The Transmigration of Stephanie Sinclaire Lightsmith

© Mandi Lynn

On April 14, 2021, my friend Stephanie died unexpectedly at Seatoun Beach. She was 67.

If I could begin to be

Half of what you think of me

I could do about anything

I could even learn how to love

When I see the way you act

Wondering when I’m coming back

I could do about anything

I could even learn how to love like you

Love like you

Love me like you

—From “Love Like You,” Steven Universe

I remember exactly where I was when I met Stephanie. One of the holistic health practitioners at our yoga studio had invited us to a party. You may not know this about me, but I am not the biggest party person. In this case, however, I was willing to hold my introversion/ neurodivergence/misanthropy somewhat more lightly for one February evening in Seatoun. This coastal Wellington neighborhood had held a special allure ever since we first rode down Marine Parade in a van named Gollum on a Lord of the Rings tour of the city and its environs.

The occasion was the arrival of Katey’s mother. She was in from London, where for years she had been part of the film and theater scene, running the iconic Kings Head pub theater. We found each other immediately, retired to a sofa, and shared our journeys as immigrants, entrepreneurs, artists. We talked for hours, about everything, stopping only to watch the orca in the harbor. It was an auspicious beginning.

Four months later, as the Fates and real estate situation of Wellington would have it, we ended up moving into the cottage next door to Katey and her family. In the meantime, Stephanie had returned to London to tie up some loose ends so she could return for the birth of her granddaughter later that year. It’s when she got back that we started an intermittent series of what we called “artist’s dates,” after Julia Cameron’s concept for sparking creativity. Our version was simple, a conversation, really, that ran for 10 years.

Some sessions we planned, but more often than not we met by chance. They were regular but never routine. More than anyone else I’ve ever known, Stephanie had a penchant for popping up at the most opportune moments. Her sense of timing, in that sense, was perfect. She and I would find each other at countless industry events, workshops, trainings, conferences, parties. We ran in the same overlapping circles. She made everything better; if she was there, you felt as if you were on the right track.

With Stephanie and playwright Phillip Tyler Wilson, Creative Leadership NZ 2017.

In LA, every coffee shop is filled with aspirants writing screenplays. In Seatoun, it was just Stephanie and me. We were respectful of each other’s writing time, because we knew how hard it could be to come by.

During our joint sessions, we would check in with each other, pitch our projects and share our processes, commiserate on our challenges and disappointments. Most of all we would encourage each other. We never collaborated directly on a project, but we were nonetheless collaborators. Stephanie wasn’t a mentor, at least not in the traditional, hands-on sense. I think she knew that the best way to provide guidance, at least in my case, was by example. As much as Stephanie had already accomplished, she’d had her share of obstacles and hardships, as any creative does. She was not without self-doubt. But she also had a titanic courage, a deep well of experience to draw upon, that saw her always pushing forward.

We shared a kinship but our temperaments were quite different.

Stephanie was always onto something new, a splendid hummingbird, and catholic in her sympathies and allegiances. For someone who excelled at beginnings, she got a lot done. She was a creative with a capital “C,” someone who understood the importance of generating and then shipping the work. For someone more deliberate but equally ambitious, it was always a healthy reminder.

Stephanie was vain but not despairing of growing old. Glamorous but not false. She was well on her way to cronehood.

She was the only person who called me “Darling,” which she spoke in her enchanting Mid-Atlantic accent.

Stephanie took Hawk seriously, always, most recently hearing his pitch for a trilogy of YA zombie-apocalypse novels he had dreamed up. She brought Hawk into our tradition, the ways of our little club, for why would you not honor the natural creativity into which we are born?

Stephanie sampled widely the menu of life, an epicure of the noblest intent who never failed to make you feel welcome, the center of the universe in that moment. She gave you her full attention. Jenifer put it this way: “When you were with her, she always held you as if you were already whole.” She spoke as if everything were possible, with a gentle but unassailable conviction that what we most longed for was eminently possible. I will continue to trust in her wisdom here.

