Excerpt: Reflections In the River

The setting for this portion of From Here to Them is Sugar House Park, in the heart of Salt Lake City. As my protagonist sits in isolation by the creek pictured above, she finds a clue that may help her escape her lonely predicament. Her reflections were inspired, in part, by A Fine Frenzy’s introspective “Riversong”. (Sign language interpretation below.)

She screamed until she’d run out of words and her throat was raw and as rough as tree bark. She was bent double over the creek, hearing the ripples but not seeing them. She was thirsty and hot and so horribly, desperately alone. She stumbled down the slope, getting twigs and leaves poked into her feet before she plunged them into the water.

It rushed around her like strangers on a busy street, just brushing against her as it passed. She longed to be on that street, to feel the arm of a stranger touching hers. She longed to make contact with any human at all. What good did it do her to go to the white room and hear her parents and Leah and Dion talking if they were not aware she could hear them–if she could not talk back to them?

Even worse than the lack of verbal communication between them, Dierdre was suffering the effects of being in the same room as her loved ones but unable to reach out and touch them. Yet, when they reached for her–as only Leah had done–she could feel it. How could that be?

Dizzy with the shallowness of her breaths and sickened by the flurry of questions buzzing around her mind, Dierdre closed her eyes and tried to shift her attention to the buzz of insects overhead. But the instant she started listening, she stopped hearing it. Were the bugs ever there in the first place, or had she imagined them?

She listened more closely, tuning out the water and the wind. She scanned the empty gray expanse above where she stood, only revealing it to be even emptier than she thought. No insects, she confirmed. No birds; not a single squirrel. I am the sole living, breathing being in this place.

It was just the kind of solitude she had often wished for when her neighbors were keeping her up late with their noise, when her friends were ruining her ingenious plans, or when the bustle of the world made it impossible to focus her mental energies on a task. It was the kind of solitude she imagined Ethan capable of creating, within the confines of his private universe, when he was in the midst of an artistic effort.

Yes. It was that–exactly that.

This is how he does it, she realized. He creates a solitary space to work in, where nothing can distract him. Is that what I’ve done?

She looked around her at the sea of fog, at the creek, and at the log bridge. Besides these nothing else could be seen, and nothing could be heard. Had she recreated this moment, these surroundings, and taken everyone else out of them so she could make of them what she wanted? Why?

She alighted on a rock with her feet still submerged, feeling her mind slowing down as she paid attention to the coolness of the flowing water. She listened to the noise of the creek, and it was nice to hear something that wasn’t her. But for all its beauty, she noticed how hollow it sounded in the absence of the other noises that belonged with it: the songs of birds, the laughter of children at the playground nearby. The water made a music of its own, but it was incomplete without the voices of the living.

Excerpt: Dierdre’s Journey

As promised in my previous post,

I now commence sharing of the songs which form the soundtrack of my novel, From Here to Them, along with the excerpts of scenes which they inspired. Here is the first: a passage taken from the book’s prologue, paired with “Rivers and Roads” by The Head and the Heart. Enjoy!

“I thought Leah was supposed to be going too,” grumbled a voice that sounded indignant–partly due to the subject matter of the present conversation, but mostly because its owner was vacuuming dog fur out of the crevices of his couch.   

“She was,” came the tranquil reply from the person at the other end of the line, who was blissfully unaware of her friend’s current occupation. “And then something came up.”

“Something more important than her little sister?”

“Come on, that’s not exactly fair.”

“Neither is dropping out of a family reunion at the last second.”

“Says the king of dropping out of things at the last second,” Dierdre retorted with a little less bite than usual, being absorbed in the pleasant sight of an antelope frisking along the road. “Would you like me to get James on a three-way call so he can enumerate all the times you’ve flaked in the last twelve months?”

“No, thanks; his roommate just read me that riot act a few days ago, so I’m set.”

“I’m sure you deserved whatever you got,” she assured Samuel, smiling as she thought of the person under discussion. Ethan, roommate to James and loyal friend to all, possessed an unbending sense of justice by which Dierdre was quite endeared to him.  

“Not as much as you’re gonna deserve it if James doesn’t hear from your own mouth about you moving away. You know how much he loves to be out of the loop.” (This last sentence was punctuated by a yelp of horror, as a five-dollar bill managed to get vacuumed up with the fur. However, Samuel’s partner in conversation was a seasoned expert at disregarding such yelps.)

“Like I said,” she patiently repeated, “it’s not a sure thing yet.”

“Sure or not,” he fairly growled, commencing disassemblage of the vacuum cleaner, “he’s gonna find out some time. Like he found out about the photo stream.”

“It haunts me still—the voicemail I shall hear no more…”

“Then you shouldn’t have thrown your phone off the side of a mountain.” (And under his breath: “Oy, that’s a dusty fiver.”)

“I’m tempted to throw this one out the window. Fortunately I’m driving through no-man’s-land Wyoming and your call will get dropped soon enough.”

“Let’s wrap this up then.”

“Very well. You know where the keys are?”

“Yep.”

“You know where my mailbox is?”

“Yep.”

“You know how to water a basil plant?”

“Now, now, let’s not bring up that unhappy occurrence at a time like…”

This is where Dierdre’s cell signal was lost, abruptly ending her talk with Samuel. The train of thought he had set in motion continued, though, and she spent the following hours of her long drive debating the same issue with herself. Should she tell James the reason for this trip to Colorado? Or should she ignore Sam’s warning and keep it a secret until her final decision was made? She knew James wouldn’t like to be the last one to hear about it. But she also knew that telling him now would put her in far greater danger of being persuaded not to go. None of the others would pressure her the way James could. She didn’t want pressure from anyone; the choice was hers to make, and she needed this opportunity to assess the pros and cons on her own.

