My family was visiting: Mom, Dad, Emily, Jon, and Thomas—the whole crew (it’d been about a year since they actually did visit and I think I was feeling particularly homesick. I always feel particularly homesick around my birthday, in the fall when the trees should be on fire and you get a taste of winter on the backend of every gust of wind, but instead it’s summer days here and it doesn’t feel like Thanksgiving and you feel farther away than 3,000 miles). In the dream, I didn’t live in San Francisco. I lived in some quaint European village–the type with stone walls, perpetually overcast skies, and exaggeratedly green grass. If I had to throw a dart in a map to pinpoint it, I’d probably aim for Ireland or Wales, maybe the Swiss side of Germany.

Anyway, the family was here but they were getting ready to leave and we were reviewing the trip: everything we’d done, favorite parts, observations about a foreign land. We were in the living room of this incredibly modern building that didn’t fit the landscape: floor to ceiling walls, all-white leather furniture that you’d see displayed in the storefront of a boutique home shop, a polar bear skin rug.

Thomas handed me a birthday present and I thanked him and started to say that his birthday would be coming up soon, but I stopped because I suddenly couldn’t remember his birthday, not even the month. And then I just left the room, either out of embarrassment or because I had to go to the bathroom, or both. I ended up outside in a backyard, still a bit perplexed, when it started to occur to me that maybe they weren’t leaving; I was. Does this look familiar, I asked myself. Does it feel like home? Do I know where I am? I decided that the only way to find the answers was to explore.

I got about 100 yards up a gravel, stone wall-lined road and I started to get the sinking feeling that I needed to go back. I ran to the door that I’d come out of, but it was locked. So I ran around the perimeter of the building until I came to double barn doors, the wooden kind that swing out.

I opened the doors and slipped inside a concrete-floored basement (or maybe it was dirt), the kind you find in really old East Coast houses: low-hanging ceilings with exposed beams, spiders, all that. As my eyes adjusted, I could see to the other end of the room, which was the size of a floor of an indoor parking garage. In the corner, there were three people crouching down and I had to squint, but I could tell they were doing some sort of an art project. I think they were painting. One of them sprung up from the milk crate he was sitting on and started coming towards me. He was stocky, wore a baseball cap, T-shirt, cargo shorts, and Birkenstocks and looked like he should be directing traffic at a Phish concert.
I started to talk, wanted to ask him how to get back upstairs, but he cut me off before a word could form.
“Can I help you?”
“Oh, uh, I’m just trying to get back upstairs,” I said.
“This is a private residence,” he said with an authority I wasn’t expecting.
“I know, but we’re already upstairs, I was just exploring. I had to go to the bathroom and then—” I managed before he cut me off again.
“This is a private residence.”
The people at the other end of the room were huddled together talking, looking up every once in a while. I started to worry what would happen to me.
“But my family is upstairs. I just came from there. How do I get back up there?”
He seemed to understand this time. At least he nodded like he did.
“You have to rent a car,” he said.
I was confused again. Maybe I was confusing him.
“What? To get upstairs,” I asked.
He nodded again, slowly, like someone who wasn’t going to respond to another stupid question, so I didn’t ask one.
“OK,” I said, “So how do I do that?”
He motioned for me to follow and led me into a hallway with a low-hanging ceiling with an ATM-looking machine. The screen had two options:

• VW Bug (Old School, Brown): $15
• Other car: $38

I wasn’t going to pay $38 (did I even have that much on me?) to rent a car just to go up the stairs, so I began to select “VW Bug” when the guy cut in with a karate chop between my finger and the button. He shook his head. “You want the other car. Trust me.”
“I do?” I challenged him, growing more confused by the minute.
“Yeah,” he said, “You do.” And he pulled a $38 bill from his pocket and fed it into the machine. I was shocked. Have $38 bills always existed? The machine accepted it and spit out some kind of ticket. He grabbed it and led me out of the basement into an overgrown lot.

