Local Literature

Michael Hearst’s Unique Approach to Children’s Nonfiction

Michael Hearst’s book for children—a collection of profiles of odd animals—is as unique as its title suggests. The format, Hearst says, is a less dry form of the mail order Safari Cards sold on TV when he was a kid. Each profile tells us the Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species of the animal, the geographical location, and just what makes it so unusual.  For example, the Hammer-headed is a loud-mouth and has a honk that rivals most car alarms. While Unusual Creatures is loaded with information, Hearst’s writing style is clear and easy to understand. It’s perfect for a young audience, and yet if you read the other essays he’s written for grown-ups, you’ll see that he hasn’t really changed his natural voice all that much. There’s no condescension, but there are plenty of jokes—fart jokes, poop jokes, vomit jokes, all the requisites for nine year olds.

But none of the joking around gets in the way of all the cool information. Despite his insatiable creative urge, and his editor’s initial reluctance, Hearst had no interest in making anything up. The truth was far too interesting. “I don’t want to make up a fake animal. I don’t want to have a real animal and make up fake information about it. That’s just not cool!” He promised his editor that a purely factual book, presented imaginatively, would be far more interesting. And he was right.

Unusual Creatures is fun nonfiction, which is in high demand right now. Its release this past fall was perfectly timed with the implementation of the Common Core Curriculum in New York. I’m sure lots of people will approach the book with this in mind. But after meeting Michael Hearst over coffee at Red Horse Café, I felt that considering this book merely in light of the newest education trend is missing the point. Michael Hearst is an unusual thinker. A creative thinker.

According to Hearst, growing into his imagination wasn’t always easy.  When he was in High School his attention started to drift and he was having trouble in school. “My parents sent me to a therapist and they put me on Ritalin,” says Hearst. “I was constantly drawing in my notebooks instead of paying attention in class. After I started taking Ritalin my drawings became much more elaborate. That’s just what I wanted to be doing!” You can stick a kid in the classroom, but you cannot make him think about what is on the board. But in Michael Hearst’s case, that wasn’t such a bad thing.

Hearst did not illustrate his book, despite the drawing anecdote. He is known for being a composer, musician and a founding member of the band One Ring Zero, the house band for McSweeney’s, whose albums include As Smart As We Are and Songs for Ice Cream Trucks. He’s also written and published essays and articles in addition to his book Unusual Creatures. He draws mostly for fun.

“You’re creatively omnivorous.”  I said.

“Yeah, that’s my curse.”

It’s clear from Hearst’s description of his childhood that his parents were very engaged. They didn’t let their son slack off.  But it seems like they also understood him.  Several times as we spoke he indicated that his mother “forced” him to do one thing or another:  take piano lessons, go to college….But he said it gratefully—glad that he wasn’t left to succumb to his own lack of will or inclination.

He was eventually allowed to stop taking piano lessons, but the damage was done. Two years of piano was enough to plant the seeds for a lifetime of making strange and beautiful sounds.  Piano led to guitar which eventually returned to piano when he studied composition in college. After college Hearst started to branch out even more. While working at Hohner as a harmonica technician he was introduced to the Claviola, a strange, short-lived take on the accordion. This odd instrument, along with many others such as a theremin, glass harmonica, stylophone, Daxophone, LEMURbots, polyphonia,  bass harmonica, and toy piano comprise the Unusual Creatures sounds.

Michael Hearst’s Unusual Creatures project is a convergence of his varied interests. Perpetually fascinated by Camille St. Saens’s Carnival of animals, Hearst had long wanted to create his own musical menagerie.  “[St. Saens’s Suite] wasn’t really meant for kids, but kids love it. I love Program Music…the idea of music representing something else.” But where St. Saens covered the familiar members of the animal kingdom, Hearst wanted to celebrate some of its unsung heroes. He started with the Blue Footed Booby who, Hearst says, does a funny mating dance that looks “kind of like the hora.” While The Weddell Seal makes an appearance on the album, a lot of these animals don’t even have known vocalizations. It’s fun to close your eyes and imagine the animals in concert with their themes. “I love They Might Be Giants and I love Dan Zanes. What they do is great. But I wanted to do instrumental music. And kids have imaginations! They can use them!” He points to the scene at the beginning of Moonlight Kingdom where the kids are lying around listening to Prokofiev and St. Saens on a little record player. “That’s what I grew up listening to.”