On the other hand… there were sentiments attached to both options. Attempting to detach them would mean removing the very reason for making this decision at all. Would it not be fair to give both sides of the issue a chance to fight for her—and would this not result in a more natural, a better-informed conclusion?

Typical of Dierdre, the sentimental approach eventually won her over. She picked her iPhone up off the passenger seat, where it had been sitting since her call with Samuel got dropped. As attentive to driving as she was to the feelings of her loved ones, she would have Siri dial the number instead of letting the phone distract her; but she couldn’t help stealing a quick glance at her wallpaper after pushing the home button. It was a photo of her and her friends: Ethan, Samuel… James. How could she even think about leaving them?

Sentiment was already prevailing in its tug-of-war with reason as, tearing her eyes away from the photograph and refocusing on Interstate 25, she held down the button and spoke her command: “Call James.”

Soundtrack to a Book

What’s my favorite part of the trip to Novel-Land taken by hundreds of thousands of writers every November? One word: packing.

Of course, there isn’t much to put in the suitcase when you won’t actually be going anywhere. And during NaNoWriMo, I hardly leave my house, let alone the state of Utah. So when I say packing, I refer to gathering the fuel and supplies my brain needs in order to pound out 50,000 words of fiction in 30 days. These are:

1. Warm, caffeinated drinks
2. Music
3. Ideas, and
4. Music.

Yes, music is important enough to be listed twice. But the real reason I’ve done so is because I’m actually thinking of two different types of music: the kind I can have playing while I write (instrumental) and the kind that plays while I brainstorm. Usually, instrumental music such as movie scores determines the pace and path in which my novels move. But three Novembers ago, during NaNo of 2016, something new happened.

Of Monsters and Men usurped my writerly throne.

Well, them and a few other artists, including Death Cab for Cutie, A Fine Frenzy, and Mumford and Sons. All the time I spent brainstorming with their music on–whether echoing off the walls of my 250-sq-ft studio apartment, or blasting from my car stereo–caused my novel to branch out in wild and unexpected directions from the original plan. For the first time in all my years of NaNoWriMo, I wrote a book that felt like a movie. It had a soundtrack, and nearly every scene was molded by its very own song.

That book, originally called Inside Looking Out, was later renamed From Here to Them. And I am happy to report that it is very near completion. But what sort of story did Monsters and Mumford and Death Cab help me write? See if you can spot their influence in the synopsis below.

After four years of living in Utah, Dierdre Collins has gotten used to the long drive back home to Colorado. She knows just what to expect when she visits: hugs from her affectionate dad, wisdom and gossip from her gregarious mother, and the nostalgic feeling of her old bedroom.

This time, though, she finds herself in a strange house, where her parents don’t greet her with their usual hugs. When she speaks, there is no response. They even act as if they cannot see her. The reality she knows has crumbled, and on its ruins another has appeared – a maze of places so familiar to Dierdre, only her those who know her best could navigate it.

She treks through this land of memories to get back to her world, where her loved ones are waiting. But the demons from her past, too, are waiting to take her at every turn, and the only person who could defeat them is the one person Dierdre can’t reach. To make it home in time, then, she must clear a path to reconciliation.

It will be the most dangerous path she’s ever walked.

Ready to catch a glimpse of Dierdre’s world through the lens of music? Coming soon to this blog is a series of excerpts paired with the songs which inspired those scenes–each of them interpreted into American Sign Language. The interpretations are done from the from Dierdre’s perspective (except where the name of another character is noted), so that any of my readers who sign will enjoy an extra hint of insight.

I’ve never brought a story off the page in such a way before, but I’m certainly looking forward to trying! I hope you’re as excited as I am to hear (and see) the soundtrack to a book.

Verse: “Sunset From the Air”

Finishing out a short reunion,

I bid my family farewell

Marveling at how time flies–

Our sun seemed to rise no sooner than it fell.

But dawn, for all its subtle sweetness,

All its hints of what will be,

Pales beside the brilliant dusk

Now gleaming all around me.

The anticipation of coming joy,

Like the start of another day,

Can never match the reality

Of a new friendship’s luminous ray.

 

Family’s a curious thing–

Rooted deeply, but never still

Moving, shifting, ever expanding

Sprouting branches and leaves at will.

Every time we get together–

Regardless of initial doubt–

Someone new is taken in

Whom I cannot imagine living without.

When this day began a week ago

My world was incomplete

For the absence of someone I didn’t know

And never thought I’d meet.

But now, my family has grown

By one essential member

And what we were before he came,

Now, I hardly remember.

 

Thus flourishes our growing tree–

Though it’s weak in places,

Our strength lies in how we welcome

New ideas, new faces.

The longer we keep adding branches

The deeper my roots seem to reach

Under mountains, rivers, oceans–

Far below the lowest beach

Until, I hope, one day they’ll find

An anchor at horizon’s end

And every member of the human family

Will truthfully be called my friend.

Quintessence – Part III: The Experience

“To see the world, things dangerous to come to…”

– The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

My next stop was the Denver area. After taking this trip three times a year for the last five years, I’m pretty sure I could drive the stretch of I-80 between Evanston and Laramie with my eyes closed. In fact, I probably wouldn’t mind keeping them that way until exiting onto 287, where the scenery finally starts getting interesting.

But living with one’s eyes closed is no way to live, and I’ve been doing it for too long. Six days out of every three hundred and sixty-five, I am riding in a car from point A to point Z, not even noticing all the letters in between. This time, I wanted to pay attention. I wanted to discover the yet-unknown.