The VW Bug (old school and brown, as promised) rested on cinder blocks in one corner of the lot. I guess he was right. We walked passed the VW and get into something like a Prius, but a really advanced one. As I buckled myself into the passenger seat, he asked for my license. I handed it to him and he inserted it into a slot on the dashboard.

“Ah!” He says, cracking a smile for the first time, which sort of relieved me. A receipt printed out from the same slot and he handed back my license.
“It says you’re a musician, a magician, and a writer,” he grinned again.
“It does?” WHO says that? I wondered but didn’t ask. I stretched across the emergency break to read the tiny piece of paper.
“Yep,” he said assuredly, “it does.” He wouldn’t stop smiling and I started to question who this guy was and what I was doing in this car with him.
“Well presto-chango and all that man, but I ain’t no magician, that’s for sure,” I said without thinking–or did I think it?
“Nope.” He shook his head again.
“It says you are.”

Lights on the runway–through the fog and above it–simplify the feat of flying into archaic video game graphics (Pac-Man, specifically): cars as dots of lights mazing steadily along a pre-programmed path (someone should tell us that’s what we look like from above).

Rain reflected in the light of the wings looks like flashes of TV static.

The man in front of me on this mostly empty flight (who goes to Salt Lake City unless it’s the 2002 Olympics or they absolutely have to?) fidgets with the lighting. He has three seats to himself and he’s exploring his options (the hypothetical has come true: if you could turn on any of these overheads without someone complaining, which one would you choose?). I prefer to write in the dark, like when I was a kid and supposed to be sleeping: belly-to-the-floor, trying to catch a glimmer of the hall light from the crack under the door. Now, I bask in this man’s choice of overhead lights (the one on the right and in the middle).

The flight attendant describes the turbulence-to-come as “some good, uneven air.”

Sailing knots above cloud level, you get to understand why sailors use the stars to guide them, where the idea for lighthouses came from. The clouds are patchy like lily pads on still water that allow you, occasionally, to peep what’s beneath (a glimpse of the moon on the water like the spine of a silvery fish and clusters of trees like those below-the-surface seaweed forests). Whenever you feel like life’s unremarkable, you should fly.

The whiskey hits me mid-air, like the slow creep of Novocaine, while the flight attendants are trying to keep us seated with peanuts. No elephant who had to pee would fall for that bribe.

Mid-stream, I notice a changing table tucked up against the wall and think “now there’s something you don’t think about until you have to do it.” As the “Fasten Seatbelt” light bings in the cabin, I brace myself against the narrow bathroom walls for balance, like trees when I’m peeing while camping. I think of my brother stuck on a coast-to-coast flight with a bad bout of food poisoning. Now there’s something you don’t think about until you have to do it. But we do it: find comfort in uncomfortable situations, even when you’re fetal-position sick. Take eight hour flights that should be less than two just to get to someone. Gain perspective from a height that even the birds can’t reach on some good, uneven air.

Games
Keys
Phones
Friends
Arguments
Money
Fights
Bets
Blood
Our minds
Our homes
Our way

Grandparents; parents; brothers; sisters; aunts; uncles
Hats
Babies
Innocence
Appetite
Teeth
Feeling
Vision
Voice
Breath
Love

Limbs
Luggage
Glasses
Retainers
Socks
Mittens
Memory
Time
Touch
Hair
Hubcaps
Face
Faith

Opportunities
Pens
Jobs
Sleep
Focus
Temper
Hearing
Interest
Lunch
Brain cells
Sense of self
Sense of humor
Life

Of all the things there are to lose in the world,
I guess your wallet isn’t so bad.

