind the counter with a fresh cup of cappuccino for the boy.

"Thank you," he said to her as he carefully took the cup.

She smiled and returned to her work.

He apologized to me once more, "I'm awfully sorry."

Through the manner in which he looked at me with his eyes, it was obvious that he was wholeheartedly sincere. I even felt a little sorry for him.

"No, don't be. Its all right."

With a kind and gentle smile he thanked me for my forgiveness and returned to studying at his table.

By now I had lost any interest I had previously had in my much needed studying, so I returned my attention to the dark corner. But to my grief, the corner was empty-no silhouetted figure of a person and no sense of being looked at. I actually saw that corner more clearly than before. Had the lighting actually changed? Or had my eyes just become more accustomed to the overall luminescence of the room? Either way, all that stood in that once occupied corner was a small feeble wooden table and an empty chair.

Frantically, my eyes sped around the room, but I didn't see anyone there that hadn't been before. Where did the person in the corner go? Slowly, I gathered my things as my eyes made another pass through the establishment. Nothing.

I stood up, slid into my coat, and started to walk to the door. With desperate hopes of having an image revealed to me of the person who had been in the corner, I stopped at the bearded man's table to view his drawing along my way. I stood behind the artist and leaned over his shoulder. He quickly lurched his body over his table, covering his drawing pad. Simultaneously, he jerked his head around and his small black eyes pierced into my own. At first I was afraid of what he was going to say or do, but he did nothing but stare from his hunched-over position.

"Sorry, I was just curious," I said as I slowly recoiled.

He sat completely motionless and silent, as though he hadn't even heard me.

Stupefied and disappointed, I made my way to the exit and as I stood in the doorway, I turned around to take one last glance around the room in vain. The warm inside air poured out and danced with the cold air outside, as I stood with the door half-open. The green-eyed worker stopped as she was walking by. "Are you looking for someone?" she asked with a semi-concerned look on her face.

"No. I guess not."

With my head down, I turned around and stepped back outside into the cold night alone.

Her melodramatic tinkering on the piano was the only sound in the room accompanying his muffled rummaging through the evening's paper.

The two of them sat in the living room; he, lounging in his plush armchair; she, perched sideways leaning against the piano. The pale green walls were halfway drenched in a three-quarter light from the chandelier and the room gave forth a dingy yellow hue.

Her powder white skin was illuminated by her new orange evening gown. His eyes were dark and his skin gray-almost the same color as his hair. The tie around his neck had been loosened and hung crooked.

Neither of them had said a word to the other since the brief "Hello" they shared when he arrived from work. They didn't know what to say anymore, or maybe they had nothing to say at all.

He put the newspaper down, stood up and walked over to the bar. He dropped two cubes of ice into a crystal glass. Clink. Clink. He proceeded to drown the ice in four ounces of vodka. The cubes tried to surface, but they couldn't-each was trapped by the other and confined at the bottom. After placing the cap back on the bottle, he walked over to their sixteenth floor apartment window overlooking the city. He sipped from the glass as he looked down upon the cars. Lights were randomly blinking on and off across the cityscape.

On the piano she played a progression of minor chords; everything was out of place.