Most helpfully, that same old drive along I-80 brought the unknown to me. By the merits of thick fog and heavy snow–such as is to be expected in Wyoming in mid-April–the colorless landscape I knew so well became shrouded in terrible mystery. My friend in the passenger seat thought we might run into a highway closure (this, too, is typical for the location and the time of year), but no such misfortune befell us. On we plowed, thankful for windshield wipers and especially for all-wheel drive–one of the main reasons I chose to buy Kuba (my 2009 Pontiac Vibe, pictured above.)

That was not the only circumstance in which Kuba lived up to her name, which is Kinyarwanda for “life”. A week later, a friend invited me and six others to a hike on Cheyenne Mountain. We piled into two vehicles–mine, and a Toyota Tacoma–and set out toward the trailhead. It could only be reached by a half-hour drive up a winding road paved with jutting rocks and deep orange Colorado dirt. I expected to eat the dust of the pickup truck, but Kuba kept up the pursuit, gliding almost gracefully over the treacherous washboards.

When at long last both vehicles arrived at the trailhead, my friend with the Tacoma jumped down from its driver’s seat and shouted, “Your Pontiac Outback knows what it’s doing!” This was the greatest compliment my sporty hatchback could ever hope to receive, and she beamed with pride at the acknowledgement of the Colorado soul her owner bestowed upon her.

Despite having lived in Colorado for thirteen of my formative years,

I must admit I saw precious little of its natural beauty. The list of sites I had visited there was short, like Walter Mitty’s reply of “Phoenix” when asked where he’s been. Mine consisted almost exclusively of Colorado Springs, where I was raised, and the city where my friends flew in to spend the summer with us. (In case you haven’t seen it, let me tell you Denver International Airport is a wonder of architecture.)

Somehow, for half my life, that was enough; but now the hunger has been awakened, and I am not satisfied with what’s familiar.

Even familiar things can surprise us, though, when we explore them a little more closely. The next side-trip Kuba and I took was to Palmer Lake–both a town about 15 minutes from the house I grew up in, and within that town a body of water that we used to call “Palmer Puddle”. This name accurately described the lake’s appearance from the window of a car, because that was the only view my siblings and I ever got. Now, on my way to Loveland from Colorado Springs, I was about to drive by it once again.

My steering wheel seemed to turn itself in the direction of the train tracks,

which I had to cross to park beside the lake. I slipped my running shoes onto my feet and set off for my trek around Palmer Puddle. It was even smaller than I’d thought–the entire circumnavigation took me only fifteen minutes, including a few pauses for picture-taking. But it was worth every one of those minutes, because each one brings something special, something that will never be repeated.

That day, for instance, there were fluffy clouds scattered throughout the blue sky. Since a stiff wind was blowing, the shadows of those clouds were in constant motion above the mesas which surround the lake. On a perfectly clear day, those mesas host a broad spectrum of colors–the red of the rocks, the various greens of the trees and bushes. But when shadows move across them, each color adopts a double hue, and now the mesa has twice as many shades for the eye to take in. As my eyes were doing just that, another visual treat came my way.

A raven and a seagull were racing each other around Palmer Lake,

just as I was racing myself. The difference is, they made it look good. I had to stop and watch them, unable to ignore the hint of jealousy I always feel when a bird flies into my field of vision. It was exacerbated when a Boeing 747 passed over us, and I was forced to compare its flight with that of the birds.

The airplane was flying against the wind. Its body shook and struggled as its pilot kept to his course, and doubtless the resistance was sensed by its passengers. I sympathized–not a day goes by that I don’t run into some turbulence in my own life. Everyone does, because we’re always fighting something.

Just as the wind tries to push a plane in one direction, our bodies push us to lie down and rest. Instead, we drag ourselves to work and end up getting sick. Our consciences tell us to treat people better, but we drag around our bitterness and resentment, and our relationships suffer. Our eyes, wrists, and backs scream in protest at the amount of time we spend in front of computer screens, but we insist we’re too busy to step away from them and put our toes in the grass. So like that plane, we just keep rattling along toward our inevitable destinations.

In spite of letting themselves be swept along by the wind, the birds have more control than we do. They’re not too lazy nor afraid to flap their wings. Yet, when a powerful gust starts taking them, they know it’s time to rest. To let the energy of the world carry them, instead of fighting against it. I wish I could understand this rule.

The birds disappear beyond the horizon, but my envy remains. With my socks and shoes resting on a rock nearby, I watch them go, letting my feet move with the flow of Palmer Lake’s cool water. Running can be an exhilarating experience. But one day, I hope I’ll know how to glide instead.

Quintessence – Part II: The Taste-Test

“To see behind walls, draw closer…”

– The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

The first leg of my journey didn’t take me too far from home: only about an hour south, to Salt Lake City. My duffel bag and I were headed there for a three-day interpreting workshop sponsored by my employer, Sorenson Communications. I commute there two or three times a week, usually by train; but since this event was mentally demanding and the hosts wanted all in attendance to get plenty of rest each night, Sorenson cut my travel time by putting me up in a hotel for the week. Still somewhat of a rookie in the adult world, I was pretty excited by the idea of being on a “business trip” (a.k.a. attending three days of training in the building where I normally work, and sleeping in a hotel at night).

Hence, imagine my elation when my place of temporary lodging ended up being a very nice hotel. It was more of a studio apartment, with its own full kitchen as well as a furnished living room. I could cook my meals there. And since Sorenson was reimbursing for food each day of the conference, I could shop at my favorite grocer–Harmon’s, if you want to know–and buy things that I would never spend my own money on.

If you heard “fancy cheese” in the above sentence, you read correctly.