But then there are some nights, like this one, for example.
It’s not so cold that the chill goes through you, not to the bones
at least. And smoking a cigarette just seems right. It’s nights like these
that you wish you smoked cigarettes regularly, forced outside
by a compulsion only to find pauses
of unexpected stillness.
Someone coughs.
A little kid raises his voice in whining excitement and is told
“Shh, not now.” An old man bends over his desk, deep in thought—reflective,
not perplexed. Writing a letter? Perhaps. Not paying a bill. Dear Someone…
the possibility of good news exists. A plane flashes by—you think
it’s a plane—seemingly the same distance as the blinking
blue star directly overhead that trembles
with light. And you’re comforted by the fact (because it is
a fact, sure as facts go—as real as the tip
of this cigarette anyway, and as flimsy
as the smoke) that the flickering light may have burned out long ago,
but still you see it.

DAY 2
The six of us are two to a bed. My sister and I share the pull out couch, a minefield of sinkholes, wily springs, and (maybe) imaginary bed bugs. Once I contort to a manageable sleeping position, my sister slings the deadweight of her leg over me or something bites my ankle and I jolt awake, the manageable spot lost to the temperamental, poor excuse for a mattress. I imagine you’d get better rest on one of those cat-ravaged, stained couches you see on the curbside that makes you wonder a.) what took the person so long to get rid of it, b.) what the tipping point was (the first nine times the cat threw up on it was acceptable, but the 10th? Put it on the street—now it’s ruined), and c.) who do they think would ever take the thing into their home. I consider the floor, which would definitely be more comfortable, but also more disgusting, so the couch-bed wins.

A combined four hours of this type of spotty sleeping finally gives way to the day. We get dressed and lotion up and head to the deli across the street for our complimentary breakfast: a single scrambled egg with a blanket of cheddar cheese laid over the top and a two-sip cup of orange juice. Not what you’d imagine it’d be, especially with the way the motel advertised it on the scrolling marquee out front: free full breakfast every morning. “Well, it’s a great breakfast for the price,” my dad points out. I suppose he’s right. You definitely get what you pay for.

Far from being full, we load up the car with drinks, snacks, beach towels, and books, gearing up for a long day at the beach. We arrive 15 minutes later to Island Beach, a rustically beautiful state park that splits the ocean and the bay. We see osprey, dragonflies, jellyfish, and even a small red fox. We’re there for maybe two hours when the rain starts. We think it might blow over. We defy the sky’s empty threats and really push it until the last minute before we have to pack up and make a run for the car.

With the entire afternoon left to kill, we venture to the interpretive center, a wildlife museum of sorts that takes about five minutes to fully tour. The rain stops, but not convincingly enough to set up camp again, so we compromise and decide to take one of the trails to the bayside. We get about 100 feet before the biting flies, mosquitoes, and rampant poison ivy along the path make us to turn back. We call it a day and go back to the motel for a round of showers and naps before an early dinner.

We’re seated almost immediately at the restaurant with the 45 minute wait from the night before. We’re led upstairs to a table next to a family with a severely mentally disabled child who yells out through the duration of the meal. “That kid has a loud voice,” my dad remarks after about 10 minutes of consistent squealing. “Dad!” My brother reproaches him. “He’s retarded.” My father, the hopeless semantic, responds, “So? Whether he is or he isn’t is beside the point. He has a loud voice.”

Our waiter arrives apparently stoned and clearly disheveled. He introduces himself as Jared and addresses us all as man. He seems more like a caricature of a California surfer than the Jersey menfolk we’ve been seeing. It’s refreshing. He races downstairs to check with the kitchen at least four times before he puts our order in. He’s unsure of the soup of the day (“I don’t really know, man, but I think it’s vegetable soup or something”); he tells my brother they don’t carry Smithwick’s though it’s on tap at the bar; and he’s really thrown when my mom asks if they have anything gluten-free on the menu (“Umm the chef says the burger, the steak, and the pasta.” “The pasta? Really?” “Well, that’s what he says and it’s his place so, I dunno man.” I imagine the chef is another 19 year-old dude). He returns out of breath and apologizing each time; it’s only his second week, he explains. He grabs his brow and nervously shifts his weight and pulls up his pants. His reaction time is slow—he instantly agrees with whatever we say and then seems to snap out of a daze and asks a question. He repeats all our orders a few times, wiping his forehead as if to clear away some of the haze. The ordering process takes 10 minutes longer than it probably should, but for some reason we all really like him and aren’t at all bothered. It sort of feels like rooting for the underdog, cheering despite all the errors and the more they lose, the more you love them.

