"The Autumn sky at dusk rings out with a voice like a bell, like a long-ago church bell heard from someplace far off, that echoes and drifts and when it’s gone you keep listening, hoping you’ll hear it again. A bell whose voice must have once been so loud, before it began its travels toward you, crossing that great distance. Perhaps a day came when you decided to go off in search of the bell. But as you traveled towards it you found to your surprise that the closer you got the smaller and quieter it became. Till at last, when you arrived, it was nothing but a perfect dot. A perfect, soundless dot. On top of a low green hill, with an afternoon sky behind it. Then you discovered that you hadn’t arrived at all. Because you had never really set forth on your journey. You hadn’t even traveled. The whole time, you were just sitting under the Autumn sky, with the tops of pine trees waving, and lazy birds circling, and clouds painted on the sky by someone who seemed to be in a hurry, like the postman who left the package just outside the door."

holiday      Once when Anna was two years old she and I spent an afternoon together. Anna was our first child and at this time was still our only child. I sat at my desk and wrote a story, and she sat on the floor playing. We were both inhabiting our own worlds. My wife was gone for the afternoon. It was a holiday, maybe it was Memorial Day, and I didn’t have to go to work. We hadn’t yet moved to the country. We lived in West Philly, in Powelton Village, in a place everyone called the Tiberino Compound because the artists Joe and Ellen Tiberino owned these four or five houses whose backyards had been linked up and turned into a wonderful Art Garden, and many artists rented from them. The yards were full of paintings and sculptures and murals. The walls both inside the houses and outside were covered with art, and the yards had many small separate places which you seemed to stumble upon as you wandered through. Joe and Ellen also owned the Bacchanal Club on South Street, which was one of the best bars our town had ever seen. The bar had inherited its spirit from its owners. Fun for all and all for fun. Creativity and intelligence were the only requirements. And if those were lacking, then the good fellowship of booze was happy to make up the difference. My wife and I both spent ten years working there.

I had a study on the first floor of our house, in the front, with a huge desk and book shelves and an upright piano by the big window with its large wooden shutters, and the rest of the room had been cleared away and on the old hardwood floor a bright red circle had been painted, and that was one of the places where I practiced martial arts. Anna just naturally gravitated to the big red circle. I sat at my desk and looked across the room at this little girl who had plunked herself down right in the middle of that circle, and with only one or two toys clutched in her soft hands carried on a lively conversation with all the creatures she was dreaming up. In my own way I was doing the same thing, though I had a pen and a notebook in front of me on my desk, and these were my toys. I was writing a story called “War Is a Holiday,” and I was in love with my story, and in love with my little girl, so it was a very good time to be alive. I went back and forth between contemplating my own imaginary world and trying to get a glimpse into hers. She carried on her conversations and her games continuously. Every now and then she would glance over at me just to check in, just to make sure I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. Which was watching her. And then she’d return to the world of her own creation. After a while she grew tired of her games, and she came to me and climbed into my lap and I took her in my arms, and she talked to me for a while, asking me what game I was playing. For her everything was "Why, Daddy? Why are you doing that? Why?"  

Finally she put her head on my shoulder and I held her even as I wrote, and she went to sleep. I finished writing my story in that way. We were alone in this old three story house, built not long after the Civil War in the neighborhoods west of the Schuylkill River. The peace was perfect. My child slept the blessed sleep of the innocent, and I did my best to recapture whatever innocence was possible to me, through the medium of our common language. My story was a straight re-telling, a series of snapshots, of a day just like this one which we had spent together, a young Mom and Dad and their child, all of them taking first steps into their new lives. With the birth of our child I had gotten my first straight job, driving a dump truck for the Electric Company. No more working at the bar as a bouncer and bartender. That was all ending now. Something new was being born. Something new just like this child, this brand new person. She had been newly born into this world and into our lives. My wife came home and Anna woke up and we all got into my pickup truck and drove down the street to the food co-op so the wife could pick up her healthy vegetarian groceries. Anna and I waited outside. Powelton Village had been built for the professors who taught at Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania. The neighborhood had charm, with its low flowery front porches and its well-kept wrought iron garden fences. In the 60’s and 70’s many artists moved in. We were there through the 80’s and into the 90’s.

As Anna and I sat outside on the wall in front of the co-op Kathy Chang appeared. She hadn’t yet met my Anna. Kathy wanted me to tell her about the story I was working on. When Anna interrupted with some random childish speech, which impressed me as irresistibly cute, I was surprised when I looked up at Kathy and saw that she wasn’t at all charmed by the child. Kathy had no children, she never would. I complained to her about the drudgery of going to a straight job. She told me that she had once worked a straight job. She'd been a whore in a massage parlor. At that point the grocery store door opened and my wife’s hand reached out. I stood up, walked to the door, went into my pocket and took out my money and handed it to her. The door closed and I went back to Anna and sat down beside her. Kathy gave all her allegiance to her ideas. She was a revolutionary woman. She was kind and generous and she was entirely dedicated, body and soul, to a world which would someday be politically transformed into a happy place for all the poor and disadvantaged. My Anna was unsure about Kathy Chang. Anna looked at the slim and lively young woman and saw that Kathy did not belong to the world which she knew. I watched Anna as, for one moment, she quite clearly looked Kathy up and down. Then Anna came close to me, and she held me while I continued my conversation with Kathy Chang.