But Hearst’s fascination did not end with the music. The book came next: a fresh take on a retro schoolbook format—distinct, nostalgic and… unusual.  There are jokes, quizzes, and sidebars to break up all the information and, as I’ve mentioned, there’s plenty of information. Hearst’s website has videos of interviews and presentations that further expand on his Unusual world.  The varied media gives his audience multiple ways into his subjects. A child may hear a piece from the CD and say, “Whoa, what made that noise?” and discover more about a Polyphonia. Or he may read a profile and wonder “How slow is a Slow Loris?” then look for video online.  At schools and other venues, Hearst does what he describes as a TED talk for kids “I play video of the animal, I talk about the animal. But then I’ll show them a Theremin and say ‘this is an instrument invented by Leon Theremin.’” Then he plays and even lets the kids try out the instrument. No one has to force this kind of lesson on a kid.

From here a child may want to invent his own instrument or create an Unusual Creature profile and, indeed, Hearst receives lots of fan mail along these lines. The reader/listener’s knowledge grows web-like, organically. So, the effect of the project on its audience mirrors the way it was created—the magical combination of following one’s natural inclinations and being forced to stay with certain pursuits. It was only completed with so much care and infectious energy because Hearst remained interested, and his interest branched out in new and sometimes unexpected directions.

In reference to his earliest misadventures with piano, Hearst says, “I guess as a parent you sometimes have to….force.” It’s true. But sometimes you also have to know when not to force, and let a kid follow his imagination.

At the risk of being a traitor to my generation, I have to say: even as we have tried harder than any of our ancestors to mentor, please, and encourage our kids, we have completely lost control of them, and in the process we’ve lost control of our own lives as well.

I live in Park Slope, Brooklyn, quite possibly the world headquarters of helicopter parents, but I have a pretty good hunch it’s happening in nearly everys middle-class neighborhood nationwide, urban or otherwise. There’s a mindset in these parts that children should be treated like adults, with all of their tastes and distastes respected.

Having grown up with twelve siblings and roughly zero of my tastes and distastes even acknowledged—“respect” was generally uttered only in the context of what the small residents of the house should have for the taller inhabitants—this sounded sweet to me. Kids are people too, after all—short, often totally unreasonable people, but people nonetheless. In practice, however, this notion was a lot less quaint.

My suspicions were realized on an early fall evening when my French friend Lucie came to dinner with her husband and two children. The Durand kids were obedient, respectful, and, when told to be, quiet. They didn’t seem to require cajoling or lengthy explanations when asked to set the table. They simply did what they were told. If they didn’t want a certain dish at dinner, they didn’t eat it, but they also were not offered a myriad of other choices. Not a single cheese stick was proffered.

After dinner, we parents were sitting around the dining room table, finishing a bottle of wine, while the kids played in the living room. A mom could get used to this, I thought, reclining—reclining!—in my chair. But the sweet, slightly inebriated reverie did not last long.

Soon enough, my younger daughter, Daphne, wanted my attention, so she did as she usually does: Namely, she started to act bananas, screaming and yelling for me.
By this point, I’d been exposed to the well-oiled Durand machine for about four hours, more than enough time to soak up some deep wisdom. So instead of doing what I usually did—tending immediately to Daphne’s (loud) calls—I looked to Lucie for advice. She leaned across the table, put a strong, steady hand on my arm, and offered an adage she told me her Parisian mother had often employed: “If there is no blood, don’t get up.”

So simple—and so excellent. Of course!

I didn’t get up. Things were loud for a little bit, and Daphne was irate at my lack of bustle on her behalf. And then, as fast as her wails had started, they stopped, and she resumed playing with the other kids.

Soon, whenever things spun out of hand in my own home, I found myself wondering: What Would Lucie Durand Do? Swallowing my pride, along with plenty of the kids’ uneaten dinners, I took things a bit further and started asking Lucie, point-blank, for advice. For instance, when Daphne decorated the length of our rather long hallway with crayon, my husband and I were unsure how to react. Time-out? Stern warning? Daph was just shy of three years old, so taking away privileges or toys wouldn’t really register much with her.

When I asked Lucie what they might do in France with this type of toddler misdemeanor, she didn’t hesitate: “You go to the kitchen and get a sponge with soap and water. Sit her on a stool and have her scrub.” I was incredulous. Scrub it all off? My husband had tried and couldn’t erase so much as a single scrawl. Then Lucie assured me that I only needed to make Daphne wash the wall for a minute so that she had a chance to understand the consequences of her action—and to see how damn hard it is to get crayon off a wall.

Often Lucie has a strategy or phrase that does wonders for any given standoff between my kids and me, but, more than that, she has a refreshing attitude: There shouldn’t be any standoffs. “After all, Catherine,” she often reminds me, “you are the chief.”

The chief—has a nice ring to it, no?

For me, Lucie is a gold mine of great advice, but she’s made it very clear that her way of parenting is natural for practically everyone in France. Here in the States, we’ve been talking and talking and talking about our kids’ feelings. Meanwhile, over there, French children don’t talk back!

