Some say it doesn’t matter.
Wanton guilt hidden paper-wedged
in an unlit lamp corner crevice
between the moulding and the plaster.

The grand valley house taken up by a disregarded prediction
of runover river waters, resettled a little further
than a foal would trot and bicker for greener grains
Only to be, a decade or so later,
waterlogged and drowned by the next year dam.
Unimportant papers floated face up
to be bleached along the shoreline stones for scavengers.
Echoes from the deep underneath whisper
through the older forest mists when it rains.

Who is to blame, really?
As if anyone is a sole actor, alone.
It’s a deep consideration.
A wobbly slapwood cart laden with discarded trinkets and treasures
once held dear and close as babies and pets.
The ramble birds pick through it irreverently and mock away.
Nearby, a nearly sightless elder, resting,
recognizes the passing scent.
Altering his ancient face to a strict concern
a song comes to mind that he heard a time ago
while falling from a grave misfortune.

Some Scrutinize the fading film remnants
Project them across cheap screens or linens
for their oddly curious fellows.
The villains and heroes have unknowingly swapped places
dead so long no soul remains to defend their intentional glances.
What language is that?
Best forget.
These golden heart strings simply become life’s death lances.
Annual flowers smell the sweetest.

Because these things are true
as true as the dim lights in the late night sky
are set too far away to capture, claim or know.
Mixed up gasses, they appear to always recede
in time, fail, will fall from the believed ceiling into shatters.

Newly open, bare to the ferocious sun
do we realize since the first sand drawn maps
sought to make sense of the distances between here and there
That South, not North, might have been the better guide
to save our lives.

Your ears stuffed with asphalt
All you smell is overripe metal akin to sweet cherries
New clocks begin their tick and turn while one key part of you is wailing
And the other part is admiring the road paint

All the grand plans die here as you lay soaked and sodden
Noticing the piles of ditched glee unevenly placed by the park’s turnstyle gates

Then the making of lists vomits out loose along the road a frank and silly result
“Don’t fix what makes you lame!”

Declaring yourself a genius you’re happy you can wiggle your toes
Without tears you press yourself up but most of you sticks to the ground
Your bones and insides flap down aside your spine
Same for your jawline, it’s wedded to the tarmac

You grip this confusion and crackpot solutions for all it matters
And with madness

With one more quick choppy breath you promise yourself
As the knobby-toed feet of the rescuers’ boots approach your face
Above all else, you must make your way blindsided in all of its glory.

Half-assed lion charmers
And
Crack-pepper wannabes throw fists first.

Unbuckled rodeos can’t crank the bones.

Don’t even.

Stamp out time wasted by backtracking field stones.
Embrace the night frets.

Keep the hilltop fantasies and open road romances
As lump sum victories displayed along the fences.

Turn it down, because

Picturesque visionaries can’t wheel straight
Slumped against forever without a map or way home.

Lucky some said
Unlucky for the others

Some died. Many walked away
Some had burns, some were badly burned

The ride has been closed ever since
It stands bent, lonely and scarred
Peeling paint

When it storms, small morbid gangs
Gather underneath the straining metal, laying on their backs
Squinting up through the rain
With hopes of seeing the lightning strike
Or catch a glimpse of a half-burned ghost

It hasn’t happened yet
But it’s still an attraction
Although there is both a hazard sign and a bolted chain

I knew the parents of some of the unlucky kids who were burned
Life moved on and they’ve grown into new people, with scars and stories

One of those kids became a race car driver
His parents blame that night of the lightning
They told their friends their son tells the story over and over
Of how the lightning, thick as a river
Jumped down from the dark and swallowed the wheel whole

It felt like a hot wet blanket that could go on forever he said
Then it became cold and dark and the rain stung his skin, bad
But he wished it would happen again and never end

Somewhere, on a tight track, under the bright lights in a dirt road town
This kid feels that fire come up through his steering wheel
And he closes his eyes and sees that river of lighting and
The howling of the kids in the roar of his engine
The wind tears at his face as he presses the gas until his teeth hurt

And he laughs and laughs and laughs.

Beliefs melt
Become unrecognizable to non-witnesses
Inconsequential

As example
What is a weekday?
It’s an easy latch mistaken for importance

See

Other cadences, transient and flimsy
Arrive, are present, overlap and recede.

Then

It becomes a struggle to ward off the easy familiarities
They creep and rush back through your edges
And suddenly you’ve forgotten you had escaped.

Except

Within and on your body are the hard reminders
That you had been temporarily free.

Later on

You recognize it in the rustling of sparrows weaving their nest
In the hovering warm air just beyond the tree’s shade.

For now I’m in between
Dreaming of that lightness, considering the discrete pain
Knowing it will one day happen again.

These roads are older than most cities, carved from clay, sand and rock first by feet and then by hands and then by hand-made tools made by long forgotten persons. Pressed and settled by rain and seasons the roads ribbon and weave together the seemingly endless roll of valleys. The cars pass with a whirl, coughing up dust. Drivers wave the backs of their hands with introverted gazes as the people strolling along the roadside pay them the same attention as slow passing cattle. The roads belong to the people first, cars are distant second.

The air is pungent with charred fields, rosemary, sage and savory.