And so it goes through the end of the meal, when a bewildered Jared returns my dad’s credit card and says it’s been declined. This really confuses him, and we half-suspect that maybe Jared doesn’t know how to use a credit card machine? My dad calls the credit card company right at the table, while a completely overwhelmed Jared runs around to other tables. We leave the dining area to make room for waiting diners and Jared runs after us. As it turns out, someone tried to steal my dad’s identity and deposit $16,000 into their account, so the bank froze the card. My brother explains the situation to Jared, and he stares blankly, looking down the barrel of a $150 bill. “Well, I still need the bill paid, man,” he quivers. “Yeah,” my brother assures him. “We’re going to pay up at the front; we just wanted to clear the table for you.” Jared seems unconvinced, but eventually gets rushed away, perhaps by something shiny, and we resolve everything with the front of the house.

We head to the boardwalk for the second night, my dad calling for Snooky like a cat (“Snooky! Snooky, where are you?”). We all laugh because for some reason, it’s hard to be embarrassed in front of this crowd. We throw baseballs at beer bottles and plates for prizes and watch a five year old pose for a picture next to a cut out of the elusive Snooky. But we have to leave the spectacle of the boardwalk early when my mom starts to feel the effects of Jared’s mistaken gluten-free dinner recommendation. My sister tries to pawn off the Mardi Gras beads we won to a father with two little girls. “Do you want some beads for your kids?” she asks sweetly and he crouches away from us with a protective shoulder. “No, I’m good,” he says with wary eyes, like we’re gypsies trying to swindle him.

The Maiers try to go on vacation and somehow end up the freaks at the Jersey Shore carnival.

DAY 1
We arrive at the Sunrise Motel to a pool full of pot-bellied (“it’s 5 o’clock somewhere”) Miller Lite drinkers. Couples and families only, the sign says. The guy behind the counter looks happy to see us. We’re the ideal family: no annoying young kids; no one shotgunning cans of crap beers till the wee hours; no smokers; no mullets. We’re not here for the boardwalk. We’re here for the seaside state park ten minutes away. In other words, we’re not the usual clientele.

The first order of business (second behind checking for bedbugs) is to get something to eat. We take a five minute walk down the street to a Pub and Grille. A sign posted in the window lists the requirements: Men must be wearing shirts with sleeves. No bandanas allowed. No gang colors. No boots. We check ourselves and seem to pass. My mom is wearing a tank top, but that’s not what they mean. In fact, we won’t fully know what they meant until later that night, when we brave a stroll on the boardwalk.

A forty-five minute wait means we keep walking. The other direction turns up only pizza shops and closed down cafes. With two gluten-frees, we decide to throw in the towel on aimless wandering and ask the GPS oracle for restaurant suggestions. We load into the back seat hip-to-hip, four kids too grown to comfortably fit in a three seater anymore. The air conditioner parts the sun-baked stuffy car air as we wait.

The oracle draws up some choices, all of which we’d passed (and passed on). Then it suggests JR’s Steak House. We all agree that this sounds like our best option. Nothing says vacationing like a surf ‘n’ turf dinner. We drive the three blocks—it’s closer than we thought—park, and make our way to the bar that claims to be a steak house. The waitress seats us outside, below a speaker blasting the kind of pop music that would be considered torture for anyone with working eardrums.