When, in late 2013, a change in immigration policy meant we had to leave New Zealand, she was one of the first we told—in a chance encounter outside St. Peter’s Anglican Church. She was also the last person we saw before heading to the airport. She saw us off, radiant in her white ceremonial garb, from her Sea Star Studio. We were so rushed, so pressed for time, she finished cleaning out our apartment, selling off or rehoming the housewares, books, and sundries we were unable to manage in what we thought were our final days in New Zealand. We were very pleased when, shortly thereafter, she moved into our cottage.

At this, our first parting, her gift to me was The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick. She couldn’t have known that the afterword and part of the annotations were written by my favorite graduate school professor. Or maybe she did, via her cosmic intelligence network, or a little bird.

The week after Stephanie’s death, I was telling my friends at work, “my Millennials,” all about her. What she meant to the arts community here, to our neighborhood, to our family. To me. “She was one of my favorite people,” I told them, my voice breaking. And so she was. I may not have known that until just then.

I went for a walk on the City to Sea Bridge overlooking the harbor. Once upon a time I had run into Stephanie there, with Katey, shortly after my return to New Zealand. As I was reflecting, I noticed a duck swimming below me, right to left. An adult duck, male, and clearly competent in the ways of duckness, of duck-being, and moving with clear-eyed intent. Once, I thought, he had been a duckling and not yet versed in the ways that would be required of him. He paddled past me, and then I noticed another duck, swimming at a right angle to the first duck, along the y-axis to his x-axis. They came together and met in the corner of their mutual graph, their 0,0, and passed from view. Who is to say what transpired after this meeting? What might these two share from this center of all centers, this core of cores? In this life, we meet one another, and our connection and shared path may be invisible to others. Sometimes even to ourselves.

The way I want to remember Stephanie is how I once observed her: walking along Ferry Street, too far away to call after her. I knew exactly where she was going and why, to the cafe to write. I envied her the journey, but it was hers to make, and I had elsewhere to be. On she went to inhabit whatever faraway world she had called into being. On she went.

Godspeed, Darling.

To My Father, on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday

My father and grandfather: Theodore C. Rasmussen III (l) and II (r), 1945.

When I was growing up, my grandfather gave me books: on my birthday, for Christmas, when we visited him and my grandmother at their house on Blossom Hill, in Lancaster. He was not alone in doing so. My great-aunt was a librarian, and a reader of novels, and she, too, gave me books, many books; starting with children's classics and working up, over the years, to various sorts of dictionaries, thesauri, and other volumes in support of my growing interest in writing. The books my grandfather gave were different.

First, they were from his own collection, and even then I perceived a powerful magic about the transaction: passing on books--vessels of knowledge--that reflected not only my grandfather's myriad interests but also his life journey, his self-education. A Conrad Argosy, Henry Miller's The Books in My Life, anything by Somerset Maugham.

Second, the books always were inscribed, in my grandfather's steady hand, in pencil. Invariably, they began with some version of "To Ryan, on the occasion of his 12th birthday," followed by an anecdote about the book's acquisition or (more interesting) Charles Doughty's exploits in the desert or how my grandfather met Henry Miller (twice!), and at last his signature: "Grandpa Alex."

Berlin, 1950s.

The thing that impressed me then, if I could have articulated it, was the experience of being made to feel special. The day was my day, and here, separate from the usual wrapped gifts, was something genuine and ineffable. It was a generational transmission, and it was significant that it came from outside the circle of my immediate family. There was mystery about the gift, always, something old and weighty, for there was no way I could conceive of what volume my grandfather would deem appropriate for the occasion. Besides, my grandfather, who was actually my father's stepfather, was difficult to know, according to both family consensus and my own vantage point of youthful timidity, and probably just plain difficult. But I felt special all the same, tended to, the chosen bearer of ancient lore. My grandfather could not have given anything finer.

I was of a generation, as many before and all since, that did not undergo a particular rite of passage. There was no common, widespread way of preparing a boy for manhood. I feel fortunate, at least, to have been the recipient of the material stuff of accumulated wisdom, doled out at odd intervals.

Today, the day my dad turns 70, I have the temerity to offer an inscription of my own, hastily scrawled, as I reflect on what it means to be a son, to receive the inheritance of manhood, and how and whether we can ever know our father, our many fathers all the way back. I cannot claim to possess special knowledge or hard-won wisdom, or at least anything worthy to be passed on to my father. Indeed, it seems such gifts can only ever be passed down, not up.