Excerpted from French Twist by Catherine Crawford Copyright © 2013 by Catherine Crawford. Excerpted by permission of Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

To the memory of Dr. José Gregorio Hernández

While sitting one night with my friend Eric, a young woman came and sat next to us. She was the next musician to play that night. Her name was Jen. She is (as I was told later by my friend) the descendent of the great American literary theorist and philosopher, Kenneth Burke, whose primary interests were rhetoric and aesthetics. She is also the daughter of the musician Harry Chapin and is a wonderful musician in her own right. Her music explores the intersection of jazz, folk and pop.

Our conversation with Jen was permeated with the music coming from the back room. It was Les Bandits, whose melodies sounded as if a multitude of instruments were in synch creating music of the ‘20s. I was on my own, thinking about the life of Dr. Hernandez known as “Doctor of the Poor.” As a protector of Barbès, his bust sits diplomatically amid the wines and spirits.

“That is a dark place…for a different crowd,” my colleague Joanna says laughingly in reference to Barbès, a bar in Park Slope, Brooklyn. She is right. Barbès is a haphazardly designed establishment through which not much light filters. Its walls have no TV sets and it is difficult to read a book there, but you can still converse with folks like the writer Jean-Vincent as he jots down his impressions of Paris—a fictional account set in modern times, a time that has the aura of the mid-twentieth century. “French people are longing for something new,” he says, as he pauses in his writing. I didn’t inquire about the plot, theme, or characters of his work, leaving him to work alone. I returned to thinking about Dr. Hernandez and of his days in Paris studying medicine.

Live music constantly flows from the back room. It is a fitting complement to a nice evening; Barbès sounds as if it were a giant juke box. If you have read Ned Sublette’s Cuba and its Music you will immediately recognize the songs. Sublette’s book is premised on the idea that the impact of Cuban music on the United States is everywhere to be found. New Orleans, Sublette explains, was the port of entry for what became a unique musical relationship with Havana. The music of Barbès has, indeed, a Latin flavor even when a band called Sherita is playing a fourteenth century Sephardic/ Ladino song. Sublette’s book on Cuban music begins in Cadiz before the time of Christ—a time when the Gaditanos traded with North Africans and were bringing African musical sounds to southern Europe, called by the ancient Greeks “hispania.” Havana and New Orleans forged a unique commercial and musical relationship by the nineteenth century.

“Fifty Shades of Grey,” says Robert, a man from Ireland. We were talking about the erotic book by the British author E.L. James, “Why not Fifty Shades of Green?”, he adds as he enlightens us with the history of Ireland vis-à-vis England. The strong rhythmic groove of a song drowns out our conversation. On any given night it could very well be the Latin American sounds of Guinea’s Mandingo Ambassadors or Cumbiagra, whose Colombian songs interact nicely with other musical styles. The brass band Mexican Band of the Death, likewise, transports us to Sinaloa, and Les Chauds Lapins to French songs of the ‘30s and ‘40s. What is happening at Barbès, other than the music, is a gathering of individuals with similar tastes and ideas. It has become a meeting place, a kind of library where you can find information about politics, books, film, art, and sports, but most importantly, you are talking with people interested in the things other people have to say. And yet, just as we drink our beverages in a capricious way, we delude ourselves into thinking that alcohol drinking and music bring clarity to our reasoning. “Amo esas noches trágicas porque son las mejores…” said the late Peruvian poet Luis Nieto about his time spent on bars and drinking.

“Did you see the Woody Allen movie, Midnight in Paris?” “Yes”, I replied. I am reminded of the Parisian bars in Allen’s movie—Café Le Select, Les Deux Magots, La Coupole—that played a big part in the lives of writers belonging to what was called the “lost generation. Places like Barbès, I am told by a bar regular, allow people to enter a world of illusion and ideas, of solidarity and companionship. Bars are timeless, I am told, as I am reminded of a quotation by Charles Bukowski: “Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you’re allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It’s like killing yourself, and then you’re reborn. I guess I’ve lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.”

“Would Bukowski drink at Barbès?” I ask Aaron, whom I call the Book-Man for his vast intellectual knowledge. Aaron is, for the most part, a quiet man who prefers to be anonymous… “The whiskey might be too good for him here,” he replies in reference to Bukowski and Barbès’ costumers, who are mainly white and professional and not necessarily Park Slopers. Barbès exudes a kind of bohemian intelligence that is appealing I contend… pre-empting the thought of the new residents to Park Slope feeling more comfortable in a classier and brighter bar environment. Yes. Bukowski’s bar would be located elsewhere, in another part of Brooklyn. Barbès is located in a beautiful brownstone community that is being infringed upon by a recent influx of affluence determined to prettify the neighborhood. Moms, nannies, strollers, and an array of beautiful dogs crowd its tree-lined streets. The bodegas and bars of yesterday are disappearing—Minsky’s, The Gaslight Inn with its pinball machine, etc. In their place, a number of trendy places have emerged with names like Café Dada, Surfish…Those of us who moved to Park Slope many years ago would have never realized that this new manicured Park Slope would emerge and extend beyond Ninth Street and on Sixth Avenue. A Park Slope where nouveau wine and cheese stores collide with the other Brooklyn of endless pressing unwritten stories.