The waitress brings us menus and we order water all around. While we’re deciding on dinner, she returns with six bottles, $3 a pop. We exchange a few for beers (why pay for water?) and ask for a dozen peel and eat shrimp while we look over the menu. Everything is fried (even the clams) and a single flatiron steak graces the menu. We look at each other. Burgers? “I don’t trust the meat,” my mom says. “I don’t either,” we all reply. The waitress returns with a small paper plate of half-melted ice and sad- looking shrimp surrounding a plastic ketchup cup filled with cocktail sauce. We look at the plate then at each other and send her away again, apologizing for our indecisiveness.

We decide there’s nothing here we can (or want to) eat, and apologize again when she returns. “You know what, these two have a special diet and there’s really nothing on the menu they can eat,” my dad says sheepishly. The waitress obliges and brings the check. My dad signs for the $30 bill with the Paradise Sands Tanning Salon pen she provides. We’re in Jersey, all right.

The next place we try is nice, if not rambling. A bar at the front of the house leads to a lounge and piano area which leads to the sushi and pizza kitchen with the dining room off to the side. Tonight they have dueling pianos: two guys on either side of what looks like a welded together piano. The food is good. The waitress smiles a lot. Aside from the fact that we’re surrounded by overly tan men who look like they regularly cheat on their wives and white women who favor the burnt toast look and animal prints, this restaurant is a huge upgrade. After a satisfying entrée and dessert combo, we stop into the piano area where the crowd is in full swing and the requests are flowing: Poison, Bruce Springsteen, Journey (and of course, Neil Diamond sneaks in)—oh yes, we’re undoubtedly in Jersey.

A drunk girl named Gina tries to get everyone to join in the chorus parts of the songs you’ve heard at every wedding or karaoke night in the past twenty years. She gets called up on stage for her impression of the two guys playing the piano (it looks like air guitar) and embarrasses her friends and boyfriend more than once.

We request Joe Cocker’s Space Captain and give the guys a fiver. They don’t know the song and ask us to request another. We say She Came in Through the Bathroom Window and they play Hey Jude. We stick around for a few more bad ‘80s songs requested by Gina’s fist-pumping table, and leave burnt out on greatest hits.

We return to the motel to deposit leftovers and bags before venturing out to the boardwalk; we’re at the beach and we haven’t seen the ocean yet. My dad and one brother stay behind and the rest of us head towards the neon flashing lights like carnies towards, well, the boardwalk. We knew it’d be bad, but we didn’t know it’d be this bad. Girls and women of all ages and sizes strut with exposed mid-driffs, fake eyelashes, caked on faces, and six inch heels. They’re often accompanied by overly-manicured males of stocky build in muscle shirts and hair cemented into peaks. Chains, belly button rings, tramp stamps, and generally poor cosmetic decisions abound.

A group of three young girls, Jersey Shore princesses-in-training walk by. “The house is full of four girls. Supposedly they’re cool, but they’re real ugly,” one says and the others nod. A chubby twelve-year-old eating an ice cream cone wears a T-shirt that says “I AM the Situation.” On this boardwalk, you can Shoot a Guido for a prize (paintballs only) or get a photo of yourself on your nails. At least two unhappy marriages are ending tonight. “I’m in control! You listen to ME and do what I say and that’s IT!” One guy yells into his phone angrily enough to stir the otherwise unconcerned police. “Fine, Judy, here’s some money. You go in there and get drunk!” another man snaps. “But Kevinnn,” Judy whines.

“Six chances for a dollar,” a smoke-ravaged woman sighs in our direction. A long ash dangles from her cigarette into a Coors Light cup. At the beginning of the boardwalk, I joked that this place feels like purgatory, but once we reach the end, I retract that statement and upgrade it to full-on hell. It’s like someone vacuumed up the dregs of society and emptied the bag out onto this stretch of the otherwise beautiful beach.

The Maiers try to go on vacation and end up in a chintzy version of hell.

I’ve been thinking about memory a lot lately. It’s a recurring theme in the usual wanderings of my mind, but recently it’s been spurred by external prodding.

