Twilight in February

The state of Vermont–the only New England state without an ocean coastline–is a rural place. And the hills in east-central Vermont, where I live, are rural even by Vermont’s standards. There’s an old saying in the Green Mountain State that there are more cows than people.  I’m not sure if that’s true statewide, but it is in the town where I live.  Just up the road, there is a family-owned dairy farm.  Sometimes, when I drive by it, I need to put the brakes on and stop to allow the cows to cross the road.  Cattle crossings are as much a part of the fabric of Vermont as skiing, maple syrup, and sharp cheddar cheese.  I don’t mind it, though.  In fact, I love it.  I enjoy the quiet, the forests, and the mountains that beckon in the distance.

 

I live in a house that sits atop a hill surrounded by meadow, which itself is ringed by woods on all sides, sixteen acres in all.  No neighbors can be seen from the house, and few can be heard.  Not that many people venture out of doors for long stretches of time.  It’s February, after all, and Vermont in winter is not for the faint of heart.

 

I don’t go outside myself as often as I should in winter.  Too often, the sub-freezing temperatures and arctic winds deter me.  But one evening, a week or so ago, just after sundown, I decided to don my gloves and boots and coat and take a walk out in the meadow behind the house.  For this time of year, the snow depth was modest–not even a foot.  That foot, however, felt like three or four as I trudged along, my feet barely sinking in, the crusty and icy surface hardened by a recent freezing rain.  It was an odd sensation.  The same expanse that I mow in summer covered beneath a shell of snow, the grass hidden, the flowers a distant memory from a warmer and more vibrant season.

 

I approached the pair of bare maple trees, in the front-middle of the meadow, that stand, side by side, like silent sentinels on guard duty, overlooking the property.  To the west, on this clear evening, there was still the faint afterglow of the just-vanished sun, visible through the woods in the distance.  Above me, the first handful of stars began to appear, and I knew, within the next several hours, on a crisp, clear night like this, there would soon be hundreds of them–giving the effect of an outdoor planetarium, the night sky a-glitter.  And to the east, rising above the birch grove behind me, a near-full moon lit the meadow in an orangish-blue glow.  It appeared close enough to reach up and touch, to call out to and half-expect an answer, or an echo.

 

I stood there, listening.  But there was nothing to hear.  The wind was calm.  The daytime denizens of the winter woodlands were no doubt hunkering down for the night, seeking shelter from the cold in caves and tree hollows and under logs and downed limbs.  The creatures of the night, meanwhile, the hardy ones who brave the subzero nocturnal temperatures, were nowhere to be seen, or heard.  Not yet.  For as much as my senses could discern, I was alone out here, in the middle of this meadow, on this starlit midwinter evening.  It was at once a sobering and comforting thought.

 

I trudged deeper into the meadow.  My footsteps were loud as they sought purchase on the ice-covered snow.  Around me, illuminated by the moonlight, I spotted wild turkey tracks, their three-toed hieroglyphics scattering this way and that, like a script waiting to be deciphered.  And I wondered.  Standing out there, in the frosty silence–would a story idea hit me, emerging out of the darkening twilight?  But then I stopped myself.  Ideas never come when called upon, when thought about, when desired.  At least not for me.  For me, they come when my mind is elsewhere, absorbed in something completely unrelated.  Nevertheless, it was so still, so quiet, so ideal for the muse to come a-calling.  I waited, stood there, a little bit longer.  Just in case.

 

Nothing came.  And the house, and warmth, beckoned.  I walked back up the meadow, pausing every now and again to savor the moment, to linger there.  More stars appeared overhead, as if by magic, their light, originating from somewhere in the long-ago past, reaching me at the end of a journey so boundless, our imaginations struggle to comprehend it.  There is a story in there somewhere, I am sure.  We are all made of stardust.

 

As I headed back inside, I felt invigorated.  Just for a while, I could forget about the upcoming week’s schedule and to-do list, the work that needed to be done, the dark and ominous direction of America’s politics.  Rather, I thought about potentialities, possibilities, infinities.  The way, when we begin a story, it can go in any number of directions, imbued with a lifeblood of its own.

 

And then, I went to my trusty PC, fired it up, and began to write.

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

A Light in the Darkness (Or, Watching the Fireflies)

It’s night–a warm, muggy summer night in the hills of east-central Vermont.  It’s late.  I’ve always been a night person.  Even though I arise by five thirty most mornings, I still shake hands with midnight from time to time.  Tonight is one of those nights.

 

I’m at the window, the breeze wafting in, carrying with it the sound of crickets as they play their fiddles, unseen, in the grass that needs mowing.  Out there, beyond the house, is the meadow–five acres’ worth, surrounded on all sides by woodlands.  It’s a private spot, down a dirt road.  There is no neighbor within a half-mile.  And while sometimes, the distant sound of a car engine or chainsaw can be heard, for the most part, it is quiet here–except for the crickets and the hoot owls and the creatures of the night who crawl and run and slither through the grass.

 

I’m not sure what I’m looking for.  There are stars above–the night is clear.  I can see the silhouette of the trees as they sway, this way and that.  But then, then . . . I see it.  A light, a flicker in the dark.  And there!  Another one.  And another.  And another.  It’s like a pre-4th-of-July fireworks show.  Fireflies.  There are so many of them out there.  When one goes dark, another takes its place.  They blink, in and out, light and dark, in a showy, rhythmic dance upon the air.

 

I am mesmerized.  It is almost hypnotic.  There’s another one, and another still.  Why do they do it?  What motivates these tiny insects to produce such a vibrant, magical show?  There are several reasons, actually.  But one is . . . a desire to be noticed.  To be seen.  A call across the dark to attract a potential mate.  “Here I am,” they’re saying.  “See my light.”

 

I step back from the window.  See my light.  Isn’t that, in essence, what we’re doing when we’re sharing our writing, our artwork, our creations?  After all, sharing is hard.  There may be praise and encouragement and acceptance “out there”–and surely there will be.  But there will also be rejection.  Criticism.  Scathing reviews.  Whenever you acquire a new reader, a new viewer, a new listener . . . you don’t know what the reaction will be.  It might go either way.  You may be on a good run, receiving positive feedback day after day.  But the next day, some new criticism may emerge.  A negative review may be posted.  It’s impossible to predict.

 

I return to the window, and witness a dozen or more fireflies glowing over the meadow.  Then more join in, and more, and still more.  The displays on the 4th won’t match this.  And I realize–these fireflies, these beings who are a fraction of the size of my fingernail, are not afraid.  They aren’t overthinking things.  They’re just glowing.

 

See my light.

Do you have an idea you want to write, but haven’t yet, perhaps reluctant on account that “it won’t be any good”?  Or . . . do you have a recently finished work collecting digital dust on your hard drive, hidden from the eyes of others?  “It’s not strong enough,” you might say.  “People won’t like it.  Who am I to share this with anyone?” And even here, in the WordPress community . . . do you have a blog post in mind but are hesitating, second-guessing, questioning whether to publish it?

 

Mitchell Brant would certainly be able to relate to this.  And so would Joe Marma, Marc Kuslanski, and Ryan Swinton.  The Eye-Dancers and The Singularity Wheel are, at their heart, about confronting insecurities and coming to terms with what and who we are, and learning to accept it.

 

Do you feel the fire within, the ember that burns, seeking release and recognition?  Are you attuned to the song only you can sing, the word-picture only you can paint?

See my light.

Directly in front of me, not five inches beyond the window, a firefly glows.  Farther out, a dozen others join him.  I don’t know how long the dance will persist.  Maybe a few more minutes.  Maybe all night.  Maybe they’ll fly and glow and glide till dawn, keeping at it until the first reddish tinge of the sun comes into view.

 

As for me, it’s time for bed.  I need to get some sleep.  There is writing to do on the morrow, scenes to craft.  Characters to live with.  Situations to explore.

Stories to share.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

“You Can’t Get There from Here” (But You Can . . . with Some Delay)

It was one of those lazy, hazy midsummer days in the Northeast, when the humidity hangs thick and wet over the land.  I was driving through the back roads of central Vermont, looking for a particular house–an address tucked away on a dirt lane far from the beaten path.  These were the years before I had settled in this area and called it home.  I didn’t know my way around.

 

Sure enough, as I came to an unmarked intersection, I took a wrong turn.  I didn’t know it at first.  It took a couple of minutes.  But when I drove several more miles and didn’t have a clue where I was, I decided to stop in the gravel parking lot of a country store.  It was the only place I saw, aside from isolated farmhouses and old, weathered barns, that might offer the hope of someone providing directions to steer me back along the right route.