The willow trees make the most consistent sounds except for the insects, and the morning birds. You become deaf to the insect’s raspy and high wire prickling after a good night’s sleep. The birds awaken you. At first you curse them. Later you thank them.

The sun above aims brightly and broadly, gauzed and silently within a widening light that’s most austere in the early afternoon. When it sets, the sun shouts a thorough and blanketing epiphany at the orchards and cypresses that line the hilltops.

Sometimes a windowless citadel peaks above a hill’s green dome, pronouncing to the visible landscape that they are under its protection and watch. Or it once was. Or it might once be again. More often a matte stoned cathedral beacons its dominion, acting as the road’s end for bands of sweaty pilgrims that gather at the intersections, awaiting their calling along the muddy serpentine footpaths. For most else, their monumental grandness initiates solemn considered contemplation about time, and the lasting nature of stone and lime masonry. Especially after viewing the giant Roman relics ingrained into the uneven and patchy layers of the stacked stone fabric of the city walls and homes.

There are no ghosts. Only fruit trees and butterflies and small silent mosquitoes. And fainting frescoes, and dioramic corner shrines.

Within the towns, in the seemingly accidental, unplanned or unusable spaces in the nooks where buildings meet each other, such as the irregular walls or the tilted walks, potted plants and vines spring up from terra-cotta or rough reed baskets and celebrate their sunlit bodies by presenting lush piles of green leaves and strong spots of bugle flowers. There are vines and plants in each nook, up walls, and hanging from baskets, in all the places a person doesn’t step or lean. There is occasionally a lone water-worn bench in a narrow pocket piazza that opens up like a blossom at the conflux of tight alleys, mimicking the instruction of the plentiful vines. The happy and joyed voices from the piazzas echo unattributable down the alleys.

The day becomes the evening and the greetings between strangers shift to night languages. Residents hurry from their ajar doors to fetch friends, relatives or their children. These Umbrian cities open and close in layered rhythms, anchored to a shared responsibility of living in an antique town, in a home much older than great-grandparents. We are fortunate to be here.

Standing at the top of a high set of steps, looking outside past the city walls at the wide valley, over there, if you point straight from your shoulder, holding your arm parallel to the ground you’ll see one Cyprus tree taller than it’s patch. Within its close branches a roosting songbird, impossibly side glances at you from so far away, resembling a frescoed face painted high above into the chapel ceiling. You blink at the beauty and the bird lifts itself into the air and changes colors from black to gold to black again. It indecisively flits and soars upwards more and more.

As you try to see it again against the miraculous bright blue sky, it disappears.

———

Rebecca began baking bread a little over fifteen years ago, and for each of the following years she’d bring a new bread to Thanksgiving as she honed her skills. For the past five years she brought the same bread, a large sour dough loaf that was both airy and crunchy, sprinkled with both poppy and sesame seeds on the crust. This is the one her mother referred to as her ‘famous’ bread.

Everyone would rave about her bread during the Thanksgiving meal. “How do you do it?’” Her mother-in-law would beam. “Unreal” her brother’s long-time girlfriend, Erin, would add, ripping a small piece from the inside of the loaf and popping it in her mouth with her short grey-painted nails. Rebecca couldn’t understand why anyone would use grey nail polish.

Rebecca took pride in her bread ever since she took the job as a bakers assistant while studying fiber arts in college. She eventually dropped her fiber arts studies to become a baker full-time. It was what she thought she’d become, what she would be for her life.

After her two-year bakers assistantship was up, the owner asked her if she wanted to open a new bakery, with him. She couldn’t tell if the proposition was purely business or had romantic inclinations. She declined and within a week she was working for a different bakery and formally dropped out of college. She poured all of her attention into baking breads, rolls and savory pastries. She was not a fan of sweet things.

Rebecca would labor over the ‘famous’ Thanksgiving bread for days with its specific weights and measures. A fifteen-year old jar of sour-dough starter still sits in her fridge. She created her starter from a scoop she saved from that first bakery where she had her assistantship. The owner claimed his jar of starter had been in constant feeding since the era of Napoleon, the first Napoleon, not the second.

Rebecca used to feed the starter daily. To any stranger it was a crusty jar sitting on her kitchen counter, to the left of her stove. It would often bubble over leaving a half-dried clay blob surrounding the jar. It had an odor of sweet vinegar mixed with ale. She still has the jar, but only feeds it occasionally. It sits way in the back bottom corner of her fridge.

She hasn’t thought of baking in a while. Not since her husband, Steve, passed away three years ago.

Steve died in the Trade Center. The World Trade Center. World. Trade. Center. Every time she’d say it, before Steve died, she’d slow it down, proudly. She knew all of the stories: how it was built on top of a massive bathtub, how the excavated dirt became Battery Park City, how they found ancient sailing ships just below the muddy surface of the foundation. It was a beacon in her life, a way to tell direction. At night, the different floors of the towers would light up. She’d turn to her friend Alissa as they sat on a bench in Washington Square Park, “See, when the whole floor lights up like that it means the cleaning crew is working.”

Now, she doesn’t ever mention it. Can’t bring the words to her lips. She can’t look at a picture of the towers, or the new Freedom Tower. She ducks her gaze whenever she’s walking south or drives out of town. She’ll sometimes see the words in print, or online, and she’ll gaze over them, recognizing them, and move slowly from them, eagerly seeking the next set of words. She finds relief when she lands on other words with other meanings. She repeats the other words, whatever they are. Words like “once,” or “standing,” or “construction.” She reads them each distinctly, removed from context. She sighs as she closes the magazine.