What, then, can I give? What do you give the man who, truly, has it all? What can I offer here besides the literary equivalent of ties, sweaters, and novelty items?

I think, today, I can offer only this: a story. Not even that: a moment. Recently, my sister came across an old photograph of my father. It's 1945. He's one year old, and standing with his father, my grandfather, Theodore C. Rasmussen II. This photograph stunned me. For I never knew this grandfather; he died several years before I was born. I know only facts: Captain in the U.S. Army, black belt in judo, survived a machine-gun burst, could lift a chair off the ground by grasping one leg while lying flat on his chest, divorced my grandmother, remarried and started a new family in South Carolina, died of throat cancer. I look at the photograph, at this unknown man, and in his face I see my own looking back at me. I can only marvel at this ageless and constant thing, this . . . Rasmussen-ness, that is expressed in a series of bodies through time.

I wonder at the "otherness" of my father, his me-ness and not-me-ness, or perhaps it's my him-ness and not-him-ness. And I wonder: How does my son know me? How will he come to know himself? What faces will stare at him?

.     .     .

Fortunately, my father was not entirely mysterious. I am aware of what he gave me. A sense of pride in my work. A sense of the cosmic. A love of what my mother terms "blood-and-guts movies." An appreciation of human frailty, and of physical strength. The capacity, as Robert Bly calls it, to shudder. He gave me books, too, at critical moments. Two in particular stand out. When I was eight (and he 36), he gave me The Empire Strikes Back Sketchbook. It was a turning point in helping me discover that films didn't just happen. They were written, designed, made. Four years later I received a copy of Dune (bearing the inscription, in my dad's perfect architectural lettering, "SHOOT FOR THE STARS, RYAN!"). Neither book was expected let alone asked for, and their arrival seemed auspicious.

Mount Victoria, Wellington, December 2012.

Churchill Park, Seatoun, Wellington, January 2013.

Thanks, Dad.

--Ryan


P.S. Early this morning--it was still "dark morning" as we call it--Hawk awoke and climbed onto me and said, "I really like the stories of your childhood, because it gives me the ideas of what I might do." And then he dashed into the dining room to wait for his father to get up and cook his breakfast.

Remembering Matt

Over the past year, on only a couple of occasions, I heard from my friend and former co-worker Matt White. They were our first communications since I left our shared employer and moved to New Zealand. He was checking in on my doings in the new world, providing intel on the old--the kind of pleasant surprise you get every now and again when you move far away from everyone you know.

It was good to hear from him. Like a number of my erstwhile colleagues, however, he'd been laid off. (In any number of ways, I got out just in the nick of time.) That wasn't exactly fun stuff, but he had plans to return to school, and that was encouraging. Shortly before my departure he suffered a stroke and was in hospital, and so we didn't have a proper farewell; and to be honest I didn't know how he had fared afterwards. To hear him tell it, though, over two years down the track, things seemed to be looking up.

Yesterday I heard from a mutual friend that Matt was murdered in his sleep by his wife. Horrible, shocking, senseless. The details at this early date are few but unhappy.

I can't claim to have known Matt well. At 6'11" he was the tallest person I knew. He loved sailing. He'd gone to Penn, led its basketball team to the Final Four in 1979, and after being drafted by the Portland Trailblazers played professional basketball in Europe for a number of years.

I worked closely with Matt. He was a member of the software documentation team whose work I edited. He was a very good technical writer, smart, frightfully thorough, and an expert in e-learning. I remember interviewing Matt for the position and reviewing his respectable work history (including upper management), education (Wharton MBA), the seemingly idyllic life he left behind in Spain, and--let's be honest--the romance of his former career and wondering why this fellow wanted to take what must have been a hefty pay cut to write instruction manuals for credit union software. (To be fair, this is exactly what I was wondering of myself.)

He was a good hire. He picked up the software quickly. He did his work well and he did it fast. He kept his head down. When we talked, it was of Europe and his days abroad and my several trips there. It was exciting, this glimmer of another life, of travel. It wasn't rooted in the distant past, or nostalgia, or even of hope tied to a distant star. It was something he had done, something real that could be done. I can't say he influenced me directly in my decision to live abroad, but he more than most knew the appeal of other places and how they can take us out of ourselves in the most wondrous ways.

