{"@context":{"@language":"en","AIPUUID":"https:\/\/open.library.ubc.ca\/terms#identifierAIP","AggregatedSourceRepository":"http:\/\/www.europeana.eu\/schemas\/edm\/dataProvider","AlternateTitle":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/alternative","CatalogueRecord":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/isReferencedBy","Collection":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/isPartOf","Creator":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/creator","DateAvailable":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/issued","DateIssued":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/issued","Description":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/description","DigitalResourceOriginalRecord":"http:\/\/www.europeana.eu\/schemas\/edm\/aggregatedCHO","Extent":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/extent","FileFormat":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/elements\/1.1\/format","FullText":"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2009\/08\/skos-reference\/skos.html#note","Genre":"http:\/\/www.europeana.eu\/schemas\/edm\/hasType","Identifier":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/identifier","IsShownAt":"http:\/\/www.europeana.eu\/schemas\/edm\/isShownAt","Language":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/language","Provider":"http:\/\/www.europeana.eu\/schemas\/edm\/provider","Publisher":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/publisher","Rights":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/rights","SortDate":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/date","Subject":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/subject","Title":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/title","Type":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/type","Translation":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/description"},"AIPUUID":[{"@value":"4a655379-2634-4db1-84a0-44b42821f3f2","@language":"en"}],"AggregatedSourceRepository":[{"@value":"CONTENTdm","@language":"en"}],"AlternateTitle":[{"@value":"Prism international 51:3 \/ Spring 2013","@language":"en"}],"CatalogueRecord":[{"@value":"http:\/\/resolve.library.ubc.ca\/cgi-bin\/catsearch?bid=1215619","@language":"en"}],"Collection":[{"@value":"Prism international","@language":"en"}],"Creator":[{"@value":"Prism international","@language":"en"}],"DateAvailable":[{"@value":"2015-08-10","@language":"en"}],"DateIssued":[{"@value":"2013-04","@language":"en"}],"Description":[{"@value":"The following description is provided by the publisher:
NON-FICTION GRAND PRIZE WINNER
\u201cHorse Camp (an excerpt)\u201d by JonArno Lawson
NON-FICTION RUNNERS-UP
\u201cNarrative Supplemental\u201d by Carolyn White
\u201cThe Skeleton Coast\u201d by Jean McNeil
FICTION
\u201cLast Train to Takarazuka\u201d by Jonathan Mendelsohn
\u201cThree Towns Over\u201d by Joel McCarthy
\u201cThe Actual\u201d by Pasha Malla
POETRY
Jessie Jones
Tammy Armstrong
David Clink
Julia Herperger
Jeff Musgrave
Elena E. Johnson
Jim Johnstone
Caroline Wong
Michael Patrick Jessome
matt robinson
TRANSLATION
Li Qing Zhao\u2019s \u201cOn Peacock Tower\u201d
Translation by Caroline Wong
COVER IMAGE
\u201cMiraichan\u201d by Kotori Kawashima","@language":"en"}],"DigitalResourceOriginalRecord":[{"@value":"https:\/\/open.library.ubc.ca\/collections\/prism\/items\/1.0135233\/source.json","@language":"en"}],"Extent":[{"@value":"79 Pages","@language":"en"}],"FileFormat":[{"@value":"application\/pdf","@language":"en"}],"FullText":[{"@value":" PRISM\nnternationa\nNON-FICTION CONTEST\nGRAND PRIZE\n\"Horse Camp\" (an excerpt) by JonArno Lawson\nFIRST RUNNER-UP\n\"Narrative Supplemental\" by Carolyn White\nSECOND RUNNER-UP\n\"Skeleton Coast\" by Jean McNeil\nJUDGE Andreas Schroeder\nCONTEST MANAGER Andrea Hoff\nREADERS\nKarim Alrawi, Nadine Bachan, Jane Boyle\nConnie Braun, Jane Campbell, Sonal Champsee\nAlison Cobra, Cara Cole, Robert Colman\nRuth Daniell, Robin Evans, Charles-Adam Foster-Simard\nSierra Skye Gemma, Rebecca Hales, Kat I laxby\nTariq Hussain, Michelle Kaeser, Michelle Kelrn\nSabrina L'Heureux, Kari Lund-Teigen, Jennifer MacDonald\nLeah Mol, Jen Neale, Josiah Neufeld, Steve Neufeld\nBeth Pond, Rochelle Squires, Kelley Tish Baker\nMeg Todd, Emily Walker, Janine Young PRISM\ninternationa\nFICTION EDITOR\nAnna Ling Kaye\nPOETRY EDITOR\nLeah Horlick\nEXECUTIVE EDITORS\nSierra Skye Gemma\nJen Neale\nONLINE EDITOR\nJeffrey Ricker\nASSOCIATE EDITORS\nJane Campbell\nZachary Matteson\nAndrea Hoff\nADVISORY EDITOR\nRhea Tregebov\nDESIGNER\nandrea bennett\nEDITORIAL BOARD\nRosemary Anderson\nNadine Bachan\nMichelle Barker\nOphelia Celine\nCara Cole\nKayla Czaga\nKate Edwards\nCharles-Adam Foster-Simard\nTara Gilboy\nJulia Leggett\nJennifer Macdonald\nMatt Malyon\nHanako Masutani\nSandra Maxson\nKim McCullough\nBeth Pond\nEDITORIAL INTERNS\nSelenna Ho\nDaniel McDonald\nMiles Sreyn PRISM international, a magazine of contemporary writing, is published four\ntimes a year by the Creative Writing Program at the University of British\nColumbia, Buchanan E^I62, 1866 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z1.\nMicrofilm editions are available from University Microfilms Inc., Ann Arbor,\nMI, and reprints from the Kraus Reprint Corporation, New York, NY. The\nmagazine is listed by the Canadian Literary Periodicals Index.\nWebsite: prismmagazine.ca. Email: prismcirculadon@gmail.com.\nContents Copyright \u00a9 2013 PRISM international {or the authors.\nCover photo: \"Miraichan\" by Kotori Kawashima\nSubscription Rates: One-year individual Canadian $35, American $40, International\n$45; two-year individual Canadian $55, American $63, International $69; library\nand institutional one-year $46; two-year $72. Sample copy by mail is $12. US and\ninternational subscribers, please pay in US dollars. Please note that US POSTAL\nmoney orders are not accepted. Make cheques payable to PRISM international. All\nprices include HST and shipping and handling.\nSubmission Guidelines: PRISM international purchases First North American\nSerial Rights at $40 per page for poetry and $20 per page for other genres.\nContributors receive three copies of the issue in which their work appears.\nPRISM also purchases limited digital rights for selected work, for which it pays an\nadditional $ 10 per page. All manuscripts should be sent to the editors at the above\naddress. Manuscripts should be accompanied by an email address. If you wish\nto receive your response by regular mail, please include a SASE with Canadian\nstamps or International Reply Coupons. Translations should be accompanied\nby a copy of the work(s) in the original language. The advisory editor is not\nresponsible for individual selections, but for the magazine's overall mandate,\nincluding continuity, quality and budgetary concerns.\nFor details on how to place an advertisement in PRISM, please visit our website\nat prismmagazine.ca\/advertise. PRISM occasionally exchanges subscriber lists\nwith other literary magazines; please contact us if you wish to be excluded from\nsuch exchanges.\nOur gratitude to Dean Gage Averill and the Dean of Arts Office at the University\nof British Columbia. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the\nCanada Council for the Arts and the British Columbia Arts Council.\nApril 2013. ISSN 0032.8790\nBRITISH COLUMBIA\nARTS COUNCIL\nCanada Council Conseil des Arts\nfor the Arts du Canada CONTENTS\njudge's essay\nAndreas Schroeder\n6\nA Challenge\nNON-FICTION\n3RAND\nPRIZE WINNER\nJonArno Lawson\n7\nHorse Camp (an excerpt)\nNON-FICTION RUNNERS-UP\nCarolyn White\n22\nNarrative Supplemental\nJean McNeil\n47\nFICTlOh\nThe Skeleton Coast\n1\nJonathan Mendelsohn\n37\nLast Train to Takarazuka\nJoel McCarthy\n61\nThree Towns Over\nPasha Malla\n67\nPOETRY\nThe Actual\nr\nJessie Jones\n17\nmine (with back turned)\n18\nhouse advantage\nTammy Armstrong\n19\nLake\n20\nLunar Eclipse\n21\nEpithalamium: New Mexico\nDavid Clink\n33\nHourglass\nJulie Herperger\n34\nOn the Way to Redberry Lake\nJeff Musgrave\n36\nInstructions for my Father\nElena E. Johnson\n44\nBefore Sleep\n45\nEdge Effect\n46\nAlone at the Base\nJim Johnstone\n59\nTribeca\n60\nIntercessions\nCaroline Wong\n64\nBones and Seeds\n65\nGirl from Neruda County\nMichael Patrick Jessome\n76\nGhazal: Finger Bowls\nmatt robinson\n77\nfebruary afternoon, near tampa TRANSLATION\nLi Qing Zhao 66 On Peacock Tower\nTranslation by\nCaroline Wong\nContributors 78\nSTILL WANT MORE?\nCHECK OUT PRISMMAGAZINE.CA FOR MORE EXCITING SUPPLEMENTS TO THIS\nISSUE'S CONTENT. A ndrects Schroeder\nA CHALLENGE\ni_\/et me begin by admitting a bias. For years I've monirored\u2014and in several cases\njudged\u2014the creative non-fiction competitions of a variety of literary magazines,\nsuch as PRISM international, Event, Fugue, Grain, Prairie Fire, Malahat Review,\netc. I've tracked the genre when it's been the focus of the CBC's annual literary\ncontest, and I've assessed the creative non-fiction manuscripts of UBC Creative\nWriting's MFA applicants for more years than I care to admit. In the process I've\nencountered a lot of fine CNF writing, but what's bugged me for years is this:\nwhy do so many CNF writers in North America seem to define the genre solely\nas memoir? Here we have a literary form whose definition and potential ranges\nso widely that, at its extremes, it can seem utterly apples and oranges (try judging\npersonal essays against docu-poetry in the same competition)\u2014and yet for the\nmost part we're merely using it to tell personal anecdores and reminiscences. A\nnon-fiction form of fiction, in effect. Meanwhile, its formidable capacity for the\ncontemplative, the rhetorical and the experimental is being wasted or ignored.\nHappily, PRISMs Literary Non-Fiction Competition of 2012\/13 turned out\nto be something of an exception\u2014if not in the overall range of its entries, then\nat least in its winners. In all three of the best-written submissions, straight-line\nnarrative has been enhanced or even replaced by approaches and techniques that\nemphasize exploration, contemplation, and a cettain productive unpredictability.\n\"Horse Camp\" is a wonderfully cheeky, free-wheeling intellectual romp\nprerending to be a treatise on horses, but like some of the best creative non-\nfiction, it's primarily about itself, refusing to be unduly limited by thesis or\ntheme. \"Narrative Supplement\" makes imaginative use of the ambiguity and\ninsensitivity of bureaucratic forms and jargon to explore the pain and emotional\neffects of suicide on those left behind, while \"The Skeleton Coast,\" which uses a\n150-kilometre trek through the Namib desert (\"The Land God Made in Anger\")\nas its narrative base, spends a lot more time tracking a parallel desert in the\nnarrator's emotional psyche. In some ways I liked this piece best of all, not least\nbecause of the way its author attempted to take Aristotle's theory of narrative\n(in the beginning evetything is possible; in the middle, one or two outcomes are\nlikely; the end is inevitable) and reverse it, though I had to eventually conclude\nthat the attempt probably caused more problems for the piece than it solved.\nStill, it's the kind of headset that will help us make fuller use of this literary form's\nexttaordinary potential, and I hope competitions like this one will encourage\nmore creative non-fiction writers to experiment with approaches a bit more\noutside their comfort zone.\nMay I make that a challenge?\nPRISM 51:3 JonArno Lawson\nHORSE CAMP (an excerpt)\nIt is easy to conquer the world from the back of a horse.\n\u2014Genghis Khan\nAt midnight, with Channa in company, the Buddha mounted his horse Kanthaka,\nand departed: on the banks ofAnoma, the River Glorious, he renounced the world.\n\u2014The Jataka, or Stories of the Buddha's Former Births, (No. 460)\nM,\nLore than thirty years have passed since I last rode a horse.\nNo one remembers now whose ill-conceived idea it was to send me to a horse\ncamp. It's possible the idea was mine\u2014I enjoyed cowboy novels and had a fine\niron-black set of six-shooter cap guns.\nIn any case, I spent eight long, unlucky days at this camp whose name no\none can recall\u2014I haven't been able to find any trace of it.\nMy father tells me it was only a half hour's drive from our house\u2014this seems\nincredible. So close. But the memories I have of it exist in a realm separate from\nall other memories of my childhood\u2014it doesn't seem possible that I lived those\neight days in such close proximity to home.\nSKINNER - MY BUNK MATE\nSkinner was born into the freckled Saxon flotsam that people the poverty-stricken\ncores of small towns from Moss Point, Mississippi to Flin Flon, Saskatchewan\u2014\nor from Opa-Locka, Florida to Emmunak, Alaska if you ptefer instead to travel\nalong a diagonal\u2014and here we speak only of one continent.\nSimilar small-town Saxons can be found almost anywhere from the islands\nwest of the Dogger Bank just beyond the Eurasian landmass to the distant shores\nof Australia, and in half a dozen bits of the world in-between\u2014less than forty\nyears ago we know for a probable fact that a group of them even reached the\nmoon having, in the meantime, renamed themselves Americans.\nIn a way the most striking aspect of this nation of pirates is its ubiquity\ncoupled with its neat-complete lack of self-awareness\u2014historical, familial, or\npersonal. And yet they are cunning. Only the Han Chinese are as numerous, but\nthey tend to know who they are.\nPale and thin, with heavily-lidded eyes and strong, frog-like fingers, Skinner\nwas, in his own way, ambitious: he watched for opportunities, and he was clever\nwith knots. Though he was slight, he was tough\u2014a sniffing giant, detecting in\nhim the blood of an Englishman, might still have passed him over for fear of the\ntrouble his sinews would give to his jaws.\nSkinner slept in the bunk above mine. On our first day at camp, during a\nnature walk, he discovered a crayfish in the creek we were lunching next to. He\nprismmagazine.ca immediately picked it up, bit off its head, and spat the severed cephalothorax\nseveral feet through the air onto the sandwich of Farzad, who was sitting a few\nstones away. Farzad glanced down at the small, lobster-like head of the crayfish,\nand tipped it off onto the ground.\nThe present, which knows what it has to be, must constantly revise the\npast in order to arrive at itself. For this reason, there are moments in the past\nwhich will (sometimes fortunately) disappear forever. But some moments only\ndisappear for a short period, and are then given a second chance, when the\npresent becomes more hospitable to them again.\nWhich leads me to the relationship between Elizabethan England and\nSafavid Petsia.\nPERSIA AND THE SHIRLEY BROTHERS\nI think it's safe to assume that neither Skinner nor Farzad had ever heard of\nthe Elizabethan mission that reached Persia nearly five hundred years before\nthe incident involving the decapitation of the unfortunate decapod. The Anglo-\nSaxon Shirley brothers (Anthony, Robert, and Thomas) represenring the Earl\nof Essex, arrived in Isfahan late in 1599 at the invitation of Shah Abbas of the\nSafavid Dynasty. Shah Abbas asked the Shirleys to bring five thousand horses\nwith them and to re-train his army according to modern English methods.\nBut before we look more closely at this fascinating early episode in mannerly\nequine cross-culturalism, the girls from Michigan must be considered.\nTHE GIRLS FROM MICHIGAN (or, HOW TO MAKE THE BEST\nOF THINGS)\nWhat is Michigan? I've seen it from across a river\u2014I've never desired to get\ncloser to it than that. My brother went dancing in Detroit, Michigan, one night,\nand a man who said he didn't like the way he laughed pointed a gun at him out\nof his car window.\nWhat else can be said about it?\nMichigan is not Minnesota. Nor is it Wisconsin. And the Great Lakes are\nnot and never will be North America's answer to the Mediterranean Sea. There is\nlittle warmth to be had from standing beside them, and no inspiration at all to\nbe had from glancing out across them. Why? Because on the other side are places\nlike Rochester, Ashtabula, and Port Sanilac\u2014none of which, we can assume, are\nin any way like Tripoli, Alexandria, or Algiers. When my wife says \"Let's go to\nthe beaches!\" my heart sinks. I picture dead seagulls on a rocky shore under a\ngrey sky. I think of death and zebra mussels.\nBut to return to the subject of Michigan.\nIt's hard now to convey to those who didn't experience it the down-spiralling\natmosphere of the darkening, despairing and (who knows why? had something\nbetter been promised?) disillusioned 1970s\u2014the faded skin-tight jeans people\nwore, the huge plastic sunglasses and the giant brass belt-buckles with bear heads\nand skulls and coarse slogans that sold at the run-down traveling fairs long since\nabandoned by the happy long-haired youths of the previous decade.\n8 PRISM 51:3 From town to town these rusted, flea-bitten end-of-the-world enterprises\ncontinued to truck their worthless wares\u2014tattered beaded macrame owls, velvet\nposters of big-game cats, race cars, and half-naked girls, as well as various leather\nproducts, mostly vests, jackets, and motorcycle gloves. For some reason\u2014\npossibly as a result of watching seedy Sunday night made-for-TV movies\u2014I\nalways thought these fairs came from California, but now I think probably most\nof them were on their way from (or on their way back to) Michigan.\nAt camp, all the boys feared the Michigan girls. Older than us, and larger,\nthey outnumbered us three to one. They had real cabins, with proper doors\nand screened windows\u2014until that summer the camp had been exclusively a\ngirls' camp. Having boys at the camp seemed to have been an afterthought\u2014a\ncash grab or the fruit of some other unsavoury scheme or contemptible plan.\nHowever it was, we were relegated to a single hastily-converted tumble-down\nshack without shade near the barn; the door was made from a sheet of thick\nplastic, and in the centre of the shack sat a single toilet, surrounded by a shower\ncurtain.\nWhy the Michigan girls hated and hunted us with such fury we never knew.\nWe hid in the shadows, but so did they, haloed by their feathered hair, their\nhard, heavily made-up misanthropic faces\u2014pastel eye-lids and bright orange\nlips, their rough cheeks thickly rouged\u2014wearing high-heeled hand-tooled tall-\ntop fancy-cutwork cowboy boots, like vicious primped-up low-class clowns\nfrom some horrible planet consisting of a single vast nightmare circus with over-\npopulated tents that finally spilled out into giant ferris-wheels that doubled in\ntimes of need (for instance when the pop and popcorn ran out) as colonizing\nspacecraft, their ships finally landing in Michigan, the colonist clowns sending\ntheit disturbed and aggressive progeny to be trained in the arts of controlling\nand dominating earth creatures.\nThis, anyway, is how I viewed them at the time.\nMany of them are probably grandmothers now who wouldn't dteam of\nkicking a little boy in the groin while wearing some fancy-but-frightening barn\nfashion racky-tack girl cowboy boot. Though I'll bet many still enjoy kicking a\ngrandson's bottom when it blocks granny's line of vision to the TV.\nI only witnessed one attack, but one was enough. I remember how the boy\nfell, writhing in the sand, his out-of-control contortions, and then\u2014the slowing\nof his spastic movements, and how he finally lay still for a moment in the dusty\ntrack before trying to stand, slightly bent, with his hand held across his lap,\nhobbling off to the dubious shelter of the shack. I remember that as I watched\nhim I prayed to be spared\u2014hoping against hope that I'd never experience his\npain and humiliation.\nI was not the one who'd been injured, but I expetienced my first delicious\nmoments of self-pity. It was a dazzling (though dark) sensation\u2014I had no idea\nhow addictive it would become, or I might have switched courses immediately.\nThe all-encompassing amnesty I'd gtanted myself with my self-pity allowed me\nthe slightly uneasy satisfaction of a growing, general passivity. Decades would\npass before I learned again how to make the best of things.\nprismmagazine.ca MOUNTIE VS. COWBOY\nAs I mentioned at the beginning, it was most likely my six-shooters that landed\nme in the camp.\nWhile there can be no doubt that the majority of the boys had been drawn\nin by the imagery of violent, inscrutable cowboys, I had never considered the\npossibility, until tecently, that some of us might have been meditating instead\non seductive souvenir shop effigies of Royal Canadian Mounted Policemen. Not\nSkinner, certainly, and probably not Farzad.\nIn the case of Farzad, I wonder now if it was the great myrhological Persian\nhero, Rostam, and the seven quests he undertook on his great steed, Rakhsh,\nthat instilled in him a desire to ride.\nBut let us consider, for a moment, mounted icons in North American\nsettings: the red-jacketed Mountie is more or less a nineteenth century British\ncavalryman. He rides, however, without a troop\u2014he's a loner, and this is what\nmakes him kin to the Ametican frontier cowboy. The Mountie's broad-rimmed\nhat is conservative and symmetrical\u2014similar to (but also quite different from)\nthe broad-rimmed asymmetrical cowboy Stetson, which is itself nothing but a\nsquashed sombrero.\nA Mountie is a man who might cotrect the grammar of lumberjacks, but he\nis also a last source of hope to lost prospectors. He sits straight in his saddle. He\nis not a gun-slinger. He annoys members of the First Nations, enforcing alien\nlaws upon them, but it rarely comes to a shoot out. When he rides, he is at the\nservice of the Queen. He does her will, not his own\u2014this is what makes him\nmost different from his south border cousin. A Mountie represents the law, while\na cowboy represents only himself\u2014he can be sheriff one day and, his slouching\nsilhouette disappearing into the sunset, an outlaw the next. This is part of the\ncowboy mystique. The cowboy rebels against the strictures of society with his\nbad, sulking postute and face-concealing bandana while a Mountie is an uptight\nopen-faced poppy of bureaucracy.\nThe Mountie is surrounded by pine trees, mountains, and rivers. He makes\nhis campfire, flint on stone, like a boy scout. The cowboy's habitat is the open,\nempty plain: he flash-starts his fire with broken percussion caps and a bullet. The\nMountie is more samurai than cowboy, but really, not much of a samurai either:\nthe Yabusame trained mounted archers of Japan probably had more in common\nwith the Navajo.