For the weeks after Steve died she kept hearing of the remarkable stories about the people who either slept late that day, or traded a shift, or called in sick. It was on the radio shows she listening to, in conversations with friends, on the late news. She wondered, magically, what quality these people who escaped that day each had that Steve didn’t. She couldn’t define it as luck as that would mean that Steve was unlucky. That was too much to bear. That would mean that she was unlucky. She wasn’t unlucky.

She’d read through the stories of these remarkable people, scratch down notes, go online and research them, find out all she could about them. She’d sit with her notes and look for the patterns. There was little evidence, she had to uncover the truth. She began to stalk the “survivors,” with trepidation at the start, then with serious fervor as the days sped up. She’d wait outside office buildings, retail shops, apartment buildings looking for their faces. It became her day job. She had a clip-bound notebook with print-outs of their bios and low-quality photos she printed herself on her old color printer. She’d spend nearly all hours of the day stalking one person at a time. Sometimes falling asleep on a stoop or at the booth of a bar.

When she’d be on a stake-out, and identify one, placing a penciled check next to their name on her master list of names, she’d follow them as they went about their day. She draft her neatly kept notes in a lined spiral-bound notebook and later entered them into a spreadsheet with times of day and mundane activities: coffee, groceries, child-care. She noted their clothing: down jacket, blue jeans, dress shoes, cardigan sweater.

What could be the unifying factor that related them? What was the pattern? One behavior they all seemed to share was a morning cup of coffee. For a while she truly believed that coffee could be the unifying factor that saved their lives…they each stopped for a cup of coffee, either at a cafe or to take out, and it was that short delay that changed the course of their lives, that saved them. When she was convinced the answer was coffee she then had the intoxicating urge to visit each location where she saw one of the survivors obtain their coffee, and she would obtain the same coffee. Some preferred their coffee with cream, others with steamed milk, some decaf, some black. She’d sip it slowly, savor it as a potion of salvation. It gave her some relief.

After three months of her walking the streets, following these survivors through their daily routines, the truth and depth of her sorrow suddenly enveloped her and weighed her down. She was walking towards the subway entrance on Lexington at 63rd street and collapsed, leaning sideways against a recently re-painted navy blue mailbox. A group of college students rushed over to help her. She softly patted their arms and said, “I’m fine, I’m fine.” Unbalanced and dizzy she made her way down the stairs and onto the train.

It was an undefinable exhaustion and pressure and she gave into it. Lifting her head from the pillow, lifting her legs to walk, raising her arms to dress, all became impossible. She was being pulled down, at all times. She remained in bed, pulled down into the mattress, her head pulled into her pillow.

After what she thought must have been a week in bed she finally called her brother, Giles, late in the afternoon on a Sunday. He answered the phone quickly, she didn’t recall it ringing.

“Giles, it’s me, Rebecca,” she whispered.

“I know,” he said slowly.

“I’m not sure I can move Giles.”

“Erin and I will be right there,” he said with greater speed.

“Don’t bring Erin please.” Rebecca gasped.

“She loves you too Rebecca, and she can probably help where I can’t.”

“Fine.” She hung up the phone, still lying sideways in her bed. She turned to face the window and watched a squirrel kick the snow off a branch. She realized she hadn’t bathed in over a week. Or opened the fridge, or took out the garbage. She didn’t care. She closed her eyes and fell asleep.

—

It was a year later that she began to feel like she might be ok. Steve’s former employer, a commodities trading firm, had continued to pay Steve’s salary, deposit funds into their joint 401k, and pay for their health insurance for the year after the event. She received a simple printed note in the mail that the salary would be suspended as of the end of the year. She crumpled up the note, placed it in a small ceramic soup bowl, and using a kitchen match burned the note, then took the ashes between her palms, pressed them tightly and washed her hands in the kitchen sink. It was a sunny day, summer-warm even though it was October.

She had barely spent any of the money in their bank account, now it was her bank account as she had to remove Steve’s name from the account within a month of his passing. She went to the bank, matter of factly, with his death certificate, unfolded in her hand. She passed it to the teller, who looked up sheepishly and passed her back a receipt of the transaction.

During that first year she’d log into her bank account and notice as the number rose each week. She had enough money to live on for another few years if she wanted to. She looked at her reflection in the kitchen window. “I look mostly the same,” she thought to herself. She bit her nails as she dropped the shade which fell with the sound of a metallic zip.

She had given away all of Steve’s clothes in a manic fit to the exasperated regret of his parents who wanted to keep them, keep everything that Steve might have touched or owned or looked at. She gave Steve’s parents the dozen or so boxes of his things which included notebooks, watches, family photographs, and his collection of obsolete subway tokens. 

His parents came to the apartment to collect the boxes late one Saturday afternoon. Rebecca stacked them in the outside hall the night before. Steve’s parents knocked on the door, calling her name, but she pretended to be out. She had turned all of the lights off so from the street her apartment would look dark. She could hear Steve’s mother sob into her husband’s down-jacketed shoulder. She listening as they took trips from the hallway to the elevator. Sliding some of the boxes across the floor. There’d be ten minute pauses of silence as they took the boxes down to the lobby. She’d hear the muted “ding” of the elevator, their conversant voices, and then more sliding boxes.