He also drank more coffee than any person I've ever met, with the possible exception of my dad's friend Larry Ironsides.

No, I didn't know him well, you know. I can't speak to his domestic or his interior life. I didn't have his confidence. But I mourn his passing. And maybe that's just how it is with those who for a time play a significant part of our daily life. We don't know what angels and devils reside on their shoulders, nor the trajectory of their lives. We just hope for the best, don't we?

Thanks, Matt. Be at peace.

Robert Bly: News of the Universe

Before I ever read a word of Robert Bly's, I heard his voice. Firm, sharp, and maybe even a bit rushed, out of excitement, or perhaps urgency. I was in Connecticut for a hiking trip with my friend Eric, riding along the back roads (there seemingly isn't any other kind in that state), and Robert was reading to us, telling the tale of the boy and Iron John.

The audio book crackled on the tape deck. Robert took us through the stages a man might go through in life, if he's lucky, and every now and again he would punctuate a point with a mad little swipe at his guitar.

Here, we thought, was a fellow who knew something.

Later that year, I read the book, and then read it again. The next year I attended a poetry retreat in Massachusetts led by Robert and Coleman Barks. The year after that I made it out to the Minnesota Men's Conference and joined the wasters, rhymers, minstrels and other vagabonds cavorting in the woods by a lake. I am a different and better man because of Robert's work.

Robert Bly: News of the Universe is a new film-in-progress by Haydn Reiss. I encourage you to have a look and consider supporting this crowd-sourced work. There's also a fine article about Robert and the project here.

For Scott

At the Smithsonian, May 1983 (l-r): Ryan, Mike O'Hara, Scott Frailey.

On March 11, 2012, my friend Scott Frailey died after a four-year bout with melanoma. He had turned 40 last month.

I loved Scott Frailey. He understood the inherent supremacy of left-handers, the Pittsburgh Steelers, and milk.

This might yield some clues into his character. He was very particular. He had opinions. This was something of a surprise, a challenge, even, to the short, shy kid who was more often than not daydreaming in a galaxy far, far away.

Scott loved politics. From an early age, he was a card-carrying member of the Republican party, an ardent fan of Ronald Reagan's. I have no idea of his adult political views, but I love this. I was Republican by default, because I was a friend of Scott's. It just seemed like a reasonable idea. Scott was quiet but persuasive. Stealth. More on that later.

Scott and I often teamed up in school and extra-curricular courses. In seventh-grade life science, with Mr. Johnson, we shared a table. Scott immediately drew a line down its middle. You can imagine the border disputes that ensued. I think even then, at 12, Scott had a sense of the righteous, and of winning. And if winning meant bestowing on me a godawful nickname, something sublimely embarrassing, like - just for example - "Rupert Rasmussmelon," then, by golly, that's what he would do.

For a few years in junior high, we took Saturday-morning courses at Franklin & Marshall. Creative writing, mostly. And for a couple summers we went to smarty-pants camp at Millersville University - we studied the Revolutionary War, the Teutonic Knights, more creative writing, and biology, where one of us developed an irrational fear of contaminated stream water. We were also cited on at least a couple of occasions for being disruptive in class. This was mortifying to at least one of us - again, I really shouldn't  say whom - but now I'm thinking we should have gotten into more trouble. (I should like to point out, however, that Scott was appropriately taciturn in reporting our endeavors to his mother, when it was her turn to carpool. When she would ply me for intel, I always caved.)

Still, our time was not altogether unproductive. Together we created a vast story world, an epic war across the stars between the evil Sardinians (no relation to the fine people from the Italian island) and the noble Quatnerds. Ours was a narrative told almost exclusively in pencil drawings. We would often draw together on the same sheet of paper, each of us starting on our respective sides (again, with the fierce territoriality) and joining the massive subterranean chambers, their stalactites and stalagmites, in the middle of the page. In our world, the hammer-headed Sardinians gave no quarter to the triangular, rocket-footed people who mined for Quaternium-19. And, yes, in case you're wondering, that's exactly where your shampoo gets that indispensable ingredient. I can't be sure, but I imagine that was Scott's discovery. As you can tell, in this arena, we rocked.