\nThe cowboy is closer to ancient models\u2014Alexander the Great, for instance,\nwas something of a cowboy when he galloped forward on Bucephalus to chop\nthrough the Gordian knot with his sword.\nThe Mountie, in contrast, is closer to a knight in the age of chivalry. He is\nself-effacing, and interested in the greater good; a gesture from his sovereign is\nenough to instruct him, and suffices him in his quest to establish justice in his\n(or her) Majesty's beaver-filled realm.\n(Her Majesty is, in reality, a pitate Queen, as the pirated Nations of what is\nnow called North America became only too awate).\nThe third, completely unexplored icon, was the First Nations rider. To little\nIndo-European boys, a First Nations rider was, for the most part, a thing of\n10 PRISM 51:3 alien beauty. He was almost a centaut, at one with the animal he rode. What\nhe achieved with his horse was not open to us. The world he rode out from and\nback to was not familiar (and, to be fair, at that point we knew as little about\nout own histories as we did about the great riders of Comancheria; our criminal\nignorance was still in its incipient state). We needed a saddle, a stable\u2014an Old\nWorld and a New. What did the (to-us) nameless and nationless rider of the First\nNations need? Where was he going? And where had he come from? We couldn't\nimagine. While many of us could see ourselves as cowboys, and possibly a few of\nus dreamed of being Mounties, I doubt that even one of us imagined himself as\na nineteenth-century First Nations rider.\nWOMEN AND HORSES\nOne problem faced by the girls from Michigan, I realize now, was a lack of\nhistorical and mythological role models.\nWhile there were many famous horsemen who rode horses that were almost\nas famous, there are few horsewomen of note between Lady Godiva and Calamity\nJane. There was the Iron Age woman of Wetwang, discovered with her chariot,\nand, come to think of it, there was also Joan of Arc, who is generally imagined\neither riding her hotse, Papo, ot burning at the stake.\nLady Godiva, of course, is nothing without het horse. A naked woman\nparading barefoot through town comes across as a lunatic, a nude woman on a\nhorse is something else entirely, something so fine that she can't exist in reality\u2014\nonly in mythology and the imagination. The world's lowliest pornographer\nwould not be able to exploit the image of Lady Godiva on her horse. It's a\ntranscendent image. The legend of Godiva, come to think of it, probably owes\nsomething to the myth of Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons. Anyway, you can\nsee why Lady G. would not have held much appeal, or been much use, to the\ndowntrodden girls from Michigan. Hippolyta though. . .there was a role model\nthey might have made use of.\nAND WE CAN'T FORGET THE FUNERARY FIGURE OF THE\nFEMALE POLO-PLAYER FROM ONE THOUSAND FIVE\nHUNDRED YEARS AGO IN CHINA. WHO WILL WRITE HER\nSTORY?\nI will, but not right now.\nHISTORICAL AND MYTHOLOGICAL TIME\nWe have little experience of living in historical time. Historical time is an\ninnovation: it was, until recently, a highly anomalous way of experiencing life.\nMost of human existence has been lived out, instead, in mythological time. The\nnewness of history has either given us (or created in us) a horror of it. It has\nencouraged in us an urge to apocalypse\u2014to put an end to it\u2014so that we can\nagain re-enter mythological time.\nWe don't yet know how to live in the histotical world we've created. We\nmay never. Nearly all nations force mendacious mythological patterns onto their\nprismmagazine.ca\n11 histories out of an honest psychological need. Out desite for myth is insatiable,\nbut we quickly get tired of history.\nThis is because history is familial, tribal, and\/or national in nature. In some\nways, the attempt to give religion a history is part of what hampers and kills ir.\nReligion, however, is resilient, and by its ever-evolving nature casts off the figures\nthat accrue to it\u2014it moves free of history.\nIn the five books of Moses, horses are conspicuously absent. The Torah is full of\nanti-heroes, and in some ways, the stories work as a complete demystification\nof God-like humans. There are none of the saddled heroes we find in nearly all\nother mythologies where people have lived intimately with horses. Pharaoh's\nhorses drown along with their elevated riders\u2014they do not cross out of Egypt.\nThe message is cleat: when entering the monotheistic world, we must enter on\nour own two feet, in keeping with the ironic Italian expression Andare con il\ncavallo di San Francesco, or Go with St. Francis's horse, e.g. on foot, as St. Francis\ndid.\nLater, Solomon rides a mule to his coronation, and Jesus rides a donkey into\nJerusalem. But it is the emergence of the Four Horseman of the apocalypse (from\nheaven, as John saw from his resort on Patmos) that indicates we are exiting the\nstrictly monotheist Semitic world again. Just as the drowning of Pharaoh's horses\nin the Red Sea told us that we were entering it.\nAnd not until Mohammed rides the lightning steed Buraq to heaven on his\nNight Journey to the farthest mosque, do we see the hotse teappear for a brief,\nsignificant moment in monotheism. Buraq does not belong to Mohammed\u2014he\nis a creature of God's, and Mohammed is taken on his back by invitation, to\ncomplete his mission as a Messenger.\nSPEAKING OF THE WAR\nSpeaking of Mohammed and the Muslim wotld, let's tetutn for a moment to\ngentle, good-natured Farzad.\nIt seems to me that Farzad came from Qom. Qom was the city \u25a0where the\nfirst protestors of the Iranian revolution were killed in 1978. Farzad told me his\nfamily had left Iran earlier that year because it wasn't safe anymore. He had been\nin a car that was hit by bullets. He looked anxious when he told me this, not at\nall excited. He had seen a bleeding body lying in the stteet.\nJust one? I asked.\nTo see even one person die is a lot, said Farzad.\nFarzad wasn't getting it\u2014I had been telling him all I knew about wars,\nand he was reflecting on the fighting he'd seen in Qom. But I was talking to\nhim about millions. I was picturing the pictures I'd seen\u2014the heaps of bodies,\nbaskets filled with human heads. But Farzad was pictuting just one dead man.\nI said \"How many people do you think died in the second World War?\"\nFarzad said \"What do you mean, world war?\"\n\"World War\u2014a war that involved the whole world\u2014everyone fought.\"\n\"Even Iran?\"\nThis was a good question. \"No\u2014I don't know\u2014maybe not Iran,\" I admitted.\nIn all the stories I'd heard about the war, Iran had never been mentioned. Though\n12 PRISM 51:3 if he'd said \"Even Burma?\" I would have answered in the negative as well. My\nknowledge of the war was limited to Europe and Japan, and Japan only because\nof the atom bomb. \"But everybody else fought\u2014and how many do you think\ndied?\"\n\"A few thousand? I don't know, maybe that's too high, even a thousand is a\nlot of people.\"\nI laughed out loud.\n\"Millions!\" I said, loving the affect I was having\u2014amazed at his stupidity\u2014\nthough even then I had a sense that stupidity was the wrong word. Farzad\nwasn't stupid. I knew he wasn't stupid. But I'd never met anyone before who\ndidn't know about the war. I wanted to impress him\u2014I was telling him about\nsomething I'd been hearing about for years, and I experienced a kind of demonic\njoy as I watched him struggling to imagine it for the first time.\n\"How many is a million?\" asked Farzad.\nI tried to remember. A thousand had three zeroes. Ten thousand had...ten\nzeroes? Or no, it had...four zeroes? A hundred thousand\u2014was it five, or six?\nA million had a lot of zeroes\u2014I could almost picture the numbet. To hide my\nignorance, I started writing it with a stick in the dry dirt. I wrote a \"one\" with a\nlot of zeroes next to it. It looked too big, but hopefully Farzad wouldn't notice or\nquestion it.\nFarzad did not say any of the things I am now tempted to put, retrospectively,\ninto his mouth. He was bewildered. Not by the enormity of the number, or by\nthe crimes, which I wasn't able to convey, not do I think it was my smug sadism\nthat dismayed him. He was bewildered because he was balanced. Or because he\nwas well brought-up, in the best sense. Or was he lucky to have a good basic\nnature? Maybe all of these things combined. Though he'd seen people killed, and\nlived through his own terrors, he had not projected his experiences onto all of\nhumanity.\nI, too, was bewildered to my core, but I had lost access to my bewilderment.\nI felt an aching need to be clever. To see that he was still capable of a real\nemotional response both distressed and excited me. He had seen more of real\nlife, at its worst, and he was still intact. He could still feel empathy.\nI had merely seen a film and been told of the shadowy world of mass murder\nthat lay behind it, and I was already hiding behind the mask of an expert, leaving\nbehind my humanity in collusion with the violence that had been done to me by\nthe film.\nAN OMITTED SCENE\nAbove all, people love cleverness because it doesn't carry the obligations of\nwisdom. But people forger that along with wisdom's obligations comes wisdom's\nfreedom. Wisdom overflows as an ever-expanding movement in evety possible\ndirection. Cleverness encourages nothing but the claustrophobia of more\ncleverness as it overfills a never-expanding space.\nThere are those who ate most impressed when they hear things they've never\nheard before, and then there are those who ate most impressed when they hear\nthe things they alteady know.\nprismmagazine.ca 13 The first group cast other people aside in the search for novelty. The second\ngroup cast themselves aside in their search for familiarity and reassurance. Our\nculture rewards both types of behaviour, and so there are plenty of both types of\npeople. There are actually more than just these two types, but I don't have time to\ndescribe the other twenty-eight, in all of their permutations and combinations.\nFARZAD AND I AMONG THE FIREFLIES\nA half hour before dusk one burning hot evening we were made to get back onto\nour ponies for a game of tag.\nWe were supposed to play in and around the edge of the woods\u2014I had\nlittle hope of participating in any meaningful way\u2014and so it suddenly struck\nme that the best thing to do was hide. It isn't easy to hide on a pony, but I saw\na promising clump of ttees and shrubs off the edge of a path. Farzad was close\nbehind me; without either of us saying a word to each other he saw what I was\nup to and he joined me. We didn't make eye contact. It was hot\u2014there were\nbugs in the shade\u2014but bug-bites were preferable to being chased by frenzied\nwhip-cracking Amazons in the last blinding rays of a boiling sun. Mercifully, we\nwere forgotten and sat quietly in our arboreal hideaway as the light faded.\nIt was incredibly peaceful\u2014no one knew where we were. The ponies\ncooperated, and a great, surprising joy rose up from my chubby tummy to my\nflabby chest.\nTiny fiteflies started to ignite in the air around us. For the first time in my\nlife I think I had a sense of what was probably really happening\u2014that we were\ndrawn to the cosmos by a song it sings in which we are both the notes and the\nlisteners. For a moment we harmonize our lives (if we're able) with this cosmic\nsinging, and then fall silent to our graves, like fireflies at the edge of a dark forest\nshowing up and disappearing to a cricket's rhythmic chirping.\nThat's not how I'd have said it at the time\u2014I wouldn't even say it that way\nnow\u2014but that was the feeling.\nSoon, angry voices shouting our names could be heard in the distance\u2014it\nwas time to leave the safety of the woods, and return to the indignities and the\ndangers of the shack.\nCARING FOR MY PONY, SILVER\nMy paternal grandmother grew up on a farm. I never met her. But I once read an\naccount of her brothet's memories of theit farmhouse: there were eight fiteplaces\nin it, and he had to chop wood for them every day. When my grandmother was\nborn in 1888, exactly eighty yeats before I was, it was assumed that any given\nday would have a fair amount of wotk in it, and work of various kinds as well,\neven if you were comfortably off.\nMy grandmother would not have understood how baffled and wearied I was\nby the care involved in looking after my pony, Silver. Nor would my maternal\ngrandfather, who delivered milk with a horse and wagon until 1960.\nI might have been born in a different universe. But as it happened, it was\nthe same world, only older and stranger than before. Hardly a generation had\n14 PRISM 51:3 passed, but I (like most of my peers in the west) was already cut off from the\ncommon skills my parents and (even more so) my grandparents would have\nacquired at home as children: from the carefully accumulated knowledge of how\nto do things like chop and prepare wood, care for a horse, mend or make clothes,\ncook a meal\u2014things that would have been basic knowledge to a ten-year-old in\nthe Western world sixty or seventy years earlier.\nBut I could whistle a tune! And I had daydreams unlike any they could have\nimagined, fuelled by movies, television and NASA\u2014and I was lucky, maybe,\nthat I didn't realize yet how little I knew. This allowed me to be conceited in a\nway that wouldn't have been possible if I'd already been living a hard-working\nmulti-faceted life. I hadn't faced any major trials yet. But I knew a lot about\nWorld War II, and to be fair, I also knew the Bible stories, which contain a lot of\nuseful, compactly expressed information.\nIn those days I loved church. Wednesdays mornings, during the school year, I\nwas enlisted by the elderly local Anglicans as an altar boy. I found the datk, cavelike beauty of the nineteenth-century church interior reassuring. Understanding\nnothing, I was caught up in the spell cast by the smoke and wax, the elaborate\nwooden carvings and the mysteries depicted in the stained glass windows. I best\nliked shaking the little brass altar bell during the \"Holy, holy, holy.\" Pulling\nmy cassock and sutplice on and off in the vestty I was a sorcerer's apprentice. I\ncan't remember if I was ever the thurifer (responsible for the thurible) or if I was\nengaged in lifting the chasuble or shifting the chalice veil. Probably not.\nUnlike many my age, I looked forward every week to Sunday school. Our\nSunday school teacher was an ageing war bride named Mrs. Gutcher. She had\nthick lenses, wore thick pancake make-up, and had a slight overbite. She may\nwell have drunk too much.\nMrs. Gutcher told us how in the early days of humanity Eve once stood by\nthe water in Eden, and while standing there, she fell asleep. And in those early\ndays when everything was alive, when even shadows and reflections had lives\nof theit own, a shadow approached Eve's shadow, and everything was so fertile\nthat even Eve's shadow could conceive. And this happened with her reflection\nin the water too\u2014another reflection approached her reflection, and also in her\ndream\u2014a dream man came to her. And this was the beginning of the imbalance,\nwhen our shadows, reflections, and dreams gained independence from us and\nstarted to conceive progeny that we had no control over. This was why we were\nthrown out of the garden. Unfortunately, our shadows, reflections, and dreams\ncame with us.\nIt may be that you know a different vetsion of this story. Anyway, should we\nbother believing all our lives in the things we believed in when we were children?\nIs it safe, on the other hand, to pretend that our early beliefs haven't, in some\ndefinitive way, shaped us?\nI can't vouch for the accuracy of what I heatd\u2014sometimes I daydteamed\nwhile Mrs. Gutcher spoke. My background, like hers, was (at least in good part)\nNotth West European. In othet words, we were both lightly Christianized Celtic\npagans, and as St. Patrick wrote to Corticus \"One who betrays Christians into\nthe hands of Scots and Picts is far from the love of God.\"\nprismmagazine.ca\n15 But I'm putting off telling you about how I learned to care for my pony,\nSilver. Just as I put off actually caring for my pony, Silver, when he was mine to\nlook after.\nI was rhe fattest boy in the camp, and so they gave me the fattest pony.\nEveryone fed Silver\u2014they thought it was funny. I didn't like Silver, but I felt\nprotective of him\u2014I felt he was a symbol of me, and when they stuffed him and\nlaughed at him, I took it personally.\nThose who are successful at what they do would always (no mattet what they\ntell you) rather have done something else. It is, in fact, essential to success\u2014a\nbasic indifference to and discontentment with the field of endeavour. And this,\nthough I didn't realize it yet, was my problem. I wasn't indifferent to the elaborate\nrules and rituals involved in the grooming of a horse. I could see at once that I'd\nnever grasp or master any of it, but I wanted to. It would have been far better\nif I'd approached the multiple problems involved in saddles, saddle blankets,\nbridles, buckles, brushes, bits and reins, as if they were of no consequence to me.\nThe occupations of those whose lives were, ar one time, built around horse\nculture left to the future last names which could have no connection to modern\nmotorist life: the osier, the currier, the farrier, lorimer, or smith. Their days were\nover. But for a week I had to act as their inheritor.\nI never looked into the mind of Silver. John Hawkes went as fat as anyone\ncan to fictionalize the inner life of a horse in Sweet William. And in the end,\nsomething about his account doesn't satisfy. Singer could bring an animal's\nperspective to life in his Seance stories, but they show the extent and the limit\nof what can be done. When you try to imagine the inner life of an animal, your\naccount has to be brief, supernatural, and to the point.\n16 PRISM 51:3 Jessie Jones\nMINE (WITH BACK TURNED)\nmine is better in minus\nmine is a scraping sound, hauling backwards\nmine is in the city making money on small windows\nmine hurt by every barbed dollar\nmine is regarding the field as though not there\nmine is yielding\nmine is laughing at a wall of hip tea\ncupping gasoline in a glove, oppugnant dark\nspilling through thick\nmine at the centre of the field, borrowing absence\nmine, riddled with circular equations\nmine can't summon psychosis, then can\na keeling sleep hides one thing only\nmine awaiting completion in a sofa\nmine awaiting completion in a bread loaf\nmine articulating with a haircut, a throat\nmine shaking off a plinth, alone\nmine is the last elaborate freedom\nmine is prescribed fire\nmine is the field in the iris looking back\nmine is the lock tolling left\nprismmagazine.ca\n17 HOUSE ADVANTAGE\nThen out of the sun came Vegas\nand we belonged to its\nweekday getaway package deal.\nCity of costume. City\nof noontime cow-tip\ninto floral liquor. Did people hug there?\nI wanted to be hugged there, but\nall the glitter. I attempted average\ncleavage for all those mitrors. Most were\ndoors. You ate garnishes.\nAt every table, concentrated staying. General\nfolding on the floor, rubes glowing\nwith the need to be shown out. The hour\npast the detrimental. If everyone was all in,\na woman leaned close and a staunch guard stood beaten.\nThe House was a man in an unfortunate vest.\nYour hand was money until they told you\nit wasn't. The loss was small but articulate.\nThe House with the cuttle fish mouth said in consolation\nif it's a push, no one wins. No one wins for\nwhole daylight nighttimes. All over\nsmall pockets jammed with fingers that smelled of felt, digging\nThe loss is the start\nof a tetutn. I thought it must be why\nthey like magic also. It's all hoax\nunless something comes back.\nPRISM 51:3 Tammy Armstrong\nLAKE\nI was wrong about depth.\nOn the lake's milk-stirred evening\nthe swallows sip mayflies from the surface.\nThey are half-sifted words in night's gritty pockets\nwhere men, still in work clothes,\nsit on rocks or coolers, smoke and dry fly\nfor rogue shad\u2014dark muscles\ndown from Horsetooth tesetvoir\npushing toward skinned light.\nToday's record heat was heavy in high 30s,\nbut you tell me to wait\nwhile the tap water garters across my wrists\nand the ice tray in your hands\nhollows against the counter's edge.\nWait for something in the storm clouding\nto push against the Front Range.\nfust wait for the storm's rigging to shift\nwhere lighting lodged its jack knife last week\nin the field's soft grain.\nCoyotes are coming down for water now,\nseeking out the farmer's slough, the overturned trough.\nOn Rabbit Mountain we listened to theit a capella\nroll the canyon.\nSoon the rains will escape the distended sky,\nthe sand will silt the gullies\nand the bones will push through\u2014\nthe mule deer's worn skull, the vertebrae beadwork\u2014\nan augur's toss onto the snap-grown grass.\nWhite and clean as peeled rutabaga,\nthe bones will appear in the morning near enough to the house\nwe'll wotty what their presence suggests.\nStill, the swallows on the lake dip and half-dip.\nThey have been hitting our windows lately,\nseeing something worth returning for.\nprismmagazine.ca\n19 LUNAR ECLIPSE\nYou set yourself to the atomic clock,\nI set myself to you at the dormer's early squint,\nasking, as we shift into the moon's shadow, is it too slow?\nTime swamps the estuaries of our schedules,\nfills our days with puttering and friends emailing,\nWhat part of the country are you in?\nIs this you who knew me some years ago?\nWe are lost to clocks that circle strange time;\ntheir silver hands point to empty faces\not leap seconds missing footing.\nIt's five, no, eight o'clock my time.\nI know the names of almost nothing now\nand you asked me so long ago\nfor the return of your book of saints,\nfor an explanation\nas to why my country has so many time zones.\nLet me guess what you're thinking as we watch\nthe light low-belly its inky mooring.\nAcross the Front Range this moony saltcellar shifts\nmote,\na bit more,\ndrags its reading lamp back through the pines,\nwarms these rumours of kin-shadow.\n20 PRISM 51:3 EPITHALAMIUM: NEW MEXICO\nFor George\nWhen the antelope lie down\nin the storm's hollow,\nour first story ends and begins.\nHere is a good space\nthat hassles the ropes free\nand leaves us over after-dinner mantras\nin strange places on the edges of darkly mined towns.\nEach new day, the road's black throat opens\nbeneath our threadbare radials,\nswallows the pale spirit that shrugs off shadow\nand shows the path down toward the town\nwith its trucks lined up like newly polished boots.