They were gone by the time the sun went down and it was too hard for Rebecca to see without lights. Still, Rebecca sat at her kitchen table, in the dark, until it was 9:00pm, a few hours after Steve’s parents had left.

Then she turned on the kitchen and living room lights. She shuffled her slippered feet to the bathroom, turned on the vanity light and pulled her hair tight into a bun. She washed her hands over her face, pulling the skin down towards her chin, revealing her straight lower teeth. Without any expression she turned back down the narrow hallway to her bedroom and got back into bed.

—

By the end of the first year after Steve’s death, when Rebecca was beginning to feel ok, there was very little left of him in their rent-controlled apartment. They inherited the apartment from her aunt Jane and this was a point of contention between her and Steve for a little while, as Rebecca would often claim greater ownership of the apartment, especially if they were fighting. “It’s more my apartment than yours!” She’d scream at Steven when he complained about something which she didn’t think was worth complaining about. Steve wasn’t much of a fighter. He’d stand down rather than raise his voice or increase his anger. This also bothered Rebecca, but the sting of their fights would fade and she’d slide next to him that night in bed and whisper, “I’m sorry” into his warm sleeping ear.

One day, while looking out of the kitchen window Rebecca noticed the leaves had changed colors, they were orange and tan, some were yellow, or putty.  She began to hum Steve’s favorite Miles Davis tracks from “Kind of Blue.” At this time of year they used to rent a car and drive north through New England to review the leaves, stop at apple farms to find the best cider donuts and eat a dinner of fried clams on an open patio near an inlet as the fishing boats rocked in the water. She’d wipe the tartar sauce from the side of his mouth with a rough paper napkin. He’d smile and feed her a french fry. She preferred her fries with mustard, he preferred ketchup. The wind tousled his hair in such as way that she found him irresistible. Later, the sun would set as they’d sit together on a beach overlooking the Long Island Sound, the air growing colder. Her hands in his lap, their fingers wound together. She’d rest her head on his strong shoulder.

Under her bed she kept a shoe-box sized teak-wood box that contained her wedding band, engagement ring, his silver wheat-chain necklace and a small set of photos of them together. The box was a wedding gift from Steve’s friend, a weekend woodworking hobbyist.

During the first year after Steve’s death she’d touch the box, but rarely open it. During the autumn of 2002 she would open the box each morning, chose one photo of them together, and speak to Steve in a hushed tone. Telling him about her days, what she’s seen, the people on the subway, the people in the market. Her new pair of shoes, a new bracelet. After the ten to fifteen minute conversation she’d say, “ok, good bye Steve,” and put the photo back into the box and slide the box under her bed. By the time the winter had rolled around again, at the start of the  second year after Steve died, she was no longer opening the box. In fact she rarely opened it ever again.

She rarely did any of the things they used to do together. She hadn’t realized this, it just sort of happened. Which was odd for Rebecca, who was so confidently sure about so many things before. Who she would marry, when. How many children she’d have, what they’d look like, their names, where they’d go to school. What their favorite foods would be.

It was difficult to see her friends right after Steve died. All they wanted to talk about was ‘Nine Eleven,’ or about Steve being dead. At first she allowed them to though she never fully engaged back, she’d just nod and make simple sounds of agreement. As time went on she learned to close her ears, and then she just couldn’t hear them any longer, and they stopped talking to her.

She had become so miserable, so unapproachable, and the story so horrible that they didn’t know what else to say to her.

“Rebecca isn’t one for friends,” her mom would respond when she was asked how Rebecca has been coping with the death of her husband. “She’s self-sufficient, sometimes she talks to her old friends,” her mom would say abruptly before changing the subject, pushing her shopping cart away from the produce and into the frozen food section.

—

For the first six months after Steve had died Rebecca had reoccurring nightmares about his death based on the first-person accounts she read in the papers, heard on TV, saw online. She couldn’t escape the thoughts of Steve dying. She envisioned him at his desk, high up in the first tower, suddenly engulfed in flames. She envisioned him walking down the hall, towards his office, suddenly engulfed in flames. She envisioned him, coffee mug in hand, gazing out of the window of his office, watching as the plane slowly curved to the right, pointing its shiny nose in his direction, realizing he might die. She envisioned him weeping. She envisioned him smiling, she envisioned him laughing.

Did he jump? Did he wait for the floors to collapse? Why didn’t he call? So many people called their loved ones to say goodbye. Why didn’t Steve? She told herself he must have died instantly, there were no peers of his to ask, they all died. She couldn’t stop thinking about the flames, the heat, the collapse.

She imagined him falling through the air, tumbling against the winds, his blazer pushed up awkwardly under his arms, one shoe missing from a bare foot, gravity pulling him down faster and faster.

The fall would have been longer than their wedding day kiss. Would have been longer than him saying, “I love you Becs.” Would have been longer than the squeeze he gave her hand nearly each day as he left the apartment, early as always, to catch the subway to be one of the first people in the office. “First one there, first one to leave,” he’d remark knowing that it wasn’t true. Everyone at his office stayed late.