 

I parked in front of the store, a clapboarded single-story structure with white peeling paint and two ancient gas pumps out back.  They looked like something out of the 1950s.  I had no idea if they were operational, and had no intention of finding out.

 

The door was open, without a screen, and I walked in.  The interior was small and cramped, complete with wooden shelves, a pot-bellied stove in the corner, and thick bark-covered beams overhead.  Beside the unlit stove, four men sat at a round table.  Each eyed me suspiciously.

 

I approached the table.  The men, three of whom were seniors, and the fourth perhaps in his thirties, continued to eye me.  There were poker chips gathered in the middle of the table, and the men were holding playing cards in their hands.  Already uncomfortable at the intrusion, now I felt worse.  I was interrupting their game.

 

“Excuse me,” I said.  My voice sounded too loud in the close, warm space.  “Sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if you might be able to help me find an address.  I thought I had everything mapped out, but I guess I was wrong.”

The men just sat there, motionless, looking me over as if I were a specimen to be driven over to the town taxidermist.  One of them cleared his throat.  A second placed his cards, facedown, onto the table.  The other two just stared.

 

I gave it a few seconds, and when no one said a word, I took a step back and turned toward the door.  I guessed I’d go knock on a farmhouse door and hope for a more cordial response.

 

That was when someone finally spoke up.

“Where ya headin’?” the younger guy said.

I turned back around, told them the address.  This brought on another round of silence.

Then, the oldest-looking guy seated at the table, a gaunt fellow with wire-rimmed glasses, said, “Thing is–if you was a bird, it’d be easy to get where you’re wantin’ to go.  But if you have to take the roads–it’s a field.  Fact is, you can’t get there from here.”

 

One of the other men smirked.  Another one coughed.

I wasn’t sure what to say.  I realized I was the amusement for the day.  There was no reason to hang around.  I’d just have to go back the way I had come and re-map the journey.

 

But then the younger guy held up his hand, and proceeded to give me the directions I needed.  He used short, staccato phrases, offering only the barest of minimums.  But I thought I had it when he was through.

I thanked him for his help.

“Would be easier if you was a bird,” the older man said again.

When I walked back through the doorway, I was sure I could hear them laughing.

As I got behind the wheel of my car and pulled away, I wondered if they had given me the wrong directions–just to further the joke.  But they hadn’t.  Twenty minutes later, I found the place I was looking for.  The directions were accurate.

 

“Though roundabout,” I was told later by someone in the know.  “He led you out of your way.”

But at least I’d made it–delay or no delay.

************************************

And that also accurately sums up the writing and editing process I have undertaken on The Singularity Wheel–the sequel to The Eye-Dancers.  It was a surprise project from the get-go.  I hadn’t even envisioned there would be a sequel–but then, out of the ether, an idea struck that wouldn’t let up and wouldn’t let go, and I had to write it.

 

When I began the book, over four years ago (!), I had no way of knowing how winding, circuitous, and bumpy the road would be.  I first announced the sequel’s existence in a blog post in the spring of 2014.  “It’ll take another year to write, no sweat,” I thought at the time.  But then 2014 bled into 2015, which morphed into 2016–and still, the book wasn’t finished!  There were character crises, plot points that needed wholesale makeovers, and twists and turns in the story line that needed alterations.  It was, and has been, the most challenging writing project I have ever undertaken.

 

Even so, as 2017 dawned, I was almost finished!  And in April, the first draft was finally complete.  I was at last able to key in the words, “The End.”  I even posted about it at the time.  So okay–I would release The Singularity Wheel at the end of summer!  Piece of cake!

 

During the editing process, however, I found that more changes still needed to be made than I’d realized.  Time slipped past, summer came and went.  Then again, The Eye-Dancers was originally published in November 2012.  I liked the symmetry.  Why not release The Singularity Wheel in November 2017?  It would be perfect.  Five years of real time had passed–and, in the story itself, five years of fictional time had also passed from the conclusion of the first book to the start of the second.  Everything was coming full circle.

 

But now–here we are, in November, and just like my journey through the back roads of Vermont that summer day years ago, I have discovered that “as the bird flies” isn’t always the way a story will proceed.  I am right now in the final edit/proofreading/copy editing stage.  The endgame.  But even here, I have found a few last wrinkles that need to be ironed out, a few tweaks that need to be inserted, a last assortment of fixes that need to be made.  Grudgingly, I have come to realize that the November release is too ambitious.  The project has been “a field” as the old-timer at the country store said to me once.  A field, indeed.

 

That said, the eleventh-hour adjustments are minor in nature.  Ninety-nine percent of the work has been put in.  It’s just a matter of trying to finish strong and present the best possible product I can upon publication.  As much as I wanted to meet my own self-imposed November deadline, I didn’t want to rush it now, at the end, after such a long journey getting here.

The delay will be one month.  And this time, there won’t be any further postponements!  The Singularity Wheel will be released prior to January 1, 2018.  I don’t have a single, specific date in mind–but it will be in December.  This time, I promise.

 

In this season of Thanksgiving, I want to thank all of you who have read and still read this blog and who have supported The Eye-Dancers these past five years.

 

Writing a sequel has been a long, long process, often beset with speed bumps and deep, tire-puncturing potholes, but, to paraphrase my old country-store friend, I have, at long last, “gotten here from there.”

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

A Land of Long Shadows

The hill country of east-central Vermont, where I have lived for over a dozen years now, is famous for its fall colors.  Tourists flock to the Green Mountain State from across the nation, and the world, to catch a glimpse of the reds, oranges, and golds that light up the hillsides every October.  The blazing foliage of autumn is as synonymous with Vermont as its ski slopes, dairy farms, and Rockwellesque small towns.

 

For me, though, October in Vermont is about much more than multicolored tree leaves.  Don’t get me wrong.  I marvel at the beauty of the season as much as anyone.  There is nothing quite like a stroll along a country lane in Vermont in the fall.  But it is the subtler, less showy aspects of the season that leave the most indelible mark.  The musky scent of woodsmoke on the air.  Fallen leaves crunching underfoot.  Warm, sunny days, the humidity of high summer over and gone.  Crisp, starry nights, quiet, the chorus of crickets silenced by frost and the encroaching winter.

 

And shadows.

Just the other day, I took a walk out back, in the meadow behind the house.  The land slopes down, gently in places, steeply in others, to the meadow, which is here and there interspersed with maple trees and elm trees and birches, their bark white and clean against the copper-yellow of the autumn leaves.

 

It was late afternoon, the sun was sinking to the west, and a recent end-of-summer heat wave was in the process of retreating, moving south like a migrating bird, leaving New England to the rightful, cooler temperatures of the season.  I looked at the maple trees at the top end of the meadow, standing, side by side, like deciduous twins, their leaves mostly green still, with the occasional flash of gold.  The sun was hitting them just so, and their shadows reached out across the expanse like dark, giant fingers.  My own shadow was long, too, as I stood in the path of the westering sun.  It spread across the grass, comically elongated, as if I were a colossus, a wanderer come down from Brobdingnag.  I walked south, changed direction to the east.  My shadow followed, sometimes merging with the shadows of the maples or the birches, or the woods, which ringed the meadow on all sides.  No matter where I walked, it came with me, always there.  Always present.

 

There was no escape.

********************

There have been times when I was told that I am not always present–not fully, anyway.  “Sometimes, even when you’re here, you’re not here,” a friend told me once.  And I don’t deny it.  Ever since I was a boy, my mind has had a tendency to wander, to daydream, to roam over hills and valleys in search of the unknown and the unexplored.  Sometimes it’s playacting.  I spent more time than I like to admit growing up visualizing, in vivid detail, myself winning Wimbledon or batting in the bottom of the ninth inning in the World Series, the game on the line.  I’d pretend to hold an interview with the press afterwards, going through an elaborate question-and-answer session.  I’d think of new games to invent, new theories to drum up, new ways of looking at the tried-and-true.  Often, at night, I’d look up at the sky, count the stars, realizing that, as numerous as the visible stars were, they represented but a tiny fraction of the whole–just a slice of the firmament, a drop in a cosmic sea without end.

 

Truth be told, I still do all of these things from time to time.  Not as much as I used to, but I still do them.  On one level, it’s embarrassing.  I’m not a kid anymore, after all.  On another level, I hang onto these wonderings, these musings left over from childhood.  Without them, something essential, something life-affirming and good, would be lost.