My conversation with Aaron transpires as we look at Pamelia (Pamelia Kurstin with Pete Drungle) playing the theremin. Looking at her, you feel like you are suspended in air; you are looking at a rare musical instrument that you have never seen before. What is suspended in air are her hands and fingers which control the instrument. Are there electrical impulses she controls to create the music? We don’t know for sure. What I saw was a woman manipulating marionettes or playing air guitar. You are mesmerized not only by the eerie sounds of the theremin, but also the desire of the musician to play a dated musical instrument that creates art for us to enjoy.

“Why do we like Barbès?” I ask Jason M, a regular who is reading The Foie Gras Scramble. Foie is about a motorcycle rider traveling from Brooklyn to Montreal. Jason is the author and is re-writing it. This is his reply: “Barbès isn’t a place for misfits (as I’d heard someone else characterize it). Rather, it is a place of serendipitous congruence where people from disparate backgrounds and bents can find areas of common appreciation and complaint. True, the creative types tend to frequent this place, but so do those whose work would cause them not to be categorized as such, perhaps as a salve for this and a chance at lending their voice to the chorus. Barbès is indeed beautiful.” The music of Los Yungas. (“Los Pobres También Somos Felices”) plays amid our bar merriment. The lyrics are reminders of other similar Peruvian chicha songs: “Los pobres también tenemos, tenemos nuestros corazones, somos más felices, sabemos amar…” In the end, the people who come here are the ones who make Barbès an engaging bar. I look around and, indeed, it is people like Jason G. who could be writing his short stories…alone in a corner. Pat, another regular, explains the meaning of a painting titled Wedding Dance by Bruegel. He is an art handler at a prestigious museum in Manhattan. Excited, we hear about the upcoming museum exhibitions. As the beers come and go and the music surrounds us, Peter, a cinematographer, shares his latest cinematography project, Casting By. This documentary film is about the innate talent of casting directors as they discover the right person (an actor) for a role to cast for a film.

The sound from the back room is steady each night. It could be the smooth melodies of blues guitarist Mamie Minch, whose musical sensibility and style sounds as “if she stepped out of a seventy-eight RPM recording.” Or, it could be Matuto’s “Brazilian Carnaval” played with an American bluegrass accent, or Spanglish Fly, which reminds one of the sounds of many Latin countries. So too, People’s Champ, Llama, Slavic Soul Party…whose fusion music is what a sociologist will call “multiculturalism in music”. The music complements our evenings, adding another level of mind stimulant. Dr. Jose Gregorio returns to my thoughts. In June 29, 1919 one of the few existing cars in Venezuela would end his life.

“Por favor, un chilcano de pisco” I ask Claire, the bartender. The drink goes appropriately with the singing by Yma Sumac. Claire apprises me, in a humorous way, of her time in Bolivia and finding chicha as a beer. The bartenders are Viola, Alita, Quince, Angie, Francesco, Geoff, Claire, Meredith, and Hanna. As one listens to them, one becomes aware about their lives as actors, musicians, and writers. Hanna Cheek, for instance, did a gripping erotic monologue as part of The Pumpkin Pie Show at The Theatre Under St. Marks. The bartenders share our conversations, but more importantly, they also have much to say about us, the regulars.

When Mondays arrive, and with them Chicha Libre, the music is that of the Peruvian jungle. The owners of Barbès, Vincent and Olivier, play these songs to the delight of their patrons. On a different day, Olivier’s wife and Las Rubias del Norte (Blondes of the North) play Peruvian “waynos”, which remind me of my own native Andean music. It has a French accent, but who cares if the melodies are inspiring? We are at this bar to hide from the outside world. That is why we are here, in a safe place (a kind of cave) for chatter and laughter along with the image of Dr. Jose Gregorio. The piano music and lyrics like that of Fats Waller (“Bless you for building a new dream…”) also helps, subdues our fuzzy and out of focus vision. It’s swing leads us musically on a different journey. It removes us momentarily from an uneven course of events that is all around us.

NOTE: The author of this paper should be named Jason Cuatro. VR was named an honorary Jason… Barbès has now five official Jasons.

Dear Eli, as I write this letter to you Mommy is putting you to bed. She will read to you before you go to sleep. When I came home tonight you were both finishing watching Mrs. Doubtfire on the television. Wow—bed time past 9 p.m.—how did you get that one past her?