With girls, we rocked to a lesser degree. Scott won't mind if we skip over that chapter.

We played a lot of football in those days. (Also, Dungeons & Dragons, but, again . . .) I played quarterback a fair bit - insisted on it, as young Napoleons do - and Scott probably picked off more of my passes than anyone else. And if you were playing receiver, woe betide you; for Scott had a knack - there is no way to say it but "uncanny" - for getting The Angle on you and getting that interception. He was the Ron Woodson of our Hamilton Park posse.

We'll Be Loyal.

Physically, he was unremarkable, you might even say gangly. But his speed was deceptive, his will of iron. He was one of the most competitive guys I've ever known. Of course, his mother - bless her soul - insisted on his wearing play clothes. And play clothes meant high waters and dark socks. None of us suspected then, but this may have been Scott's strategy to make us underestimate him on the field. Scott was stealth before there was stealth.

Several years after we graduated from university, Scott called me up, invited me over for lunch. He was newly married and he wanted to catch up. We did, and it was like no time had passed. The chicken chili was really good, too. When I had drifted away from our circle of friends, Scott remained my connection. I think in terms of temperament, of all my friends, his was most like mine.

He wasn't perfect. He didn't break out the Electronic Football every time I bugged him to. And if it were possible, his Star Wars figures were even more pristine and less played with than mine. No one had a See-Threepio with tighter shoulders.

What I'm getting to, what I know that all of you already know, is that Scott Frailey was a remarkable guy. Others will be able to tell the stories of his university days, of his professional life, of his time with his family. But I will always be grateful to have been there from the beginning, and I saw right from the start: he was really, really awesome.

And left-handed.

I loved Scott Frailey. He was my friend.

New Digs 2.0

One way to draw a woman's ire, if you're interested in that kind of thing, is to move house and then, when asked if you have doubts about the move, to answer honestly that you do. This approach is particularly effective - and I'm speaking philosophically here - if your woman has been the principal architect of such a move, has supported the "direction" you provided, followed the project brief, as it were, to the letter.

In this way we rather suddenly found ourselves living in a beach cottage in the neighborhood of Seatoun, on Worser Bay, on the peninsula of Miramar, Wellington, New Zealand, the World. And if any doubts were expressed and any ire drawn, they were resolved after only a couple days; for living in a beach cottage on the water and across from mountains is pretty damn awesome.

It's not like things weren't already pretty spiffy. The routines, the ways and means, we had them all down to a science. A seven-minute walk to work, another five to the harbor. A Victorian house tucked away in a lush park. A split schedule where Jenifer and I each worked half a day in the office, half a day in the field with Hawk.

A great big abundant life.

We first became acquainted with Seatoun during our first visit to New Zealand. Our tour guide Jack drove our party through the seaside suburb to show us the grounds where Orlando and the Hobbits had trained for The Lord of the Rings. Over the past year, as we contemplated which neighborhood to settle in, Seatoun kept coming back to us. Okay, mostly to me, as such a move would require a wholesale lifestyle change and put us about as far away as possible from the Steiner school we were investigating for our son. But Jenifer plugged away on Trade Me, scouring the listings for houses here, there, and everywhere; and ones we really liked popped up time and again in Seatoun; and we suddenly started making lots of new friends who lived in Seatoun. Eventually Jenifer's logic centers had no choice but to acknowledge the fundamental correctness of my intuition. (Boy, I'm gonna get it.)

Our place is small but cozy and full of what the Danes call hygge, that warm feeling of contentment and well-being that comes from sitting by a warm fire at the end of a long day out of doors. This time around we have a mud room ("the airlock"), a wee back yard, and even a greenhouse, which Hawk already refers to as "the playroom" and which will soon feature a sandbox. The house faces northeast, which means more sunlight. The key feature, though, is the view. Our windows look out on wind-carved rocks (crawling with hermit crabs the size of peppercorns), brilliant green water, the endless passing of ferries and frigates, and an active, welcoming community: walkers, dogs, triathletes, the odd blue penguin. Everyone here seems to keep their curtains open most of the time, and you often can't help but look in (or out) because of the view.