The Whiteman Brothers are a set of filmmakers in Portland who dream up strange and beautiful stories and actually see their imaginings through. They’re what you can consider successful artists. When they asked me to be in their latest, Childhood Machine, as a character called Memory Foe, I didn’t hesitate. We wrapped a few weeks ago, after an intense but truly amazing six days. And my mind has been stuck on memory since.

My character is out to destroy memory, having had a really good one that makes it hard for all others to live up to. She feels memory has wronged her, and as an act of self-preservation and for the good of humanity, she spends her days on the streets, canvassing against it. Her endeavors lead her to Childhood Machine, who has his own absurd ambitions, and her mission sparks his interest. He agrees to help her. If she collects the data, he will analyze it. He promises results. So she sets up shop, lemonade stand-style, paying a gold dollar for people’s best and worst memories.

The thing is, we actually did this. And for about six hours, I listened to over thirty unscripted best and worst-ofs. By the end, I felt like I’d been emotionally wrung out, like a desiccated sink sponge; a maple tree fully-tapped and syrupless.

These are my findings.

1.) We all have good and bad memories, but we tend to most easily recall the bad, or at least that’s the type that gets a vice grip of a hold on us.

There was the girl who came across a fiery and fatal car
accident on her way to spring break. The first to arrive on the scene,
she and her friends called 9-1-1 and she had to keep one of the
victims conscious until help arrived. He’d been ejected from
the car that his girlfriend was still trapped inside,
burning alive. The other car contained a family that all
perished. Her best memory was…that spring break. Although, I’d imagine
anything experienced immediately after a tragedy like that
would seem best, in comparison.

2.) Every memory has validity and relevance on a very personal scale. Everyone has her own barometer of good and bad; you can’t compare degrees of bad. Still, the range of depths of hell is drastic.

a.) A twelve-year-old girl’s best memory was getting an American Girl
doll that she partially paid for, for Christmas. Her worst memory was losing her
retainer for two days, because it was expensive, and she was going to have to
pay for it.

b.) There was the junkie whose worst memory was that he died,
just the night before. He’d checked himself into rehab a few
months ago and returned to Portland where he fell back into the
same habits that led to the eventual overdose. He was “so bad”
that one of the EMTs bailed before they even got him into the
elevator. They poked him 29 times, trying to inject some Narcan.
But his veins were all collapsed and it wouldn’t take. Then his
heart stopped and he died for five minutes. They finally shot
a huge needle into his heart and brought him back
to life.

3.) Most worst memories are recalled from a young age–seven–almost across the board. Maybe seven is just a highly impressionable age. Or maybe it’s the age you become aware of the world enough to understand realities like death and loss of innocence.

a.) There was the guy who was just seven when his father was murdered by three teens high on crack.

b.) One man was seven when he got the news that his five-
year-old brother was dead. The brother had just dropped off a
forgotten pair of glasses to him, and was returning to school
when he was hit and killed by a car. The man said he was pulled
out of class and told “Steven is dead.” So he went around to all
the houses of his friends named Steven and asked if they were
OK. It wasn’t until he finally went home and found his father crying
at the kitchen table, that he understood.

4.) A person’s good and bad memories don’t usually equal in intensity.

There was the seven-year-old girl whose best memory was when
her best friend’s Clif bar accidentally fell into her lunchbox.
This memory was grossly eclipsed by her worst: when her
babysitter died.

A few times people got weepy and it was hard for me hold it together. Sometimes I hugged the person afterwards. I felt like sopping up all the pain that oozed from them, swabbing the deck of all these horrible memories. By the end of the day, I was convinced, like my character, that memory should be obliterated. Still, when confronted about the idea, most people disagreed. They’d rather the bad with the good–even if it meant much more bad–than none at all.

If you eradicate the bad memories, some reasoned, you’d also be eradicating the knowledge gained from them. This got me thinking of memory as a survival mechanism.

One guy wondered how he’d know where his keys were when he got up in the morning. You wouldn’t lose muscle memory, I argued, just moment memory. It’s different. But I couldn’t convince him. I don’t think so, he said, politely waving me off.