\nIf you'll love me in the awkward,\nI'll let those coy-dogs cross up North\nwhile you drive against the kerosene sun.\nAnother mapless flinch. Our story is a back road.\nThis is the gold around our fingers.\nThe storm calls through the evergreen sting\nwhile something in the air catches the starter flame.\nA good winter. A book of plum.\nThe sky's worn blade.\nBefore the coming snow,\nthe antelopes settle at the shelterbelt.\nJust there, a certain sort of light.\nThe snow falls. Our story begins.\nprismmagazine.ca\n21 Carolyn White\nNARRATIVE SUPPLEMENTAL\nARREST-INVESTIGATION REPORT1\nDate\/Time of Arrest Report: 10-3-08\/1130\nLocation of Arrest\/Incident: Golden Gate Bridge2\nOfFense(s) Charged or Investigated: (10-31) Suicide3\nName (last, first, middle): White4, Laura5 Margaret6\nRace: W\nSex: F7\nBirthdate:06-l4-898\nHair: Bin'\nEyes: Hzl1\"\nHeight: 5'9\"\nWeight: 15012\nSTATE OF CALIFORNIA\nNARRATIVE\/SUPPLEMENTAL\nDATE OF INCIDENT TIME\n10-03-08 1130\nNCIC NUMBER OFFICER ID\n9350 17702\nsummary:\nOn 10-03-0813, at approx. 1130 hours14, I received a report that a witness had\nobserved a person jump from the Golden Gate Bridge15, into the water16, from\nthe east sidewalk, by light pole 8717. I responded from the east lot on the south\nend of the Golden Gate Bridge and arrived at the area of light pole 87 at approx.\n1135 hours. Golden Gate Bridge Patrol had released a flare into the water and\nthe U.S. Coast Guard had already been notified18 and was responding. A green\npurse was located near light pole 8719. A search of the purse found a green wallet\nand inside the wallet was a Ca. driver license #D8060837, belonging to Laura\nMargaret White of Fremont, Ca20. At 1138 hours the U.S. Coast Guard, Greg\nBabst\u2014BM1, advised they had recovered the body approx. 800 yards east of\nthe south towet, and were in route to Coast Guard Station Golden Gate. Aftef\ntalking with witness I responded to U.S. Coast Guard Station Golden Gate.\nPresidio Fire was notified and responded to Fort Baker.\nWhile en route to Fort Baker, the coroner was advised and was requesred to\nrespond. Upon my arrival at Station Golden Gate, I observed the body of a\nfemale, approximately 20 years old, as she lay on a rescue litter on the U.S.\nCoast Guard dock21. The picture on the driver license from the recovered purse\nconfirmed the female was rhe owner of the purse and confirmed the identity of\nWhite. Presidio Fire Dept. Engine 52, Paramedic Zaffa, checked the body and\npronounced her deceased at approx. 1155 hours22.\n22\nPRISM 51:3 At approx. 1213 hours Mari County Coroner Investigator David J. Foehner\narrived on the scene. Investigator Foehner took charge of the body at that time\nand searched the clothing and the purse of the subject. While taking inventory\nof the purse, Foehner found a suicide note23 helping confirm this as a suicide.\nA set of car keys were also found in the purse. At approx. 1237 hours Golden\nGate Bridge Service Operator (tow truck driver), Amarrilas, located the vehicle\nregistered to White, parked in the east lot of the Golden Gate Bridge. The vehicle\nwas stored by Corte Madera Tow24.\nwitness information:\nRene Putman, Netherlands25\nI contacted the witness on the Golden Gate Bridge. He identified himself as\nRene Putman and stated in essence that he was walking on the bridge and saw a\ngirl with red hair climb over the rail and jump into the water26.\nevidence:27\nNone.\nADDITIONAL INFORMATION:28\n1. Clothing worn by White: brown two-tone shirt, blue jeans, and no shoes25.\n2. White was not listed as a missing\/wanted person30.\n3. Notification to the next of kin31 to be performed by the Marin County\nCoroner's Office.\nOPINIONS AND CONCLUSIONS:32\nIt is my opinion that White committed suicide by jumping to her death from\nthe Golden Gate Btidge. This is based on witness statements and the suicide\nnote found in her purse.\n1. ARREST-INVESTIGATION REPORT\nWhen my sister swallowed handfuls of her sleeping pills and anxiety medications,\npushing the capsules down her throat with gulps of Smirnoff, the EMTs who\ncame to my parents' home to pump Laura's stomach and fill her body with\ncharcoal told my mothet, \"Don't wotty. She won't be atrested.\" In 1963, a police\nofficer in North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington, New Jersey, Nevada, or\nOklahoma would have put her under arrest, handcuffing her limp wrist to the\ngurney. On the day in July that Laura tried to die, and on the day in October\nthat she succeeded, suicide was not illegal in this country.\nA clarification: INVESTIGATION REPORT.\nprismmagazine.ca\n23 2. LOCATION OF ARREST\/INCIDENT:\nGOLDEN GATE BRIDGE\nSince 1937, upwards of 1,300 people have jumped from the Golden Gate\nBridge. On average, one person jumps every two weeks. Laura was one of 34\nbridge jumpers in 2008. The bridge meant nothing to my family until my sister\ndied beneath it.\n\"Thanks Laura,\" my father says. \"Thanks for picking the biggest fucking\nlandmark on the West Coast.\"\n3. OFFENSE(S) CHARGED OR INVESTIGATED:\n(10-31) SUICIDE\nBarbara Meyers, a Unitarian Universalist minister with wine-colored hair and\nwide, glassy eyes, sits in my parents' kitchen. She has the high voice of a child.\nWe are planning Laura's memorial service.\n\"We think it's impottant that we not shy away ftom the word suicide,'\" my\nfather says. \"She fucking killed herself. It's not like we'te going to try and hide it.\"\nAt the memorial service that Saturday, Barbara Meyers gives a homily in\nwhich she says, pausing gravely, \"It is important that we seek to learn from the\nperson who dies from suicide.\"\nHer voice drops as she says the word.\n4. WHITE,\nA day after, we are assembled in the living room\u2014the room no one ever uses\u2014\nwhere candles a decade old sit arranged on the coffee table with unlit white\nwicks.\n\"Your Great-Great-Grandfather Brownley killed himself,\" my grandmothet\nsays.\nI nevet knew: at thirty years old, my Grandmother White's grandfather,\nRobert Brownley, drowned himself in the Chesapeake Bay for fear he had given\nhis second wife, Emma Lee Jarvis, the clap. He tied a bit of cloth about his head\nto prevent the blue crabs from eating the flesh of his face\u2014he was quite vain\u2014\nand sank into five feet of brackish water and drowned.\nAnd then my mothet tells me, \"My uncle, too.\"\nMy Grandma Breingan's brother, Clemente Bernasconi, killed himself in\n1958. My mother does not know how ot why Clemente Bernasconi killed\nhimself. Her mother would not speak of it.\n\"And my great-great-grandfather,\" my mother adds.\nOf Edward George Blackwell, the death certificate states only that in 1894\nhe died by \"cutting his throat, being of unsound mind.\"\n\"It's in yout blood,\" my grandmother says. \"The child came by it honestly.\"\n5. LAURA\nHad she been named for our family, Laura could have been Ladie Alice, Dora,\nElsey, Winifred, Maria Antonia, Apollonia, Wisconsin, Annunciata, Lucia, or\n24 PRISM 51:3 Florence. Instead, my sister's name was chosen on the basis of tolerability; my\nmother and father decided they could both stand saying \"Laura\" for the rest of\ntheir lives.\n6. MARGARET\nMy Great-Aunt Margaret kept us for a night every summer when we visited my\nfather's parents in Virginia. She lived in a tiny cinderblock one-story on North\nRiver. Her second husband, Howard, was a sea captain, and brought home gifts\nfrom places my aunt would never go. When he retired from the sea he took to\nhis bed and stayed there the last eighteen years he lived. The house we visited\nwas choked with the gifts he had brought her: glazed ceramic angels, reed-woven\nwine casks, mobiles made of white Jamaican seashells, tiny bamboo garden\nscenes from Japan, and delicate, brightly painted china birds in their china nests.\nAt night, Laura and I shared the bed that Howard died in, giggling as we\ninevitably rolled togethet into the deep hollow left by his body. In the morning,\nAunt Margaret fried potatoes in a cast iron skillet and let Laura, her namesake,\npick something to take home from the myriad of treasures cluttering every\nsurface of the house. Laura always chose to take a china bird.\nIn Laura's bedroom in Fremont, everything is as it was left: the green-sheeted\nbed in which she slept, the narrow closet full of clothes too large for her waning\nbody to fill, and the books she cried every time she read, so great was her desire\nto live in a world unlike this one. My now dead aunt's china robin, cardinal,\nbluebird, sparrow, and finch perch atop my sister's bookshelf, their china nests\nringed in halos of dust.\n7. SEX: F\n26% of bridge jumpers are female.\n8. BIRTHDATE: 06-14-89\nMy sister was born on Flag Day: June 14th. My father convinced her that the\nAmerican flags our neighbors affixed to their garages and cars were hung in\nhonor of her birthday. At six, Laura counted them aloud as we drove down\nMarigold Drive, whispering, \"Happy birthday me, happy birthday me,\" at each\nflag she saw. Fourteen yeats later, we gather for the twentieth birthday she is not\nalive to celebrate. The flags hang on every house.\n9. HAIR: BLN\nAt age 16, Laura begged my mother to let her shave her head. She had worn\nher hair cropped short and dyed shades of eyesore-bright pink and highlightet-\npurple for a year\u2014an incomprehensible thing, as she hated to be noticed. My\nmother told het, \"You'll look like a Nazi skinhead. Your teachers will judge you.\"\nShe looked to me for agreement: \"Right, Carolyn?\"\nI reminded her that her daughter's hair would grow back, whereas the\nnumerous facial piercings Laura had been begging for would leave marks. My\nprismmagazine.ca 25 parents often cringed at the sight of the hooked bone and glass earrings Laura\nforced through the stretched holes in het ears.\nThe next day, I drove my sister to the hair salon we had visited since we were\nchildren, and Laura asked Noelle to shave her head. I was struck by the delicacy\nof the flesh revealed. Her scalp was render and new looking, like the smooth\npink skin beneath a scab.\nWhen my sister's hair grew back, it came in as curls of light red. My mother\nfawned over it. \"She's such a pretty girl,\" she said to me, proud.\nA correction: my sister's hair was not blond when she died. It was red as\ncopper.\n10. EYES: HZL\nThe officer might have seen Laura's eye color listed on her drivers' license. Or, the\ncoroner peeled back her eyelids to reveal pupils the same color as my own. Or,\nshe died eyes opened wide.\n11. HEIGHT: 5'9\nA correction: my sister was 5T0. She hunched to hide it.\n12. WEIGHT: 150\nAt age 16, when my sister received her driver's license, she recorded her weight\nas 150 pounds. By 19, bulimia had sucked the fat from her flesh, leaving her\nskin taut and bloodless over the mountain ranges the illness had made of her\ncheekbones, her spine, her ribs. The coroner's report does not report Laura's\nweight. Instead, it tells me of her organs. Her heart weighed 252 grams when\nits beat stopped.\n13. ON 10-03-08\nMy mother left the house in the early morning to walk by Mission Creek,\nbeneath the eucalyptus. An hour later she returned to find Laura sitting at the\nkitchen table. Unwilling to be drawn into conversation, my sister rose from the\ntable and went to the garage. She returned with her mud-crusted riding boots\nin hand and said, \"I'm going to the ranch.\" My mother said goodbye, and Laura\nleft.\n14. AT APPROX. 1130 HOURS\nLaura placed her purse on the grate beneath light pole 87, climbed over the rail,\nand jumped. She was alive for four seconds aftef her feet left the bridge. Her\nbody hit the water at 75 miles per hour. She suffered subarachnoid hemorrhage,\ntransection of her cervical-medullary junction, hemorrhage to her posterior neck\nmuscles, a comminuted ftacture to her C-l vertebra, lacerations to her lungs\nand liver, anterior right rib fractures, internal hemorrhage, and an eight inch\nlaceration along her left lower lip, near the corner of her mouth.\n26 PRISM 51:3 15. A PERSON JUMP FROM THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE\nMy mother says, \"She's gone.\"\nShe rises from the kitchen table to fold her small, sharp limbs about me,\nholding me against her as she sobs into my shoulder. She clings to my body as if\nI am trying to run from her.\n\"She jumped off the bridge,\" she says, gasping.\n\"The bridge,\" I reply.\nI understand what horror is. I had never known it.\n16. INTO THE WATER\nMy mothet sat back on the imported sand beach beneath the pines, her thin\nbody slathered in SPF 89 sunscreen, as I walked into Lake Tahoe, its water\nas frigid as the biting spring snowmelt. Lauta floated belly-down on a shiny\nblack inner tube in my wake, her fat hands clasped about the rope I had tied\naround my torso ovet the pink paisley-printed nylon of my swimsuit. We headed\ntowards to the buoyant, Astroturf-carpeted platform some 60 feet from shore. I\nwas the water-horse to her rubber carriage.\nMy feet slid on the algae-coated stones and I threw myself into the lake,\nthe cold shocking the air from my lungs. Laura's fair skin turned red where the\nshallow swells broke across the tube and onto her body. The ground gave way\nand through the clear lake I could see pine trunks, great and even as marble\ncolumns, felled and rotting. I surged forth and yelled, \"We'll make it, Laura!\"\nLaura's inner tube bounced behind me and her eyes scrunched closed\nbeneath her blonde fringe. The water grew deeper, the rocks and drowned tree\ntrunks vanishing beneath us. All I could see was blue. Lauta began to sob, \"Stop,\nCarolee\u2014stop!\" I swam faster.\nOnce I had reached the floating platform I used my weight to dip its edge\nso that my sister could slide from the inner tube onto the Astroturf without evet\ntouching the watet. Still crying, Lauta clambeted onto the squate of buoyed\nwood and plastic grass, graceless as a seal on land. She lay splayed on the gteen,\nwater-worn turf of the platform, her hands spread flat. I stood above her,\nbouncing gently. I proclaimed, \"See? We made it!\"\n17. BY LIGHT POLE 87\nThe Golden Gate Bridge Patrol uses the bridge's 128 light poles as reference\npoints in its records. The most populat light pole from which to leap is the 69th,\nat the bridge's centet. A recorded 55 people had climbed the tail there by 2005.\nMy sister was the 21st person to climb the rail beneath light pole 87 and jump.\n18. THE U.S. COAST GUARD HAD ALREADY BEEN NOTIFIED\n\"You know, they'te not always dead when they pull them ftom the water,\" my\nfather says. In two years, he has never told me this. \"Sometimes they have to\nwatch them die.\"\nprismmagazine.ca\n27 19. A GREEN PURSE\nMy fathet and aunt took Laura to Florence as her high school graduation\npresent. It was hot and the city was empty of Italians; tourists filled the streets.\nMy father took pictures of Laura in the mins. In one, she emerged through a\ntiny stone door, smiling mockingly through an angelic expression. Her cheeks\nwere already hollow with illness; in a year she would come to my parents with\nthe shiny welts of lighter burns on her arms and say, \"I've taken all my pills, but\nI'm not ready to die yet.\" In a year her teeth would be rotten and datk in my\ngraduation pictures. In a year she would be locked away in the psychiattic watd,\nbehind heavy, buzzing doors.\nAt the leather market, Laura chose a slender purse made of strips of soft,\nemerald-green leather.\n20. LAURA MARGARET WHITE OF FREMONT, CA\nI write my sister's eulogy.\nLaura was not easy to know. She may have seemed distant, terse. We all knew\nher differently Her family remembers her stubborn disposition, her strange, absurdist\nsense of humor, and her tendency to express her distaste with a squawk, a sound\nmore befitting of a chicken than a child. She wanted to do everything on her own.\nAs a toddler she said, \"I do it myself. \" She walked with her toes curled under her\nfeet, balancing across the knuckles, refusing to explain why or to stop. Her childhood\nfriends knew Laura in the years when she was a runner, a laugher, a goof. In some\nrespects they probably knew her when she was most herself, the little girl that came to\nlive somewhere hidden away as she got older, and different, and sad. Laura did not\nwant to grow up.\nWe don't know the exact moment that Laura's life changed. By the time of her\ndeath, a simple conversation was an excruciating ordeal for Laura. The eating\ndisorder that would slowly destroy her health and sap her of her strength was Laura's\nway of trying to control the uncontrollable fear she experienced while trying to live\nday to day. The child we once knew seemed to disappear, to shrivel, and for years\nwould only reappear in instants.\nLaura wanted to be normal. Though it may seem like she did not want us to\nknow her very well, I think that maybe more than anything else she wanted to find\na person to know, and be truly known by. The waste is unspeakable. She chose to end\nher life having barely lived it. She may have someday had the ranch, the dogs, the\ngreat love, and all of her other wishes granted, but maybe not. Laura's desires were\nnot outrageous. They were small, and sweet, and, to Laura, seemingly unattainable.\nNow, truly unattainable.\n21. THE BODY OF A FEMALE,\nAPPROXIMATELY 20 YEARS OLD\n\"I want to see the body,\" I tell my father.\nHe looks at me and says, pleading, \"Let me talk to the coroner first. It may\nbe something you do not want to see.\" He is wrong, but I agree to take the\ncoroner's advice.\n28 PRISM 51:3 Laura's corpse will be fed to flame the next day, her 252 gram heart and\nsmooth and glistening epicardium and 553 gram right lung and 1529 gram\nbrain turned to fine white ash to be housed in a small brass box\u2014the plainest\nurn the Chapel of the Angels Funeral Home has in its thick catalogue. I want to\nsee the body, as if it will explain. I want to see the body so that I know my sister\nis dead.\nThe coroner calls and says to my father, \"I don't recommend it.\"\nThe body is taken away and burnt.\n22. DECEASED AT APPROX. 1155 HOURS\nIn Santa Cruz, I sit at Sushi Totoro across the table from my friend, Kai, who has\nordered the 49ers roll, sushi made of globs of roe, melted cheddar cheese, and\ntomato sauce meant to mimic the colors of the San Francisco Niners.\n23. SUICIDE NOTE\nI sit on the queen bed in my parents' room and read what my sister has written\non a single sheet of white paper, three inches by five. My father stands in the\ndoorway, back to me, waiting. Words lilt on the page, the ink floating above the\nblack, wide-rule lines:\nAfter 19 years, this is where I meet my\nend, where I finally discover what comes\nnext. I really am very sorry to do this\nto all of you, this selfish and weak thing I'm\nabout to do. I know you were all rooting\nfor me, but I wasn't rooting for me. I feel\nlike if I don't do this now, it will only happen\nlater, probably within the next year.\nI love you all so much and I hope you\nknew that.\nAm I scared? Hell yes. When you\nactually consider taking your own life\nseriously, that's when you find out what\nyou really believe. I will hope for the\nbest. I hope I get to try out a different\nkind of existence, a different world. I never\nreally belonged here. Please try to let me\ngo. To my family, all my love.\nLaura White\n\"She sounds so fucking young,\" my father spits.\nI rest the note on my knees. \"Not her best,\" I say. And he laughs.\n24. THE VEHICLE WAS STORED BY CORTE MADERA TOW.\nThree days after Laura jumps from the bridge, we drive to San Rafael to collect\nher car: the blue Prius. My father drives around the bay's shore, opposite the city.\nprismmagazine.ca\n29 I stare at the huge white cranes lining the water's edge, built to lift and stack the\nmetal containers from the decks of the boats that dock at the shipping yards. As\na child I thought they looked like great white longneck dinosaurs. Beyond rhese\nmetal structures, across the bay, I can see the Golden Gate Bridge. I am unable\nto look from it. It emerges from the fog in red spires, the water beneath it blue\nas cornflower. It is beautiful. The bridge remains in sight for twenty minutes. I\ntwist in my seat so that I may continue to stare at it as we round the bay and the\nhills threaten to obscure it. Finally, I see only dried grass.\nWhen we reach Corte Madera Tow, a fenced asphalt lot at the heart of a\nlabyrinth of highways and circuitous commercial roads, the sun-leathered tow\ntruck operatot says, \"I am sotry for your loss,\" as he hands my father a full\nclipboard of paperwork. Laura's car sits in a big, cluttered garage, two stickers\naffixed to its bumper: \"Obama 2008\" and \"Give wildlife a brake!\" I walk away,\nmy footfalls echoing.\nNear the entrance to Corte Madera Tow, a white pit bull sits tied to a metal\npole by a heavy chain. It whines. I look down at the dog and the plastic grocery\nbags and crushed soda bottles caught in the chain link fence behind it and I\nthink, so this is where it ends.\n25. RENE PUTMAN, NETHERLANDS\nMy father has frequently searched for Rene Putman on Facebook, but has not\nfound him.\n\"That poor man,\" my mother says. \"He was on vacation.\"\n26. SAW A GIRL WITH RED HAIR CLIMB OVER THE RAIL\nAND JUMP INTO THE WATER\n\"The foorage probably doesn't even exist anymore, but I think about it\nsometimes,\" my father tells me over the phone. \"If you could watch it, would\nyou?\"\n\"You think the security cametas caught het?\" I ask.\n\"Oh, I'm sure,\" he says, as if he's thought of it many, many times.\n\"But it wouldn't be of the fall,\" I say.\nHe does not pause. \"No, but you'd see her go over the rail, probably.\"\n\"No,\" I say. \"I don't think I'd want to see that.\"\nIt would be grainy, I imagine, the footage captured by a security cameta\nmounted high on light pole 87. Laura walks into the frame with her odd, low-\nfooted gait. She walks like she is gliding, her upper body held unmoving above\nlong legs. She stops, looking over the edge at the water beneath.\nI do not care to see my sister climb over the rail and vanish into the air,\nhurtling unseen towatds the watet.\nI want to see her face. I have dreamed of it every night since she died\u2014weeks\nnow. In the dreams, I turn a corner in a familiar place, a crowded Santa Cruz\ncoffee shop or hallway in my grandparents' house, and abruptly find myself\nstanding on the bridge. Laura is standing with her back to me, hands spread on\nthe red rail. Her hair looks like a flame. And just as she tutns to face me, I go\nblind. I cannot know whether she smiled her grimacing smile. I cannot know\n30 PRISM 51:3 whether tears wet her freckle-spattered cheeks. This moment is one I cannot see.\n\"You're probably right,\" my father says. \"I think more about the second after\nshe let go of the rail\u2014whether she regretted it or not. That is what I can't stand.