 

More than anything, though, I get lost in my stories.  That’s to be expected while I’m hunkered down at my PC, of course, frantically pecking away at the keyboard.  (I’m old school.  I don’t have a laptop.  I still prefer the bulky old desktop.)  But it’s not only when I’m physically writing.  My stories are with me always–especially the novels.  I can be seated at my desk at work, out taking a walk along the shoulder of the road or through the woods, showering in the bathroom, even visiting friends or family–and suddenly, out of the blue, an idea will hit me.  So that’s how chapter 27 should be resolved!  Oh, so Ryan shouldn’t do that, he should do this.  I’m not sure if Joe handled that the way he really might have.  How about this . . .?  And on and on it goes.

 

Beginning with The Eye-Dancers, which I started in 2009, and continuing on through its sequel, The Singularity Wheel, still on schedule to be released in November, I have lived and breathed with the protagonists in these tales for almost a decade.  They are never far from my thoughts, always ready to intervene or interrupt, as if to say, “Hey, remember me?  You got that last scene all wrong, partner.  I would never do that!  You better go back and fix it.”  Or the story itself, like a living, breathing entity, a sentient thing, will communicate with me, vying for my attention.  If I’m not sure what to do in an upcoming chapter, it does not stay silent, tucked away in the background.  It speaks, shouts, demands to be solved.

 

So forgive me if, while we talk, I occasionally have a distant, faraway look in my eye.  The story never sleeps.  The characters can never be put to bed.  The questions and musings and machinations of the creative process are as stubbornly and persistently present as shadows.

 

And while there are times when this is taxing, draining, even downright annoying, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

***********************

Ready to come inside, I walked back up the slope, leaving the meadow behind me.  As I crested the hill, I paused to take another look at the trees and the grass and the deep, forever blue of the sky.  I stood there like that, taking in the scene, pondering its beauty and its vastness, and its truth.  Then I turned around, and headed for the house.

 

My shadow followed me every step of the way.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

The Inner/Outer Writing Paradox (Or, From an Old Oak Desk in New England)

Where is your special place, the place where you block out the clutter and noise and distractions, and let your creative energy flow?

Mine is an old oak desk that my father used to use when he was a student in school, decades ago.  It’s solid, heavy, and not designed for the accoutrements of 21st-century digital technology.  But it’s my little oasis to think and dream and create.

 

My father actually passed the desk on to me while I was still living with my parents, a high school student with my eyes peeled toward the future, the promise of ten thousand tomorrows, of horizons to be explored and aspirations realized.  We are old friends, my desk and I.  The oak is scarred in spots, dented in others, victim to the long passage of time and the elements.  But the imperfections merely serve to make it more approachable, more real, more mine.

 

I’ve spent countless hours sitting at the old desk, pecking away at my keyboard, working through stories and ideas and inspirations–some of which took shape and became full-bodied manuscripts and novels; others that died a quiet, gray death, falling into the oblivion of the unfinished and uncompleted.

 

Through it all, one thing has remained constant–the desk, my sturdy oak friend, has always offered solitude and seclusion–it’s just me, tucked away in my den.  There are times, at night, the drapes drawn, the house dark and still, as if surrounded by a giant, soundproof glove, when I feel like the only person, the only creature, on earth.

 

Writing is a lonely task–sometimes, it seems, the loneliest of all, especially when the words won’t come, the characters won’t cooperate, the sentences and paragraphs refuse to flow into anything resembling a coherent whole.

 

And yet, and yet . . .

There is a paradox at work here.  From the solitude, a reaching out; from the stillness, a sharing of words and thoughts and ideas–sending them out, perhaps with confidence, perhaps with trepidation, to be read and contemplated and critiqued by others.  What was originally crafted in the quiet of a bedroom, the seclusion of a Thoreau-like woodland getaway, is now dispersed, as if by magic, away from the confines and isolation of self and out toward the vastness of an ocean of readers.

 

And yet still, there is a paradox within the paradox. I, like many writers, am a lifelong introvert.  I recharge my batteries when I’m alone, lost in thought and wonder.  I suppose I’ve become a bit more skilled at social gatherings through the years (though perhaps my friends may disagree!), but mingling among partygoers or making small talk in a group setting has never, and will never, come naturally to me.  Much like Mitchell Brant or Marc Kuslanski, I tend to feel awkward and clumsy in such situations.  When I observe my extrovert friends or family members, the effortless way they break into, or begin, conversations, I cannot help but admire them for their skills and panache.  They make something I struggle with look easy.

 

But the funny thing is–the majority of them would likely never dare to share the intense, personal accounts we writers do on a regular basis–often, to people we don’t even know.  A paradox, indeed, that an introverted writer feels the desire, the longing, the need, to become naked and vulnerable, sharing his feelings, fears, dreams, memories, foibles, passions, ideas, loves with anyone who chooses to read them.

 

It’s as if the solitary act of writing needs to shed its literary cocoon and fly out the window, looking for places to land.  There is value, of course, even in writing just for yourself.  Diaries and journals through the ages lend proof to this truth.  But within every writer’s heart, isn’t there a calling, as if a voice were whispering, to share the depth and breadth of her essence?  The ideas, expressed as words on a page, are disconnected from the whole, separate from the world, so long as they reside only in our computer hard drive or in a dusty corner of our dresser drawer.

 

And the world, as it were, may contain only a handful of readers–perhaps family members and a few close friends–or it may include everyone, the reach as limitless as our imaginations.  The power of the Internet certainly offers such reach.  We write a blog post in New England, or Berlin, or San Francisco, or Prague, and we, through the simplest of clicks, instantly share it across the globe.  And we, more than likely, wish for our words to be read, and, hopefully, appreciated and digested and thought about, by as many people as possible.

 

Perhaps writers, then, are, in actuality, closet extroverts?  Or, maybe more accurately, writers are people, and feel the same longing all people share–to be recognized, to be understood, to be heard.  We just go about it in our own way.

We try, “in utter loneliness,” as John Steinbeck once said, to “explain the inexplicable.”

 

So the next time you tuck yourself away in your room or your office or your secluded writer’s cabin in the wild, and you feel a pang of guilt that you’re not spending that time with your family or your friends (a feeling I’ve certainly experienced on numerous occasions), perhaps you can offer them (and yourself) a reminder.

 

Tell them that you have something inside of you, insisting, unceasing, that must come out, something so personal, so inherently you, that no one else on earth can produce it.  And that it’s a wistful thing, ungraspable, really, like a phantom flower that materializes out of thin air, but when reached for, vanishes like mist.  All we can do, while sequestered in our little writing corner, the door shut, the phone off, is try to capture that feeling, that idea, that insistence within us and express it to the best of our abilities.

 

And then, when we step back out into the light of day, share it with the world.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

From Frost to Thor, with a Cup of Hot Cocoa (Or, the Literary Dualism of a New England Stick Season)

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to live year-round in balmy, gentle conditions, where palm trees sway in midwinter and heavy, insulated coats are strange accoutrements only seen on television.  I’ve never experienced anything like that–not even close.  I grew up in Rochester, in upstate New York, famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) for its long winters and the lake-effect snow machine that produces blizzards and white-outs with alarming regularity.

So, what did I ultimately do?  Move to Southern California, the South of France?  Tahiti?  Not quite.  I moved to Vermont, colder and harsher still than Rochester!  I have no regrets.  Vermont is a rural gem, a rugged little state tucked away in the far northwest corner of New England.  It’s one of the most beautiful places you will ever see.  It is also, to put it mildly, a land of extremes.  Few locales on earth experience such robust, exaggerated seasons–there is nothing subtle about the weather in New England.  The region, according to Henry Cabot Lodge so many years ago, yet still as appropriate today as when he proclaimed it, “has a harsh climate, a barren soil, [and] a rough and stormy coast.”

And yet . . . there is one time of year in New England that is more subdued, nondescript, and soft-spoken, almost shy in its fundamental drabness . . . The month of November, tucked away in hiding for so long, creeps up on the calendar, whisper-quiet, as if inching forward on its tiptoes.  And, once arrived, it has a personality, a starkness, all its own.

The flowers and blooms of spring are a distant memory, as are the ripe fields, muggy nights, and poolside gatherings of high summer.  October, with its breathtaking, almost narcissistic display of reds, golds, and oranges, is still fresh in the mind’s eye, but it’s a brief performance, a limited run.  The hillsides, afire with splashes of color only a fortnight ago, now lay stripped, with row on row of gray tree trunks and skeletal limbs reaching for the cold, late-autumn sky.

So, yes.  In many ways, November (what the locals sometimes refer to as “stick season” around here) is a somber, even depressive month.  The days grow successively shorter, colder, as the interminable New England winter approaches. There is a stillness to the land, a sharp crispness to the air, and all too often a succession of leaden-sky days with low-lying clouds hovering like bruises over the earth.