So, after the first day of training, I made my way immediately to Harmon’s. With a very forgiving budget in mind, I didn’t quite know where I should start. The store helped me out in that respect by placing their chocolate display near the front entrance, just beyond the cheese counter. Therefore, I decided, chocolate would be the foundation of each meal I consumed here. But in order to use my energy efficiently, I made cheese my first stop, moving around the case at a leisurely stroll, selecting a couple of flavors that I’d never heard of before and that didn’t seem absurdly expensive.

As I strolled, the lady behind the counter asked if I needed any help. I did not think so, as I was about to head over to the chocolate, and of this I have considered myself a connoisseur for some time now. After studying my options, I selected a bar called Madagascar, made by Ritual, a company based out of semi-local Park City. The appeal of this choice was its price (a mere eight dollars compared with others that cost over ten) and, admittedly, its aesthetically pleasing package. So my first decision was made. But what to do next?

“Let me know if you need help with anything,” an amiable female voice repeated. Now, I thought, it seems that I do.

“What cheese would you suggest pairing with this chocolate?” I asked.

That was the beginning of an adventure.

The woman at the cheese counter (Anne was the name on her badge) took the bar from my hand. “Good choice,” she commended me. “This is the only chocolate I can identify with my eyes closed.” She turned the package around, examining it. I, apparently a rookie at this too, had not noticed the tasting notes on the back: “raspberry, citrus, & peanut” they read. With one glance at these, however, Anne knew just what to do next. She grabbed one of the hunks of cheese in my cart, and said with a gasp: “That’s exactly the one I would have picked! Look at me,” she added, rolling up her sleeve to bare her forearm, “I’ve got goosebumps!”

That seemed to me an overreaction, but I was later to be proven wrong. I read the name on the label: Toma. So. Toma and Madagascar was the ideal pairing of the day. I considered myself ready to move on to other courses, but apparently Anne disagreed. She delved into an description of the Madagascar’s flavor, explaining what made it unique. I learned that cocoa beans take on the aromas of the soil in which they are grown, and therefore every country’s chocolate is different. Then she took me back to the cheese counter and gave me so many samples I thought I wouldn’t have room for the Toma by the time I got back to my studio. She took me to an olive oil display and had me try three varieties. Then back to her station once again, where she slipped me a bag of bread and stuck a label on it that read SAMPLES. “If they give you grief at the checkstand,” she whispered furtively, “tell them Anne had extra and didn’t want it to go to waste.”

There will be more about Anne in a future post. I liked Anne. But she was not the only person I grew to like over the course of those three days in Salt Lake.

Interpreting is an emotionally draining profession.

For three days at the workshop, the ten attendees and five presenters discussed and practiced methods of getting a message into our head, extracting its essence and meaning, then putting that meaning onto our hands in a way that conveys every nuance–every sigh, every scoff, every rise and fall of the speaker’s voice. And yet, we are instructed not to allow the feelings expressed in these ways to ‘stick to us’.

We’re only human, though, and sometimes they do. And sometimes–perhaps even more often–our own feelings leak through. This includes the stress associated with our work itself, such as having to put on and take off so many characters in a single shift, vicariously experiencing their joys and tragedies, and putting on ourselves the pressure of making sure their daily tasks are completed on schedule. So by the end of the third day of training, the number of situations we’d been called on to interpret–imaginary though they were–had taken its toll.

The final exercise we did in pairs, with one of the presenters observing and critiquing each pair. The one standing over me and my partner happened to be the one who had intimidated me the most since the beginning. The message I was given to interpret was nothing extraordinary, but I felt immense pressure to do it perfectly, and my confidence plummeted. When I was finished, the presenter asked me what I thought I had done well. My mind went blank.

She and my partner looked expectantly at me for some time, their facial expressions gradually softening, encouraging me silently to focus on the positives. But as their eyes rested on me, I could not fight the tears that were slowly filling mine.

The woman who had so intimidated me just minutes earlier suddenly shifted roles, becoming my cheerleader instead. “Let me tell you what I liked,” she said, and highlighted to me strengths that I was not even aware I possessed. The remainder of the training session went more smoothly, and at the end of the day when we were all saying goodbye–all of us who had been strangers just three days earlier, but who had bared our souls to each other and were now an unexpected sort of family–this woman hugged me the tightest out of everyone, and would not let me go until I knew that she believed in me. That I was good enough to do this, even if I didn’t think so.

It’s odd how our perceptions of people can change so quickly, without much effort at all. How a woman who works at the grocery store can, just by telling stories and slipping us one too many free samples, become a doting and generous mother figure. Or how someone can be a demanding instructor one moment, and a reassuring friend the next. Sometimes all it takes is for us to push past a single wall, and be willing to try out what’s on the other side.

Call it a taste-test, if you’d like.

Quintessence – Part I: Hunger Reawakened

“If I like a moment… I just want to stay in it.”

– The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller’s remake)

I know it’s a bit late in the game to write a review of the above movie, which was released five years ago. But the experience of watching any great film from start to finish for the first time–that is the time when its full impact can be felt. For me, the full impact of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty was felt exactly eight days ago.

It’s hard for me to sit down in front of a screen and let myself do nothing but watch, so most of my viewing experiences are enhanced/diluted by the simultaneous performance of tasks like cooking, cleaning, or folding laundry. In this instance, the top item on my To Do list was packing for a two-and-a-half week road trip to Colorado. Therefore, a travel-centric film like Secret Life was a logical choice of viewing material.

