She found strange satisfaction in watching the silver gaps between the trees at night. It was just past the midnight hour when she would take her lonely perch at the tower window, settle her eyes on some distant branch or cloud, and wait.

And she had told herself, not many moons. Not many moons before her intended beloved. He would arrive at the tower steps before her fourteenth year; she would be a child bride, perfectly loved.

And then she thought... no, it would be as a young lady, and then as a woman, full of moonlight. And each night, she watched. And never did anyone approach.

And as the years passed, she forgot that she was waiting, and took to sitting in her room, creating art from sounds and symbols, pressing love upon them, sewing her heart into a warm cloak that she wore tightly around her shoulders, because the nights were colder now, and a thick winter underway. It felt as though it had snowed longer than the season; days shortened and lengthened, and yet ever there was snow on the windowsill. Birds migrated overhead, one direction and then eventually another. She forgot how many times she noticed them pass. She felt as though time had grown as cold as her fingers.

And slowly, slowly she became ice, and then stone, and then part of the very tower walls.


* * *

When he first saw the castle, it was as a fortress of ice and thorns.

He looked upon the wild gardens with no small wonderment. Abandoned, perhaps? It was impossible to tell, and yet night was closing in, and he had followed the road as far as it would go -- it had ended here, at the wrought iron gates, strange, spiraling beasts arching above him, sentinels to the silent dwelling.

The windows on the lower story were broken. He could easily climb the gate, slip in.... It would be sure suicide to stay outside on a night like this. The winter of this forest was dense and permanent; some said a god had died here, hundreds of years ago, and now no warmth would visit its tomb. Others said it was the eternal chill of a woman's heart... but he couldn't imagine anyone ever living in this forsaken castle. The gray scone was blackened by what may have been centuries of weather and wear. Even the vines that climbed its spiraling tower were brown, hardened by frost.

But night was closing in. "A roof, a bed," he murmured, and gripped the iron gate with two hard, strong fists. He pulled himself easily upward. "And with any luck -- a match."

* * *

All of the doors were either locked or barred, but he grabbed the hinges of the kitchen door and pried it from its frame. The wood gave easily, soft as a sponge.

He stepped into what may have once been a kitchen, but was now a room of dead leaves and branches. He followed the obvious path into a hallway, long and worn, dusty, shadows elongating into spiraling drapes. It lead him into a cavernous room with a mahogany table stretching from one end to another. A massive fireplace took up the entirety of the northern wall, large enough to have cooked an entire stag. There were the remnants of expensive carpets across the ground, rusted dishes and empty, faded picture frames, all of it covered with a thick layer of dust. From the inside, it was impossible to see outside the windows, which were thickly coated by frost. Webbed patterns reached from the floor to the ceiling, traveling up the glass like lines on map.

He could have stopped in that room, made a place on the floor and set a fire in the hearth, ate from the fragile roots he had gathered and what was left of his travel bread... and yet curiosity stirred in him. Who had lived here, so many countless years ago? He had passed through a town not far from the forest, which had told him that there was an abandoned house, a palace of ice, in the heart of this cursed winter. He could only assume that this was the place, the land where the curse had been born. What had happened here? It seemed that something had been forgotten.

He left the cavernous room and sought the stairs.

* * *

A stranger entered her walls.

She watched through windows, through mirrors and picture frames. His shadow was tall and lean as a willow tree; his clothing dark and tattered as the earth. He left soft marks on her carpet, indentations of wide boots.

He crossed the foyer to an abandoned fireplace, but did not stay there. Rather, he sought the stairs.

* * *

River

When I speak, I ask questions, while some
continue to babble; I always hear

like clear water: a look
on the face like a stream

which cannot be dammed. It says
be tranquil, dearest, as shade

over deep water; you are
clearer to us, as dear

as the river stones, as smooth
as the voice of the river.

We are in this place again; I only know how to swim with ice.
Heat is as painful as light creeping through closed lids--
my hands haven't moved in a year.

you left, as did the Sun; do I hide now from dawn
or is a momentary thaw simply a deeper night,
ice melting to freeze again.

_____________________


I have taken to watching you sit at an outdoor table. You threw kindness
at me -- at least, your smile, though it could have been as ordinary

as a good lunch. I am pasting kindness over a sandwich, because
the heart is starved, looking for a place to alight Her wings, where

She may flit and jibber and enjoy crumbs. I have great need
of solitude, for I have been trampled under foot, shooed away.

I count on those who feed the birds, because love has died
(again, or still dead since the last time) and nothing can sustain me.

So I watch, nobody
other than a kind mystery, a flattering smile, a crust of bread.

How do you think this book helps you fathom the relationship between "religion" and "literature" and between the stories we hear and the ones we live?