\nThe thought that she was sorry she did it.\"\n\"I hope she wasn't,\" I reply.\nMy father says, \"Yes. I hope she was glad all the way down.\"\n27. EVIDENCE:\nFrom the journal of my sister, Alta Bates in-patient Laura White, July 2008:\nSo how did I end up here? I better figure it out on paper before someone else\nasks me. I was strong, I was solid. Then I went to Davis, alone. Fuck friends. Fuck\ntrying. It's easier to go up and down on this rollercoaster high of drinking and being\nfucked and engaging in my ED and not eating and going to Summit hung over\nwith unexplained bruises and burns. Enter parental concern. Enter sober me, enter\nconscience. I spill the truth to my dad; 1 spill it good. I cry for my daddy once again,\ndropping the act. Not a hot piece of ass after all, not a pro drunk driver, not a smooth\nparty girl. So it all comes crashing down. I ask for help, and now I have it. But the\npattern persists. I need those rollercoaster emotions again, or else, what do I have?\nNothing, no one. Wrong, of course. This is the point where I could have chosen health\nand sanity. Instead, I choose destruction and lies. I am still a drunk and I go straight\nback to the Bad Guy when I can. I lie and cheat and it feels good. I never pause to let\nmy conscience creep in, to see the moral wreck I have become, the worthless daughter,\nthe destitute human. So why not end it? Better to float on to the next thing, leave this\nlife trashed by the wayside. But no. Something in me screams now to hold on. I listen,\nfeebly. I want to go home. I want a cat to rub itself against my calves. I want to listen\nto the adamant stomp of my mother's path through her domain.\nI will not do this again. There, there it is. I will not. I am committed to this life\nI've been given, whether I come to regret that or not.\n28. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:\na. Before driving to the Golden Gate Bridge, Laura removed the FasTtak device\nfrom the Prius and hid it in the garage beneath her quilted saddle blanket.\nThe car's toll tag records its passage through a FasTrak lane on any Bay Area\nbridge. Removing it ensured that her path to San Francisco would not be\ntraceable. I wonder: Why would my sister bother to cover her tracks if she\nwas sure she would jump?\nb. When my father tutns my sister's keys in the ignition, we find the mix CD.\n\"Wake Up\" by Arcade Fire plays. \"You'd better look out below!\" the singer\nshouts.\nc. Laura took a photo of herself with her cell phone. The timestamp dates it\nOctober 3rd, 2008 at 11:25 am\u2014five minutes before Rene Putman saw her\nclimb over the rail. I tell my father I do not want to see it.\n29. NO SHOES\nI think, why did she take off her shoes? And then I realize that they probably flew\noff when she hit the water. Like in Looney Tunes.\nprismmagazine.ca 31 30. A MISSING\/WANTED PERSON\nTwo months after she is dead, I call my parents' house and get the answering\nmachine.\n\"Hi, you have reached the Breingan and White residence. We can't come to\nthe phone right now, but if you leave a message after the beep, we'll get back to\nyou as soon as we can,\" says my mother.\n\"Hi parents,\" I say. \"It's Carolyn.\"\nAnd I realize I have said my name when I no longer need to. There is no\nlonger a person with whose voice they will confuse mine. They are my parents,\nand I am their daughter. No confusion left.\n31. NOTIFICATION TO THE NEXT OF KIN\nBy 12:30, when Laura had not yet returned from the ranch, my mother called\nher cell phone. The phone rang, singing the chorus of Gnarls Barkley's \"Crazy\"\nover and over: \"Does that make me crazy? Does that make me crazy? Does that\nmake me crazy? Possibly.\" My mother went to Safeway to buy groceries to make\ndinner for my farher and sister. She bought three boneless pork chops and a red\npepper.\nMy mother rounded the sharp corner at Marigold and Mission Creek Drive\nat 2:15, and saw two police cars parked in front of the house. A male police\nofficer met her as she stepped from rhe car onto the cement.\n\"Are you the mother of Laura White?\" he said.\n32. OPINIONS AND CONCLUSIONS:\nI am sitting beside my grandfather on the porch of his home in Virginia. His\nbrain is riddled with dementia. We sit in silence and watch the ctabbing boats\ncome in at dusk, their motors chugging across the smooth water of slack tide.\n\"Why do you think Laura did what she did?\" my grandfather asks. He sucks\nat his tobacco pipe and looks at me intently. The ice resettles in his sweating glass\nofTalisker.\nI think, thank God he remembers that she is dead. It is one of the last things he\nremembers\u2014everything since wafts through his brain, ephemeral as pipe smoke.\n\"She was sick for a long time,\" I say. My grandfathers face contorts as he tties to\ncomprehend; this answer is not good enough.\nTen minutes pass and my gtandfather asks, \"Why do you think Laura did\nwhat she did?\"\n\"She didn't think she had anything to look forward to,\" I say. He tilts his\nhead from side to side, as if he is testing my answer's fit.\nHe will ask again. I will not have an answer to satisfy him.\nLaura did what she did because:\n32 PRISM 51:3 David Clink\nHOURGLASS\nPatience settles inside you.\nYour sand dreams of returning to the ocean\nto dance in that salty den of sharks and coelacanths.\nGlass is yout horizon, your world where\nwood is both a ceiling and a floor.\nA hand takes you by the waist.\nprismmagazine.ca\n33 Julia Herperger\nON THE WAY TO REDBERRY LAKE\nA constellation of stones\nin a dry bed\nwhere the river was:\nwater-logged sticks, plastic\nbags tangled in green reeds.\nWho knows\nwhat I'll find? Sea glass,\ntossed pennies, some talisman\nI can keep on my bedside table,\nlike the tin\nDad found in an abandoned\nhouse on the way to Redberry Lake.\nThe house slanted\nto one side, sun-bleached\ngrey in a field of rye.\nMy parenrs\nbefore they were my parents, younger\nthan I am now. Dad told this story\nso many times\nit seems I was there, watching:\nhe steps into the house while she waits\njust outside the doot in a blue\nsun dress, strawberry-blond\nhair to her shoulders.\nThere are windowpanes in jagged\nshards on the dirt floor, dust\nsieved though\ncracks in weathered wood,\nand, in the corner, a silver\n34 PRISM 51:3 wink of sunlight\non metal.\nHe brushes off the dirt,\nfinds the initials O. N. J.\nscratched into the lid\nof the tin.\nSun-blind, he steps\nback into the field,\nhands it to her. It nests\nin her palm like a small bird.\nNeither of them say\nanything. Open space and silence,\neverything still before them.\nHis memory\nalready turning into a photo\nhe'll pass on to me.\nI think about\nwhere the future begins\u2014\nevery moment opens\ninto it, hete\nfor just long enough to see it, before\nit turns into the past, the memory\nof green fields and heat.\nprismmagazine.ca 35 JeffMusgrave\nINSTRUCTIONS FOR MY FATHER\n(black & white photograph of my father on a beach, taken by my mother, 1967)\nLeave the woman taking\nthis picture, Dad;\ndive into the water and\nswim for your life.\nCrawl onto the beach of\nthe next village and\nmarry the prettiest\ngirl you see. That night,\nwhen I come to you in\nnightmares, please stay\ncalm, as I will bring\nscenes from your foregone future:\nholes the size of fists\nin closet doors, and\nchoirs of rum bottles\non window sills.\nFeel better by going for\na walk on the beach.\nPeet actoss the watet\nand imagine\nthe boy from your dream,\nsmiling and waving. He is\nhappy that, for you,\nhe simply never was.\n36 PRISM 51:3 Jonathan Mendelsohn\nLAST TRAIN TO TAKARAZUKA\nUMEDA TERMINAL, 11:56 pm\nYamamoto had not wanted to break up the work party, which is why he stayed\nuntil its end. When he arrived at the station thete were only four minutes to\nspare before the last train of the night would set off.\nNone of his colleagues had known Yamamoto wasn't feeling well, sitting\ntall in his charcoal grey Armani suit in the izakaya booth. But then none would\nhave claimed to really know Yamamoto in any personal way at all. They certainly\nwouldn't have known that at the best of times going for after-work dinner and\ndrinks at the pub wasn't exactly the thirty-one-year-old's favourite hobby. That\nhe only ever drank a single glass of beer at these all too-common-outings was of\ncourse joked about, but Yamamoto was such a good sport, laughing along, no\none realized the young manager would rather have been at home.\nThe guys from the office liked talking about sports, baseball, soccer, so\nYamamoto, who sometimes worried he came across as too work-oriented, would\ntalk about his fitness routine: weight training and swimming 1500 metres every\nday before work. He liked describing the specifics of his exercise regimen; it\nwas easy conversation that wasn't gossip or overly personal. Better to answer\nhis colleagues' probing questions about fitness than deal with inane ones about\nappearance. His co-workers, old and young alike, often made wisecracks about\nYamamoto's looks, and there was always an element of truth in their envy-tinged\nteasing. A favourite witticism involved asking about the quantity of seaweed he'd\neaten as a child\u2014the old myth about seaweed doing wonders for the lustre of\none's hair. But really, what was his secret? They wanted to know. It was genetic,\nwasn't it? Yamamoto had to admit it probably was.\nOne thing he didn't share with his coworkers was his love of reading, in\nparticulat long nineteenth-centuty English novels. He read them in Japanese,\nof course. He'd never been strong with languages. It didn't matter. There were\nplenty of good translations, especially for Dickens. His favourite, though, was\nTrollope. Trollope for the everyday details of English life that took Yamamoto\nto that far off place. Trollope and a cup of English tea in his armchair by the\nwindow of his catpeted living room\u2014that was the young salaryman's idea of a\nperfect night. But he knew his colleagues wouldn't understand. As he wasn't yet\nmarried, they'd think him strange choosing not to join them more often.\nOn this night, though, a rather wet and muggy Thursday, he had to be\nout. Had to go along with his department at least a couple times a month.\nAnd as per always, he did so with good posture and social grace, his new navy\nsilk pocket square in place to match the shiny blue of his new tie. He knew\nhow often to smile and when to laugh, all the cues necessary to assure everyone\nthat he was having a great old time in the downtown Osaka izakaya. Anything\nnot to burden the group, especially with something as embarrassing as a little\nprismmagazine.ca\n37 stomach discomfort. It wasn't easy, however, to hide the wince-inducing churns\nhis stomach kept going through. Hard to laugh in that kind of situation or not\nfeel a little isolated from everyone else. His head kept repeating its concern over\nthe cramping. And now there were bouts of nausea as well. Was it one of the\ndishes he had eaten? The oysters?\nRushing off the escalator he shook out his long black umbrella with three\nquick, hard shakes, before wrapping it tight and buttoning it up. With equal\ndeftness, he swiped his train pass through the card reader and raced down to\nTrack Four where his train was waiting patiently. There were still three and a\nhalf minutes, but Yamamoto hurried, hoping to find a seat, afraid he might\notherwise faint out on the platform in his best suit for all to see.\nUp ahead an older man walked quickly, clearly on the same seat-finding\nmission. A thin-waisted man, he wore a chocolate brown corduroy jacket over\na beige shirt tucked into brown pants he had hiked much too high. His grey\nsneakers had big looped laces, also grey, that flopped with each step he took.\nInstead of a briefcase, the old man had a white plastic shopping bag hanging\nfrom his wrist, banging against his leg with each step. The ojiisan walked at a\ngood clip for a man his age but Yamamoto knew there would be no competition.\nHe passed the old man easily, accidentally bumping him with his briefcase as he\ndid. In fact, he bumped the ojiisan rather hard, and would have apologized had\nhe not been so desperate to sit.\nIt was the last seat on the last car of the ttain, a narrow space in the middle\nof one of the soft moss-coloured benches that ran from one set of car doors to\nthe next. Yamamoto squeezed his way down between a high school girl in her\ntartan uniform and a heavy middle-aged man wearing a forest-green suit that\nlooked two decades out of style. The man, in glasses with gold frames so big they\ncovered half his cheeks, reeked of whiskey.\nThe doors hadn't yet closed when Yamamoto was hit by another round of\nnausea. People continued streaming onto the train, but Yamamoto didn't notice.\nHe had hung his head in his hands to close out the wotld, anything to block out\nthe smell\u2014the rank, sour smell coming out the pores of the drunken fat man\nbeside him\u2014a stench too similar to his father's for Yamamoto to ignore. He took\na breath to calm himself.\nClosing his eyes tight, Yamamoto tried to concentrate on his stomach. He\njust had to control it. Just control it. Like the waves of nausea that kept coming\nup, so too now were childhood memories he wished would go away. Sickness\nwas not something his fathet would abide. Crying was even worse. Yamamoto\nberated himself, commanded himself to swallow it down and just, Sit up straight!\nIt didn't work. The nausea was making him dizzy, as if he were caught out on\na small boat in the middle of a dark windswept sea instead of a still unmoving\ntrain. It felt like a nasty bit of karma when he opened his eyes to find the ojiisan\nhe'd bumped on the platform was standing right in front of him, holding the\nrubber ring above him. Yamamoto quickly averted his eyes, afraid the guy had\ncome to stand there and glare down at him. Only after he braved a quick upward\nglance did he realize the old man wasn't even looking in his direction. Yamamoto\nsaw the hunched way the man stood, the frailty of the old man, of old men.\nThe shopping bag hanging heavy from the man's wrist. Through the plastic,\n38 PRISM 51:3 Yamamoto could make out six small hard-covered books weighing the tired old\nman down. Of course the ojiisan had to be a reader, Yamamoto thought. The\nscruffy mismatched clothes, the plastic bag. Why did so many of the men who\nread on trains have to look like pathetic old homeless people? And why did this\nold guy have to carry exactly the kind of antiquarian books Yamamoto found\nso handsome? He hated how curious he suddenly became. Did the ojiisan read\nTrollope? Was he also a fan?\nYamamoto knew he should give up his seat. He would have too if he didn't\nhave such a stomachache.\nTAKARAZUKA STATION, 8:10 am\nNakamura was seventy years old but still worked everyday except Mondays\nwhen he left the house only to grocery shop and go for a walk up to the temple\non the hilltop near his house. Long before work, still lying in his bed half-asleep\nin Takarazuka that Thursday morning, Nakamura knew it would be that kind\nof day\u2014when artificial lights would be necessary the gloomy way through. It\nwasn't raining yet when he awoke. The only rain that would fall throughout the\nday would fall in a thin drizzle that couldn't satisfy the low hanging clouds with\nany sort of release. The morning commute into the city was more unpleasant\nthan usual, what with the humid weather and the lack of air conditioning. The\nHankyu Railway wouldn't turn it on until May; it didn't matter how hot the last\nfew days of April had been.\nNakamura tended the book shop himself. This wasn't what bothered him;\nin fact he knew to be relieved at the distraction work brought. To pass the quiet,\ngrey morning he stood at the store counter with a cup of coffee, his radio tuned\nsoftly to a classical station as he scoured the newspaper movie listings. It was after\nwork that he was ptepating for.\nAt twenty past seven in the evening, after Nakamura had swept the floor\nand dusted the counter and bookshelves, he locked up his shop and took with\nhim yet another selection of books he had still to read. Like the walks he took\non Mondays\u2014always Monday and exclusively up the narrow stone path that\nled to his neighbourhood temple\u2014Nakamura was compulsive about his need\nfor a wide selection of books to choose from each night when he read in bed.\nDependent on his mood he would pick from no less than the 15 or 20 books\nhe had going at any given time, often forcing himself to try authors and periods\nof English writing with which he was unfamiliar and not unabashedly in love.\nOn tired nights when a new plot or overly modern style just seemed too much,\nhowever, he would return to his beloved classics of old.\nFinancial consttaints usually kept him eating his dinners at home, but\nhe could only make a late show tonight, and didn't feel like he could wait till\nafterward to eat. It had always been a shock to his late brother that he could\ncook. His ex-wife and het friends\u2014het ftiends because she had known them\nfitst and because they stopped being his friends after the divorce\u2014used to tell\nhim he had a knack for Italian food. They had adored his carbonara, and he had\nloved making it fot them. Now though, he cooked only simple (usually boiled)\nJapanese dishes for dinner, much hotpot through the wintet. For lunch he liked\nprismmagazine.ca\n39 to make himself omelets. He preferred making foods that didn't go well with\nwine. He didn't drink anymore. Hadn't for years. Now when he was blue he\nwent to the movies.\nWet, and still angty with himself for losing yet another umbrella (left\nsomewhere on that morning train between Takarazuka and Umeda), he brushed\nthrough the curtained entranceway of a tiny yakitori place and sat himself on a\nstool at the counter. There were no tables in the place. There was only enough\nroom for the wooden counter, skewers of chicken sizzling on the hot grill behind.\nNakamura wiped off his hands and face with the cool, wet towel he was given\nand, after ordering his food, released a large sigh. Two young salarymen looked\nover before resuming their conversation with the proprietor. Nakamura wished\nsomeone would have a conversation with him.\nAfter dinner, he bought a bottle of cold green tea and a two hundred yen\nbox of chocolate almonds in the sterile white glare of a convenience store. He\ntook them through the mild rain and into the darkness of the giant old movie\nhouse in East Umeda. Nakamura loved this place for its grandiosity, for the red,\nvelvety curtains that framed the screen. The screen felt miles away, the place\nwas so big. It was a Korean melodrama, lots of tears and beautiful people. The\nfilm was supposed to be tragic but it was so pretty and far-removed from reality.\nNakamura enjoyed the escapist ease of it.\nThe sinking feeling returned when he exited the cinema and saw the drizzle\ncoming down under the street lamps. Couldn't he just snap out of it? More than\nanything, Nakamura wanted the day to end. He looked at his watch and realized\nhe only had a few minutes to catch the last ttain of the night.\nHe moved quickly along the sidewalk, hot and frustrated by the feelings\nhe had no explanation for, his plastic bag of books swinging by his side. As he\nwas boarding the train his shoulder was nearly knocked off by a rude young\nsalaryman who hadn't even apologized as he rushed by. No one apologized these\ndays, Nakamura thought, as he side-stepped through the crowd and onto the\ntrain. He hadn't noticed the selfish young man when he first walked over, but\nwhen he did, it was a strong temptation indeed to glare down at him. It was a\nrage Nakamura felt building\u2014a feeling he thought he'd outgrown\u2014a rage at the\nself-centered ways of the world. When he looked around it was as if the whole\ntrain, everyone, looked angry or sad or drunk-awful. No one cared about anyone\nelse anymore. Nakamura knew to catch it though, this angry wave of heating\nthoughts. He'd put too much conscious effort into his reactions to let something\nthis small work him up. So young people never gave their seats to the elderly\nanymore\u2014what else was new? He could stand; it was good for him to stand.\nHe'd spent too much of the day sitting anyhow. But still he let out a sigh. Could\nit never be easy?\nHOTARUGAIKE STATION, 12:12 am\nThe familiar musical warning trumpeted along the platform and in through\nthe open train until its lingering last note when 24 sets of car doors closed\nsimultaneously. The train started with a thrust. Yamamoto's grip tightened on\nhis briefcase, which was on his lap. He looked up as the train exited the terminal\n40 PRISM 51:3 station into the spring night. The old man and the other ring holders were\nbobbing toward Yamamoto and back again in rhythm with the jerky movements\nof the train. Seeing the outside world suddenly seemed terribly important, like\ngetting an eyeful of fresh air, but the standing crowd blocked any possible view.\nYamamoto couldn't see a thing. He heard it, though, when the train shrieked\nand took a sudden turn.\nHe hurried to unzip his leather briefcase, burrowed his hands deep inside,\nfinding and clenching the empty plastic bag he had used to take fruit to work.\nHe didn't pull the bag out; he didn't want to believe he'd have to use it. He closed\nhis eyes, swallowing and swallowing as he did. It had to have been the oysters.\nHe was sure of that. He was less sure he could hold them down all the way\nhome.\nIt came up the way a train makes its sudden start. A jerk followed by a thrust.\nYamamoto barely managed to hold on to it, sealing his lips and feeling the soft\nwarm-wet food, like porridge, fill his stretched cheeks. That was the jerk. The\nthrust came as a second jolt went through his stomach and up his throat and out\nhis mouth like a jaundiced waterfall. He retched into the plastic bag, but not the\none he had been holding. He hadn't had time to get it out of his briefcase. It was\ninstead the bag of books the ojiisan standing in front of him had opened and\noffered for him to use.\nThe vomit didn't all land in the bag; a good deal of it splattered across the\nold man's one pant leg. The ojiisan wiped himself off with his handkerchief and\nthen offered Yamamoto a hand. \"Do-zo,\" he said and helped the boy up as the\ntrain slowed into the next station. \"Here you go.\"\nEveryone on their car stared as the young salaryman walked through the\ncrowd, wiping the dtibble from around his mouth with the sleeve of his Armani\nsuit. He couldn't use his hands as they were holding shut the two sides of his\nunzipped briefcase.\nNakamura glared at the onlookers. \"Mind your manners!