When it’s time for bed you make the nightly request, “Daddy, will you carry me to the bathroom?” You will say, “I’m starting to roll”. You’ll roll into my arms (if I make it in time to the couch) or you will wait frozen as I walk over to catch you and carry you to the bathroom. Sometimes I tell you you’re big enough to walk yourself. Most of the time I carry you while you act like a stiff board, or I make a seat for you out of my arms. You brush your teeth, pee, I carry you from the bathroom and throw you on the bed, and Mommy or I read to you before you go to sleep. Tonight, Mommy reads.

I wonder as we read, do you listen? Sometimes I know you’re listening, other times it’s as if you’re looking off into space, thinking. Does the sound of our voice create a vehicle or sacred space for you? A way for you to travel from the reality of this world to the universe of your dreams?

Mommy comes out. “He’s very tired.” Now that’s a description of a ritual and a routine. We have many in our home. Sacred and nothing special at the same time. Reference points for how we exist and move through space together, dance sometimes, play, and get along. Within the next half-hour if you don’t go to sleep you will call out, “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy” literally, either her name or mine, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy” — always three times in a kind of song—summoning us to your bedside. You will ask that we cover you, or lay down with you, or provide you with essential information regarding a question you have about anything under the sun that is occurring to you, as you navigate the transition from awake to sleep to dream. It’s as if you are getting ready to go somewhere and you want to make sure things are in place when you return in the morning.

Mommy just gave me some chicken soup. Since I came home late and didn’t have dinner, I’m eating now. Where was I? I was at The Shambhala Center. What was I doing there? I was taking the next step. What is the next step? I will tell you.

The next step is reclaiming the work I was doing before you were born and that I have continued doing after your birth, but not in the same way. I’m taking something down off the shelf that I put on the shelf so that I could create the space in my life for you, for Mommy, for rituals and routines that I felt needed to be in place, so that I could work the way I want to work. That work is to write. I can hear you asking, “You mean like on the subway?”

Yes, it’s true; sometimes Daddy will go out to ride the subway and write. The subway has all the things I need to write well. It has movement, it has no guarantee about who is going to get on or off, it has grit, some danger, noise that actually creates an inner silence within; it has stops and starts in ways that encourage me to take a breath, to pause, to connect thinking with action. There are all kinds of stories unraveling on the subway. There’s a lot of action. Beginnings, middles and endings all happening at the same time, all interdependent and isolated like subway riders can be. The subway does not care whether what I write is good or bad. It also has a kind of deadline. There’s a point when it reaches the end of the line. I have to get up, walk across the platform, and get on the train headed in the other direction. The subway is neither for me nor against me.

But the next step that Daddy took tonight about writing has been a long time in the planning. It‘s less about riding the subway and more about getting off the subway. It’s more about what Daddy said earlier about ritual and routine. It’s about reference points. It’s about writing so that other people can have and read what Daddy has written so they can turn them into their own reference points.

Eli, those reference points are for you too. Maybe only for you. Daddy may not have any reference points for what it means inside your heart to be the happy, safe, loved, and wanted little boy that you are, but Daddy has some other reference points. It’s time to give them away now. Before I say more about that, there’s something I need to tell you. For a long time, I have often said that I have no reference points for how to be your father. That’s because the kind of father I had was nothing like the kind of father you have. But that’s not true. Our time together has shown me that I have very powerful reference points for being your daddy. Some of the most powerful reference points a man can have. They are born from a heart of genuine sadness, loss, and pain.

Daddy was a wolf child. Daddy was Oblivion’s child. There are others like Daddy. We know a lot about dark places. We found our way out of them. We love to play in the light of day. We are happy to be free of our childhoods—those of us that got out—but we can’t change our childhoods. My brothers and sisters and I who come from the same kind of childhood —we howl when we feel lost. That’s how we hear and know one another, that’s the ritual and routine we use to remind ourselves where we all are. We love and care for one another. Not the same thing as “Daddy will you carry me to bed,” but that was how I went to bed at night when I was a child. Howling inside and outside. I still howl, but not for the same reason. I howl to stay in touch with my other reference points. Don’t worry, son, Daddy’s not trying to tell you he’s a werewolf.

You don’t howl at night. You are an ordinary, imperfect child. No doubt you will do some extraordinary things, but at the heart of it, you are the simple, pristine, victorious, noble, pure, nothing special, ordinary, imperfect child beyond Daddy’s wildest dreams. Daddy knows nothing about the life you are living right now on the inside of yourself. On the other hand, Daddy is working with Mommy to create the world you are living all around on the outside. Isn’t that funny? Why is it that you would never trust a pilot who has never flown an airplane to take you up in the air, but that you can trust absolutely that, while I know nothing about the world inside you, I totally know how to create and sustain that world for you?