There is also, at least for me, a sense of slowing down, of stepping back, looking over the bare, windswept terrain and pausing for reflection.

It’s easy to see, walking along a Vermont country road littered with the desiccated harvest of fallen October leaves, or climbing a knoll and looking out at the ancient, rounded spine of the Green Mountains, how this area has served as an inspiration for some of the world’s great writers and poets.  Something in the rocky soil, the rugged, unyielding terrain, the windswept contours of a rolling New England field in the fall instills a serious quality to an author’s prose, or a poet’s verses.  Frost, Emerson, Thoreau, Plath, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Dickinson . . . the list goes on and on.  Surely, there is something special about this place.

 

I feel it throughout the year, but at no point does it affect me more than the month of November.  November brings out the serious and the brooding in my writing, makes me want to try my hand at poetry (a proclivity I rarely feel over the course of the eleven other months) and pen an introspective novel, light on the action and saturated with layered themes, obscure symbols, and tortured, existential characters.  I want to reach, pursue, challenge myself to write about the subterranean undercurrents of life, raging beneath the surface, often hidden beneath a civilized and well-practiced facade.  I want to produce art, works that inspire and examine, question and illuminate.

Worthy aspirations, all, but sometimes, when unchecked, they can become an albatross, long-winged and sharp-beaked, weighing me down, choking off my airflow.  I appreciate the masters of the craft and serious literature as much as anyone, and hope a small smattering of my own output can be labeled “literary,” but at the same time, at least for me, there is an element even more important than the profound, more essential than the sublime.

Thankfully, the month of November also speaks to this lighter aspect.

I find November, with its protracted evenings and roaring, crackling hearth fires and frost-covered windows, to be one of the coziest times of the year.  There are few treats I enjoy more on a cold fall night than preparing a mug of hot chocolate, maybe popping a generous portion of popcorn, and settling in to watch an old black-and-white classic–nothing extraordinary, not necessarily an Oscar- or Emmy-winning masterpiece, but rather something fun, silly even.  Perhaps I’ll binge-watch episodes of The Honeymooners, or tune in to a corny old sci-fi movie with bug-eyed monsters, mutated spiders, or ever-expanding gelatinous blobs from outer space.

Other times, I’ll dig into my vintage comic book collection, perhaps pulling out a science-fiction title from the 1950s like Strange Adventures or Mystery in Space.  If I’m feeling more superhero-minded, maybe I’ll flip through an old issue of Journey into Mystery with the Mighty Thor or, Mitchell Brant‘s favorite, The Fantastic Four.  Whichever choice I make, a classic sitcom; a cliched but riveting movie produced decades ago, short on character but high on smiles; or a vintage comic complete with nostalgic ads and the musty, old smell all comic book collectors know and love, I’m just glad that Old Man November, with all its grays and dark, wistful sighs, has its lighter side to help me keep things in balance.

It’s a noble thing, a calling, really, for artists and writers and creative souls the world over to want to imbue their work with meaning and thoughts, words, and images that move their audience from tears to laughter and back again.  It’s something every serious artist should have, and cultivate.  But if our creative process isn’t also fun, if we don’t love what we do, that, too, will be reflected in the final output.

“Write only what you love,” Ray Bradbury once said, “and love what you write.  The key word is love.  You have to get up in the morning and write something you love.”

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with some hot cocoa, freshly popped popcorn, and a legion of telepathic crab monsters.

Thanks so much reading!

–Mike

The Greatest Distance Is Only a Thought Away (Or, A Morning on the Beach)

I have always loved the sea.  From the first time I experienced an ocean beach, I felt drawn to it, its vastness, the steady rhythm of the waves, the sounds and smells and textures.  Growing up in Rochester, New York, hundreds of miles from the Atlantic coast, I didn’t have the chance to visit the sea very often (though Lake Ontario is a pretty fair facsimile!).  And so, whenever my family would take a trip to the coast, I always looked forward to it, counted down the days.  The trips never disappointed.

 

But there was one trip, one particular experience, that stands out, apart from the rest.

It was midsummer 1994, and my family and I took a two-week expedition to Prince Edward Island, Canada–to this day, the most beautiful place I have ever seen.  We toured the Island, took in the sights, the rich red dirt roads and farms and quaint seaside villages.  But most of all, we went to the beaches.  PEI is famous for its beaches.  We stayed at a hotel right by the shore.

 

One morning, at dawn, I woke up.  I don’t know why.  I just felt an urge to get up early and experience the day.  Everyone else was still asleep.  I quietly let myself out of the hotel and walked down the narrow footpath, through grasses still moist with dew.  Off to the left, a raven, an early riser himself, pecked at something in the grass, ignoring me.  I continued on to the beach, empty at this hour, as the sun began its ascent in the east.

 

I walked along the beach, my feet making patterns in the sand, down to the water’s edge.  A gull flew overhead, calling out, perhaps demanding a scrap of food I didn’t have.  The water was warm as it flowed over my feet and around my ankles–just another of PEI’s many charms.  Despite its northern location, the ocean water surrounding the Island is the warmest anywhere along the Atlantic coast north of Virginia.

 

The waves were gentle that morning, the breeze blowing in softly off the water.  I looked out, as far as I could see.  The sky was some nameless variant of pink, the sun rising, slowly, steadily, the start of a new day.  Another gull–or perhaps it was the same one–squawked again, its call echoing, echoing.

 

I peered at the horizon.  It was hard to tell where the sea ended, and the sky began.  It all appeared to be joined somehow.  Not separate, but whole.  Not two, but one.  That’s when it happened . . .

I suddenly felt something, I wasn’t sure what.  It was a jolt, like a surge of electricity, but it was also airy, gentle, a feather swaying, nearly weightless.  I closed my eyes, opened them, and I saw.

 

I saw, in my mind’s eye–so clearly it was as if I were seeing it directly before me–a distant beach across the water.  It was hours later there.  People were milling about.  And some of them were looking to the west, looking toward me.  Maybe they, too, were feeling something above and beyond themselves.

***********************

In The Eye-Dancers, Mitchell Brant, Joe Marma, Ryan Swinton, and Marc Kuslanski travel through the void, whisked to a parallel world through an unexplainable psychic connection with the “ghost girl” who haunts their dreams.  While Marc, ever the rational scientist at heart, attempts to explain their remarkable situation through the principles of logic and quantum mechanics, Mitchell–inquisitive by nature, intuitive, with an imagination constantly in overdrive–believes there is much more to it than the laws of physics can explain.

 

And yet, he, too, wants a reason, something to grab hold of, something that might begin to explain why this happened, how this happened, and how Monica Tisdale, the “ghost girl,” was able to draw them into her universe.

 

At novel’s end, when she once again walks in the shadows and secret places of his dreams, Mitchell asks her, point-blank  . . .

“Why did you ever come to me in the first place?  We . . . I . . . don’t even live in your world.”

To which Monica Tisdale answers, “I never really picked you.  I didn’t say to myself, ‘I need to get Mitchell Brant to help me.’  I just called, and you were there.”

But Mitchell needs more than that.  It’s not good enough, doesn’t go far enough . . .

“‘But the distance,’ he said.  He couldn’t even fathom it.  The void.  The gulf.  ‘You and me, we’re so far apart.'”

“‘Are we, Mitchell?’ she said.  ‘Are we really?'”

Later, upon reflection, in his own words, Mitchell states . . .

“Maybe more than anything, I learned that everything’s connected. . . . I’m not sure how I can explain it to make sense.  It’s like, even the things that seem so far away you can’t even imagine . . . even those things are right there with you.  And the people, too.

“Maybe we’re all connected to each other, in ways we can’t even really understand.  And that’s okay, I guess.  Because maybe we don’t need to understand it.

“We just need to believe it.”

 

**********************

Standing on that beach along the sandy shores of Canada’s garden province, the sunlight warming the morning air, I felt a part of the whole, as if a million invisible fibers extended from me, in all directions, everywhere, across the expanse of the globe.  I thought of the fish beneath the water, miles offshore, swimming, pursuing, surviving.  I thought of giant squid and crustaceans and blue whales, slicing through the water like living, breathing ocean liners, and blind, glowing creatures with fangs and stings, as yet undiscovered by humankind.