\" He was still\nshaking his head as he helped the young man off the train. \"They think it's a\nbloody television program they can just stare at.\"\nThere was a men's toilet off the platform and Nakamura quickly moved the\nboy towards it, hurrying him into the only stall in the empty bathroom.\nYamamoto dropped to his knees at the oval hole that was the squatter's toilet.\nHe could feel the old man crouch behind him and put a hand on his back as\nhe threw up all over again. There was no way for Yamamoto to move or even\narch his back out from under the man's touch. He was too busy convulsing with\naftershocks. Then came the bile. After that nothing but empty gagging. While he\nstroked Yamamoto's back, the old man hummed a familiar bit of classical music.\nIt wasn't Mozart. It was sadder music, gentler even. Chopin, perhaps? Dvorak?\nThe music helped calm Yamamoto. So long as the ojiisan kept humming the\nslow and haunting melody. Take him to that other place. It was enough to keep\nhim kneeling there, even after he'd finished gagging, hunched as he was so close\nto the floor, his hands\u2014two fists\u2014supporting him against the lubber pads\nmeant for feet on either side of the squatter toilet. But he didn't move. He didn't\nwant to, listening to the old guy's repeated refrain, like a gentle lullaby.\nprismmagazine.ca\n41 Only when the tears came did Yamamoto open his eyes again. He'd not\nregained as much composure as he hoped, but already he heard himself saying,\n\"Sumimasen. I'm sorry.\" He was still facing the toilet, but saying, \"Gomen\nNasai. I'm very sorry.\" He tried sniffing the runny snot back up his nose, tried\nbraving a look round, but he was quick to turn back after catching sight of the\nplastic bag still hanging from the old man's wrist. The ruined books! Suddenly\nhe was that eight-year-old boy all over again, his face twisting up in the awful\nanticipation that came before you got hit for making a mistake. The pain inflicted\nfor \"feminine\" weaknesses, as his father called them whenever Yamamoto began\nto cry.\n\"I've ruined your books.\" The flat manner with which Yamamoto delivered\nthe line was on account of the fear he was working to hide. The flinch, however,\nwas all instinct\u2014what he did when a man came in towards him, as the old man\ndid now, to cup a hand over Yamamoto's shoulder.\n\"Sh sh sh. Don't worry about that now. You'll be OK,\" the ojiisan said.\n\"You'll be OK.\"\n\"Please,\" Yamamoto said, more harshly than he intended, pressing hard with\nthe back of his knuckles to wipe away the wet from his upper lip and nose. \"Just\ngo.\" He shut his eyes tight and the way he was pursing his mouth, his fists, the\nway his nostrils flared with the air pumping in and out of them. When it came\nit came to him in full. A complete vision. He saw just exactly what he would do\nand how easy it would be to do; he heard the cracking sounds, and how seeing\nthe old man's blood on his hands after would satisfy something very deep and\nwrong inside of him.\n\"I'm happy to help,\" the ojiisan was saying. \"So please, don't you worry.\"\nThe old man was still talking and swaying with rhythm, staying just as close\u2014to\nYamamoto. \"Don't you worry now. You're gonna be OK.\"\nYamamoto felt the man's breath at his cheek. He didn't hesitate a moment\nlonger. When he got up, he was so quick he nearly knocked the old man over in\nthe act. He grabbed his briefcase like he was yanking the hand of a misbehaved\nchild. The bathroom stall was too nattow for him to pass the old man, though,\ndesperate as he was to leave, to get away so as to protect the ojiisan and keep a\npromise he once made himself as a boy long ago. Yamamoto had no choice. He\nhad to wait fot the old man to hoist himself up off the floor in the slow way old\nmen will. When finally they walked out of the stall, Yamamoto watched as the\nold man tossed the bag of books in the bathroom's trash bin.\n\"Old and used, anyway, eh?\" The ojiisan laughed.\nOn the long escalatot ride up Nakamura asked the young salatyman where he\nlived, if he was anywhere near Takarazuka so that maybe they could share a cab.\nThe young man didn't look up when he apologized that he unfortunately lived\nnear Uneno off the Nose line.\n\"Naruhodo. I see. Never mind then,\" Nakamura said. An idea had occurred\nto him. \"I think I might just walk then.\"\n\"Walk?\"\n42 PRISM 51:3 \"Sure.\" They had gotten off the escalator and were standing by the turnstiles\nat the station exit. \"Why not?\"\n\"But it would take you almost an hour from here!\"\nNakamura smiled \"It very well might.\"\n\"But it's raining.\"\n\"I think I'll survive,\" he said and offered the young man a wink. The\nheaviness that had been bearing down on him all day was finally beginning to\nlift. And now this spontaneous little plan of his. It was such a meager thing, but\nthe very thought that he could walk now\u2014at night, in the rain, so outside of his\nroutine\u2014 it felt wide open with possibilities, like boarding a big ship bound for\nthe open sea.\n\"Please.\" The young salaryman took a five thousand yen bill out of his wallet\nand moved in toward Nakamura. \"For your trouble, so you can take a cab\nhome.\"\n\"Thank you, but I genuinely would rather walk. I could use the exercise.\"\n\"You don't even have an umbrella. Please. I insist.\"\n\"Now who's worrying about who?\"\nThey walked out the station together. It was drizzling but warm. The young\nman apologized and said he had to go. Before he did he opened his expensive-\nlooking umbrella and held it out for Nakamura.\n\"It's almost big enough for two,\" Nakamura joked. This time, though, he\ndidn't refuse the offer.\nBefore the young salaryman set off, Nakamura rummaged through his pants\npockets and produced a dog-eared business card. \"Because who isn't in the\nmarket for an old foreign book?\" He said it with another wink. \"Truly, you're\nwelcome at my store any time. Have a cup of coffee and a chat, eh?\"\nYamamoto thanked the man with a deep nod and stepped into a waiting cab.\n\"Evening,\" the cabbie said.\nYamamoto closed the door. \"To Takarazuka,\" he said. He looked out the\nrain soaked window that he unrolled just a crack. Finally alone again, he looked\ndown at the card the ojiisan had handed him.\nTHE VICTORIAN NOVEL\nRare and used Foreign Books\nT. Nakamura, Owner\n2-3-22 Nakazaki-cho, Kira-ku, Osaka, 530-1013;\nPh: (06) 6313-4202\nYamamoto closed his eyes a moment and took in a deep breath. He turned\nfound to watch as his taxi drove by the old man. In the light rain the ojiisan\nwas walking btisk and tall undet Yamamoto's umbrella. The old guy looked like\nhe really was enjoying himself out there. Yamamoto watched him a long time\nbefore facing forward again. He checked the rearview mirror to make sure the\ncabbie wasn't watching, and then dropped the business card out the window\nbefore shutting it tight. He didn't want to get wet.\nprismmagazine.ca\n43 Elena E. Johnson\nBEFORE SLEEP\nThese nights are mostly sunset.\nWe amble into long-johns,\narrange our cocoons without flashlights.\nWind keens the ropes\nthat tie small shelters to stones.\nBefore sleep we switch\nthe bear fence on\u2014\neach pulse through the wire\na faint click.\n44 PRISM 51:3 EDGE EFFECT\nEach landscape leaves its mark\u2014\na scratch at the heart, faint\nas a pole-scar on talus,\nsunk like a boot-print in tundra.\n(Oh how the sphagnum springs\nand springs, how it soaks and soaks\nagain.)\nprismmagazine.ca 45 ALONE AT THE BASE\nThe \"door\" of the cook-tent\nunzipped. It blows shut,\nblows open.\nThe other tents\nflap, flap, flap. No one\nis ever coming back.\n46 PRISM 51:3 Jean McNeil\nTHE SKELETON COAST\nDAY 8\nThe drive from Uis to Hentiesbaai is poles, road, poles, road; a melon sun. In the\ntruck we are chastened into the silence that grows, as the moment of departure\ndraws closer, between people who will soon never see each other again.\nIt is September, early spring in the southern hemisphere, and we pass under\nthe mantle of coastal fog that extends 10 kilometres inland, a product of the\nrefrigerated Benguela cutrent that flows all the way from Antarctica. The fog\ninteimingles with sandstotms, turning noon into sepia twilight. Just visible in\nthe murk are glossy ribbons of kelp, fur seals, the hunched shaggy forms of the\nbeachcomber hyenas who eat the fur seals, fishing shacks, knackered bakkies and\nhulking remnanrs of ex-ships.\nWe've been walking 150 kilomettes over seven days in the Namib desert on\nthe ftinges of the Skeleton Coast National Park. The Ovambo called this place\n\"The Land God Made in Anger.\" The Bushman called it Bitterpits. I read this\nword first in Stephen's poems when he was alive and all was well and thought:\nthat sounds like the place grief lives. I should go there.\nThis is my second visit to Namibia. The first trip, in March and April 2010,\nwas almost on a whim. I was living in South Africa then, and was captivated\nby the idea of the empty country to the north: a desett in southern Africa\nstocked with anomalies like the horned adder with eyebrow scales that make\nhim look like an enraged elder statesman, the gemsbok which have their own air-\nconditioning system in theit nasal cavities which allows their brains to keep ftom\nexploding in temperatures of 45 degrees, and the desert elephant with its feet\nspecially adapted for walking on burning sand. All eking out a living in dry-cut\nvalleys where rain hasn't fallen in hundreds of years, drinking the dew condensed\nfrom a cold Atlantic.\nIt is not yet over but already I know I will write about this trip, and that\nit needs to happen in teverse time. In the beginning everything is possible; in the\nmiddle one or two outcomes are likely; the end is inevitable. So said Aristotle, the\nfirst theorist of narrative.\nBut if we reverse this chronology we start with the inevitable and end with\nthe possible, we see more clearly what has been discarded or lost along the way.\nWe glimpse the ghost of luck, map the path not taken. Why should be this way?\nwe ask, retreating along out path, as if we have seen a lion. Everyone in Africa\nknows this is what you do when faced with a lion: stand your ground, then back\nslowly away.\nDAY 7\nThe last of our nights in the desert, our campfires the only warmth against the\nchill. Fires burn bright at the beginning, then wither.\nprismmagazine.ca\n47 For these last six days we've walked 20 to 30 kilometres every day through\ndune grass swaying in the wind. It looks not at all like land but an empty sea. I\nsee only him, the horizon, the dog bending into the land.\nEight or nine kilomerres beyond the Rhino Alerr camp rhe finish line awaits.\nThis is such a trifling distance for us now that Jan doesn't even put on his trainers.\nHis feet are swathed in bandages, as are mine. Alice, the Frenchwoman who\ndoes logistics for Medecins Sans Frontieres (so not a delicate creature) has a\ncentimetre-wide hole in her head from when the metal peg of our spinnaker-\nshaped shade tarpaulin hit her in a freak accident, and the tip of Helen's toe will\nfall off within the next two days. We've even had to bandage the dogs' paws; Tiki,\nthe little herding dog, pads along on Band-Aids.\nLast night we'd sat around the campfire; as usual only Jan and I drank. Alice\nwas still recovering from her confrontation with Jan, two\u2014or is it three?\u2014nights\nago now.\nShe comes up to me when the others are eating around the fire.\n\"Don't you think he drinks too much?\"\n\"I'm the wrong person to ask,\" I say. \"I drink too much. I'm not a good\njudge.\"\nThe problem is Jan's volatile moods. Here I can't fault him\u2014I'd be furious,\ntoo. But on the other hand there is a collusion in my response which is not only\na drinker's camaraderie, it has a tinge of self-sabotage. This has been with me all\nmy life. Its periodic reappearance is never a good sign, I've learned. It means my\nallegiances are misplaced and they will not be repaid in kind.\nOn our way to the Rhino Alert camp we stop to taste desert lettuce. It is a\nsucculent; in Namibia many plants survive on the sea mist which drifts inland\nfrom the Skeleton Coast. The lettuce tastes of the sea.\nAn explosion from the river grass. A creature sprints past me, pursued by\nOmukuru (the Herero word for God, or divine creator), Jan's dog. It's a kudu, a\ndusk-coloured anrelope. The kudu and Omukuru teat down the sandbed of the\nUgab, an ephemeral river, so-called because it flows only a few days a year.\n\"Will he catch it?\"\n\"Not on his own,\" Jan says. \"If there were three or four of them, maybe.\" His\nvoice drips with a calculated boredom. Nothing I say will interest him now.\nMy relationship with Jan, if that's what you can call it, has deteriorated over\nthe past two days\u2014a sharp decline that might have nothing at all to do with\nme personally and everything to do with his preoccupations. We'd started off\ntalking while we walked\u2014about the fate of the Bushmen, Laurens van der Post,\nthe corruption of the ANC\u2014all the reliable southern African topics. But now\nthat voice of his which teeters between provocation and scorn has tipped in the\nfavour of the lattet. You're mad as a box of frogs! What do you want to know the\nname of that for? Walk, won't you\u2014he shoves me on the back when I get in his\nway.\nAnxiety fizzes in my stomach, my head, everywhere. I deliberately fall behind\nand walk at the rear.\nWe are doing this trek in support of the organisation Jan founded, which\nwotks to conserve the endangered black rhino, an animal that has recently come\n48 PRISM 51:3 under renewed and sustained threat thanks to a snake oil remedy trade in Asia\nwhich prizes rhino horn for sexual potency. The rhino hasn't got long to last, I\ncan't help but fear. The rhino themselves remain phantoms. We see only their\nspoor and dung.\nThis week we have all turned brown and lean like kindling. Jan has gone\nbeyond tanned; his face, caramel at first, is rubber. Two tourmaline eyes stare out\nfrom it. He looks like one of those hard men in Grand Theft Auto.\nAll week dark holograms of anger swirl from him, also a stringy, unstable\nelation. Around him the air is electrified but unhappy. I keep watching him,\nttying to figure out his essential code. He is alert, taut, but there is something of\nthe same surrender of the language of this place in him, too: succulent, ephemeral.\nSuch voluptuous words for a thorny place. Like the buffalo thorns that attach\nthemselves to us, driving an inch down in to our flesh, we absorb them until they\nare dissolved into our bodies.\nDAY 6\nBefore dawn we rise and stand by the fire, shaking off mist, dew, scotpions.\nWaking up after surviving another tentless night among hyena, jackal, elephant\nand leopatd feels like coming unpeeled into the world. The spring sun rises by\nsix. We watch Orion fade with the night westwatd, into the Atlantic.\nWe walk all day. What do we think about while we walk? For once I don't\nthink. The wind roams through me and this is enough.\nMy life now is blisters, zinc smear of sunscreen, trying not to sit under the\ntick bush nor step on a puff adder, migrant fears that waft in and out as I try to\ntake the measure of the emptiness of this place. Scat of bustards in the sky. Jan\npicks up petrified ostrich eggs for me. The ground is covered with the shatteted\ndetritus of a lost culture\u2014flint from Bushman arrows, used Bushman's candle,\nlast touched by a human hand six hundred years before.\nThere is an undeclared reason why I am doing this trek. I am not an habitue\nof secrets; it just didn't feel right to tell anyone. Everything I see and feel on this\njourney has been coloured by this. It has to do with a friend of mine, a writer\nwho chronicled this landscape, or one much like it, long before I came here.\nThese days have been an ordeal but also never long enough. I remember my\nnear miss five days ago, or was it six? At night I don't dream of snakes at all but of\nus going sand-surfing on windsurf boards mounted with spinnakers; imprinted\non them ate the names of Damaraland, the Kaokoveld: Koppermyn and Mon\nDesir, Torra Bay and Sorris Sorris. Such reckless yearning names for drunken\nhamlets with an Engen station and a bottle store. There is some formula driving\nthis, I feel, an attempt to solve that persistent equation between lavishness and\ndesolation.\n53ft\nFebruary is the hottest month in the Cedetberg. Tourists are scarce\u2014not many\npeople can take the heat; duting the day it is ovet 40.\nEskom, the electricity company, is doing work on the line and have cut off\nprismmagazine.ca\n49 power to the entire district between Calvinia and Clanwilliam for the day. I have\nto shove everything in the freezer and not open it if I want all the food and drink\nI have bought to last in the heat.\nOutside a rainstorm brews. Cold cobalt clouds amass over the citrus farms\nthat stretch for hundreds of kilometres in all directions. The clouds are rolling\nin from the north, all the way from Namibia. If I got in the car and drove for\nanother five hours I would reach the Namibian border. And if I drove for a\nfurther ten hours after that I would be back in Walvis Bay.\nI don't know I will walk 150 km in the Namib desett in six months' time\u2014\nthat decision is still ahead of me. But here, nearer the border, I feel its pull; an\ninsistent tug of unfinished business. Not good business, rather it has the grating\ninsincerity of something I must return to do in order to expunge it from my\nsystem.\nAs for this trip to the Cederberg, I've come here alone against the advice of\nfriends (this is South Africa and it's not safe) in another kind of bleak sympathy,\nthis time with a friend who is dying.\nI met Stephen some years ago. We were colleagues, both writers; last year\nStephen invited me to teach at the University of Cape Town. Stephen is a\nmountaineer, a walker, a marathon runner, a swimmer and like many men on\nthe Cape physically perfect, with thick veins rushing oxygen from one quadrant\nof his body to the other as his heart performs feats of endurance.\nA prolific poet and essayist, he'd published what many people considered\nhis best collection, Return of the Moon, in 2000. These poems were based on the\nBleek\/Lloyd translation of the San (Bushman) language and lore, now stored in\nthe archives at the University of Cape Town. The Bleek\/Lloyd archive amounted\nto nothing less than the record of a lost culture and language. When, in 2004\nthe South African poet and journalist Antjie Krog published a collection based\non the same archive, Stephen publicly accused her of plagiarism, igniting a bitter\ncontroversy in the cloistered world of South African poetry. I only met him years\nafter the fact.\n\"I've mellowed now,\" he told me, in an oblique referral to this chapter in his\nlife. \"I'm not quite as uncompromising as I once was.\"\nHe'd taken his share of criticism too, I knew, accused of being a conservative\npoet because his work did not overtly position itself with the snuggle against\nApartheid. \"I refuse to write about politics as my primary subject,\" he'd told me.\n\"Probably because that's what I was supposed to do, or required to do.\" Then\nhe'd given a rebellious giggle.\nThe shadow of his death creeps across this place, even if at this point, here in\nthe Cederberg in February 2011, Stephen is still alive.\nSitting on my stoep with only a Windhoek beer for company, the rainstorm\napproaches. I wonder if the Cape leopard still treads these roads. To the north is\nNamaqualand; I love the word Namaqua\u2014its sound like pieces of split wood,\nlike water running over stones.\nStephen has camped alone here. He set himself physical challenges, epics of\nausterity to feed his poetty, as if an internal code needed to be established then\nstiffened like a core. He wrote a famous essay about this place, \"Bittet Pastoral.\"\n50 PRISM 51:3 In it he calls the Cedetbetg \"the land with no fat.\"\n\"It takes an unusual person to see beauty here,\" says Haffie, the dowager\nowner of the farm where I am staying. \"Most people want green, they want the\ncoast.\" So do I, I think. Then why am I here?\nI wanted to write but I find I can't here. I am writing a book narrated by a\nman who falls in love with another man for the first time in his life. Neither of\nthem are gay. \"They must be a little bit gay,\" teases my friend back in London,\nwhen I tell her the scenario. What I mean is that for both men it is a personal\nscandal, what they feel for each other, a surprise and also a revelation.\n\"Why are you writing about men?\" my London friend asks me. I don't think\nI manage an answer. It seems so obvious to me: \/ am a man, these men are\nme. Even if in life I very often provoke the worst possible instincts in men. I\ndon't know what they see in me, but they feel shortchanged. They are expecting\nsomething from the outward package, and upon opening it find a creature too\nclose to their natute to be trusted.\nThe nights are rough. I feel alone and vulnerable. It is 28 degrees at midnight\nand I have no fan, so I have to leave all the windows open. I wake before dawn\nand open the curtains to see that the shale of the Cederberg has ignited. A\nhungty red bores into my eyes. Today it will be 39 degrees.\nDAY 5\n\"What do you think of my Bushman's feet?\"\nWe sit around the fire bundled in our downfilled jackets, but our feet are\nbare in sandals. I had noticed Jan's feet, of course, when I first met him a yeat\nand a half ago. Who is this annoying guy with the lovely feet?\nSince I was last in Namibia I have had many dreams in which I come back\nonly to find he is not here. He doesn't live here anymore, he's had to leave. The\ndreams were their own warning: don't go back. Something about this place, or\nthis man, or both, has its hooks into me, into my unconscious.\nSeveral things have changed since my last visit to Namibia: Stephen is dead.\nHe died suddenly in April this year of stomach cancer. In February I spoke with\nhim on the phone in Cape Town; he was so weak he could not have visitors. I\nnever saw him again after that day in St James when we climbed the mountain\nand he told me that I would come back to teach with him and I thought, no.\nTilings have changed for Jan, too. There is a problem with his wotk permit\nand he can no longer be in the countty for more than two months at a time. Just\nas in my recurring dreams of returning, he doesn't live here anymore, in fact only\nby chance have our paths crossed. Yet everything he owns is here: the business he\nbuilt from scratch, his house, his partnet Elise.\n\"Why did you come to Namibia?\" I ask as we walk up and down dunes.\n\"Why did I come here?