She’d wake from her dream, frightened for him, frightened herself, sweating with her heart racing. As she broke from her dreaminess and push the dream away, she’d immediately burst out howling, crying, shaking. In her bed, alone.

These dreams crept into her days as all-engrossing day-dreams. She’d be standing on a corner with people walking past her and she’d be in a dream, she’d be up in the tower with him, touching his face, tears streaming down his checks, then he’d disappear into flames, or smoke, or dust, or he’d fall away straight down. She’d awake, standing at the crosswalk with her arms raised to touch a face that wasn’t there.

—

As she entered her parent’s house on the Thanksgiving of that third year since Steve’s death, her mom couldn’t help herself, “You didn’t want to make the bread?”

‘Want,’ Rebecca repeated in her head. “No. I’m not going to make that bread ever again,” is what she said aloud.

“Don’t you think thats a little much?” Rebecca’s mom tried to add a tone of levity to her statement but realized it was too late. Rebecca pushed past her mother and entered the foyer of their new home near the Hudson River. She removed her coat and gloves, and dropped them on the bannister to the hallway stairs. She then went into the kitchen to try to find her dad, or Giles or even Erin. Dreadful Erin.

At Thanksgiving that year, her mom had invited the usual crew and some special guests and even extended an invite to Steve’s parents, but they promptly replied with a “we’d love to, but we’re traveling.” Steve’s parents only joined the Thanksgiving meal at her parent’s house once during the years they were married. That was one of the benefits Steve gained from her side during their marriage, a somewhat static set of parents. Steve rarely saw his parents, even when he was younger, they were always traveling.

The special guests included some of Rebecca’s friends from her bakery days and some friends from her marriage with Steve.

“I have to do something,” Rebecca’s mom confided in a friend the week before as they at next to each other at the nail salon, “she’s still so gloomy. I hope seeing her friends helps.”

Each friend made a dramatically obvious effort to hug Rebecca, to look into her face and smile warmly. They sat to her left and right at the awkwardly long table her mom created by adding two smaller tables to each end of their oval dining room table. The table looked like the wimpy barbells her mother’s friends exercised with. Rebecca and her friends sat on one side with their backs to the kitchen, Rebecca’s family and their friends sat on the opposite side, with their backs to a wall of windows that look out over short shrubs, a few pine trees, and into their neighbors living room.

As the dinner progressed no one made a mention of Steve and everyone seemed to be careful not to engage Rebecca directly in a conversation. They asked hypothetical questions for everyone to chime in on. This made her brother’s girlfriend, now fiancee, Erin irritable. She wasn’t one for small talk. She was an intensely serious person who loved to talk about world politics and the UN.

After about fifteen minutes of the vapid conversation about nothing in particular Rebecca could see the irritableness emerge ever more strongly on Erin’s face. As the cranberry sauce, or green beans, or potatoes au gratin were passed up and down the table, Rebecca kept her eyes on Erin. Erin’s distaste for the current conversation, yet her eagerness to still answer the questions, gave Rebecca a bitter joy. As she savored Erin’s situation, she became clearly aware that no one had spoken to her at all, not since her mother asked her about the bread. She began to feel that she was falling even further away from everyone, that maybe no one could see her, that she might not even be there at the table, that she could be dreaming.

“Steve was having an affair.” Rebecca said quietly at first. Erin was the only one who seemed to hear what she said.

“Steve was having an affair.” Rebecca raised her voice this time and the conversation stopped. Her friend Alissa, sitting to her left, grabbed her arm in shock. Her mother dropped her hands, still holding the silverware, on the sides of her plate. Her father wiped his mouth with the flower embroidered tan and green napkin and looked at her, with his chin slightly upturned, awaiting what she’d say next.

“Steve was having an affair. I didn’t know about it until he died. I found the receipts and notes, and some photos in a drawer. I only found her first name, Stacey, but no other trace of her name.”

“Are you sure?” Asked her mother, skeptically. Her father nodded. Alissa let go of her arm and began to bite the nails of her right hand. Erin, who Rebecca thought would burst into a smile, began to cry.

“That’s awful,” Erin sobbed, “how awful for you to have to find that out, in that way.” Rebecca was surprised by this reaction, so much so that she decided to continued her lie.

“Yes, I’m sure mother. The notes were hidden under a stack of old phone bills in a drawer where Steve said he kept his work things.”

“Maybe they were work things…” her mother continued.

“Why are you defending him mother?” Rebecca scowled.

“Your mom is just trying to understand this news, Rebecca,” her father comforted her mother.

Rebecca’s friend Samantha from the bakery, who was sitting two seats to her right chimed in, “I knew it. I never liked Steve.”

Alissa jumped to Steve’s defense, “What are you talking about Sam, you never knew Steve.”

“Yes I did, plus I was at the wedding. I could tell he was no good.”

The table began to discuss whether there was any hint at the wedding, or at any other formal or informal gathering where they could tell that Steve was a lousy cheat. A dishonest man, not worthy of Rebecca’s love. They discussed birthday parties and beach trips. Sam said she thought Steve made a pass at her once. Another one of Rebecca’s college friends, Elizabeth, began to recall a story about her and Steve being alone one night, and Steve acting ‘weird.’