Granted, shit happens (and don’t tell Mommie I cursed), but one thing you can count on as long as karma or God or whatever allows, I will be showing up and delivering the goods for you in terms of presence, acceptance, and tolerance, and you will have no better or more learned friend than I if the shit ever really hits the fan in your life. I have lots of reference points for that.

Last night, the lady who is teaching us about how she writes, Susan, said that while it’s true that our actions impact our environment, so too does our environment impact on our actions. You live in an environment that is being created, sustained, and maintained by Mommy and I. I’m not talking about what happens when you are outside of the world, space, container we are creating for you. That’s part of the deal we both had to make with life on life’s terms when we fell in love and realized—not too long after that—that you were coming. “Eli’s coming! Hide your hearts, girls!” are words to a song that lots of friends were singing before they even saw you.

What I want to say, Eli, is that Daddy is taking the next step, which was part of the plan, my own plan. A plan I held deeply in my heart and had to trust and believe in and wait for so that I could be sure when I took the writing off the shelf—not just the words but the ritual and routine of writing that I also need to take off the shelf now—that fundamental things would be in place. Daddy had to create all of these on his own with a lot of help from Mommy and lots of help from friends. A world. A family. A purpose. A sense of belonging. Knowing that he is loved and can love. Daddy needed to put all of that into place, along with a nice place to live, a good paycheck, and the settling of a few scores (I’m not talking about soccer and will explain more about that to you in another letter), so that he could do exactly what Susan was talking about last night.

But that’s why it’s very cool for you that I’m your daddy. I’m not bragging or anything, I’m just saying that at fifty years of age, Daddy has successfully and fully extricated himself from the oblivion of his childhood. That is a world you will never know about via your own personal experience. But it is a world that I will need to tell you about some day. It’s not like you aren’t starting to pick up on some of the clues. You notice that Daddy is comfortable in places where others might feel very nervous and frightened. You notice that Daddy is awkward and frightened in other places where there is no need for anyone to feel frightened or awkward. Daddy always inhabits a new world with every step he takes.

A couple more things to say, then this letter will end. But it’s going to be added to the collection of letters to you that I hope will be of some help to you in later years.

First thing: Mommy showed me YOUR writing the other night. She brought it to me at the perfect moment: you know, when I’m sort of tired and it’s late at night, but I don’t want to go to sleep. Wow. Are you a writer? Of course you are. So was your grandmother. So is your Daddy. What a story. I’m glad that your teacher is challenging you to write on a higher level, too. Mommy did not like the teacher’s criticism because she wants to know what third grader could possibly understand the things you are being asked to do. Since she’s a teacher and Daddy is a teacher, we are very careful to see what your teachers are saying. I agree with Mommy—maybe your teacher is a bit unrealistic. But on the other hand, something inside of me is saying, “Yeah, Eli. Kick Ass!!”

Last thing: Daddy has no special place where he writes. There never has been a special place. Daddy has always written in the gaps. Creating a special place—like the place you go before dreamland, or the safe place called our home, our family, where you are being allowed to emerge in accordance with your being, which I have the paradoxical experience of having no identification with on the one hand, and which I am totally and equally on board for realizing for you, for Mommy, and for myself on the other—creating that place for the writer and the writing that Daddy is now gong to take off the shelf is going to work only if we understand that it’s really nothing special.

Maybe nothing will change at all. You will continue to see Daddy writing in his notebooks in the park or on the computer in the morning when you leave for school. You will continue to try to talk to Daddy sometimes, and I will say yes and continue typing. You will see that Daddy will go for a long subway ride with his notebook. But it’s going to be different. It won’t be writing for the shelf. It will be writing for something else. It will be writing for you. For Mommy. It won’t be writing for writing’s sake. It will be writing for the sake of voice, for realization, for the sake of any wisdom or compassion I can squeeze out of my experience from now until when I am dead. It will be writing that will be about death that comes from living, writing about life that comes from death. I will need to be as fearless and outrageous as you are on the soccer field, when you sing and dance for us, when you jump in bed to kiss us and tell us how happy you are. It will have to emerge in accordance with its being. As you do.

The subway is my living room. I sit next to a woman doing her makeup, wait for a train alongside a man clipping his fingernails. As we ride, ladies take off their shoes and plunge their hands toward the soles as their fingers search for that one irritating lonesome pebble or piece of lint.

One day, a large man sits next to me, his thigh touching my thigh. “Would you like a fig?” he looks past me and asks the man to my left. The other man shakes his head and reveals a quiet grin of confusion. I look down and see that the large man has a branch of dried, brown, prune-like fruits dangling on a diagonal off a vine, like the veins on a leaf.