One woman suggested that there’d be no such thing as a good memory without the existence of the bad. The dichotomy may seem cruel, but it’s necessary for the very existence of the good ones. Otherwise, it would just be plain old memory, and far less significant. Or maybe it wouldn’t exist at all.

I tried to convince an old woman that memories were just reminders of what once was. She smiled and looked away thoughtfully, warmly. I like them, she said, shaking her head. This got me thinking about memory as a durable scrap book, a sentimental record of where you’d been and who you were.

I likened memory to a deceptive friend. It’s a fictionalized version of reality; you can’t trust it. Why would you want to keep something like that around? Does that matter, one man asked. Don’t you read literature? Don’t you watch movies? Not everything has to be true to be relevant. Not everyone’s version of the truth is the same. I’m colorblind, he said pointing. That grass is not green.

And as far as I can remember, it wasn’t.

“It’s time to go up,” my mother said. She meant to the beach house that my grandparents rented every year. The afternoon sun had gone. Beach towels had begun to be used as blankets. We were all turning backs to fronts to backs again, trying to pull the day’s last UVs. The tide was coming in and we had to keep dragging our camp towards the dunes until we were almost in them. Then one of the kids, who was utterly bored of tanning, and who was instead usually digging for sand crabs, would yell “Mom!” And like a routine fire drill, we’d all jump up, grabbing chairs and towels, shovels and pails, before the water could swallow it all.

But I didn’t want to go “up,” and I pleaded with her “not yet.” I’d found a driftwood stick, calcified with lichens, preserved by the salty sea. I held it like a scepter. So far from trees, how did it find its way to the ocean and back on to shore? I started drawing a line to separate us from the water. “Come on,” my mother persisted. But I continued on with my line like I hadn’t heard her. I walked hunched, dragging the stick behind me, watching the sand move away and my footprints disappear like the tide recedes. When I finally looked up, the beach was desolate in either direction, and I tasted panic at the back of my throat. At this point, stubbornness was no longer my guide. I looked ahead, at the line yet to be drawn, and felt a compulsion to finish the task, to make it to the next pier.

As I stuck the stick in the stopping point, I saw a bare-chested figure approaching. I froze, wondering if I should make a run for it, and in which direction. As he got closer, I recognized the bi-colored blue swimming trunks and waited for him to reach me. It was my dad. My mother had sent him, I was sure of it. He was going to make me go back. I held the stick loosely at my side like a melted ice cream cone, looking down at the wavering line that my father walked, like a land-bound tight roper, and I realized he’d followed it like a breadcrumb trail. I felt caught, and stepped to the side of the line as his toes met its end.

“What are you doing, Rach?” he asked unaccusingly, unlike my mother would have. “I’m drawing a line to the end of the pier.” I answered like I’d been called upon in science class to recite a fact. “You realize it’s a little over a mile between piers,” he asked, Socratically in his way. I shrugged, picking the seat of my bathing suit out of my sandy bottom. He held out his hand like a nun who just caught me chewing gum in church. I already knew, at age eight, that there was no arguing with my father. Especially when he was right. I handed over the stick in defeat. He closed his hand around it and looked at me, then he lifted his head, squinting into the distance. I waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. Then he bent down, dug the stick into the sand where I had left off, and bolted towards the next pier.

i lit a hundred candles tonight, like a really special mass,
and read through old emails
and not-so old ones.

you were telling me about your porch, where you invited me to come
and have a glass of wine
and talk philosophy.

does it overlook the ocean, i asked.

a small brook, you said,
with a family of ducks.

i can’t wait to drink wine and talk philosophy! i said.

you laughed at my enthusiasm. i’ve been waiting FIVE yearssssss,
you said dramatically.

* * *

you sent me a hard-covered version of to kill a mockingbird one christmas,
with a note that simply said
“because you’ll understand.”
(and i did).

* * *

someday i better get a chapter in your biography, you said,
i’ve logged a good 7 years.