\" He repeats the question, his voice sounds of wary\noffhand boredom. \"I was so tired, tired of people, everywhere. Tired of their\nlittle powerplays, their ego, striving, university degrees, their...\"\n\"Acquisitiveness?\"\n\"Yes! That too.\"\nThat night he leaves the campfire. Later when I go to lay my bedroll in a\nprismmagazine.ca 51 hollow on the karst plateau where we sleep I see him lying on the rock far from\ncamp, propped up on one elbow, looking up into the stars. It's not a normal\ntableau of a man gazing with wonderment at the sky. There is a collusion between\nthem; a current travels down from the sky as much as upward. The stars know\nhim, or know something about him. I wonder what it is.\nAll night I hear jackal and hyena. Hyena make scoping sounds, almost a\ncoo, like whales communicating underwater. I wear a British Airways eyemask\nagainst the Cyclops glare of the moon. When I wake I shift it to see Orion's boxy\neye criss-crossed by shooting stars. The Bushmen said \"we are the Dreamer's\ndream:\" they believed we are being dreamt into existence, which we mistake for\nreality, by a far more advanced consciousness. It's not hand to imagine a remote\nintelligence in these dark skies curdled with constellations.\nAll day we've been seeing remnants of the Bushman's existence: the stone\nhunting circles where they would crouch and aim their slender bows at springbok\nand eland, the flints they used as tools and which Jan ingeniously spots on\nthe rocky plain. But the Bushmen are long gone, driven out by the relentless\nmigration of Bantu peoples from the north.\nTonight Alice and Jan had a confrontation. Alice asked that we walk more\nslowly and take account of the landscape.\n\"This is not a bloody safari!\" Jan bellowed. \"And don't tell me how to walk\non sand! I've been working in the Namib for sixteen years.\" Alice had lived in\nMauritania; she knew a thing or two about walking on sand.\nFor the whole day we'd seen only ostrich. This area of the Namib was formed\nwhen the Atlantic retreated 300 million years ago. By day we walk through eerily\nvacant Gondwanaland plains.\n\"Ten years ago this place was teeming, man,\" Jan tells us as we rest under the\nonly tree for fifty kilometres in all directions.\nIn the 1800s, homesteaders in the area would be unable to open their doors,\nwalled in by springbok herds that stretched from one horizon to the othet. Now\nweekend hunters come from Windhoek or Swakopmund in portly 4x4s. So far\nwe've scared the living daylights out of a lone mother giraffe with her calf and\nscattered a few nervous springbok. All eyeing us, stiff with the threat of slaughtet.\nDAY 4\nWe walk for seven hours with hardly any rest. The last hour is a 30-minute\nvertical scramble. The rains have been so plentiful this year we have been walking\nthrough undulating sable curtains of grass, so beautiful that I forget to look\ndown. This momentary inattention is what led me to my near death experience,\ntwo days behind me now.\nAt the top of Messum Crater, Jacqueline plays Sinatra's \"Fly me to the Moon\"\non her mobile phone. The view is so impressive it takes on a calamitous aspect. A\nkhaki plain stretches to all horizons, punctuated by anvil-shaped drumlins.\nI take Stephen's poems from my backpack. I hadn't noticed before how\nReturn of the Moon is suffused with dreams\u2014the dreams of the Bushman, of\nstats and the moon and its steel light, of rain and wind and oryx and eland. In\nthe Namib my dreams are atavistic and strange, they dissolve before the first\n52 PRISM 51:3 green ribbons of dawn appear on the horizon.\nIn my usual life as a teacher of writing I often give my students this question,\nas an exercise: What dream did your character have the night before the story\nstarred? It's about the overture as much as the unconscious, the last moment\nbefore we were aware that something was going to begin, the very next day.\nThings that happen today: Alice gets walloped on the head by a metal tent peg\nwhich the wind tips out of the ground, tearing the flytarp, our only protection\nagainst the sun in this treeless place, over our heads where it whips, a giant kite.\nAlice's head pours blood and we marshal one of our precious ice packs, long and\nthin like those ice cores glaciologists coax from the Antarctic ice sheet, to stem\nits flow. We are four hours away from a hospital. There are no helicopters to\npluck us out.\nAnd later, once Alice has been attended to and we are sure she is not going\nto die of a brain injury\/bleed to death, Jan looks at me. I come to sit across from\nhim around the unlit campfire. He never sits next to me. Then again I never sit\nnext to him. I sit in my chair and shake out my hair and lift my head to speak\nto him and his eyes are already there. In a long arrested moment we stare at each\nother. The look in his eyes is familiar: curiosity, distaste, and an element I can't\nidentify. I meet his gaze with a questioning one of my own: Why do I feel so close\nto you? You don't like me, do you?\nJacqueline joins us in our little semi-circle of camp chairs, and we look away.\nHaffie's Cederberg farm is a 30-minute drive from Clanwilliam on a recently\ntarmacked road. The drive takes you first high above the verdant valley of the\ntown into a mountain pass. Here twisted cedars defy the wind. Strange boulders,\nwind-carved, line the highway like statues. Then the road plummets into a wide\nflat valley, as far as the eye can see. I pull up undet huge drooping ttees and book\nin at the fatm office.\nFor the last eight months I have felt a pull to return to South Africa, as if I\nhad to return to make sure this landscape was real. Not only the Cederberg, but\nalso Cape Town, Noordhoek, the places I frequented last year when Stephen was\nwell and we were making plans to work together in the future.\nThe day before I left for Namibia last year Stephen took me for a walk on\nthe mountain. We reached the top and he turned to me and said, \"You see how\neasy it is to become obsessed with this place.\" We were looking out onto False\nBay, into the bony mountains that stab the southern ocean on either side. It was\na Sunday in April, early autumn, but a thin heat temained.\n\"You'll come back next year, and we'll do this again,\" he said. In his eyes was\na rigid note. Possibly the obsession for this place he was speaking of.\nI had to stop myself from saying, \"Stephen, I won't. Something will go\nwrong. I don't know what, but it won't be like that.\" The feeling was there,\nautomatic, pre-scripted, I didn't need to think of it at all. An alarm trilling\nthrough me, powered by an uncertainty: what will go wrong? I knew, I think.\nprismmagazine.ca\n53 Not what would happen, but what would not happen. I wonder if this counts as\noracular knowledge. A premonition.\nDAY 3\n\"She's trying to recreate the trek she did two years ago,\" Elise says of Helen, who\nis the oldest among us and is finding the terrain difficult.\nBut Helen is not making it easy for herself: she rejects all our sorties of\nfriendship or offers of help. Each night around the campfire on her iPhone she\nreads out the blog that someone on the trek kept of this same journey two years\nago. \"Dave brought me up to walk behind him,\" Helen says, and her eyes mist\nover. \"I was number two all the way.\" I can't help but feel sorry for her. We have\nperhaps committed the same error, summed up in that old adage: never go back\nto somewhere you have been happy.\nDAY 2\nAs there is a constant flow of light we are born into the PURE LAND. This is the\ntitle of the painting by New Zealand artist Colin McCahon that hangs above\nmy desk in London. It is a horizon-awed canvas, a single Rothko line between a\nmuted sky and land.\nAhead of me for seven, eight hours a day, I see this painting. Jan cutting\nthrough it with his angry seigneurial stride. But he is delicate, too, almost\nballetic. He moves in wider circles than the rest of us. The air eddies away from\nhim as he approaches while we are fitting ourselves into envelopes of space,\ntrying to slide in neatly, hoping it will let us in. He hurls himself into time like\nyou would a wall. I like this burning conviction. You can tell a lot about a man\nfrom the way he walks.\nStephen, he gulped the ground. He wrote that the body of the writer\nabsorbed the message the landscape was broadcasting. For Stephen, Hemingway,\nabour whom he wrote with great insight and affinity, was the embodiment of\nthis idea. He would never have written the books he wrote had he not grown\nup in the woods and lakes of Michigan. He had absorbed the savagery and the\nwild intelligence of that place. For Stephen, Hemingway was not so much a\nmasculine writer as an open-hearted one. He declared his allegiances. He knew\nwhat he loved and was not afraid to say so.\nThey have similar eyes, Stephen and Jan, gas-flame blue against a darkening\nface that week as we all crisped in the desert sun. The eyes of a man walking away\nfrom you, always or eventually, into the horizon, into adventures, other women,\nanother cold beer at the beach bar where he will bask in the admiration of men\nand women alike. Even toward the end of our walk when we are fed up with\neach other, Jan still stares at me with those beacon eyes of his. And we stop, each\narrested in the moment of discovering an adversary, or is it another self? As you\nwould stall in front of a mirror, shocked to find it is not your own countenance\nlooking back.\n54 PRISM 51:3 DAY1\nIt is quarter past seven in the morning when I nearly step on the snake.\nThe spring sun has been up for twenty minutes. We walk across the northwest\nface of the dune. That is why I don't fully believe in the snake: he should be on\nthe east slope, facing the sun.\nI think: just a horned adder. No, it's not\u2014\nBy then it is too late and my feet are above its plug-shaped head.\nI know very well what you are supposed to do when you encounter a puff adder:\nstop dead, back away. The puff adder strikes at 300 kilometres an hour. That's\nfastet than a jet departing the tunway.\nInstead I step over it thinking, oh, that's a puff adder.\nAlmost unique among snakes, the puff adder doesn't move at a human's\napptoach. \"I'm going to kill you so why bother\" sums up their world-view. If it\ndoes bite you, the result is very often death. If you are lucky and don't die you\ncan be ctippled permanently thtough tissue and muscle damage inflicted by the\ncytotoxin in its venom.\nJan lifts the snake up on the end of Jacqueline's walking pole. The snake\nunhinges itself and dangles by the throat to reveal the biggest puff adder I have\never seen. His thick belly is a vanilla bronze. It glitters in the early morning sun.\n\"I used to play with these guys but then a mate of mine got bitten on the hand\nand we had to cut off his fingers so he wouldn't die.\"\nAfter he has put the snake down Jan comes toward me; we exchange an\nuncertain look. He makes to put a single finger on my shoulder, as if to say, you're\nbloody lucky, or, I'm glad you're not dying right now. But at the last moment he\ndraws his hand away.\nUp and down dunes all day. There are no shadows in this land. The sun cauterises\nthem. For seven hours in 38 degree heat I see Jan, the horizon, khaki grass,\nOmukuru, the gleaming citadel of the flytarp. At night temperatures plummet\nto near zero; the 40 degree temperature differential means we migrate between\nwinter and summer in a day.\nThis is when he tells me his story, how he was a commando here 22 years ago,\nin the dying days of the Botder War. He was only 18. His father, a conservative\nAfrikaner, forced him into the South African Defense Force, where he trained as\nan officer.\n\"No one knew where I was,\" he says, running a hand through his hair as he\nmarches in front of me. 'Not even my fathet.'\nJan came to this country fitst in war. He has made it his home, but now he\nhas been banished. His two months are almost up.\nIn southern Africa people say stay when they mean live: \"This is where we\nstay,\" they say, pointing to the house where they have lived for 25 years. There is\nsomething itinerant and non-committal in this verb choice. As if at any moment\nthey could get up and leave.\nWe are in the same position, I realise. He can't stay here either, even if it is\nhis home.\nprismmagazine.ca\n55 Evicted into a cool wind we walk twenty kilometres in silence.\nBack in Cape Town over the next week I will battle strange lashing panics. A\nblack fear will dervish around me, looking for exit. Why is this happening to\nme? I didn't know Stephen that well, we were only friends. He's been dead for\nfive months now.\nBut grief will saturate the months to come so that my mind will feel as if\nit has been flensed from itself by unseen knives. Grief is waiting. Waiting for\nwhat? Fot the moment to return, the moment in which you felt alive, if not\nloved. The moment in which the natural obscurity of life, the dark and the\nshadows, is illuminated. Waiting for the lean figure to appear on your horizon\nonce more. To come bounding back from the edge. Waiting for the sunset, to\ndrink sundowners as the light is swallowed by the mountains.\nI never felt desire for him, for either of these men in fact, or not desire for\npossession. But I did feel a companionship, and although one will burn you alive\nand the other is the east wind that blows in the Namib morning, they might be\nthe same current pitched on a different frequency.\n\"Desire is a great builder of inner space within human lives, hollowing us\nout, making resonant places we originally thought vacant,\" Stephen wrote in\none of the essays collected in The Music in the Ice, which would be his last book.\nSuddenly inside us there are grand vistas flooded with sun. We say, I never knew\nthis place existed.\n3:40 in the afternoon. At this hour it's too hot to walk. Jan and I read under\nthe flytarp while everyone else sleeps. All sounds are magnified by the silence:\nHelen's sleep murmurs, drone of bees, jangle of the copper bracelets and amulets\nthat encircle Jan's wrist, fizz of Jan's cigarette lighter, rake of desert wind.\nIn Stephen's poems the Bushman says that a man is truly dead when his\nspoor fills with rain. All people who die become stars:\nThere are whole clans of people\u2014\nMen, women and children\u2014\nLong since become stars.\nI sit up and look into the yellow wind of the Namib. I see how he absorbed the\ntense, resinous tone of this land so thoroughly. I understand now how walking\nand poetry are twinned. There is a space inside me now which I did not know\nwas there and which must be filled. This space has been prised open by the\ndesert, which demands I fill it with emptiness.\nI put down his poems and stare at the dun hills.\nStephen's voice\u2014as a poet, as a person\u2014still rings in my mind; its intensity\nso out of place with those languid Capetonian vowels, the humout that always\n56 PRISM 51:3 loitered at the edges of even the most sombre sentence, his near-cackle of a\nlaugh. Only when you stop remembering what someone's voice sounds like are\nthey truly dead.\nI don't know yet how, on our last day of the trek, we will file rhrough rocky cuts\nthat will lead us down into the riverbed. It will be 40 degrees. The sun will sting\nour arms. The red walls of the canyon will close in on me. This is where Jan will\nshove me as casually as he boots Omukuru's behind when he gets in his way. We\nwill pass lone eland and oryx standing sentinel in sand tivers with those cool\nnodes in their heads preventing their brains from exploding.\nWe will be so near now to the Skeleton Coast. We will feel its coolness, feel\nthe presence of the wrecks that bleat like scars, the Eduard Bohlen, the Otavi,\nthe Dunedin Star, beached spacecraft lost in the fog Angolans call cassimbo. The\nLand God Made in Anger. Anger can have a velocity, even a beauty. Jan will be\nangry; I will be angry. I will have absorbed something of his fury.\nSuddenly our feet are walking on sand.\n\"Ah, the Ugab river,\" Jan will sigh.\nThat means we've made it; it's over.\nThat night we make a fire in the middle of the Ugab, where the river would be if\nthere were water. Our legs ache from the effort of the day, when we have levered\nourselves in and out of canyons, walking a thin game trail etched by the delicate\ntracks of Hartmann's mountain zebra.\nHe materializes from the darkness and sits by the fire. I can't see his face, only\nhis legs. Here the dark is so total that if we do not sit within a metre of the fire\nwe disappear.\nJan tells us he has a trip he needs to do, through Mozambique, with two\nvehicles. One of them needs a driver. He asks all the others in our group if they\nwill come\u2014Jacqueline, Caro, Helen. I offer encouragement to them all. He says\nnothing to me and I am careful to say nothing in return. But in the end I make\na mistake, offering a random comment about road trips and his voice comes out\nof the cordon of darkness.\n\"Be quiet. You are not invited.\"\nA self-protective response would be: I didn't ask to be invited. Or, cut it out\nwith the power plays.\nI say, \"Yes, Jan, I know I'm not invited.\"\nI sit around the fire for a few minutes more, then go to bed. I crawl into my\nsleeping bag and am asleep immediately. I didn't know I was so tited.\nDAYO\nThe night before our walk begins we sleep on a grassy plain under a full moon.\nOnly yestetday I'd flown back here from Cape Town in a sandstorm so fierce it\nprismmagazine.ca\n57 threatened to divert our flight. Don't worry, the pilot had said on the intercom\nas we keeled in over the cold ocean. The engines can take it.\nI wake in the middle of the night from a dream to the gurgle of jackals\nhunting in the shadow of the Brandberg. In the dream I am in my flat in Cape\nTown and there is a stranger, a man, in my shower, naked apart from a pair of\nchocolate-coloured Ugg boots. The man is flimsy, urban: writer type. Nothing\nlike Stephen or Jan, the men who I will watch as they move in front of me\u2014one\nalive, one a ghost\u2014until they consume all horizons.\nI feel such anguish ar not being in the desert I say to the dream in a bleak\npanic: Take me back, take me back please! I wake up in the Namib and the relief\nis like waking up from a nightmare in which someone has killed you to find you\nare not dead aftef all.\nThere is always a dream the night before the story starts, but we don't always\nremember it.\n58 PRISM 51:3 Jim Johnstone\nTRIBECA\nBryten Edward Goss, 2006\nAt dusk, smoke rises\nfrom Tribeca\nlike an ampersand,\na cirrus cloud\nriling sentinels\nfrom the rooftop\nwhere we hover,\nJanus-faced\nat the sight of flame.\nIt was Matthew\nwho warned\nthat beasts would turn-\nand turning, pass\nfrom body\nto body until the city\nbegan to burn.\nIn the conflagration\nyour dress\nswells, peels back\nlike the mast\nof a tall ship\u2014\nthe marquee dwarfed\nby the advancing\nproof of motion.\nShifting frames\nI submit\nto its constraint,\nthe petal-shaped\nhooves\nof your composite.\nprismmagazine.ca\n59 INTERCESSIONS\n\"Without an element of cruelty at the root of every spectacle,\nthe theatre is not possible. \"\n\u2014Antonin Artaud\nTrue hunting is over.\nBehind an arcade I tear your dress and tie my arm off with a sleeve\u2014pulse\nembossed, free to address your fingers' reach.\nA tangible lilt: the Ganges defers the dead to its margins.\nAn abbey blanketed with fur.\nLion, leopard, wolf.\n60 PRISM 51:3 Joel McCarthy\nTHREE TOWNS OVER\nWe\ne made our love Sunday mornings. It was a good day for that, at least that's\nwhat we figured. The most practical day of the week. We were always home and\nthere were never any plans. Our sex was bettei on a Sunday. It didn't have all the\nhype and obligation that Friday or Satufday nights carried. Those were nights\nwhere we felr like we had to, and that just made us not want it. We were like\nthat. We didn't have to do anything; we didn't need to be told what was what,\nwhere we should go, how we should be. We fucked when we felt like fucking,\nand that happened to be on Sunday mornings when the church bells at the end\nof Mill Street rang out.\nWe nevef married, and though I don't think she'd ever admit it, it's why it\nended between us. We acted like rebels, like we were against the grain, happy to\nlive outside of conventions, outside of what our families wanted. We said we'd\nnever have children. We'd never enter a church. We'd never reserve a banquet hall\nor call a caterer or hire a band. It made us special compared to everyone else, and\nwe felt like we were really sticking it to the lot of them by making us work. We\nlived together with separate bank accounts and we made love on Sundays. It was\nouts.\nI told myself it was perfect but knew it wasn't. It wasn't what she wanted\nand it wasn't what I wanted. We played as rebels for as long as we could. We\nwere stubborn, and it wasn't compatible with the relationship we thought we'd\nperfected. I would've proposed and she would've accepted, but neither of us\nbudged. Aftef a while we stopped making love on Sundays. That's about the time\nwe knew it was gone for good.\nShe ended up marrying a mechanic three towns over. I knew this because I\nkept in good contact with her brother, Ben. Ben was a good man and I told him\nthat he was too good a bud to lose over what ended between his sister and me.\nWe stayed talking, but not like before. At least we were still talking.\nI moved above a pet store. The rent was cheap because there were birds along\nthe back wall of the shop that squawked every time there was something for\nthem to squawk at. I got used to it, and when it felt like too much I always had\nmy headphones. They were these big padded things that gripped your melon\nlike a vice, blocking everything out. I'd play tapes that I didn't listen to when I\nwas with het. It was a lot of 70's stuff from college radio, stuff that she hated,\nprogressive guitar stuff with flakey dfum patterns\u2014stuff that gets you thinking\nthe beat is in four when it's really in seven or nine or something like that. Tricky\nstuff. I'd clamp my head and turn up the volume and think about moving into\na big city, or to an island where the weather changes every ten minutes, and\nI'd let the music trick me into thinking the birds weren't squawking. I thought\nabout the broad who ran the pet store below me, how I wished she was half as\nprismmagazine.ca\n61 attractive as my ex. It occurred to me that I could barely remember her face now.\nI'd ditched the few Polaroids we'd managed to pose for. I wondered if she had\nkids now, got fat, lost the glow in her cheeks, the fullness of her smile. I didn't\nknow if I'd gotten fat. I never bothered to replace the bathroom scale she took\nwith her, three towns over.