For the first half-hour or so, what stuck out to me were the movie’s comedic elements. From Ben Stiller’s eccentric daydreams to the lighthearted sarcasm of Kristen Wiig’s nonchalant heroine, everything made me smile. As I rolled up T-shirts and placed them robotically in my duffel bag–the same one I have been packing three times a year for the last five years, preparing to travel to the same place for the same reason–the comic genius of the movie kept me distracted from the monotony of real life. I shook my head with wonderment at what was happening on the screen, hardly noticing the symbolism of what was in the bag.

Then another cinematic daydream began to play out in Walter’s mind, one that was not quite like the others. It was not the product of an unruly imagination filled with out-of-this-world fantasies; it did not induce the slightest giggle. To the contrary, it took the gaiety right out of me. Instead of laughing, I experienced a profound melancholy at the scene before me.

If you’ve watched the movie, you can likely pinpoint what I’m referring to even before I’ve described it. In my mind, this scene marks the closing of the curtain upon Mitty‘s playful first act, and its reopening to reveal the introspective and awe-inspiring Act II. Walter imagines someone singing to him, and with their music ringing in his ears, he takes his first step down the road less traveled. The resulting turning point in his story is predictable; yet, the way it is depicted is stunning. We see a character transformed in a single moment–from one who is content to repeat the motions of a dull routine, to one who will settle for nothing less than the very quintessence of life. This moment was, for me, perhaps the most meaningful one in the entire film. It struck a tender chord, reawakening a hunger I had long been forcing myself to dismiss.

A recent road trip to Washington was my Step One.

If you follow me on Instagram, you know I got some lovely vintage books and pretty remarkable espresso out of that trip. That was all part of the plan. But the great underlying theme to the whole venture was this: I wanted to experience something I never had before. Since I had never previously driven along the Columbia River with waterfalls beside me and rain pouring down in bucketloads from above, I consider that experience a success…and yet.

I wanted more.

It was hard to say exactly what it is that I wanted more of. My eyes feasted on breathtaking scenery; my skin felt the chill of five consecutive days of spring rainfall; my tongue tasted the product of eight coffeehouses, and my ears heard the lapping of the tide at several different shores–not to mention a sweet serenade from the owner of Lionheart Books, a charismatic bookseller who sings every word he says. Could something still be missing?

That scene in Walter Mitty was my first clue that something was. Up until the minute I saw it, all I’d had was an unidentifiable sense of dissatisfaction.  But when I watched Ben Stiller dashing out of that pub and into that helicopter, with that song playing in the background, dissatisfaction exploded into longing. Now I knew that I wanted, needed something. But what was it?

My answer came at the climax of the movie, when Sean Penn’s character says the line at the top of this post. It resonates because we live in a world of hurry and distraction, of perpetual overstimulation. None of us has time to stay in a moment that we like, because the next moment is already being arranged for us, and we can’t be late for it.

I, for one, am guilty of placing this pressure on myself–by multitasking, by over-planning, by stressing constantly about tomorrow–not to mention the external pressures like bills and deadlines and rush hour traffic. So what would life be like, I began to wonder, if I stopped occasionally just to be alive?

I didn’t have much opportunity to do that in Washington. But in the span of the two-and-a-half-week trip before me, I was determined to make those opportunities. To seek out moments that meant something to me, and then to stay in them. Although my destination was a place I had visited many times, I knew there was yet unexplored territory–both in the physical realm, and in the inner worlds of thought and emotion. Such are the beliefs which great cinema has the power to create.

And, I am pleased to report that I was not mistaken in believing this. The first week of my trip has furnished much to be explored, and if you’ll stay tuned for my next post, it would delight me to share with you the story of this adventure.

Excerpt: The Concerned Roommate

“I’m sure he’s fine.”

“I’m picturing him lying at the bottom of a ravine with two broken legs. Freezing to death.”

– from the following excerpt of my novel, From Here to Them

Bypassing the white room, she walked into the night. As she approached the horizon, it split into vertical stripes of varying shades and patterns: there was a cloudy sky, a clear one with an abundance of stars visible, and one that had all the moon’s phases on display. She closed her eyes, trying to remember.

When she opened them again, she set out with a reasonable degree of certainty toward the waning crescent. She was delighted when, after just a few steps, her old apartment on the south end of Ogden came into view—the nearly-full moon shining upon it like a spotlight. She raced toward it the apartment and swung the door open, giggling with delight as, that very second, her old phone dinged. On its screen, which was not as badly scratched as it had been when she was on the mountain, there was a notification:

Ethan Barker at 10:07

Have you heard from James recently?

Giddy with the success of her endeavor, Dierdre started composing a reply, but her phone deleted every letter she typed. She fought it for a minute before a better idea came to her: back off and see what happens. So she stopped typing and let the phone take over, relinquishing any control of the outcome. What it composed on its own was, verbatim, the response Dierdre had given Ethan when he sent her that text two summers ago.

–Not since this afternoon. Why?

And on its own, her phone sent the message. Dierdre stood motionless in her old doorway, awaiting Ethan’s reply—even though she already knew what it would be.

Did he say anything about what his plans were for the evening?

Dierdre watched in raptures as her phone reenacted the entire conversation that had transpired so long ago. She was watching her past play out in the present.

–All he said was that he was coming to dinner with us. Why his plans changed between then and 6 pm, I’m sure I don’t know.

Neither do I. It’s also unusual for him to be out past 10 without letting me know what time he’ll be home.

–Did you try calling?

Yes.

–Texting?

Obviously.

–Stalking him on Find My Friends?

His location is unavailable.

–Maybe he just had a long drive home from somewhere and doesn’t have cell service.

I think he turned it off.

–…

Or maybe he got called in to work.

–He probably did.

I’ll drive by there and check.

…

Today, 10:35 pm

He isn’t there, and the store manager said she hadn’t seen him.