“Those are dates,” I offer. The man looks at me with surprise then down to the fruit.

“Are you sure?” he asks.

“I’m sure,” I confirm. I notice that below his wreath of dates is a box of date-filled cookies, the cover showing yellow round biscuits surrounded by the wrinkled fruit.

“See?” I say, motioning to the package.

He smiles and cries out in shock. “It is a date! I should know that,” he declares. “I’m a food writer.”

“Really?” I ask.

“Well I didn’t get this figure from nothing,” he says, running his hands down and under his rotund belly. From there the conversation continues. I learn his professional history. He is currently a minister, slash food writer; formerly a basketball player, slash hip-hop artist. “Google me,” he insists.

Another day, a smaller man sits beside me after bounding through the doors at Twenty-Third Street. He ruffles with a plastic bag between his feet.

“You know, I just bought this cologne and I don’t know if it’s any good. I drive a cab, so I always want to smell good,” he begins to tell me, without introduction. He pulls out a still-plastic wrapped brand name cologne I have now forgotten. He looks to me for approval. I shrug. I tell him I don’t know it.

He unwraps the box and pulls out the glass container, spritzing a small mist on himself. “What do you think?” He questions. His torso ends just inches below mine, so I can see most of his balding crown. Another passenger across from us looks on in amusement.

I lean to my left, nose bowing ever so slightly and I inhale. “You smell lovely,” I tell him.

The man nods, and satisfied, puts the cologne away. He thanks me for my input, and I can tell he feels better about his purchase. The next stop, I exit, saying a quick goodbye.

After Hurricane Sandy, my living room was dark. It was filled with water, and I imagined fish navigating its hallways, speeding past South Ferry along State and Pearl, the black and white mosaic of tree branches transformed to waving seaweed, bending with the rippling water. Even though I sat in my perfectly undamaged apartment, I still felt a small pang of loss. Not only of mobility and convenience, but of space, of refuge.

Spotted, molding, chipping walls; plastic bottle, potato chip bag, and rodent accessorized rails; piquant whiffs of urine or vomit that are not all too uncommon. But everyone in the subway experiences the same sensory assaults. As travelers, we are in it together. Like the funky odor the family car often takes on. It’s a familiar stink, a familiar rocking and squealing of motion.

I was relieved when I could finally return again, bounding down the steps at Seventh Avenue in Brooklyn, book in hand, ready to enjoy my half-hour ride, my productive time of underground commuting. It was like someone was handing me a ticket home. Like tasting my mother’s chocolate cake after one too many months without it. It was back. My living room, restored.

Tom said, “Listen to this. Due to extensive cuts in the quarter’s revised operational budget, Franklin City Council has called for an immediate restriction of municipal power usage between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. Mayor Barclay encourages Franklin residents to make use of their porch and garage lights if they need to be outdoors at night.”

At ten o’clock the streetlamps faded, held dimly for a moment in the neighborhood dark then clicked off completely, bathing the streets in silence and night.

“Still,” Layla says to Tom over the paper, “We’ve got it better than Newark. They’ve eliminated twelfth grade.”

Jake was upstairs showering again. The ceiling had already started to drip steadily and soon the droplets would come together to form a stream that would make a puddle on the carpet. Tom’s policy was not to knock on the bathroom door until the stream had formed, lest he deny Jake the freedom and space he needed to grow up to be a healthy, functional adult.

“That kid showers at all hours of the night. I don’t understand.”

Layla put the paper down. The parts of her facial mask that had dried wrinkled when she spoke. “He’s a teenage boy, what else is there to understand?”

“Even a fourteen year old can’t commit that much self-abuse. The shower can’t even be all of it. We know the shower isn’t all of it.”

Layla shrugged, which Tom loved best of all of her nonverbal responses. It was beautiful. Her shrug deflected all harm. Her hair rearranged itself on her shoulders in a way that was somehow almost more beautiful than the shrug itself but the shrug had the benefit of being the thing that started the whole chain reaction.

“I don’t think it’s safe for him to be showering at night now. What if the power goes out? And if he doesn’t get out of that shower eventually the ceiling will fall down.”

“I forgot to tell you that a chunk fell off last night. It’s on the fireplace. On the part of the fireplace that would be the porch if a fireplace were a house.”

A book-sized flake of drywall sat propped against the remains of last winter’s firewood.

When Layla became pregnant Tom finally understood the phrase “the miracle of life” and spent many evenings staring in the bathroom mirror after Layla had gone to bed, wondering if his child would have his eyes; if the clump of cells inside his wife was a body yet; if it was a human yet. And once he was born Tom often wondered how they managed to make an entirely new person out of just their human bodies which, he realized when he watched his son successfully ride a bike for the first time, were no less meat than anything they sold at the butcher. Looking in the mirror he often wondered how he had made anything.