\nI got beat up late one night after the pet store was long closed. I heard glass\nbreaking, and the birds started their squawking. There were these two kids below\nme, emptying out the register, stealing whatever they could carry. I went down\nand caught them before they got away. I got a hold of the one's wrist, a black kid,\nand I twisted it until he screeched like one of the parakeets at the back wall. I lost\nsight of the white kid, though, and that wasn't a smatt thing to do. He smashed\na fishbowl over the back of my neck and I went down and they took off.\nI got up, went back upstairs, picked bits of glass out of my neck and hair,\nand brought down a broom to clean up the mess. I called the broad who ran the\nstore.\nShe wanted to take me to a hospital, but I said it was alright. My neck hurt\nsome and I had a headache, but any blood had already scabbed over. I had this\npiece of plywood resting up on milk crates that I'd been using as a coffee table.\nI brought it down for her with a six pack, and I nailed it over where the front\nwindow had been. She thanked me and we drank. I took her up to my bed and\nwe fooled around until morning light spilled in through the window.\nI left het a wad of cash for when she woke up. It was my last rent payment. I\nlabeled the envelope as such because I didn't want her to feel like a whore. I never\nthought of her that way.\nThree towns over was an hour on the road, and I didn't think my car was going\nto make it. It did, and I didn't know what to do when I got there. I expected\nthe thing to die. I called Ben, but he didn't pick up, so I went for lunch at the\ncafe on the main street and ordered the special: tutkey sandwich and soup. The\ncoffee was hot and it tasted soapy. I paid at the front counter, and asked where\nthe mechanic was at.\nWhen I dtove the car in, I saw him. He was Asian, with hair like a helmet\nand coveralls that told me he'd worked on his fair share of engines. He shook my\nhand when I got out of the car, but made sure to wipe his own before reaching\nout. I noticed the ring on his finger, felt the callused flesh that had grown around\nit. He couldn't have taken it off if he wanted. I had to wonder if he ever wanted\nto.\nIt took me a few seconds to answer when he asked me what the trouble was.\nI told him the battery light kept coming on. I told him the battery was new and I\nfigured it was the alternator, and asked would he check it out for me? He smiled,\ntold me it wouldn't be a problem, and he pointed to a row of chairs and a stack\nof magazines along the wall of his shop. He spoke with no accent.\nI picked up a magazine, but wasn't reading. I watched him when I knew\nhe wasn't watching me. He whistled something familiar, but the tune stopped\nonce he set the hood open, so I couldn't figure what it was for sure. I browsed\nthe walls, looking for any sign of her or the family that I wasn't sure they'd made\n62 PRISM 51:3 together He pulled the voltmeter from a large tool chest and connected it to the\nbattery, positive to red, negative to ground. Were they in the red? Were they in\nthe ground?\nThere was something on the counter in front of me, next to the register. I'd\nseen it before. It was a paper weight, glass, a fake monarch butterfly trapped\nwithin. I remember her buying it. It was off a dirt road, somewhere west,\nwherever we were. There was junk sprawled here and there about a yellowing\nlawn, a wooden sign sptay painted. It said 'Antiques & Treasures.\" When she\npicked the thing up, she smiled, said it wasn't antique, that none of it was, but\nshe was good enough not to let the owner hear. She bought it anyway, paid full\nprice, though I'd tried to get her to haggle the thing down another dollar than\nit was going fot. It sat on her side of the toom on a night table until the day she\npacked everything up.\nThe mechanic looked at me, his brow furrowed. He said the battery was\ncharging normally, and asked if it could be something else that was giving me the\ntrouble. I got up, put the magazine back in its place, telling him it was alright,\nthat maybe it was nothing. Maybe the trouble had passed, I said. He looked at\nhis shoes, shrugging, not knowing what to say. I pulled the wallet from my back\npocket, telling him thanks for checking things out, asking what I owed for the\ntime. He laughed, shaking his head, his thick hair not moving. He told me no\ncharge, that it was okay. He told me to come back if things started to act up\nagain. I nodded, telling him I doubted they would, knowing it now.\nAs I pulled away from the town I heard church bells, and in the mirror saw a\nswarm of whippoorwills dancing in the gray sky. I clicked on the radio, catching\nonly static, but it was all right. It was enough to mute the bells. It was all right,\nand it was enough.\nprismmagazine.ca\n63 Caroline Wong\nBONES AND SEEDS\nafter Thomas Heise\nMy birthright I have exchanged for an alphabet\ntablet and a dirge. I have pawned my Confucian\nink stone for an amber the colour of unpreserved bones.\nIf I could sail on an ox bladder on a vertical\nocean I would burn my nostalgia to honour\nthe cinnamon peeler in the moon.\nFor some of us, home is a leprosy\nwe carry throughout out journey west\nbereaved of Monkey's eight fold tests.\nI sleep today. My mother, long dead, cracks open\nher sarcophagus to make room. \"Ma, I'm not ready yet.\"\nIn answer she bestows upon me three blessings.\nThe sun beams seeds of incandescent catastrophe.\nA stick girl plants flamingos in a broken lawn.\nIt's no one's birthday. Some stars are not born yet.\n64 PRISM 51:3 GIRL FROM NERUDA COUNTRY\nHalf out of the sky, the gibbous moon\nfloats between branches of dogwood.\nNo chance for the stars to break through.\nClouds and grass a rain-stitched\ncarpet on which to fly straight into the pool\nof drowned longing.\nRise, my lotus girl, who sits shy and sweet\nfecund with Pablo's leaves.\nPlug your ears against the courtier's serenades\nbled now of concretized lies and heat.\nGo where a stranger's touch, his wordless pleading\nwill not move you\nwhere the one worthy of your heartbreak\npens:\nThe green grass in the meadows\nGrows long with your absent shadow.\nprismmagazine.ca\n65 Li QingZhao (1084-1151)\nON PEACOCK TOWER\nTranslated by Caroline Wong\nIn the gilded censer the fragrance is cold.\nThe silken counterpane tosses like waves.\nRising, a heaviness in my limbs.\nMy hait hangs in unwashed tangles.\nDust from habit layets over my fine things.\nOutside the curtains the sun has burned up half the day.\nThe aches inside, so much I wish to tell you.\nBut never mind.\nThis new thinness\u2014\ncomes not from autumn\nor from too much wine.\nBut never mind.\nYou are gone\u2014\nA thousand songs of farewell have not detained you.\nNever mind.\nThinking of you on your way to distant Wuling.\nThe wall of smoke and mist in between.\nI'm grateful for the rivet flowing past Peacock Tower\nwitnessing my watching.\nWatching thus adds a new length of sorrow to the long road.\n66 PRISM 51:3 Pasha Media\nTHE ACTUAL\ni.\nAnd so it was in the town of L in Ontario Province that everyone became a\ngod. This happened less celestially than with a natural, earthly progression: the\ncitizenty went from mastets of theit own domains to lotds of private castle to\nheads of PTAs to full-on gods, with the requisite special powers and elaborately\nflowing garments. Robe-tailoring concerns statted moving serious units. Leather\nsandals went on back-order. Razor companies, despite stuffing even more blades\nonto their space-age designs, found L a dead market: big, shaggy beards\nbecame all the rage for men, and the women let their legs and armpits grow\nivy-wild and free.\nWhile each person was a god their talent as such, their magic, was limited to\none realm so no one stepped on anyone else's toes. Meaning that each deity had\na specific powet: this god was really good at tempests, that god was the God of\nVideo Conferencing, another one was fierce into hoedowns, and then there was\nthe god who'd crafted an exquisite, divinely manicured front lawn that no one\ncould hold a candle to, no mattet how feverishly even the God of Pyromania\ntried\u2014fireproof, that lawn.\nThere was an arcanely titled God of Stuff who with the help of tiny, tiny elves\nmade miniature simulacra handicrafts of real-world things, which when fired in\nan enchanted oven and removed, and painted, and glazed, would transform into\nthe real-world thing, replacing the real-world thing in the real world. Basically\nstealing it with a sort of proprietary voodoo. For example: this god, whose name\nwas Morris, had his elves manufacture a dinky-scale ceramic copy of a minivan\nhe'd seen another god, Arlene, driving, and which Morris liked very much.\nArlene was piloting her kids (whom she'd crafted herself; Arlene was the God\nof Pregnancy) to soccer practice when poof, it disappeared, and Arlene and her\nkids had to navysealroll out of traffic to safety, while the minivan rematerialized\nin Morris's workshop and the elves danced and cheered.\nOr there was this other god, Julie, the God of Boring. No one was quite sure\nwhat she got up to in her split-level duplex, but every so often the always-drawn\ncurtains in the front window would flutter and you'd see the shadow of a face\nthere, ot at least a shadowy head-shape which probably housed some make of\nface, and a great beige pall would fall tediously over the land and everyone's life\ngot a bit duller for a few days.\nStuff like that.\nL was a fair-sized town, with fat too many gods to tell about here. And\nwhile there were literally thousands of gods, there was no Allah or Zeus or even\nBrahma-equivalent, no head honcho-type figure who called the shots and did the\nsmiting (Barry, the God of Smiting, mostly just smote roll-your-own cigarettes,\nwent the local joke). Evety god pretty much did his or her own thing. Whether\nprismmagazine.ca\n67 it be conjuring a maelsrrom of snakes from the sky or kicking out hot jams on\nlocal radio.\nYet there existed no ethical or political divisions between gods, no teaming\nup, no allegiances of Light vs. Datk or Naughty vs. Nice or Shirts vs. Skins, etc.\nEach god was just a cog in the same wondrous machinery of the town of L ,\nwhich was in many ways like any other place in human or heavenly history,\nexcept maybe Sodom or Valhalla, in that it comprised everything, one big sloppy\njumble of stuff good and bad and kind and evil and sweet and stinky, and it\nfunctioned as such, as best it could, and sometimes L ets were happy, and\nsometimes they were sad\u2014or angry or frustrated or envious, or whatever.\nStill, like everywhere, people (gods) got pissed off at one another sometimes.\nBut it was agreed that in order to represent the \"huge vast glowing and snatling\ncomplexity of humankind,\" as per the Town Charter of Commandments, it was\nnecessary to include and respect vengeful gods, wrathful gods, petty hateful gods\nthat were cruel or full of avarice; the covetous, the snivelling, the bitchy and\nmean. There were plenty of kind, fun gods, too: the God of Beach Volleyball, for\nexample, whose name was Liz, and the God of Making the Th-mes River Run\nwith Chocolate Milk, and this other quiet god nobody knew too well but just\nsmelled really, really amazing all the time.\nWhat else? Oh, when the God of Pregnancy, Arlene, blessed the other\ngods \"with child\"\u2014a simple ptocess, just a form you had to fax her\u2014and said\nchildren were born, they were at first coddled as any other babe-in-arms might\nbe, and cribbed, and breast- or bottle-fed, depending, and burped, and so on,\nuntil they were school-age: five. Then every boy and girl was placed into a local\nmadrasa, where they began a theologically inclined study of all the R's, as well\nas subjects that were not R's like music and gym, etc., and twelve years later\nfrom this holistic education they would emerge with some idea of what type of\ngod they'd like to be\u2014as in, of what. So they'd \"declare\" and attend the local\npolytechnotheological college ro specialize, to learn their craft, and graduate a\nfully certified god, ready to do that unique and holy thing that no one else could\ndo, or had done, ever. And then they'd do it, forever.\n2.\nAnd then, and then, and then: so things went in L . The kids grew into gods\nand the gods exercised their powers, and life wasn't that unlike life in any other\nmid-sized town in Ontario Province, such as H or B , excepting of\ncourse the frequent acts of divinity, and the fact that nobody died. Oh, because\nof the mortality rate (zero), housing was a problem\u2014that is until an enterprising\nkid named Ailsa decreed herself God of Housing Gods, and within the week was\nconjuring great towering literal skyscrapers that pretty neat tickled the moon.\nThe apartments were really nice, too, with feng shui flowing through evety unit\nlike a soothing, Zen-filled river.\nAilsa's work was commended by urban planners and architects alike\u2014even\nthe God of Demolitions, Gina, resisted getting up to her old tricks. And so\nL ets had comfortable places to live, and were happy. In a laudatory profile,\nthe L Free Press praised Ailsa as \"Best God Ever,\" and contrarian letteis to\n68 PRISM 51:3 the editor were hugely outweighed by those pledging support.\nThis success continued and Ailsa stayed busy. Then, when she was in her late-\ntwenties the God of Love, Mike, hooked her up with a fellow named Lucan, and\nsoon they were an item, a couple, a married couple, wife and husband. Lucan\nwas the God of Money, a position he'd defaulted into due to the glazed look he\ngot at the smell of hot paper and which his madrasa teachers had mistaken for\npassion.\nBut gods don't really need money. When Lucan and Ailsa's friends came\nover, out of collegiality, or pity, they might fold a few bills into their wallets\nwith sombre promises to \"spend it wisely.\" But Lucan knew it was a ruse; he felt\nineffectual, especially considering all the fame and furor afforded Ailsa, or even\nthe prosaic utility of someone like, say, their neighbour, Medway, who laboured\ndoggedly within the realm of fibreglass insulation. Truth: Lucan was angry. His\nlife felt like a compost bin; evety day he stomped more guck into the squelching\nbrown sludge, reeking and rotting in the depths of his soul.\nDespite the anger, because of Mike's fine work Lucan did indeed love Ailsa\nvery much, and she loved him right back, and perhaps it was precisely because of\nall that requited love that Lucan suppressed his rage, or at least sublimated it into\nthe Sisyphean task of cranking out sheet after sheet of totally useless currency.\nAilsa, for her part, was so busy with her work, and all the interviews and photo\nshoots attendant to celebrity, that she remained oblivious to her husband's\nturmoil and decay. And then one day she came home and he was standing in\nthe kitchen wearing nothing but hi-tops and said, flaccidly, \"Ailsa, let's fax for a\nchild.\"\nWith passive aggressive tactics Lucan coerced and Ailsa listened, or at least\nwas quiet, while mentally sketching blueprints for a Fuller-inspired geodesic\ndome on the derelict fairgrounds. Finally she said, \"Okay, if that's what you\nwant, but you're carrying it.\" And so Lucan faxed Arlene, was soon enough\nimpregnated, and nine months later a team of various medical gods caesarean'd a\nsquealing baby boy from his midsection. Ailsa and Lucan named this child Elgin,\nand Elgin progressed from soiling himself at evety turn to a plastic potty to being\ncheered as he mounted the big boy toilet to secreting his bodily excretions\u2014of\nall sorts\u2014beyond his parents' jurisdiction altogether.\nInto his teens Elgin evolved into a pasty, mincing young man in a helmet of\nbrown hair so persistently greasy he appeared dipped to the temples in gravy. His\nbeard grew in patchy and pubic; whiteheads glistened within it like pearls. Elgin\nhad one friend, a boy two years his junior, Iqbal. Together they shut themselves\nin Elgin's room for hours and hours. Ailsa and Lucan weren't quite sure what\nthey got up to in there, though it couldn't be anything naughty, as their son\nexpressed as much interest in dtugs ot sex or anything archetypally teenage as he\ndid in, well, everything.\nLife to Elgin seemed akin to queuing with bad gtoceties at some purgatorial\nsupermarket: onward he ttudged, holding in each hand a watm, damp lettuce.\nAnd so he trudged. And in his son's nudging Lucan recognized his own similar\nttudge, as though in re-run, and this isn't what he'd hoped fatherhood would be.\nLucan had believed raising a child might ttanscend his empty, moneymaking\nexistence. Instead: Elgin.\nprismmagazine.ca 69 On the evening of Elgin's graduation from the madrasa, he and Lucan and Ailsa\nwent out for a celebratory dinner at a downtown restaurant run by Gladys, the\nGod of Tex-Mex. Iqbal was not invited; this was just for family. And while his\ndemeanour might have suggested sulking, Elgin always slumped around in a\nsilent malaise, like a masterless henchman or an off-duty mime.\nFirst, drinks (wine for the adults, grape soda for Elgin), then everyone\nordered\u2014Elgin by pointing listlessly at the menu. As the waitress trotted away\nLucan stared at his son. \"What did you order, boy?\" Elgin mumbled something.\n\"What, what's that?\" \"Steak fajitas, too,\" said Ailsa. Lucan's eyes widened; he\nthumped the table with a fist. \"Damn it, that's what I ordered\u2014you couldn't\nhave got something different?\" Elgin shrugged. Steely-eyed, Lucan emptied his\nglass and signalled the waitress for anothet.\nThe food came: vegetarian nachos and two platters of fajitas, sizzling in\nstereo. After everyone had cleaned their plates in tense silence, Ailsa asked The\nQuestion: \"So, Elgin, school's done\u2014what are you planning on doing?\"\n\"Time to declare,\" said Lucan. \"Everyone else does at your age, you're no\nbloody different.\"\nElgin said nothing.\n\"Out with it, boy,\" growled Lucan. \"What are you going to do with your\nlife?\"\nElgin took a sip of grape soda.\nAilsa said, \"What about grape soda? There's no God of Grape Soda.\"\n\"I don't even like it that much,\" said Elgin, staring into his drink, fizzing and\nviolet.\n\"Well what do you like, goddammit?\"\n\"Easy, Lucan,\" said Ailsa. \"Blaspheme not.\"\nElgin said, \"Nothing, really.\"\n\"Nothing,\" Lucan sighed. \"The boy likes nothing. He's interested in nothing.\nWell you can't very goddamn well be the goddamn God of Nothing.\"\nThe air above the table shifted.\nElgin stopped chewing.\nAilsa locked eyes with her husband. \"Can't he?\"\nIn a voice trembling equally with irritation and wonder, Lucan whispered:\n\"My son: the God of... Nothing?\"\nHere was the thing: Elgin was an atheist. That might seem a counterintuitive\nposition in a town like L , surrounded by so much evidence for the powers of\nthe divine, but Elgin, in his lethargic way, was steadfast. He just didn't believe,\nand he couldn't fake it. The whole business of gods seemed only exhausting, all\nthat showy providence\u2014it just couldn't be real. From mass delusions to tricks of\nthe light, possible explanations were outlined in The Actual (working title), the\nmanifesto he and Iqbal penned together, and which they had so far secreted from\neveryone in town\u2014especially Elgin's parents.\n70 PRISM 51:3 At the time of Elgin's graduation the manifesto was a 1500-page doorstop\nhidden in a hollowed out edition of the municipal bible (released annually,\nroughly the size of a dozen stacked phonebooks). Though manifesto was the\nwrong word for The Actual, which lacked not only disproof of things godly, but\nalso a basic, cohesive argument. As Iqbal's 128-page introduction suggested, this\nwas precisely its point: \"An argument,\" he'd written, \"is an attempt to convert\nsomeone's opinion to your own. Conversion is a religious practice. We don't\nwant to do that.\"\nIt wasn't even nihilism the two boys were advocating. Despite its length, The\nActual was less epic and rambling than a steady, brown drone humming without\ncease. The document was about getting thoughts and feelings on papet\u2014for\nposterity or their own integrity ot what, Iqbal and Elgin weren't even sure. All\nthey knew was that they didn't believe, and writing about this, togethet, seemed\nthe right thing to do: and they did so compulsively, almost pathologically.\nThe Actual aside, the motning after that Tex-Mex dinner, Elgin's father\nmarched him down to the registrar's office at the polytechnotheological college.\n\"My son's going to be the town's first God of Nothing,\" Lucan announced with\na flimsy sort of pride. The registrar, Pauline (The God of Registration), handed\nover the appropriate forms, which Lucan completed with requests for a thesis\nsupervisor (gods of Quantum Physics, Buddhism and German Philosophy),\nwhile Elgin slouched nearby, staring forlornly at the untied laces of his sneakers.\nPerhaps revolutionaries aren't born, or even chosen. Perhaps the tebel spitit lies\ndormant within all souls, and it takes only a spark, some ignominy or injustice,\nsome cause ot reason, to kindle it into a conflagration. In Elgin's case, his\nlethargy often infuriated othets into action. Certainly he vexed and perturbed his\nprofessors. \"To be the God of Nothing, you have to become one with nothing,\nnot just do nothing!\" Dr. Lao hollered, brandishing chalk. Elgin shrugged.\nWord spread around campus of rhe kid who, for reasons no one could\nfathom, didn't care about godliness. In the cafeteria, in line for the bus, in the\ncrowd at the Homecoming Game that October, Elgin could feel the lingering\nlooks, hear the whispers, sense the speculation. Once someone even came up to\nhim after a Books of Creation lecture and asked him outright: \"So you think\nyou're better than everyone else?\" To which Elgin replied: \"No, of course not.\nObviously worse.\"\nRumours began to circulate beyond the campus's ivy-shrouded walls. Ailsa\nsensed among some of her more reactionary clients a palpable reticence and\nfrigidity; some even cancelled orders. Still, no one came out and demanded what\nshe suspected was on all their minds, i.e. how someone of such godliness might\nhave failed so terribly as a parent.\nOne evening in Octobet, while Lucan fed another day's-worth of dollats\nthrough the paper shredder and Elgin perched at the window waiting for Iqbal to\ncome over, Ailsa sat swirling wine on the couch and wondered: maybe she'd been\ntoo career-driven, maybe her absenteeism had allowed her husband's cynicism\nto encroach unencumbered into Elgin's subconscious... But no, that wasn't it,\nprismmagazine.ca\n71 she thought, watching Elgin peer into the L night. There was something\ndifferent about the boy that transcended both nature and nurture.