–You called the manager? After hours?

Would you mind calling him? He’ll pick up if he sees your name instead of mine.

–I already did, and sent a few texts too.

…

–I’m sure he’s fine.

I’m picturing him lying at the bottom of a ravine with two broken legs. Freezing to death.

–I don’t think it gets cold enough here in August for a person to freeze to death, even at night.

In the mountains it might.

–Well…

Do you have his tia’s phone number?

–I think this is getting a little out of hand.

😦

–…but I suppose I could send her a quick text. Just to see if she’s heard from him.

🙂

–Though honestly, even if something was wrong (which it isn’t), what’s she going to do about it from all the way in California?

Hmm.

…

Where’s that trail he likes to run by himself?

–Ethan.

Never mind, I just remembered the name. I’ll look it up.

–Ethan…

Today at 10:56 pm

–Ethan?

There was another long pause before anything else happened. But Dierdre spent it looking expectantly at her phone, because she couldn’t recall just how long the pause had been. Five, ten minutes?

Right around twelve, the phone rang, answering itself after displaying Ethan’s name and photograph for just a few seconds. Dierdre remembered thinking during those seconds: If Ethan Barker is calling me at 11:08 pm, he has found James dead at the bottom of a ravine. There is no other explanation. All right, here we go…

But the first voice she heard through the speaker now was not Ethan’s at all. It was her own.

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Excerpt: The Nice Evening

“In all the delightful randomness of things spiraling out of control, something is bound to happen by accident some time that ends up being just fantastic. Don’t you think?”

-from the following excerpt of my novel, From Here to Them

“Come on in!” James welcomed her. “I put a glass of water on the table for you.”

“Thank you,” she said with surprise when she looked at the glass. Apparently there were details of this evening that she had forgotten, and as Samuel retold the story, they were coming back. Such as the fact that James had put her water in a wine goblet. And had lit a candle on the coffee table… and the windowsill… and the bookshelf. And was dressed in his nicest sweater vest…and so was Samuel. Had she missed a memo about this being a formal event?

“Wow, you’ve really spruced the place up,” she commented to James.

“Do you like it?” he said with eyes expectantly glowing, like a puppy waiting for a treat.

“It’s…very nice.” She was careful not to answer the question directly.

“Thanks! I was in the mood to do something special.”

“If that was the case,” Samuel argued, “why did you invite me and Dierdre?”

“Yeah,” she laughed in agreement, “the most special thing you could do, if you really wanted to shake things up, would be to invite anybody over except the two of us.”

His puppy had been kicked. “But I wanted to share something special with the two of you.”

Dierdre and Samuel exchanged looks. Hers said ‘well, isn’t that kind,’ and his, ‘Oh, please.’ Dierdre made sure to be the first one to express their sentiment aloud. “Well, thank you for sharing your evening with us, James. I’m sure it’s going to be lovely.”

“It is, it is!” he insisted. “I’m making baked spaghetti, and I have a gorgeous salad prepared, and garlic bread, and then we’ll cleanse our palates with a selection of the season’s fruits, and then for dessert… wait, you were supposed to bring a dessert, weren’t you?” (She made a guilty face, which he passed by in his sentence without pausing to acknowledge.) “…never mind, for dessert I can throw together some parfaits, and we have the sipping chocolate, so this is gonna be great.”

“Great.”

“Great,” added Samuel.

“Can we help with anything?”

“Absolutely nothing at all,” said James. “Just you two have a seat on the couch, and…”

“I can’t sit on the spinny office chair?” Samuel complained.

“And I can’t sit on the floor?” lamented Dierdre.

“No, you can’t sit on the floor and the spinny office chair! I got the couch ready to be sat on!”

Dierdre looked at the couch in question; it was the one that had filled some of the space in James and Ethan’s living room while they saved up for the more comfortable one. It was hardly large enough for one person to spread out on, let alone two people. It had an attractive blanket folded and draped over the back of it, which was a new feature. This must have been what he did to get it “ready”. She exchanged another look with Samuel, and this time their looks were identical in reading: ‘What is going on?’

But they conceded to take their places on the miniscule couch and drink their fancy water. On first sipping hers, Dierdre realized it wasn’t just water in a fancy glass; it was Perrier. James was really going all out here. “Did somebody crochet this for you?” she said with a hand on the blanket.

“Yes, Richard’s mom did. It was a housewarming present, but I normally keep it in my bedroom. Tonight I thought it made for a nice atmosphere.”

Dierdre snapped her fingers. “I’ve figured it out. This is a napping party, isn’t it?”

“I’m so on that,” Samuel cheered.

“This is not a napping party,” contested James. “This is a nice dinner party with a blanket over the back of the couch for decoration.”

“Are the candles for decoration too, or are we going to use them functionally for burning things?”

“We could heat our sipping chocolate over them,” Dierdre contributed.

“They’re for ambience!” James yelled.

Samuel was getting the mischievous look in his eye that Dierdre could spot a mile away, and James still didn’t know how to detect. “Are our jokes ruining your ambience?”

“Kind of!” This was the wrong thing to say.

“Ought we to discuss classical literature in phony English accents instead?”

“What?” Santi’s exasperation was unabashedly showing, which made Dierdre want to stop exasperating him… but not just yet.

“I’ve just finished reading The Iliad for the fifth time,” she said to Samuel in her best English countryside accent.

“Oh, it’s a good job you did!” he tried in a horrific Cockney. “In English or Greek this time?”

“German. I’d already done Greek the first three times, and Russian the fourth, so I thought to myself, It’s about time for a change, isn’t it.”

“Innit, though!”