 

Looking across the surface of the waves, their rhythm timeless, eternal, I thought about the continents on the other side.  What were people doing at this moment?  And I realized–everything.  Babies were being born in London, Moscow, Johannesburg, and Rome.  Somewhere in Berlin, there was a car crash; elsewhere, there was an unexpected visitor popping in unannounced, perhaps a long-lost son returning home and bringing smiles to his parents’ faces.  In Ankara, in Casablanca, in Madrid and Paris and Warsaw and every town and village and hamlet in between, life was happening.  People laughed and cried, some shared and felt good; others were alone, in run-down apartments or dark alleyways, thinking of surrendered choices and opportunities now irretrievably lost.

 

Here I was, standing by myself on a fine Island morning, the sea and the wind and the gulls my only company, and yet–I was everywhere, plugged in, one small cog in an infinite and incomprehensible machine.

The gull squawked again, as if acknowledging my thoughts, and then another gull swooped in low, and then another, and another.

 

I watched as, moments later, they flew out over the water, becoming smaller and smaller, until they vanished, like a sea mirage.

 

It was then that I heard voices.  Other early risers were coming now, the beckoning of an Island summer day too much to resist.

The spell broken, I turned around and headed back for the hotel.

As I walked, I thought of sandy beaches halfway around the world, fish that swim in the dark, and stars that shine, like diamonds, in the night sky.  I realized, the light from some of those stars, distant beyond imagining, takes millions of years to reach our planet.

Yet reach us it does.

 

Thanks so much reading!

–Mike

Looking Out the Window . . . Or, the Cure for Writer’s Block?

It was difficult to feel motivated, and I don’t think I was the only person in the class who felt that way.  Fellow students yawned, fidgeted.  A couple of times, the professor, a tall, bespectacled brunette in her late forties, had to remind the class to focus on the discussion at hand.

 

The malaise was understandable, perhaps even unavoidable.  It was the first week of the spring semester, which in itself seemed a cruel joke.  Spring?  It was the end of January, and outside, a soft snow was falling from clouds the color of ash.  The temperature had been stuck several degrees below freezing for days, and the sun, a shy, long-lost acquaintance, seemed perpetually hidden.

Western New York State in midwinter . . .

 

“So,” the professor said, her voice high, energetic.  No doubt she sensed that she needed to inject some much-needed enthusiasm into the classroom.  “Today I want to talk about writer’s block.  We’ve all been there before, am I right?”  Nods, faint murmerings from the class.  “Well . . . when you want to write something, and you just can’t seem to, what do you do?”

 

One girl raised her hand and said she just waits it out.  Ideas come when they will come, she said.  I nodded.  I had tried to force-feed ideas in the past, but it never worked.  The creative process was a mystery.  It wasn’t something you could order around.  It was the one in charge.  Not me.

 

The professor didn’t agree.

“Look outside,” she said.  “Everyone.  Look out the window.”  Heads turned, slowly, and I overheard one student behind me whisper to herself that she needed another cup of coffee.  It was an early morning class on top of everything else.

 

“Now,” the professor continued.  “I want you all to describe what you see.”

Blank looks and an audible grunt from one guy who looked as if he’d literally stumbled out of bed two minutes before the start of class greeted her direction.

“In your notebooks, write what you see through the window,” she went on.  “Just a single paragraph.  But in that paragraph, I want you to paint a picture.  Create a mood.  Get those writer’s muscles working!  I’ll write something up, too.”

One girl asked if we’d all have to share our literary creations with the rest of the class.  The professor rolled her eyes behind the lenses of her glasses, and shook her head.  “Only if you want to.”  The girl breathed a sigh of relief.

I peered out the window, taking in the scene.  The classroom overlooked a snow-covered expanse interspersed with walkways and dotted with maple trees, stripped bare for the winter.  This section of campus was presently empty, the early hour and cold, snowy weather keeping students and faculty inside.

 

One tree in particular caught my eye.  It stood perhaps twenty feet beyond the window, its limbs reaching up into the white, wintry haze.  The trunk was large, solid–I estimated it must have been there a hundred years, if not more, an ancient guardian, a sentry of the walkways and classrooms within its watch.  A crow, cawing as it flew (or so I imagined through the closed window), landed on a branch, its black feathers bold against the whites and grays of a Rochester January.

 

I stared at the crow, thinking, imagining, and began to write . . .

“In the maple that has been here so long, no one alive can remember its absence, a crow perches.  Midnight black on slate gray.  What secrets does the tree know?  What hushed conversations has it overheard?  What conspiracies has it been privy to?  It stands and watches.  And listens, listens . . .  Not eternal, perhaps.  But enduring.  The bird flies away.  Perhaps, just perhaps, it had sensed something in the tree.  A knowledge, maybe.  A probing . . . as if its innermost being, its secrets tucked away in a quiet corner of its black heart were being exposed, one by wintry one . . .”

I never did share that paragraph with my classmates.  And, truth be told, I’m not sure it should see the light of day now!  But it illustrates the point the professor was trying to make that day.  If you observe the simplest thing and decide to write a paragraph, or a page, about it, you can escape the creative logjam you might be in and ride with the river’s current.  Sometimes the current is slow, winding, hesitant.  Sometimes it rushes headlong toward some unknown destination, full of promise and optimism.  Either way, however, you are moving, not stuck in the mire and muck of writer’s block.

 

While the scene you describe may not find its way into a short story or chapter (though it might!), it very well may kindle the flame of an idea, kick-start a story line, or help you to navigate the maze of the novel you’re working on.

 

There were times while writing The Eye-Dancers that I did indeed feel stuck.  What should happen next?  Sometimes your characters act in the most unpredictable ways!  That’s generally a good thing, except for when they act so unpredictably they cause you, the author, to question the next scene, or peer ahead, bleary-eyed and overwhelmed, not sure where the story should journey next, or if it should even be completed at all.

 

And for me, these creative crisis points are the moments when I need to remind myself to step back, take a breath–and write.  Create something fresh and new, completely unrelated to the work-in-progress that has me bogged down and frustrated.

Because whether you live in upstate New York as I once did, or northern New England as I do now, where the January landscape is a black-and-white photograph, the snowdrifts deep, the wind a serrated knife, the growth and renewal of spring seemingly a lifetime away; whether you live by the sea in a sunny, mild climate, the sound of the waves an echo from some long-ago century; or whether you live on a farm or in a bustling downtown, or on the outskirts of a Norman Rockwell-esque village, there is always something to watch, to hear, to contemplate.

 

All you have to do is look out the window . . .

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

How to Tell If You’re Addicted to Your Cell Phone

When Mitchell Brant, Joe Marma, Ryan Swinton, and Marc Kuslanski find themselves in the variant town of Colbyville, they quickly realize that their cell phones don’t function.  Colbyville, after all, has no cell network in place.  While there, the boys’ cell phones are useless.  This of course raises a question.  If you were stranded somewhere, perhaps some town in the middle of nowhere, or, perhaps, in some parallel world where the concept of cellular technology did not yet exist–how would you cope with the loss of your cell phone’s usefulness?  Would you be able to pocket it and not mind a bit?  Or would you struggle through a period of withdrawal?

All things considered, the boys in The Eye-Dancers handle the situation pretty well.  They miss being able to use their mobile phones, but they don’t dwell on it.  Of course, given the situation they’re in, literally life-or-death, they do have more pressing things to worry about!

But just the other day, when I took my car in to the shop to have it serviced and then took the shuttle ride back to work, I couldn’t help but notice my driver’s dependence on his cell phone.  He was a bald guy in his mid-thirties who sported a goatee and a backwards-wearing baseball cap.  He’d just moved up from Florida (he shared this with another passenger in the shuttle).  “You have it twisted in reverse,” the other passenger said.  “Most people in New England go to Florida in winter.  Not the other way around.”

“Yeah,” the driver said.  “If I had a dollar for every time someone told me that the last couple of weeks, I’d be rich.”  Moments later, he dropped the other passenger off, and then asked me where I work.  I told him, and he drove away.  It would be about a ten-minute drive to my office.

As we drove, I noticed he had his cell phone on his lap.  Every few seconds it would chirp, and he’d pick it up to read the new text.  One time, he moaned, threw his cap off, scratched his head.  Then he called someone and had a brief conversation.  A moment later, the phone chirped again.  He picked it up, while driving, read the text, keyed in a quick response.

“Where do you work again?” he asked two stop lights later.  I told him again, just as his phone chirped.  On and on it went, the entire drive.  When he dropped me off, he said he’d have the shop give me a call when my car was ready and he’d pick me up.

When he did, the same scenario played itself out.  Cell phone on his thigh, as he continually checked it.  I had to think to myself:  He wouldn’t last five minutes in Colbyville!

Easy for me to say, of course.  I use my cell phone sparingly–never having gotten in the habit of it.  Besides, it’s an archaic Tracfone, a relic.  When I show it to people, they usually laugh out loud and say, “Hey, I had one of those once.  About ten years ago!”