When reading The World is Made of Stories, I couldn't help but think that all literature is written on moral premise, and therefore, religious premise. We are inherently religious creatures, as moral and ethical ideology spills into almost every facet of our existence (and every facet of our existence, according to this book, is a story.) The stories we live by are moral stories, ethical stories, questions of "Why do bad things happen to good people?" and "Why am I suffering? Do I deserve to? What is the meaning of my life?" In this sense, the stories of others help to shape our own story; the stories we are told growing up are what create the stories of our lives, our relationships, what we value and what we expect to achieve. Likewise, the stories we read in books as adults or as children can also change our experience of reality, the "story of our life."

It would appear that we are all spiritual beings searching for a spiritual realm of truth; an understanding within ourselves, a liberation from the stories that tie us to our roles and to the identities of others. Literature reflects this, as most literature is an exploration of the human experience, questioning the purpose of our lives, the way we effect others and history, and the collective truths that transcend history. Literature draws attention to the less apparent stories that dictate our lives, allowing us to view these stories at a certain distance so we can analyze them. However, the stories that we live by every day are invisible to us, a clear lens that we see through without realizing its own color or texture. Much of literature reflects history, and history itself is a story. Rewrite the story, rewrite history, rewrite literature, rewrite the lens, rewrite the self....

But what of the self outside the story? If our experience of the world is our own narrative, and we can change those narratives by changing our ideology and values, then what remains cohesive and constant? This is where questions of nothingness and Nirvana enter the picture (nothingness and Nirvana being, of course, another story.) As The World is Made of Stories says, "For identity to change, there must be something other than that narrative, something that is not bound by it."

After reading the text, I agree with the premise that we are coauthors of our lives, with the ability to direct our own stories, at least to a certain extent. However, I believe this only happens after Nirvana, after an essential realization of the permanent self. Nirvana is an inherent "knowing" of reality and an interconnectedness with the true Author, the Self that is in all things, and the transient emptiness of all things in relation to that Self. Perhaps Nirvana is our own innate ability to create of ourselves the perfect story, one that we can predict, which we feel is already written because we are instinctively awakened to the causality in all things. One doesn't need to understand the rings in a pond when one has become the rings in the pond.

I always feel that there is too much emphasis on emptiness and nothingness in many discussions on Nirvana... it is not that Nirvana is "empty" or "nothing," but rather, that all other things become "empty" and "nothing" in relation to it. "It is not understood by those who understand It. It is understood by those who understand It not." This is the difference between concept and experience. You can describe bondage, but one does not consciously experience one's own bondage when one has only ever been bound. In the same way, one can conceptualize liberation until one is liberated, when it becomes a state of being, and then all description and explanation becomes meaningless. You can only know freedom; you can only live freedom; you cannot draw it or set rules to it or describe it to others.

As Nirvana is an ineffable experience, can that experience be "Storied"? Not the results of the experience, or the path leading to it, but the experience in and of itself, one that is self contained, yet transcends all causal reality. Is Nirvana therefore the Self that is beyond narrative? Is Nirvana the Self that began all narrative? Or is Nirvana the ability to see all life as narrative, and to detach from it, observing all things with an impartial eye? These questions are largely unanswerable, but I would like to write into my own life's narrative that yes, Nirvana is the Author beyond the story, which writes the story according to the events prescribed in our hearts, which, given an honest understanding of our Selves, allow us to know the reason for our lives, our own significance, and our own fragile transience. In this sense, literature and Nirvana serve the same purpose: to allow us the impartiality to examine our own narratives and perhaps coauthor new ones.

Dwelling Places

there is a body eroding inside of me, rotting
out my mouth

i have a taste for death; it has cracked two of my teeth,
but i do not think, no matter how many times
my internal dwelling collapses, that death ever leaves

nor do i ever

(how could i, with our bodies entwined,
fingers clasping fingers; when i reach
for love with this heart of our hearts
does death love through me? or in me? or of me?)

leave it

because we both must walk
with clubbed feet, black lungs; we live
in our lipless love, grinning

Dwelling Places

there is a body eroding inside of me
worms eating out my mouth

i have a taste for death
it has killed me at least twice
but i do not think, no matter how many times
my internal dwelling collapses
that death ever leaves, nor do i ever leave it

(how could i, with our bodies entwined
and our voices combined to create one voice;
when i speak, or love with this heart of our hearts
does death love through me? or in me? or of me?
what is love but a thousand chips of bone;
a collection on our mantle, trophies of solitude
and eternal winters kept tightly confined)

a season is drowning inside of me
i keep choking up snow
i know i am a vessel, a harbinger, a black lung
sick with the love of decay

I am ready to move beyond the blank flurries,
the voice of solitude, which banks next to me
and sails over my neighbor's roof --

I am ready for a forecast, for a simple weather drop,
but this is my sixth season remembering you
and as I count back days, it would seem that daylight
no longer keeps time; you are at a distance

i could never reach

somewhere between my watch tower and my neighbor's roof.
there is the sound of water in the back of my mind,
it reminds me of the clack of your teeth and rolling eyes.

i released you into the darkness of a sleet-gray night.
your brother was on the phone, hanging onto each absence;
you were dead on arrival and i died

with the wind