“Ok, guys.” James had now unmistakably reached his limit for nonsense. “That is quite enough.”

“Quite!” they both exclaimed in unison, accents intact, turning their heads toward him. After the initial excitement of the moment was over and the curtain was coming down on their performance, the quivering of both their sets of lips said that they were having a hard time stifling their laughter. But they tried valiantly for the sake of James and his friendship.

He stood and stared at them for a minute, threatening each of them with his eyes. The long, serrated bread knife he held in his visibly clenched fist only compounded the effect. The air contained a tension that he could easily cut with such a knife, until Samuel proved to be the first one to loosen it. With the painfully slow release of a high-pitched vocalization that wasn’t a laugh so much as a scream, his winning streak of keeping a straight face for longer than Dierdre the last 18 times in a row was broken. Beyond that, the real laughter rolled forth.

“Yes!” she squealed, throwing her arms in the air and curling her legs up towards her chest in the excitement. She jumped up from her seat on the couch and did a victory dance that involved hitting Samuel with one of the frilly pillows decorating the couch and then carelessly dropping it on the floor. “Stir that into your tea and sip it!”

Samuel attempted to contest her exclamation, but was laughing so hard he could neither breathe nor move. Tears were streaming from his eyes, he had fallen over and had his head on the spot where Dierdre had been sitting, and everything above his shirt collar was cherry red. She loved it when he laughed like this. And it went on for a good two minutes, during which Dierdre put on a song—the first one that began to play when she put the needle down on Santi’s old-timey record player—and continued her victory dance with it ringing out in the background.

By the time the song ended, James was completely dumbfounded and a little appalled. It would be hard to tell that just from his next statement, however. It was: “My spaghetti!” In all the noise, he hadn’t heard the timer going off for the oven. He ran to it like a paramedic to an injured hiker, or a parent to a crying child.

“Oh, it was only a couple minutes,” Dierdre vainly tried to comfort him; “I’m sure it’s still okay.”

“It’s a very high-temperature recipe!” he explained, urgency in his voice as he struggled to get the baking mitt on his hand. Dierdre rushed over to assist him by turning off the oven and opening the door. When she did, smoke came billowing out of it. The pan and everything in it was covered in black. She coughed, and James started wheezing as he pulled it out and set it on the stove. Soon Samuel was coughing too, and his noise was followed by that of the smoke alarm.

“Everybody grab a cookie sheet!” he shouted, leaping over the coffee table to get to the kitchen. As he did, his foot caught Dierdre’s fancy water glass and shattered it, spilling water and shards of glass all over the table and the carpet beneath it. On one of these shards his foot happened to land, and as he stumbled over in pain the momentum from his leap caused him to roll across the floor. He stopped only when he ran into James, who in his desperation for a handhold to steady himself, grabbed the brim of his salad bowl, dumping salad all over his kitchen floor at the same time that he was falling onto it.

Dierdre, meanwhile, was running around the apartment opening windows, and when she got back to the kitchen all she saw were bodies—and pieces of lettuce—writhing on the floor. “At least the dressing didn’t fall,” she said a second too soon. At the very next, said bottle of dressing was nothing but a puddle on poor Santi’s shirt. She gasped and covered her mouth, and the wheeze that immediately followed this gasp reminded her that they were all still being choked by smoke. She nudged James out of the way with her foot, opened the drawer beneath the oven, got a cookie sheet out of it and started fanning.

Samuel, limping on his bleeding foot, was the first to grab another one and support her effort. James got up a few seconds later, dripping dressing all over his floor, and tried to help without making too big a mess. This meant he was looking down at his shirt while he fanned instead of at where the cookie sheet was going, and it went straight into Dierdre’s head with a shocking amount of force. She put her hand on it and stumbled around in a daze for a few seconds as James blurted apologies at her in absolute devastation.

“It’s okay, I’m fine,” she assured him even as her vision was going a little blurry.

She bumped into the dinner table, and put a hand down to steady herself—right on the bread knife James had set there. She sucked a breath in through her teeth and sank into a chair, trying to keep herself from crying at the pain from either one of her recent injuries. Santiago’s frantic apologizing only increased, which alerted Samuel that something was going on. When he saw the blood coming from Dierdre’s hand—never mind that gushing out of his own foot—he again leaped into action, rushing to the bathroom to retrieve first aid supplies. When he got back, James was on the floor next to Dierdre, hugging his knees and rocking, and with her one non-injured hand, she was patting him on the shoulder and telling him everything would be okay.

“Of course it will,” Samuel announced–“I have band-aids!”

“See, Santi?” Dierdre cooed in the soothing, motherly tone she often adopted in speaking to him. “He has band-aids! We’re already on our way to a better night.”

Samuel was staring with one open eye into the band-aid box. “Just kidding, it’s empty.”

James burst into tears.

“That’s even better,” Dierdre told him, “I only like Phineas and Ferb band-aids anyway. My hand could definitely use to be cleaned, though.”

“Great, because I also brought paper towels and antiseptic spray!” He sat down and set to work cleaning her hand using that and the remaining fancy glass of water that was on the table. But when he sprayed her wound, the mist caught the flame of a nearby candle, which jumped up and scorched one of his eyebrows. He looked expectantly at James, who clapped his hand over his mouth in shock. “It’s gone,” he announced.

“Figures.” He got back to work, but Dierdre used her free hand to tap him urgently on the arm and say, “Sam, that flame is still going crazy.”