Where Te Aro was wooded, dark, dense, Seatoun is open, bright, airy. As a new friend observed, our move quite literally affords us a broader perspective. Our walking world is now circumscribed not by office buildings and bus lanes but by Scorching Bay to the North and Dorset Point to the South. At the latter Hawk and I now routinely "go an an adventure," a nature hike along the rocky shore that wraps around to Breaker Bay or up the Pass of Branda through the "poky" pine trees of the Beacon Hill Reserve. From here you see the flat blue line of Cook Strait, which separates the North and South Islands. Massive shipping vessels crest what looks like the edge of the world. Here if feels like we are at the edge of the world.

This is our neighborhood now. This is where Hawk will grow up, where he will clamber through the bush with his goblins-in-arms, where he will mount spy missions on unsuspecting hikers and investigate long-abandoned military bunkers and sit in the tall grass of the old Maori pa and listen to the wind.

Shortly after we moved I had occasion to walk by the old place. Passing through the park beneath it, I suddenly felt very clear: our energy had moved on. I had grieved the place, our ways and means, the morning after our move. Now, I smiled in gratitude for our entry into a new world. Our old house protected us, held us during a year that was at times very difficult: one way to make enemies, if you're interested in that kind of thing, is to take over an existing business. Fortunately, it's also a way to make friends.

No, the move was necessary, and if any doubts arose, they did so only because, as is ever the case with leaps in the dark, we are called to make them before we think we are ready. Or maybe that's just how it is with grownups. As Hawk would yell every time before sprinting down the path to our old house: "Two, three, go!"

Captain Hawk: World Traveler

There’s more to come on our trip, but unexpected gadgetological troubles and the rebalancing of circadian rhythms means y’all’ll have to stand by for a bit. (The promised ethnographic study, “Kiwis and Their Attitudes toward Housing,” is forthcoming.) However, if you’re anything like my workmates, you want to know how Hawk did on the flights.

When people meet Hawk and witness his uncannily sunny disposition, they’re quick to say, “He’s such a good baby!” And of course he is, as all babies are good. But what they typically mean by “good” is “convenient and easy,” which, though we aim to keep these ideas separate, he certainly is. The flights were pleasant, if lengthy, non-events for the lad, with the added bonus of not requiring his least favorite accoutrement, the dreaded car seat.

One of the highlights of the trip, for me, was simply the privilege of being together with Hawk. I haven’t spent so much continuous time with him since he was born. As any parent knows, watching your child grow and develop is an immense source of joy and satisfaction, and here I felt I was privy to things I’d been missing during work hours. When he wakes, Hawk tends to bless us with his sweet, drowsy whisperings, though one morning he sat up and boldly and clearly proclaimed, “Garg.” He learned how to crawl up stairs, taught himself how to work a light switch, and one of the big thrills each day was pressing elevator and crosswalk buttons. He also worked on standing up without support, a skill he practiced by bouncing on the bed. By the time of our (10-hour) layover in LAX on the way back, he had done it several times, sans bouncing, from the floor of lovely Gate 8.

A friend of mine, who doesn’t have children, once suggested Jenifer and I get all our traveling in before having a kid. But I wouldn’t trade this time with Hawk for anything. Just as we’ve discovered that visiting other cultures teaches you more about your own, traveling as a family outside the usual day-to-day restrictions, in my experience, opens you up to a deeper sense of who you are and what you want in life. It's also great fun.

Reduction In Force

This morning, while enjoying a much-needed vacation, I learned of my company’s imminent RIF. I wish I could say that Corporate saw fit to sponsor a Reading Is Fundamental program, but the truth, as the title gives away, is closer to a disturbance in the energy field that surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together.

I learned from the VP I report to that my direct report had been let go. Later, while depositing checks at the credit union whose software our company creates, I ran into my former manager. He, too, was gone.

Now, more than ever, I am grateful for this work which allows me to support my family, travel the world, and develop my ability to write stories worthy of the screen. It is no small thing.

While I was spared in this reduction in force, none of us is spared the uncertainty of these or any other times. It is a hard thing to see friends and colleagues, journeymen and veterans alike, face sudden challenges that were not of their own devising. To them, to the rest of my fellow workmates, and to those unknown brothers and sisters bravely facing the logic of the bottom line, my prayer is that each of you will come through this period a little stronger, a little wiser, and be the bearer and creator of new opportunities and meaningful work.