Clearly, there isn’t much chance of me being addicted to this particular device!  It’s definitely not a smart phone.  It’s quite dumb.

So . . . how can you tell if you’re addicted to your mobile phone?  Well, if like my shuttle-driving friend, you keep it on your lap as you drive passengers to and from the auto shop, you’re probably hooked.

And you probably wouldn’t like it in Colbyville very much.

Thanks for reading!

–Mike

Short Story — “The Christmas Figurines”

As I mentioned last week, I will gradually post a few of my short stories on The Eye-Dancers website, and since it’s the holiday season, I thought I’d post one today that fits right in with the time of year.  I wrote “The Christmas Figurines” several years ago, and that is evident in the scene where the protagonist, Chad, goes to the video store and rents a VHS tape.  Ah, yes–the “old” days!  I could have gone in and updated that scene, made it more suitable for 2012.  But I’ve decided to leave as is.  After all, it’s not video-transfer technology that is at the heart of this story!

In The Eye-Dancers, the four main characters all have to deal with a sense of isolation–and not just due to their other-worldly surroundings as the story unfolds.  Even in their “normal” lives, Mitchell, Joe, Ryan, and Marc all struggle to “fit in.”  This fitting in, or not fitting in, is a major theme in “The Christmas Figurines.”

I hope you enjoy it . . .

“The Christmas Figurines”

Copyright 2012 by Michael S. Fedison

****************

The first thought that popped into Chad’s head when he saw Mr. Coomtromb was, This guy doesn’t have any teeth.  But then the old man started to talk so much, it was hard to think at all.  Chad had been standing in the kitchen, munching on a handful of stale potato chips and staring at the boxes he still needed to unpack when there came a sharp knock on his door.

“Great,” he muttered under his breath, and a few chip remnants fell from his mouth to the tiled floor.  “Just what I need.”  He walked through the maze of boxes and furniture, while the knocking persisted.  “Hold on!”  he shouted.  “I’m coming, okay?”

By the time he opened the door, he was in a foul mood.  Why the intrusion, now of all times?  He had so much to do.  He—

“Hi there,” a tall man wearing a stained white shirt and faded corduroy pants said.  He was old—at least seventy, Chad estimated at first glance—and his cheeks were covered with a gray five o’clock shadow.  “I’m John Coomtromb, but all my friends just call me Coom.  I live right across the hall, young man.  So, seeing that we’re new neighbors, I took the liberty of coming over here and saying hi.”

For a long moment, Chad was at a loss for words.  Then:  “Uh, well, I’m really sort of busy unpacking, and—”

“Nonsense,” the man interrupted, holding up a hand.  “I won’t mind at all.  Besides, what are neighbors for?  I’ll help you.”  Without an invitation, Mr. Coomtromb brushed past Chad, into the apartment.

“Wait a second,” Chad said, closing the door.  “Look, I—”

“Say,” the old man broke in, “you aren’t from around here, are you?”

Chad shook his head.  Was it that obvious?  “No.  I just moved up here from Georgia.  But, really, I’m still unpacking my stuff.  I’ve got a lot left to do.”

Mr. Coomtromb appeared not to hear any of this.  He opened a box and pulled out a bottle of wine.  “Very nice,” he said, smiling toothlessly.  “Maybe I’ll join you for a toast to celebrate your arrival to this fine city.”

Chad couldn’t believe this guy.  Was he drunk?  He stepped closer to Coomtromb, and sniffed.  Nothing, except maybe the hint of fried onions on his breath.  Was he high, then?  He must have been something.  How else to explain it?

Before Chad could stop him, Coomtromb opened another box.

“Goodness, this is beautiful,” the old man said.  “Where did you get it?”  He pulled out two porcelain figurines, a winged female angel in a flowing, ankle-length dress and a young boy looking up at her with wonder-filled eyes.  The two figures stood on a white base powdered with artificial snow that glittered in the light of the room.

Chad considered taking the guy by the arm and flinging him out into the hall.  Maybe he would, too, if Coomtromb didn’t quit bothering him.  Surprising himself, not quite understanding his patience, his tolerance, Chad merely answered the question.

“It’s my mom’s,” he said.  “She got it as a gift when she was a little girl.  Thought I’d want it now that I’m so far from home.  You know how it is.”

Coomtromb nodded.  He stared at the figurines, as if bewitched.  “Yes.  I suppose I do.  Does it play?”  He looked at Chad, and for a moment, he seemed like a little child fascinated with a new toy.

“Yeah,” Chad said.  “It plays ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.’  You wind up the crank at the base.”

“You don’t say,” Coomtromb said.  “Can I . . . can I play it?  Please?”

Chad felt a sense of unreality wash over him.  This whole scenario was just plain weird.  Coomtromb was weird.  But maybe if he let the old man play the song, he would leave, and let Chad get back to work.  This made Chad bristle.  Why didn’t he just kick the guy out of his apartment?  That’s what most people would do.  And it’s not like it would be rude or mean.  He was busy.  He didn’t need this.  Somehow, though, he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

Sighing, he said, “Sure.  Knock yourself out.  But I got a lot of stuff to finish.”  Chad picked up a heavy box, placed it on a faded-brown sofa, and began sorting through the contents.  Here was a photograph of his father, looking impossibly young.  And one of his mother on her wedding day.  How pretty she looked.  Had she always been so beautiful?  He’d never really noticed, or if he had, he had taken it for granted.  Perhaps it took moving away to appreciate it.  Perhaps that’s how—

Suddenly, the angel figurine was singing.  The melody of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” filled the room, and Chad looked back over his shoulder.  The angel was twirling around the little boy, and he turned in concert with her, his eyes never leaving hers.  They were doing their choreographed routine, a routine Chad had seen hundreds of times through the years.  But he didn’t mind.  He liked the song, and the quality of the sound was first-rate.

Then he glanced at Mr. Coomtromb.

The old man was staring at the figurines, unblinking, mouth agape.  Tears formed in his eyes and rolled slowly down his cheeks.  When the performance ended, he bowed his head, as if in the presence of something holy.  Chad had no idea what to make of it.  He figured he should just ignore the old man and continue with the task at hand.

He emptied the box of its contents, and placed the photos and other paraphernalia on the kitchen counter.  He’d hang them later, when a certain odd old man was gone, safely across the hall.  He opened another box, and began to rummage through it, wishing he were more organized.  There seemed no rhyme or reason to the packing method he had used.  His mom had helped him, but she wasn’t so good at packing, either.  She hadn’t had much practice.  His parents had never moved from the house they bought the year they were married.

“That was . . . breathtaking,” Chad heard Coomtromb say.  The old man was sniffling, but the tears had run their course.  “Just breathtaking.  Thank you.”

Chad shrugged.  It was just an old music box.  Sure, it had been in the family for a while, and it meant a lot to his mother, but still, what was the big deal?  Coomtromb, of course, was more than ready to shed some light on the mystery.

“Do you know what that song means to me, young man?  Do you know?”  He wouldn’t take his eyes off the angel.  He still seemed in a state of rapture.

Chad didn’t reply.  He just waited for the man to continue.  Showing a moment of interest, he set the box aside and planted himself on the sofa.

“When I was young, I adored the movies,” Coomtromb said.  “I know, I know, many children do.  But I loved them.”  His gaze finally left the angel figurine, and locked itself onto Chad.  “They offered . . . I don’t know, an escape, I suppose, a place I could get lost in.  You see, my folks, they died when I was just four—car crash.  Can you imagine?  A fatal crash in 1937?  But we had them back then, too, you know.  My grandparents took me in.  They were old and didn’t understand me terribly well, but they cared for me.  And they knew how much I loved the movies, so they took me as often as they could.  And this one day, back during the war, they took me to see Meet Me in St. Louis.  They had wanted to see it, and asked if I desired to come along.  Me, turn away a movie?  Of course I went along!  And, oh, little did they know, little did I know, how that scene, that wonderful scene, would move me.  Do you know which one I mean?”

Chad shook his head.  He had never watched the film.

“At one point,” Coomtromb said, “when it seems the family in the movie will have to move away, and everyone is all sad and despairing, Judy Garland sings a song to Margaret O’Brien, who plays her baby sister.  Magnificent!  There wasn’t a dry eye in the theatre after she got done with that song.  I cried and cried, and tried to turn my face away, but, oh, who cared, even Granddad was crying!  Don’t you see?  She sang ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.’  I can remember it like it was yesterday.  It was at the old Palace Theater that used to be over on Lower Elm Street.  I went home that night and just wrapped myself in my blankets and I wished, I wished I had a big sister like Judy Garland.  I wished she would be there to comfort me and sing to me, and just be my friend.  I wished I could share my Christmases with a sister like that.  My, how I wished.  I guess . . . I suppose, in a way, I still do.  Do you have any sisters, young man?  Or brothers?”