Rebecca let it go on. Steve Steve Steve Steve Steve Steve Steve. All she could hear in the conversation was his name over and over again. She kept gazing across the table at Erin who went from sobbing to confusion to mistrust. It was as if she knew Rebecca was lying. She had gotten over the shock and now she was running through the facts and they didn’t add up.

“Are you sure?” Erin asked, quietly.

“I’m sure,” Rebecca replied, now smiling slightly. “It feels so good to get this out, to say it, it’s cathartic really.” The table nodded their heads, murmuring until all grew silent again. That ended the conversation about Steve. First, her mom’s friend Karen asked, “Well, how are you otherwise my dear?” And then everyone was now asking how Rebecca has been, what she’s been up to, how she’s been feeling. It was as if a curse had been lifted and the sun broke through the clouds for the first time in years. Rebecca felt elated. She beamed. Erin’s face was screwed up. She kept whispering into Gile’s ear. Giles keep his eyes on Rebecca, but didn’t say anything.

—

Later, after the table had been cleared and the dishes put into the dishwasher, and leftover portions of the meal were packaged up and wrapped in small paper bags for everyone to take home, most of the guests sat in the living room. Rebecca sat outside on the back porch with Alissa. They sat side by side in a small hammock hung from two pegs, one on the wall behind them and one from the post holding up the floor above them. The pegs creaked as they swung back and forth.

“Remember when we’d sit out here and smoke cigarettes?” Alissa faced Rebecca.

“Barely. That was so long ago.” Rebecca replied, still looking across the yard at the ancient Oak tree and the picket fence just beyond it.

“It wasn’t that long ago.” Alissa concluded. Then after a moment of silence, except for the creaking of the hammock, Alissa turned towards Rebecca again, needing a reconfirmation, “Did Steve really have an affair Rebecca?” Alissa prodded.

“No, no he didn’t.”

“Then why…”

“Because no one has been able to talk to me. No one’s been able to talk about Steve and it was all I could do to say his name again. I miss him so miserably. I loved him so much.”

“What?”

“I just want people to talk about him, I want to talk about him, I just want to be able to talk about him again, normal things, not tragic things, just normal things like his eyes or his shoes.” Rebecca began to cry into her hands then she lost control. She wailed to where she could barely breathe. Alissa held her shoulders as they heaved with her crying. Rebecca’s tears fell onto her lap and made dark spots on her khaki pants. Alissa hugged her tightly and rocked her.

Alissa whispered, “shhhh, shhh” to comfort her. Rebecca’s mom looked out at them through the kitchen door. She grabbed her husband’s hand and squeezed it.

They sat there, Alissa and Rebecca, together on the hammock for another ten minutes before Rebecca’s mom called from the dining room, beckoning them to come back inside as it was cold, too cold to be outside. Plus, she had just put the apple cake on the table, and it was just the perfect temperature to serve with ice cream.

——-

end

(I’ve changed the names of the individuals and the streets in this story to protect and respect the privacy of the great people of Avon Village – historically called “Kinnekeet Village”)

When the third police car sped by the small children’s playground at the head of Harbor Road, lights flashing, Bernadette turned to me and said calmly yet slyly, “that’s unusual.” Then an ambulance sped by. Bernadette turned away to watch its trajectory, her hand slowly running through her straight brown hair, pulling it between her shoulders, in slow motion, as if time had gotten stuck and that moment was progressing at half-speed. She then turned back, scanning the playground for her daughter as any watchful mother would do. Her daughter and mine were swinging on adjacent swings. She turned to me again and said, “that’s something, I guess. I haven’t seen that much activity for a while. We’re a sleepy little village here, we all know each other. Went to school together. Even after college they all come back.”

Avon Volunteer Fire Department.

If you spend some time studying the map, it becomes clear the Village is moated off from the rest of Avon. There’s a semi-circular canal, blocking all street access except for Harbor Road. Whether this was an intentional fortification or merely a way to give more of the Village access to the sound, there’s only one road in, or out, from the Village. Standing at the head of Harbor Avenue is like standing on the drawbridge. It’s the only place the water runs underneath your feet. The water tower, the fire station, the electric plant, and the playground line the entrance to the Village.

“Live Oak” tree.

The Outer Banks Survive

Though the Outer Banks are romantically referred to as “life a sandbar” on t-shirts, hats and mugs, the islands used to be foliage rich and sturdy against the sea. After the majority of the trees were cut down for commerce, mainly for shipbuilding, the islands became an unstable sandbar, with stories of “live” sand dunes roaming the island and suffocating the remaining forests and engulfing villages. It wasn’t until the 1930s and the New Deal when funds were provided to create the ocean-side miles of dunes and the planting of new foliage to hold them in place. Still, after nearly every Nor’Easter or Hurricane the islands need some form repairing, typically returning the high piles of sand the ocean pushed onto the main roads back to the beaches and dunes. In some case breaches need to be filled back in. In others, bridges need to be built.

Older blue house in Avon Village.

Grave Sites Under Canopies of Live Oaks

It’s under the canopy of these remaining Live Oaks that you’ll find scattered grave sites, some going back to the 1800s. “Kinnekeet used to be 2 miles north of here,” Robby points north into the sunlight, his face covered in zinc oxide to protect it as he’ll be on the water all day, “sometime around the late 1800s they moved the entire town down here to the village. Higher ground. Guess they got tired of their homes flooding.”