Summer's End

I was going to title this entry "Back in the Saddle" or "The Receptive," but this morning there was an autumn chill in the air, and Jenifer and Hawk are off for the first of the fall teacher training sessions. Leaving me home to . . . write.

Several days ago a friend asked how the writing was going. The good news is that already the new family routine allows plenty of time for it. Sure, there are moments when it feels like (to me alone of the trio, no doubt) that I've stumbled headlong into a set designed by Spielberg, wherein the toy train is steaming around the bend, all the appliances are flashing and screaming, and that sinister toy monkey is clapping his cymbals. At me.

But such moments are fleeting interruptions to the general slowing down and steady and simple being that a baby brings. This past week has been more of a ramping up to writing, a melange of software configuration, file management, and getting used to the idea and process of regularly plugging away on a story. You see, shortly before Hawk arrived the laptop picked up a nasty virus that shut down production. Having seen their van ambling along the interstate, I called the, uh, Geek Squad for assistance. This was on a Sunday. The "double agent," whose accent revealed that he was from very much elsewhere on the North American continent, eh, informed me that the earliest appointment for a house call would be on Friday. I took it, thinking all the while that this was entirely unsatisfactory. But another buddy suggested I take up the cause with the boys at Circuit City's Fire Dog, and lo! I was able to haul in the computer that very evening. With any luck, the guy said, it'd be ready as early as Tuesday. Boy, was I set.

I'll spare you the agony of the next two weeks, saying only that after at least a half a dozen trips out to Circuit City and probably twice as many phone calls I was once more in possession of the laptop and all of my files. It seems Brad--how great is that?--had had trouble locating not only the correct driver but also the gumption required to complete the job. Rarely have I witnessed such a fine display of incompetence.

The net result, of course, is that I was out of action for a full month, and that has turned out to be nothing short of necessary, as something inside me told me it would. Sometimes the Universe conspires to slow you down and you pay attention and give thanks to the evening chirping of the cicadas and the fiery sunsets and the dark hours after, and you, with head clear and fire stoked, are once again ready to enter a new and willing season.

October J Decided

Then a great beauty was revealed in him, so that all who after came there looked on him with wonder; for they saw that the grace of his youth, and the valour of his manhood, and the wisdom and majesty of his age were blended together. And long there he lay, an image of the splendour of the Kings of Men in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world. — J.R.R. Tolkien

October J Rabbit has passed. Yesterday, at five o'clock in the evening, he died in Jenifer's arms. He had waited for me to return from work. He waited for me, and when I joined him and Jenifer on the sofa, I knew that his time was drawing near.

Jenifer offered October some water, some honey, but he wanted neither. Then, with great force, he pushed down with his front legs, and Jenifer placed her hands beneath his paws to give him better leverage. All his long life he had rarely uttered more than contented murmurs and clucks, or the low grunts of sexual desire. Now, at the end, determined sounds of effort escaped as he pushed down and reared his head up, leaning into Jenifer's chest. He pushed and pushed again, rising skyward, until with his last breath his spirit escaped the body. His hind feet were pressed neatly together, his little hands folded as if in prayer, and his gentle face lifted to God. He died with honey in his mouth. It was a beautiful death. Perfect. A miracle.

We first found October, or he found us, in the pet store Jenifer was working in. The date was September 5, 1997. He gave us 10 beautiful years to the day. He was always fully present and effortlessly himself. Everyone who knew him saw his big personality, was forced to reconsider their notions of what a rabbit could be. He was naturally a prey animal, and yet he approached others and the world without fear. If a dog or cat was out of line, Mister J would not hesitate to thump and let them know who was boss. If he were a Gatorade flavor, he would be Fierce Melon. He was regal and imperious (he got that from his mom), curious and generous. He was our sweet, rabbit-shaped boy.

October J, we love you. We will be with you always, to the end of all days.

Each form you see has its unseen twin image.
If the form is transient, its essence is eternal.
If you have known beauty in a face
Or wisdom in a word,
Let this nourish your heart:
What passes is not real.
— Rumi