* * *

i like this alot, you said:

“But an invalid or an inmate would agree, just existing is not the same as living.
So what do we do? We live as best we can.
We try to remember we are not our jobs.
And we remind ourselves that we are nothing,
if not young and happy
and free.”

* * *

at some point, you should tell me your favorite memories,
you said.

the one i really love that always comes to mind, i said, is sitting with you
in the lobby of the music building, drawing and coloring and talking,
watching the lake turn reflective
as the sun set.

i know, you said. i think about that often
and fondly.

hey, you said, I have someplace i’m gonna take you if you come to boston…
it quite possibly rivals a sunset
from the hill at cornell.

* * *

i tried writing back, because i realized you never told me where.
but the email bounced back with the message:
“Delivery to the following recipient failed
permanently.”

and i laughed aloud at the absurdity of the word “permanently.”

and then i cried.

you are missed and loved, kevin marshall. i like to think you’ve just gone off
hunting hills for watching sunsets.
and that you’ll have some pretty spectacular ones
to tell me all about.

RIP
XO

We wander in from galeful Sunday streets that reek of dank city, the lingering smell of a long weekend of garbage blowing around like urban tumbleweeds. Upon entering, we’re greeted by a foyer full of stone statues with menacing faces, terrifying as gargoyles. Inside, people are kneeling and bowing to deities whose names I can’t pronounce: Virupaksha, Vaisravana, Vasudhara, Dhritarashtra. Most are protectors of something or other. Buddha sits at the front, behind the altar, immense and elaborately adorned. On either side of him there’s the god of compassion and of knowledge, all dripping with ornamentation: flashy garb and gilded talismans. If this weren’t a temple, I’d call it tacky and no one would argue.

The monk who greets us is kind enough to pardon our ignorance and show us around, explaining in broken or maybe just simple english, what is what. We are reverent, bowing in gratitude, not unlike the hundreds of offerings before the altar: tiny bowls of water, lotus flower lanterns, pomelos, and oranges. Someone has even left trail mix. Does someone eat the stuff when no one’s looking? Like my dad sneaking outside in the pre-dawn of Christmas day, frozen ground crunching beneath slippered feet, to nibble the carrots we’d thrown out for Santa’s reindeer, as proof that he does exist. I hope so. All those starving people in China…

The monk with the happy eyes slips behind the altar to show us “golden merits”: flakes scraped from the scalp of the master rinpoche after a Llama laid his hands upon his head. They’re supposed to be a sign of all the good deeds the rinpoche had done in past lives. Preserved in a clear liquid in a miniature chalice, it looks like a shot of Goldschlager, and I think it’s odd, the things we choose to worship. But they’re beautiful and strange, and he gets a glow when talking about them.

The monk locks away the chalice and walks us out, saying we can leave a donation to the deity of our choice, as he hands us a decorative paper bag. “You can write your name on the outside,” he says, and we take the offering bag from him but choose to remain anonymous. I get a two dollar bill ready, though A. reaches for a 20 and I’m surprised. He slips it into one of the donation boxes at the foot of a statue–I don’t see which one–and we walk through the giant marble pillars back onto the street, where the clouds boast rain and it feels more like fall than spring.

“It’s funny,” I say. “All that materialism.” A. taps out a cigarette and lights it. He exhales and the wind catches the smoke, sending it wafting into the grimy air. “It’s Disneyland for the religious, kid.” A pimped-out car sits parked outside the temple doors, booming rap music. The passengers are reclined in the front seat, eating potato chips. A crow squawks in time to the too-loud bass. A cab cuts through a yellow light and a car honks. The contrast is startling at first, and it takes me a moment to reconcile the two worlds. How could a place like that exist on such a profane street corner? A little girl walks by, unsteadily carrying a casserole in a porceline dish. Offerings. Cigarette smoke encircles us like a halo and it occurs to me–don’t they know?–it’s the same thing.