“Yeah.  Two of each,” Chad said, but he didn’t really want to think about them right now.  Looking at the photos of his parents a moment ago, and now this.  Was Coomtromb trying to make him feel more homesick than he already was?

“You’re a very fortunate fellow, my young friend,” Coomtromb said.  “I was an only child.  I could watch Judy Garland, and I could dream of a big sister—or a big brother.  But that’s all it ever was—a dream.  Just a dream.  But here now, do you mind if I play the song again?”

“No, go ahead,” Chad said.

♣

The old man left a few minutes later, after playing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” six more times.  “I’ll be back soon, young man, don’t you worry,” Coomtromb had said.

“I won’t,” Chad responded, wondering if the intended sarcasm was apparent.  “Take it easy, Mr. Coomtromb.”

“Coom!” the man said.  “Coom to my friends!”

“Okay, Mr. . . . Coom.  See you around.”  But not too much, I hope.

After Chad closed the door behind Coomtomb, he went into the kitchen and grabbed another handful of potato chips.  Something about his unannounced guest grabbed hold of him and wouldn’t let go.

“Weird guy,” he said to the bare white walls, the fingerprint-smeared windows, and the smiling faces in the old family photographs.

♣

Throughout the next week, Chad got situated and began to explore his new neighborhood.  He’d take long walks, despite the cold, taking advantage of his free time.  He’d moved in on the first, and he wouldn’t need to begin work until the day after the New Year, so he had ample opportunity to get acquainted with the sprawling city.  He would leave in the morning and stroll through the streets for hours, stopping every now and then at a café for coffee and a pastry.

He walked through the entire apartment complex several times, as well, attempting to see into the building’s past.  Perched alongside the cold, gray river, two stories high and half a football field in length, the structure had once been a paper mill.  In fact, the locals still called it “The Mill.”  It struck Chad as quintessentially New England.  He liked the antique feel of the hallways, the odd angles in the corners, the unfinished wooden stairway at the heart of the building.  When he tried hard, he could almost smell the sweat pouring off the workers a century ago, he could almost hear the clanging of the building’s old machinery and the piercing shriek of the five-o’clock whistle.  But he also felt out of place here.  It struck him as the sort of residence only natives should live in, not transplanted Southerners.  But the price had been right.

He’d run into Coomtromb on several occasions since that first day.  The old man had knocked on Chad’s door and invited himself in a handful of times, and intercepted him in the hall more than once.  It was always the same.  Coomtromb wanted to talk, to prattle without pausing for breath.  Chad would nod and say an occasional “uh-huh,” and then he would tell the old man he needed to get on with some task or other.  He didn’t want to seem abrupt, but Coomtromb would talk all day if he didn’t put a stop to it.  Sometimes he let Coomtromb wind up the angel figurine, and listen to the song again.  That always sent him away happy.

One thing he’d noticed.  No one else spoke, or even looked, at the old man.  Whenever Chad saw someone pass Coomtromb in the hall, they just kept walking, as though the man didn’t even exist.  Guess people just aren’t as friendly up North, Chad thought, and left it at that.

♣

“Oh, excuse me, I didn’t mean to bump into you,” the voice said as Chad was knocked into from behind.  He was in The Mill’s foyer, taking off his gloves and scarf following another brisk morning walk.

“That’s okay,” Chad said.  “No harm done.  It . . .”  He paused when the person who’d bumped him came into view.  She was a young woman, probably around his age, with long brown hair and large, silver wire-frame glasses that gave her the look of a reference librarian.

“Hey,” she said.  “I’ve seen you around.  You’re the new guy on the second floor, right?  I live down the other end from you.  Name’s Nan.  Nan Butler.  Pleased to meet you.”  She smiled, and offered a red-mittened hand.

Chad shook it, feeling awkward.  He’d never been comfortable around women his own age, and he sensed the blood rushing to his cheeks.  He introduced himself and told her he was pleased to meet her, too.

“Hmm,” she said, cocking her head to the side, “you’re not from around here, are you?”

Smiling, he told her he was from a small town in southern Georgia.  Then he said, “I can’t believe how cold it is here.  Do you ever get used it?”

“Not really,” she said, as someone else rushed past them on the way outside. “I’ve been here all my life, and when winter comes, it still feels cold as ever.  Maybe colder.”

“Great,” he said.

She smiled.  “Let’s go upstairs.”

On the way up, she said, “Hey, I’ve seen that old creep Coomtromb talking with you.  Is he buggin’ you?  You can report him.  Lots of people have.  I almost did, too.  He’s been here, like, forever.  Whenever someone new comes along, he strikes like a vulture.  New people are the only ones who give ‘im the time of day, ‘cause no one who knows him will talk to him.”

They reached the top of the stairs.  The long, narrow hallway was empty in both directions.

“But why?” Chad said.  “I mean, he comes on strong, but what’s so bad about him?  Seems pretty harmless to me.”

She snorted.  “You’ll learn.  He steals, you know, so you better watch out.  No one’s proven anything, but anyone who’s been here knows he does.  Like, a couple years ago, I had a friend who lived in the room right next to his.  Her second day here, he went in and just . . . took some of her family photos.  He tried to, anyway.  Lucky for her, she saw him do it.  He said he just wanted to look at them, that he’d planned on giving them back.  He was, like, ‘Oh, I just wanted to talk with you.  If I borrowed these, I knew you’d come back for them.’  I mean, can you believe this guy?

“And he’s . . . I don’t know . . . weird.  Like, sometimes in summer, he’ll go to the park and just . . . sit there.  Some of my friends have seen him there, sitting on a bench and watching people.  For hours.  I’ve seen him there myself.  Mostly, though, he just stays in his room all day, doing God knows what—at least until someone new comes to live here, anyway.  So take my advice, and tell ‘im to quit pestering you.  That’s the only way to set him straight.”  She started walking toward her door.  Though his room was in the opposite direction, Chad found himself following her.

“But how does he live here, then?” Chad asked.  “I mean, if he stays in his room most of the time.  Doesn’t he have a job?”

“Who’d hire him?” Nan said.  “No, he’s retired, I guess.  Must have a great pension, ‘cause, like I said, he’s been here for years.  I wish he’d go to a retirement home or something.  But at least I’m way down the hall from him.  You’re right across.”  She stopped at her door.  “Hey, I’ll be seeing you around, Chad.  Maybe we can go for coffee or something.”

Again, he blushed.  “Sure,” he said.

“Can I ask you something?” she said then.  “Sorry, but I’m kinda nosey.”

He chuckled.  “Ask away.”

“Why’d you move here?  I mean, why did you come up North?  Do you have family up here?”

He shook his head.  “No.  I graduated this past spring, and couldn’t find a job in my hometown.  I started searching online, and a place up here hired me right over the phone.  Can you believe that?  I start in January.”

“What will you be doing?” she asked.

“I got hired on as a technical writer.”  When she looked perplexed, he explained that he’d be writing how-to manuals for computer software.

“Wow,” she said.  “But, why’d you come way up here, though?  Couldn’t you have found a job in Atlanta or Charlotte?  Someplace closer to home?”  She smiled and looked away.  “Hey, I’m sorry.  Like I said, I’m nosey.  You don’t need to answer if you don’t want.”

Down the hall, a door opened and shut with a resounding, echoing snap.  A tall man in a frayed brown coat emerged, walking briskly toward the stairs, then down them, out of sight.

“No, that’s okay,” he said, trying hard to fight the rising heat in his cheeks.  It was easier when Nan was doing most of the talking.  “I . . . I guess I wanted to get out on my own.  I’ve always lived at home.  I wanted to go somewhere different, while I’m still young.  I’d never been anywhere but the South.  I didn’t think I’d miss home as much as I do, either.  Mom was pretty shook up, too, especially with me being away for Christmas this year.  But she’ll be okay.”

“At least you were home for Thanksgiving,” Nan said.

“Yeah,” he said.  “I guess.”

♣

As Christmas neared, the weather turned even colder, and Chad had serious doubts about his relocation.  How could he live in such a climate?  Yet, there was no snow.  Only wind and gray clouds and raw, cutting rain and dying grass and bare, skeletal trees that seemed poised to reach down and strike.  He had heard of SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), but had never experienced it . . . until now.  He had called home yesterday, and it was sunny and seventy-four degrees.  “See?” his mom had scolded.  “You should come home.”