“Look out!” he screamed, grabbing the candle off the table and dashing out of the room with it. Dierdre and James exchanged glances, waited a moment, then jumped to their feet and darted after him, she knocking her chair over as she got up. Following the smell of burning chemicals, they found him on the bathroom floor with his back against the toilet, as hysterically guffawing as he had been a few minutes previous. But it took them a moment to notice the thing about which he must have been laughing, and only when, gasping for breath, he pointed over his shoulder. They looked beyond him and saw the candle upside-down in the toilet bowl.

Dierdre crumbled to her knees. She shook and banged her fist on the floor, silent with laughter. James just stood there trying not to let Samuel see that he found it the slightest bit funny. “Are you done now?” he asked, hands on his hips.

Still unable to open his eyes or to breathe, Samuel just nodded.

“Good. Let’s go back and see what we can scrounge to eat for dinner, if anything.”

Samuel bumped his head on a shelf as he stood up, which only made him chuckle harder, and he almost tripped over the still-prostrate Dierdre as he walked away from the bathroom. And he kept on almost tripping, which she realized was because he had hurt his foot. She offered to let him support himself on her as he walked, and he accepted, but as they were both still doubled over in laughter the journey was slow-moving. They arrived at the kitchen to find James standing at its threshold, looking out at the wreckage with utter despair showing from his head to his toes. The one chair that belonged next to his kitchen table was lying on its side, right next to the pillow Dierdre had dropped; there were pieces of lettuce and glass, as well as drops of blood and salad dressing, scattered all across the carpet as well as the tile; all three of his cookie sheets were out of place, one even having taken up temporary residence on the overturned salad bowl on the floor; there was a puddle of water still seeping into the carpet beneath the coffee table; and to stop it all off, the pan of spaghetti on his stove was irredeemably burnt. His one consolation was that the smoke had somewhat dissipated, and the alarm was off.

The last thing he noticed was that the drawer under his oven, from which the cookie sheets had been taken, was still open. In the middle of this shouted sentence, he kicked it shut: “This was supposed to be a nice—evening!” He breathed heavily and turned around to face his friends, looking helplessly at them—Samuel with his bleeding foot, Dierdre her bleeding hand and a goose-egg on her forehead. “Where do we start?” he asked, mostly rhetorically.

“I’m starting with Sam’s foot,” stated Dierdre. “You start with your shirt, then join us again when you’re all clean.”

“Oh no!” he exclaimed with a gasp, suddenly remembering what had happened with the dressing, and rushed to his bedroom.

Minutes later, while Dierdre pulled shards of glass out of the sole of Samuel’s heavily bleeding foot, James got started on cleanup by picking up the lettuce.

“Don’t you think you should start with the most dangerous thing?” Dierdre suggested.

“Oh.” He went over to the table and lifted the fallen chair off the floor. Samuel and Dierdre shared a look, and she started to laugh. “No, I mean the…”

“Ouch!” James had found the glass.

“I meant that.”

“Why didn’t you say that?” he blurted.

Samuel cut in. “Because it seems pretty obvious that if there’s broken glass on the floor, it should be the first thing you pick up.” He said this with a lighthearted sarcasm that Dierdre could easily detect, but she knew James was in no kind of mood for it. So she softened the blow by admitting: “You’re right, James, I should have been more specific. I’m sorry you got hurt. Why don’t you just have a seat, and I’ll come to you when I’m finished with Sam.”

Samuel gave her a look that asked why she was taking pity on James when he was acting in such poor humor. She ignored it and mercilessly sprayed antiseptic all over his lacerated skin, inciting a cry of pain that made her smile. When she was finished cleaning him up and putting a paper towel on his foot under a clean sock from Santi’s drawer as a makeshift bandage, she sent him to work at picking up the glass that James had not been able to get. Then she called Santi over to get his wounds treated. He sat on the chair which she had knocked over and he had set upright again, and reluctantly took off his socks to let her see the cuts beneath. She had to extract shards of glass from them, and he held his breath and bit his lip but ultimately took it better than Samuel had.

“Thank you for inviting us over for this lovely meal,” Dierdre attempted to make small talk, as a doctor would with a patient.

“I just can’t understand how so many things went wrong at once,” he lamented, hanging his head in shame.

“The principle of entropy.”

“You know about the principle of entropy too?” She nodded. “Dierdre, that’s one of my favorite scientific principles!”

“It surprises me, then, that you don’t seem to believe in it.”

“What do you mean?”

Samuel left the room to find a rag, dissatisfied with the effect of the paper towels he was using on the carpet, as well as the bottle of hydrogen peroxide he had seen in Santi’s medicine cabinet. Dierdre figured his exit was for the double purpose of keeping himself from getting involved in this discussion, as his presence would inevitably have led into an argument.

“You always go into shock when anything goes wrong,” she continued. “It should be more shocking when something goes right, shouldn’t it, if everything is slowly descending into absolute chaos?”

A light appeared to turn on inside his head. “You’re right,” he whispered after a long pause. “I’ve always thought entropy didn’t apply to me. I’ve always seen it as something that can be overcome with enough effort. Maybe… it can’t.”

“But in all the delightful randomness of things spiraling out of control, something is bound to happen by accident some time that ends up being just fantastic. Don’t you think?”

He smiled down at his nurse and philosophical guru. “I guess you’re right.”

“Of course I’m right,” she teased without looking up, intently focused on cleaning his wounds as gently as possible.

“Like, if you and Samuel hadn’t been driving me crazy with your laughing contest, and my spaghetti hadn’t gotten burnt, and he hadn’t jumped over the table and knocked the glass over, then…” Sam re-entered the room, and Santi paused to clear his throat. Dierdre waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. What could he have wanted to say that he couldn’t say with Samuel around? She thought about it now in a way that she hadn’t on the night when all of this actually happened. And she thought, If this is only happening in my memory, what’s preventing me from asking him?

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