Tom rapped on the door gently. “Jake, we’re leaking again.” The sound of the shower through the door was more like a humming pulse than a rainfall. Tom knocked more insistently. “We’re leaking.” The hum continued.

Meghan Ritchie is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied writing and literature. She grew up in Fremont, California and now lives in Windsor Terrace.

What inspires me most? Inspired people. Alice Markham-Cantor is one of the brightest, most creative, and dedicated young writers I know. In her experimental story, The Night, Alice explores the smallness of a moment–how feelings can shift in seconds and how affected we become when we begin to notice the world around us.

To find out more about the workshop in which Alice wrote The Night, please visit: www.WritopiaLab.org. Writopia Lab is a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization that holds creative writing workshops for kids ages 8-18 in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Westchester, L.A., and D.C.

Rachel Ephraim is Founder and Director of FreeBird Workshops.

You look around, tiny, crystalline snowflakes falling softly on your face. You glance up to the dusky purple star-strewn sky, to the perfect full moon, round as your wide-open eyes. This is a night of whispers, of dreams.

You walk down the sidewalk, old blue and gray sneakers sifting the thin layer of shadowed white fluff that lands softly on the cement. You glance back over your shoulder every so often, not knowing quite why you do it. The sounds of the busy New York avenue behind you begin to fade, muffled by the snow as you turn down a side street.

The trees are bare, their leaves fallen to the ground months ago. The cars parked on the street and the brownstone houses loom up on either side of you, huge shadows pricked with pinpoints of light, windows. Reflections of that light tinkle off the tiny icicle dangling from an overhanging branch. It snags your hair as you pass underneath the shadow-dappled bough.

It is beautiful, you realize, but also forbidding, cold, untouchable in the still. The night is calling to the wild, and you can hear it. A tight feeling rises in your chest, and you shiver.

You have no reason to be afraid, you know that. And yet you cannot stop the slow creep of fear of the unknown. Your breath accelerates, sending frosty puffs out into the smooth, dark air. Your breath does not even touch the quiet. You are not important enough for that. Compared to the world, the universe, the night, you are tiny, completely inconsequential.

Once panic begins to rise, it is almost impossible to stop. Your body tenses. You glance around wildly, at the same time trying not to move your head too much, trying not to attract any attention. The fact that there is no one else on the street doesn’t matter; the skeletal shadows cast by the trees and the houses on the moonlit snow have suddenly turned into monsters, demons, creatures of another time and place who are ready to rear up and tear the fragile world to pieces.

When you were young, your parents told you, ‘Don’t be afraid of the dark’. And you weren’t, not usually. But there is a difference, you realize, between the dark, and the night. The dark is simply the absence of light – it obscures your vision now as you peer into the shadows, sure that with your next step you will fall into an endless abyss. But the night, the night is something else entirely. The night is unfamiliar. Each night is something new. The night unlocks things from somewhere else, things you imagined as a child. You do not belong in the night, and you know it.
The panic is rising, the beauty of the snow-filled world evaporating. You raise your foot to run, to dash away from the still, untouchable night, then freeze in mid-step. In that single moment of terrified decision – to either succumb to your frightened thoughts, or defy them – you somehow know without a doubt that there is one other option. If you ride the fear, you realize, ride the rolling wave just as you used to do when you were six, playing at the beach, then it cannot touch you. If you accept the darkness, the night, then it will no longer frighten you. Fire cannot burn fire. Ice does not freeze ice.

That path has been there all along, you know that, but you were simply unwilling to see it. You do not like to depend on anyone else. You don’t like the idea of allowing something into your self, in fear that it might take you over. That you might cease to be you.

But you will still be you, you realize. It is like the snow that is still dancing through the calm darkness. If you were to open your mouth and catch a flake on your tongue, the ice will melt and become water, which will soak into you, eventually becoming part of your body. By letting the snowflake in, you do not become it. The snow becomes part of you.

It becomes clear. You must break bread with your fears, open yourself to them, and they will no longer trouble you.

You take a breath, the panic receding. It seems loud at first, booming against the silence of the moonlight, but becomes quieter, sinking into the soft, hushed night. It is no longer untouchable. You are part of it now, one of the tiny pieces that make up the greater puzzle.

You know that you should take a step, and another, that you should walk down the sidewalk towards the lights in the windows, the glowing squares of golden light that mark your home. But you don’t. You stay a moment and lift your face to the moon, sneakers planted firmly in the snow, hair falling off of your face, cold hands stuffed in your jacket pockets. You close your eyes and breathe in, listening and becoming the quiet of the night.