“How’d they do that?” I asked sincerely.

“No idea,” Robby replied shaking his head slowly, lifting his hat, pushing his hair back with the palm of his hand and putting his hat back on, “No. Idea.”

Unmarked entrance to a path to grave sites.

During my meandering I stumbled upon a shadowed trail among the Live Oaks. I stopped my bike, dismounted and tread carefully while reading the names on the grave markers. I realized that many of the street names in the village share their names with the deceased.

Grave sites under the canopy of Live Oaks.

I turned back, exited the cemetery, and headed south to reconnect with Harbor Road to visit the Harbor. It’s peacefully quiet in the village. Along the roads are a mix of historical homes and newer construction. Most of the new homes are built on stilts. As I biked along the road I barely noticed the folks quietly sitting on their porches. They were incredibly still. At nearly each house there was a person, sitting. gazing, resting. It’s quiet and tranquil in the Village.

A newer home, built on stilts, sits on the edge of the Pamlico Sound. A cropping of Live Oaks are on the right.

Haunted House?

I made a short turn to my right, on Scarborough Road, recognizing the family name from a headstone. A sea gull stood as a sentinel in the middle of the road. It wouldn’t budge. As I rode my bike towards it, it lifted up with its wings spread, and flew right towards me until peeling off towards my left. I could feel the pushed air from its wings on my face and arms. It seemed to be protecting a home, long abandoned, peeking out from behind some overgrown bushes.

Former Avon Seafood at the Avon Harbor.

I asked Robby why the buildings were still empty in what appeared to be a vital part of the Village, “Well, it’s all caught up in red tape now. The guy who owned the market killed himself. Whoever ends up buying the harbor won’t gain possession of it for fifteen years or so.”

“I see,” I replied, surprised and somberly.

“Well, don’t be sad…did you know that land was originally a pasture and that they hand-dug the harbor,” Robby continued, shifting the conversation back towards something positive.

“Whoa,” I replied, thinking of all the labor it would take to hand dig a harbor back in the 1800s, though the thought of the former owner of the seafood store lingered in my mind.

Avon Harbor, looking west towards the Pamlico Sound.

The News Breaks in the Playground

Later, about fifteen minutes after the police cars raced by while I was speaking with Bernadette, the news broke.

As the sun set and the sky grew darker, thousands upon thousands of magnificent stars emerged from the twilight. There were more stars than I could remember seeing. A young couple arrived, coming up the road from the Village. A young man was on his bike and a young woman was walking beside him. They saw Bernadette, the young man imperceptibly nodded, and they walked towards the playground gate.

“Overdose,” the young woman said frankly and excitedly, leaning her hand on the playground fence, but not entering. “I’m pretty sure it was Mary.”

“How you know?” Bernadette asked.

“Because they were headed down Smith street, and Mary’s the only one who lives down there that I know that could of overdosed.”

“Right,” Bernadette surmised, then turned towards the swings, “Ok, Kelly, time for us to go home.”

The Princess House

I thought back to when I was exploring the Village streets. I reached a dead-end on an empty street. There at the end was a “restored” house. It was pink and purple, partly victorian, partly other styles. It was remarkable, both for its detail and for its soleness. It could have been dropped out of the sky, or out of a fairy tale book.

The “Princess House.”

“Oh, I know that house, “Robby acclaimed, “that lady has been fixing that house up for years. Importing fixtures from everywhere, custom woodworking. It’s a beautiful home.”

“Ah, that’s the ‘Princess House,’” Bernadette responded in a whisper when I asked her if she knew about that house, “at least that’s what my daughter calls it.”

The “Princess House” from the driveway.

On my way back to the Harbor from stumbling upon the Princess House I made a turn down a different street, that also turned out to be a dead end. There, towards the end, in the shade of a crop of trees was a hammock, and a dog with a frisbee. I stopped to watch the dog. The dog suddenly jumped into the hammock, waking a young woman. She rose from the hammock slowly, slightly unbalanced. The dog dropped the frisbee at her feet, but she didn’t move. Her back was to me. She pressed the edge of her jean-skirt towards her knees and stood there, in the shade, barely moving. She placed her hands on her hips, and the dog ran off.

Out of a former post office tucked away in an industrial section of Boulder, CO, startup Mod Robotics develops toys for children to help them learn and thrive in an increasingly complex world. Though the popular mantra of KISS (Keep it simple, stupid) rings true with many of today’s business professionals, Eric Schweikardt, Mod Robotics founder with a PhD in Computational Design, would argue that keeping it simple might actually cause future generations to become less capable of managing the realities of a highly technical world.

According to Eric, the solution is to equip kids at a very young age with the ways to become more familiar with the world’s increasing complexity – ideally ways that are fun and engaging – to where handling complexity is second nature, better preparing them for the future ahead. To Eric, this solution manifests in Mod Robotics’ toy robots that look like standard building blocks but are, in fact, “smart.”

Modular, familiar components are the core
Eric and I sit outside at a picnic table for our conversation under an overhang of the warehouse-like building – a building that serves as both the headquarters and the manufacturing plant for these unique toys. Reaching for two handfuls of the robot blocks – known as Cubelets – he places them on the table and begins introducing the different types.

“What do you call these?” I ask.