\nWhen Iqbal, who had recenrly taken up with a teenage sect that hung\naround the town's various shopping mall food courts, finally showed up (with a\nfreshly pierced nasal septum) he deflected Elgin's embrace into a limp soulshake,\nexpressed no interest in working on The Actual, and absconded forty awkward\nminutes later with Elgin's favourite pen. At this Lucan gloated\u2014though it was\na brief triumph, as the next day the L Free Press featured an editorial about\nhis son.\nLucan read the piece (\"Renegade student so impudent to refuse even\nNothing!\") aloud to his wife and son over breakfast: '\"What has our city come to\nthat a boy of such strong matrilineage\"'\u2014here Lucan cringed\u2014\"'might forsake\nthe very foundation of what it means to be a L er? To wit: what sort of dark\nsoul might reject godliness? Elgin was lucky to be born in this town, and not\nsome heathen backwater where nary a soul perchances to dream. Yet this boy\nchooses to ignore such a privilege. An apostate,'\" Lucan read, glancing up and\nmeeting his son's eyes, \"'is the only name for a practitioner of such blasphemy.\nCast him out!'\"\nElgin slurped his wet cornflakes.\n\"Boy!\" hollered Lucan. \"You're disgracing this family. A God of Nothing\u2014it\ncan't be that hard! Just do what they tell you, graduate, and then you can sit back\nand petform as little magic as your heart desires. Why drag our family through\nthe mud?\"\n\"But I don't want to do nothing,\" said Elgin. \"I don't want to do anything.\"\nLucan threw up his hands.\n\"Elgin, sweetie,\" said Ailsa. \"All we're asking is that you try.\"\n\"But I don't want to try. And the more I don't try the more it feels like\ntrying.\"\n\"So stop ttying!\" screamed Lucan.\n\"But then,\" said Elgin in a measured voice, \"isn't that the same as doing\nnothing?\"\n6.\nA paradox, then. Yet there was no time to contemplate paradoxes when the town\nof L was in an uproar. The Free Press missive had divided the citizenry into\npattisan camps: on one side the collective, Elgin: Cast Him Out (ECHO) hosted\na candlelit vigil so fiety that the God of Flame Retardants had to intervene\nbefore all of downtown was burned to the ground. ECHO was opposed by the\nsurprising (to Lucan, at least) Pro-Elgin the Atheist CollectivE (PEACE), who, if\nnot explicitly in support of the boy, at least advocated a general theo-\/democratic\nright to agnosticism.\nMorris, the God of Stuff, became PEACE's spokesperson, mostly because\nhis elves had plagiarized a high-tech megaphone that made his voice resonate\nand glisten with a digital sheen. \"People,\" he hollered from the rooftop of the\nChildren's Museum, \"it is not for us to decide how each person believes. This is\nno caliphate! We are not fundamentalists! Our gods live free. If the boy doesn't\n72 PRISM 51:3 want to lord over Nothing, we must let him...\"\nThe local public access TV station hosted a debate between Morris and\nECHO's representative\u2014perversely, Maureen, eyeing her purloined minivan in\nthe studio's parking lot. Ailsa, Lucan and Elgin watched this broadcast with\ninterest. Points were made and vigorously rebutted; the rhetoric was fierce,\nturning personal when Morris quipped about Maureen's impending bus-ride\nhome.\nThe next day, one of PEACE's members was jostled and mocked in line\nfor lottery tickets; this incited a brief riot that culminated in the looting of\nthe adjacent Bulk Barn. Later that week an ECHO rally was dive-bombed by\ndiarrheal waterfowl\u2014clearly the work, Maureen claimed, of PEACE's God of\nBirds, a certain Howard \"Hitch\" Rosenstock. A few days later the brakes went\nout on Hitch's Prius and he had to be lifted to safety by a flock of seagulls.\nAnd, just like that, wat was declared. The town's central thoroughfare became\na line in the sand: on the east side, ECHO stockpiled weapons, which Morris's\nPEACE-committed elves swiftly appropriated in their west-end workshop.\nMaureen recruited the God of Smiting, Batry, who between cigarettes smote\nGod after God from the enemy ranks. Fortunately PEACE included the God of\nResurrection, who revived each felled fighter; they awoke blinking and staggered\nabout like foals in the sunlight.\nElgin's parents sided, naturally, with PEACE\u2014though Lucan assured Morris\nthat his talents were best suited to \"producing funds for the war effort,\" while\nAilsa crafted ramparts and flying buttresses and all other manner of cover for\nPEACE's frontline soldiets. The attacks intensified. Many of Ailsa's buildings,\nwhich housed members of both factions, were reduced to rubble. Throughout\nthe town fires burned and were extinguished and then rekindled and alarms\nscreamed through the night.\nDespite the chaos, things seemed destined for stalemate. Each god's powers\nwere negated by some other god's: fecal tempests summoned by the God of\nShitstorms were sanitized by the God of Sewage Treatment; strikes from the\nGod of Astigmatism were remedied by the God of Laser Eye Surgery. In an act of\ndesperation, on October 28th a faction of pro-Elgin reconnaissance agents were\nnabbed from a foxhole on the tenth fairway of the S-nningdale Golf Course.\nIqbal, learned Elgin, was among them. Two nights later PEACE retaliated: the\nGod of Hydro cut power to the west side of town, instigating an act of divine\nvengeance from the God of Natural Gas.\nOn Halloween night the town of L was reduced to total stasis. The streets\nwere empty, everything sat in darkness, and with neither heat nor light; even the\nmalls shuttered their doors. PEACE and ECHO agreed on a temporary ceasefire.\nIf they were honest, few people on either side could remember what they were\nfighting about; general assemblies were required to remind one another before\nresuming battle.\nWhile meetings convened at the tival factions' respective headquartets,\nElgin sat in his usual perch by the front window. As ice cubes chimed in a glass\nof untouched grape soda in his lap, listlessly he flipped through The Actual,\nthinking about its missing co-author, his only friend. How was Iqbal faithful\nprismmagazine.ca\n73 enough to fight under Elgin's name, yet still seem so indifferent ro Elgin and\ntheir old common cause? What did he really believe in? Was there anything in\nL to believe in at all?\nOut the window, the streets were lifeless and dark. What a metaphor,\nthought Elgin: the town without powet as all the gods were rendered powerless:\nno one had any powers at all, so efficiently was each divine act rendered moot by\nsome diametrical force. Elgin stopped flipping pages. He listened. Downstairs,\nhis father cursed faintly while his printing press whirred. But otherwise, the\nnight was silent.\n\"It's happened,\" he said aloud. \"Nobody's anything anymore. Everything's\njust... nothing.\"\nAt this a pang of sorrow lanced his heart. He thought of Iqbal, out there\nsomewhere in the night, perhaps held captive in a dingy, ECHO-held root cellar,\nwaiting patiently for the God of Hostage Negotiations to turn up and work her\nmagic. But then what? Would things return to normal? Was that good? Elgin\nhimself could think of no answet: other than suggesting that L was vacuous\nand silly, The Actual had, by its very nature, never proposed an alternative to\ncollective divinity. Faced with the prospect of a clean slate, and without Iqbal to\ncelebrate ot even confer with, Elgin felt overwhelmed, anxious, exhausted. The\nbook in his hands grew heavy.\nJust as he was beginning to lose all hope, the doorbell rang.\nThree children waited on the stoop: one was draped in a white sheet\npunctured with two eyeholes; one wore a construction paper-and-felt attempt\nat a witch's hat and robe; face rouged with lipstick, the final child brandished a\nrusty pitchfork\u2014the poorest excuse for a devil Elgin had ever seen.\n\"Trick or treat,\" said the children.\nElgin stared back. \"Did you make those costumes yourselves?\"\n\"Yeah,\" said the witch shyly. \"We know they're not very good, but.\n\"We don't have any powers yet,\" came a voice from within the bedsheet.\n\"Trick or treat,\" said the devil.\n\"But I've got no treats,\" said Elgin.\n\"What about yout pop?\" said the witch.\n\"Oh,\" said Elgin. \"Well, okay.\"\nHe handed the glass to the ghost, who lifted her sheet, swept the drink\ninside, slurped, and passed it along to the devil. Once the soda had made the\nrounds back to Elgin he took a sip to complete the ritual. The flavour was diluted\nand the bubbles had lost their fizz. But it was still cold, and the coldness woke\nElgin up a bit.\nThe devil pointed his pitchfork at the book under Elgin's arm. \"What's that?\"\n\"Something I was writing with a friend. But we never finished it.\"\n\"You mean it doesn't have an ending?\" said the witch.\n\"No, not yet.\" Elgin considered the shoddy triumvirate on his doorstep\u2014\nthe devil's absurdly blazing visage, the witch's hat-brim crinkling, the ragged\ntwin hollows from which the ghost surveyed the world. \"Know what?\" he said.\n\"Why don't you finish it for me.\" And with equal feelings of resignation and\ntelief, he handed The Actual over.\n74 PRISM 51:3 \"For us?\" said the witch.\n\"For you,\" said Elgin. \"Give it a good ending, okay?\"\n\"Sure,\" said the ghost.\n\"We will,\" said the devil.\nAnd the three ttick-or-treaters\u2014the witch, the ghost, and the devil\u2014took\nElgin's life's work back down the driveway and off into the moonless night.\nElgin stood on his doorsrep watching them go until they turned a corner and\ndisappeared. He was left with a view of the neighbouthood: lightless houses, cars\ndormant in driveways, and, smoldering just above the skyline, the ruins of one\nof his mother's massive towers. This, a remnant of what had been, was the only\nsign of people, gods, or anything like life. The town seemed abandoned, at once\nshrunken and limitless.\nAnd somewhere a dog barked\u2014once, sharply.\nAnd then thete was silence.\nAnd Elgin felt sad.\nAnd then, in what seemed a small, benign miracle, the dog began barking\nagain.\nprismmagazine.ca\n75 Michael Patrick Je\nssome\nGHAZAL: FINGER BOWLS\nWhen the car entered the fog, btanches of hardwood went as veins in a wrist.\nIt's like blowing dust from an old dictionary, like finding pressed leaves\nbetween \"mallet\" and \"mandrill.\"\nIn an atlas, it may be possible to span the fingers so they covet five oceans at once.\nAfterwards, bend at the knees and drop under. Start on the cold bottom and\nheave the largest rock.\nThere might be proof of a pond in the attic. It's the kitchen ceiling sagging\nafter rain. Call us lucky. There's green water on the dinner plates and infant\nhand-smudges that bloom in the plaster.\nOne seagull has its mind tucked into its wing. It's all fish hooks, a bit of netting.\nStill, the sound of its feathers is the sound of turning pages.\nIn her grip the cake pan scoops ait like a shovel. She takes it outside to the sandbox.\nAfter winter we find it turned, spotted and gouged from salt and ice.\n76 PRISM 51:3 matt robinson\nFEBRUARY AFTERNOON,\nNEAR TAMPA\nunsteady\u2014not quite anxious\u2014from the limp of this\ndeck furniture's scuff-addled vantage, this small, prefab\nbalcony's whitewashed aluminum tails: sttobe-frames the inflatable beach\nslide's flaccid blue end-of-day posturing\u2014captures everything\nhere, uneasy; collapsing; folding in, on itself, and there\nis near nothing as far as wave action goes; the water sleepily-dimpled,\nthe gulf a sun-soaked newsprint facsimile of overworked levi's.\nafternoon's now a breezy, disinterested sigh; nameless\nnear palms struggle to grab the air's pay. checked, the view's a strip-mall\nwaffle house, segmented and greasy; you can't un-stick your eyes'\nthick lids for all the air's syrup, the beer's not quite warm.\nthis, it would seem, is america. you sit here, you lounge\nin a favourite shirt worn and washed once too often\u2014\nthe seams ready to give, but no one's willing to wager, just now, on\nquite how.\nprismmagazine.ca\n77 CONTRIBUTORS\nTammy Armstrong's poetry has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies\nin Canada, US, Europe, UK and Algeria. She has been nominated for a Pushcart\nPrize, the Governor General's Award and short-listed twice for the CBC Literary\nPrize. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of New Brunswick,\nstudying North Atlantic poetry and ctitical animal studies.\nDavid Clink has two collections of poetry published by Tightrope Books: Eating\nFruit Out of Season and Monster. He edited an anthology of environmental\npoetry: A Verdant Green (The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2010). The same\npublisher has recently released Crouching Yak, Hidden Emu, a book of David's\nhumorous verse.\nJulia Herperger has had poetry on CBC Radio, and in magazines such as Arc,\nRoom and The Antigonish Review. Her work has been included in the anthologies\nListening with the Ear of the Heart: Writers at St. Peter's (St. Peter's Press), and Fast\nForward: Saskatchewan's New Poets (Hagios). She lives in Saskatoon, and is at\nwork on her first full-length manuscript.\nMichael Patrick Jessome was born and raised on Cape Breton Island. Currently\nhe lives in Fredericton and is completing a Master's Thesis in Creative Writing\nat UNB. Michael has been an assistant editor for The Fiddlehead and was the\npoetry editor of QWERTY {or two issues. Michael will also be published in the\nfall issue of CV2.\nJessie Jones is a writer and editot living in Victoria, BC. Het work has previously\nbeen published in CV2 and is forthcoming in filling station.\nElena E. Johnson has been a finalist for the CBC Literary Awards, the Alfred G.\nBailey Poetry Prize and This magazine's Great Canadian Literary Hunt. Her work\nhas appeared recently in The Fiddlehead, Arc, Dandelion and The Literary Review\nof Canada, as well as three anthologies. The poems in this issue are excerpts\nfrom \"Field Notes\u2014Alpine Tundra,\" a 22-poem series written during her time\nas writer in residence at a remote Yukon research station. She lives in Vancouver.\nJim Johnstone is a Toronto-based writer and physiologist. He's the author of\nthree books of poetry: Sunday, the locusts (Tightrope Books, 2011), Patternicity\n(Nightwood Editions, 2010) and The Velocity of Escape (Guernica Editions,\n2008) and the poetry editor at Palimpsest Press.\nKotori Kawashima, born in 1980, is a photographer based out of Japan. He was\nawarded the 42nd Publishing Cultural Prize by Kodansha for photogtaphy. Some\nof his photo-books include Miraichan, BABY BABYand Myojo. With over one\nhundred thousand copies of Miraichan sold, it is highly regarded in the Japanese\n78 PRISM 51:3 photo-book world. Exhibitions of Kotori Kawashima's work have taken place in\nfive cities in Japan, including Tokya and Osaka, and his work has also generated\na large response internationally in Taiwan and Thailand, kawashimakotori.com\nJonArno Lawson lives in Toronto, Ontario with his wife and three children. He\nis the author of several books for children and adults. His most recent book is\nDown in the Bottom of the Bottom of the Box, illustrated by Alec Dempster, and\nOld MacDonald Had Her Farm, illustrated by Tina Holdcroft.\nJoel McCarthy is from Mississauga, Ontario where he lives with his fiance and\ntwo cats. His story \"Everything's a Club\" was published in The Feathertale Review,\nVolume 8. He splits his time as a musician, contractor and writer of fiction.\nPasha Malla is the author of fout books. He is \"currently\" \"working\" on two\nmore. He lives in Toronto.\nJean McNeil's most recent book is Night Orders: Poems from Antarctica and the\nArctic (2011). She lives in London, England.\nJonathan Mendelsohn's writing has appeared in The Globe and Mail, The\nToronto Star, Today's Parent, The Kansai Time Out and Cha: An Asian Literary\nJournal, where he also served as a guest editor for fiction in Fall 2009. He is\ncurrently completing his first novel, set in Japan, where he lived for five years.\nJeffMusgrave has published short fiction, non-fiction and poetry in a variety of\njournals and magazines, including Grain, The Queen Street Quarterly, subTerrain,\nCrank and The Antigonish Review. He lives and writes in Toronto.\nmatt robinson s most recent collection is Against the Hard Angle (ECW, 2010).\nPrevious collections include no cage contains a stare that well and A Ruckus of\nAwkward Stacking. He works at Saint Mary's University in Halifax. Among other\nthings, lately he's been revising older poems and dog-sitting.\nAndreas Schroeder is a freelance writer who has published 24 books, including\ncreative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, translations and writing for young adults.\nHis work has been included in 59 anthologies and his articles have appeared in\nmost major serial publications in Canada. He holds the Rogers Chair in Creative\nNon-Fiction in UBC's Creative Writing Program.\nCarolyn White is a Californian who found her home in tidewater Virginia.\nAs an MFA candidate at American University, she writes short fiction about\nimagined families, those they have lost, and the stories they keep on telling. She\nwrites non-fiction about her own.\nCaroline Wong came to Canada from China in her early teens. She is a recent\ngraduate of the Writer's Studio at Simon Fraser University. Her work has\nappeared in the Prose Poem Project and Ricepaper. Caroline lives with her family\nin Burnaby, B.C.\nprismmagazine.ca 79 CANADA'S OLDEST LITERARY JOURNAL BY AND ABOUT WOMEN\nROOM'S 2013 ANNUAL CONTEST\nFICTION, POETRY & CREATIVE NON-FICTION\n1st prize in each category $500 2nd prize in each category $250\nDE4D\/.\/A\/EJULY15 2013\nJUDGES: Yasuko Thanh fiction Jane Munro poetry\nBetsy Warland creative non-fiction\nEntry fee for Canadian entries $30. Non-Canadian entry fee C$42.\nFee includes a complimentary one-year subscription to Room. WMS&MEZ CAVEtOORISS \u2022 WHRSS CjA.SIS PHISEtS \u2022 QUI DQiJUQiblMS:\nH:\\Tii','f ^frt ^'^1^1 Ai\nNU'UIHH (\nANNUAL\nnnnnnjj \u00ab^\u00bb\nCASH\nAY 15,2013\nSEME) KSS'Mls; 0\nLush Triumphant\nc\/o subTerrain Magazine\nPO Box 3008, MPO,\nVancouver, BC V6B 3X5,\n.\u2014 QlM ....\nWW DHUH\n...subterrain.\n: subtcr@portal.ca\nMAXIMUM 3l ..Q).@) @)iWO R DS\nii m \u2014y ,\u00ab\nNON-FICTION\nBASED ON FACT, ADORNED W\/FICTION\nMAXIMUM C,@@iiWORDS\nitcgory will receive a $750\n ENTRY FEE:\nPER ENTRY\t\nSBWM11T\nINCLUDES A ONE-YEAR SUBTERRAIN SUBSCRIPTION!\nYOU MAY SUBMIT AS MANY ENTRIES IN\nAS MANY CATEGORIES AS YOU LIKE UBC Bookstore\nCanada's largest\nuniversity general\nbookstore.\nSave 20%\non new releases everyday!\nJoin our book club.\nIE \u25a0. .%\u00ab>*.-'\nThe Creative Writing Program at U.B.G.\nThe University of British Columbia offers both\na Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and a Master\nof Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing. The\nM.F.A. degree may also be taken by distance\neducation. See our website for more details.\nStudents work in multiple genres, including:\nPoetry, Novel\/Novella, Short Fiction, Stage\nPlay, Screen &? TV Play, Radio Play, Writing for\nChildren, Non-fiction, Translation, and Song\nLyrics &\u25a0 Libretto.\nSteven Galloway\nKeith Maillard\nMaureen Medved\nAndreas Schroeder\nLinda Svendsen\nPeggy Thompson\nRhea Tregebov\nBryan Wade\nFaculty\nOnline Faculty (M.F.A.):\nLuanne Armstrong, Gail Anderson-Dargatz,\nJoseph Boyden, Brian Brett, Sioux Browning,\nMaggie deVries, Zsuzsi Gartner, Terry Glavin,\nWayne Grady, Sara Graefe, Stephen Hunt,\nPeter Levitt, Annabel Lyon, Susan Musgrave\n&? Karen Solie\nwww.creativewriting.ubc.ca (ft\n\u2022I II \u2022 I - I \u2666 1 \u00bb\n\u00a9peotive Wpitep\u00a7!\nRolex is proud to be the printer\nfor PRISM international.\nROLEX\nPLASTICS &\nPRINTING LTD\nwww.rolexpIastics.com Call Toll-free 1-888-478-5553 SUBSCRIBE TO PRISM AND SAVE!\nCD Two-year subscriprion (8 issues): Canadian $55, American $63, Inrernarional $69\n\u25a1 One-year subscriprion (4 issues): Canadian $35, American $40, International $45\nResidents outside Canada please pay in US funds. US POSTAL money orders are not accepted. Please make cheques payable to: PRISM international.\nName: \t\nAddress: \t\nCity:\t\nProvince\/State: Postal\/Zip Code:\nEmail: \t\nD Payment enclosed D Bill me later\nVISA\/MC: Exp. Date:\nSignature: \t\nSUBSCRIBE TO PRISM AND SAVE!\n\u25a1 Two-year subscription (8 issues): Canadian $55, American $63, International $69\n\u25a1 One-year subscription (4 issues): Canadian $35, American $40, International $45\nResidents outside Canada please pay in US funds. US POSTAL money orders are nor accepted. Please make cheques payable to: PRISM internarional.\nName:\nAddress:\nCity:\t\nProvince\/State: Postal\/Zip Code:\nEmail: \t\nD Payment enclosed D Bill me later\nVISA\/MC: Exp. Date:\nSignature: \t Place\nStamp\nHere\nPRISM international\nCreative Writing Program, UBC\nBuch. E462-1866 Main Mall\nVancouver, BC, V6T1Z1\nCanada\nPlace\nStamp\nHere\nPRISM international\nCreative Writing Program, UBC\nBuch. E462-1866 Main Mall\nVancouver, BC, V6T1Z1\nCanada PRISM is contemporary writin\n51:3\nTammy Armstrong\nDavid Clink\nJulie Herperger\nMichael Patrick Jesso me\nElena E. Johnson\nJim Johnstone\nJessie Jones\nJonArno Lawson\nLi Qing Zhao\nPasha Malla\nJean McNeil\nJonathan Mendelsohn\nJoel McCarthy\nJeff Musgrave\nmatt robinson\nAndreas Schroeder\nCarolyn White\nCaroline Wong\n.03\n7 [ 72006 \" 86361' 2\nCover Photo:\n\"Miraichan\" by Kotori Kawashima\nprismmagazine. ca\n$12","@language":"en"}],"Genre":[{"@value":"Periodicals","@language":"en"}],"Identifier":[{"@value":"PR8900.P7","@language":"en"},{"@value":"PR8900_P7_051_003","@language":"en"}],"IsShownAt":[{"@value":"10.14288\/1.0135233","@language":"en"}],"Language":[{"@value":"English","@language":"en"}],"Provider":[{"@value":"Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library","@language":"en"}],"Publisher":[{"@value":"Vancouver : The Creative Writing Program of the University of British Columbia","@language":"en"}],"Rights":[{"@value":"Materials provided for research and reference use only. Permission to publish, copy, or otherwise use these images must be obtained from the Prism international: http:\/\/prismmagazine.ca","@language":"en"}],"SortDate":[{"@value":"2013-04-30 AD","@language":"en"},{"@value":"2013-04-30 AD","@language":"en"}],"Subject":[{"@value":"Creative writing Periodicals","@language":"en"},{"@value":"Poetry--Periodicals","@language":"en"},{"@value":"Canadian literature -- Periodicals","@language":"en"}],"Title":[{"@value":"Prism international","@language":"en"}],"Type":[{"@value":"Text","@language":"en"}],"Translation":[{"@value":"","@language":"en"}],"@id":"doi:10.14288\/1.0135233"}