“Cubelets,” Eric replies with a giddy smile. “Everybody loves blocks like Legos and those construction kits,” Eric says. “I think lots of creative people played with construction kits, and this is what happens when you put robot stuff inside of a construction kit.”

The key component of Cubelets is that they are modular and familiar, a form reminiscent of wooden blocks, and are easy to manipulate. The trick is that these toy robots are “smart,” each with a different function, and when clicked together in different configurations, they behave differently.

“Each little Cubelet has a tiny computer inside of it,” Eric explains. “All of the clear ones are action blocks – they do things. All the black ones are sensor blocks – they sense things like our senses do.” In essence, the sensor blocks can “see” and then communicate to the other blocks what action to take, such as roll forward, or turn on the flashlight.

Eliminate clutter through mixing and matching
Rather than having to reprogram each Cubelet, the mixing and matching of the blocks seemingly create new robots, an entirely different approach to how the current set of intelligent robots are being created, which are single form and single function. If this approach was continued, we would live in a world cluttered with robots due to each of their confined and specific use. Following the path of the Cubelets, a person could create a variety of robots from a simple set of components. This is precisely the type of solution future generations will need in order to tackle ever more complex problems – essentially doing more with less.

Eric explains, “We just got a robot to do what we wanted. To switch its behavior, we just built a robot by snapping some physical blocks together. By snapping the physical blocks together, you’re obviously building the body of the robot, but you’re also building the code. And it’s a different model of building robotics for every other robot out there.”

We need a new acronym
This new approach calls for a clever acronym, one that reminds us that complexity over simplicity might be the real solution. As Eric speaks, it becomes clear that each day we are exposed to a number of variables, so many inputs to decipher. It’s likely this degree of variability wasn’t something previous generations had to manage, and I can only imagine the steady increase that kids will have to navigate in the years to come.

Eric continues, “So they [kids] can begin to gain intuition and build complex systems so that when they’re older, it won’t come as a shock that there are rarely simple answers in the world, and that it’s rarely black and white, good or bad, red or blue. And that the world is actually more complicated.”

Making complex solutions a reality
In order to make our own complex solutions into reality, it’s as simple as just making something. Eric explains, “Ideas are worthless. If you’re inventing a new type of electric car, you don’t have to build the electric car from scratch to get conversation started, but you can build prototypes of the one innovation that you think will make your electric car much cooler than the other. That’s how we all learn…by failing early, by building something, by testing, and by trying it out. And for some reason, especially entrepreneurial communities, you hear about a lot of people who it never occurred to them to make something. They’re talking about getting off the ground. They don’t have any traction because everybody’s trying to figure out these ideals and they’re all over the place. But as soon as you make something, you can talk about it with somebody and it’s extremely powerful.”

(Originally published on Huffington Post, 12/12/16)

Boulder Colorado is a micro-culture, a unique place where you can still find hippie communities going strong along pale dirt roads, abutted against hiking trails that disappear into the trees. I was in Boulder to meet with two of the partners at Techstars, David Brown (also a co-founder) and Ari Newman. Both share an electric vibrancy that buzzes in the intensity of their eyes and the stillness of their postures. They are deep listeners, with algorithmic-process brains. They are living in the future…the film canisters of their brains capture more frames-per-second than the average brain. They shared five core values for success, which is basically “Karma wins.”

1. Give first. This might seem obvious in the realm of Karma, but remember Techstars is a tech accelerator program for start-ups meant to create millions if not billions of dollars in return on investments. This would seem antithetical to building wealth, but it works for Techstars. Ari explained, “We just try to help and there’s a sort of karma that comes along with it, and things come back.”

2. Ask, “How can I help? Don’t think ‘what’s in it for me?’” A slightly more focused version of the first value, but proactive. Focusing on helping something already in progress, help someone else’s dreams versus your own. “Because we help them thrive,” Ari notes, “I think about it like ‘rising tides.’”

3. “Team-team-team,” David explains, “the people matter more than the idea.” Techstars looks for team dynamic as the leading indicator of success. This also seems antithetical in a capital-driven environment where investors are seeking the idea with the biggest potential, but Ari adds, “If you think about some of the most successful companies in the world, the original idea they started with; isn’t the thing that made them the most successful…”

4. Read the feedback. Related to core value above, Ari continues his train of though, “…It was the founder’s and the team’s ability to read customer feedback, look into the future, and adapt.” The ability to pivot, to trust in the team to evolve versus being stuck on the one concept, even if its failing, is highly important.

5. Get the right things done. David expresses, “You can take a PhDer who’s incredibly bright, has a Harvard MBA and a technical degree from MIT. And if they are very analytical and prophesize too much then they can’t get anything done. They’re just going to spend a lot of money.” David adds an example scenario, “Something that you love, but that no customer cares about, is not a good idea.” You have to chose the right things to focus on, at the right time. Don’t try to boil the ocean

Ari accentuated all of the above points, “If you ever participate in our network, you do it because you want to be helpful, because you want to see other people find success.”

Maybe this type of operation could only have started in an enclave like Boulder, similar to how Silicon Valley sprouted in the nurturing light of Stanford. That said, the intense yet “give first” attitude of Techstars is unique, and welcome, given the pressure these entrepreneurs have chosen for themselves.

(Originally published on Huffington Post, 11/18/16)