He had met several of The Mill’s residents now, and the ones who lived on his end of the hall often warned him about Mr. Coomtromb.  “Stay away,” they said.  “Old nutcase,” they said.  “Ignore him, and he’ll get the message,” they said.  And Chad had to admit, he was getting close to the point of no return, the point where he would tell Coomtromb to get lost.  If Coomtromb could only show a little restraint, it wouldn’t be so bad, but the old man was almost always there, ready to pounce.

As much as he wanted to tell Coomtromb to leave him alone, Chad knew it would be hard to do.  Coomtromb didn’t mean any harm, Chad was sure of that.  But his reluctance to tell Coomtromb off ran deeper.  He did not really understand it, and could scarcely believe it, but he knew, on a level beyond logic and common sense, that there was something he shared with the old man, some odd form of kinship.  On the surface, such a notion seemed beyond laughable.  What could the two of them possibly share?  But he felt it.  It was real, and as sharp as the cold crack of dawn in that hour just before the sun rises above the horizon.

♣

It was morning on Christmas Eve, and Chad had made it downstairs undetected by Coomtromb.  He was going to take a walk—a nice, long walk in the snow.  Three inches had fallen already, and no let-up was in sight.  He felt like a schoolboy let loose in the playground.  He’d never seen so much snow in his life.

“Hey there,” he heard someone say behind him.  “Where ya going?”

It was Nan, and he was glad to see her.  They hadn’t talked much since that first encounter—only a handful of times—but he enjoyed her company.  He wasn’t the type to go out on the town at night looking for a match.  If he were ever going to meet someone, this would be the way:  gradual, unforced, a natural progression of daily events.

He told her he was going for a walk in the snow, and she said she wanted to come along.  They walked around The Mill, then down the side streets to the west of it, him looking up at the flakes as they fell, like white magic, from the clouds; her pointing at stately colonials that brooded in the distance like old poets contemplating the meaning of life.  “That’s the old Bartlett place,” she said as they strolled past a mansion-sized house.  “They say it’s haunted.”  She proceeded to tell him the stories, the legends, not only of the Bartlett house but several others.  He listened, and asked questions when he needed to, and he laughed with her often.  More than anything, he found himself wishing the moment could linger.  He felt a connection—with her and the neighborhood.  Maybe it was the snow, the time of season, the holiday wreaths hanging from the front porches and doors.  But for once he felt like he belonged here, like he was a part of a whole, a vital link in a moving, living chain.

Then she brought up Mr. Coomtromb.

“When are you gonna give him the boot, Chad?” she said.  “A few people are starting to lump you two together, you know.  You don’t want that.  Trust me.”

“Well, after New Year’s, I’ll be starting my job, and it’ll probably blow over,” he said.

She stopped, suddenly, and put her hands on her hips.  “What is it with you?  Do you, like, like him or something?”

“No,” he said, “not really.  It’s just . . . he needs someone to talk to, that’s all.  He seems lonely.”

“Pss,” she said, and started walking again.  Snow landed on her hat, then melted.  “Big deal.  Everyone is lonely.  Haven’t you ever noticed?”

Chad looked away.  Not until I moved up here, he thought, but he said nothing.

♣

Two hours later, they got back to The Mill, dusted with snowflakes.

“Thanks for the walk,” Nan said as they pushed their way into the foyer.  “That was nice.”  She took off her glasses and wiped them with the end of her scarf.

“Any time,” Chad said.

When they had climbed the stairs, Chad, taking an uncharacteristic chance, invited Nan to his room for coffee and a snack.

“Sure,” she said.  “I’d like that.”  They walked slowly down the hall, and Chad mused that they probably looked like a couple.  “Hey,” she said then, “your door’s open!  Someone’s in your room, Chad!”

At first, he figured it must be some optical illusion, some trick of the light.  But no—his door was definitely open.  “Stay out here,” he told her.  “I’ll go in an check.”

“Be careful,” she said.

He tiptoed into the room, wary, on guard.  He had never learned how to fight, and he didn’t know how he would fare if someone picked one with him now.  Maybe the—

Then he saw him, and he knew there would be no need for a fight.

Mr. Coomtromb was seated on a chair, next to Chad’s coffee table.  He was caressing the angel figurine, staring at it with that same rapture Chad had observed before.  But how did he get in?  Had he picked the lock?

“Mr. Coomtromb?” Chad said.  “What are you doing here?”

A gasp escaped the old man, and he quickly put the figurines back on the tabletop.  “I . . . your door was open, it wasn’t locked!” he said.  “Oh, believe me, my young friend, I knocked and knocked, I surely did, but you wouldn’t answer, and I just had to see it, to hear the song, you understand, and I didn’t want to wait, oh, it seemed so cruel to wait.  But I didn’t break in!  I just tried the knob, you see, just in case, and it opened!  I wasn’t going to do anything bad to your place, young man.  I was just going to take—to borrow—your lovely angel for today and tomorrow—for Christmas, you see—and return it after.  I promise, I would.  I will!  You believe me, don’t you?”

“Tell him to get out of here.”  It was Nan.  She had entered the apartment.  “He was trying to rob you, can’t you see that?  I told you!  He’s an old crook!  You better check your drawers, ‘cause I bet he took some stuff and snuck it in his room by now.”

“No,” Coomtromb said.  “I did no such thing.  I just wanted to borrow this angel, and the door—”

“I cannot believe this guy,” Nan interrupted, and Coomtromb shook his head, back and forth, back and forth.  His toothless mouth was set firm.  He looked to Chad like a gradeschooler denying the accusations of a teacher.

“Look, just calm down, everyone,” Chad said.  “Just chill.  No harm’s been done.  I guess it’s just as much my fault as anybody’s.  If I left the door unlocked . . .”

Nan’s mouth dropped open.  “Are you really that stupid?” she said.  “You actually believe this guy?”  The sigh that escaped her lips then had a finality to it, a hard crack of firm, unalterable judgment.  “Look, I need to get back to my room, okay?  Thanks again for the walk.”

“Nan, wait . . .”

But she was already gone.  He could hear her rapid, stiletto footsteps on the hallway floor, receding into the distance.

“I am sorry about that,” Coomtromb said.  “She’s a pretty girl.”

“Yeah,” Chad said.

“But, my young man, I promise you, I did not break in.  When your door was unlocked, I—”

Chad gestured for Coomtromb to stop.  “Don’t worry about it.  And go ahead.  You can borrow the music box, I don’t care.  Just be careful with it.  It’s kinda special to my mom, and she’d be ticked if something happened to it.”

Coomtromb began to speak, but Chad again halted him.  “Look,” he said.  “I really just wanna be left alone, okay, Mr. Coomtromb?”

“Coom to my friends,” Coomtromb said.  “And, yes, I will leave now.  I know all about being alone, you see.  Intimately.  Especially over the holidays.  Have you ever been to a party or a get-together, my young friend, and just felt . . . separated, apart, as though a wall, a barrier, existed between you and the others?  So many people talking and laughing and dancing all around you, but you . . . you’re alone.  Have you ever?  That’s the way it is right here, too, right here in The Mill, right here in the city.  So many people all around, and yet. . . .  But I thank you for your kindness, young man, and do not worry—these beautiful figurines are in good hands.  I will treat them with the utmost care and delicacy.  And I promise, I will return them on the twenty-sixth.”

♣

Chad sat in his apartment that afternoon, trying to feel festive.  It was Christmastime, after all.  But he didn’t.  Nan’s words stung him.  He told himself it didn’t matter, that she didn’t matter—how could she be so quick to accuse Coomtromb, anyway?  She wouldn’t even hear the guy out.  He tried telling himself that she wasn’t his type, that she wasn’t the sort of person he’d hoped she was, that it was no great loss.  But it was a loss, and not all the philosophizing in the world could deny it.

He also thought of Mr. Coomtromb.  He wasn’t sure if he believed the old man’s assertion that Chad’s door had been unlocked, but it didn’t really matter.  What mattered were Coomtromb’s words.  He thought about being at a party, being here at The Mill, surrounded by people, by strangers who didn’t know him and didn’t care.

The snow had not let up.  If anything, it was coming down harder now—a white Christmas was assured.  A white Christmas.  Such a concept was to him, until this moment, a fairy tale.  And that’s how the world outside his window seemed, too.  The snow fell from a bruised-gray sky, covering everything under a veil of silence.  Car tires rotated through city streets without a noise.  Pedestrians, flaked with white powder, walked quietly along the sidewalk, their steps muted, the sound absorbed by the snow cover.  And in the gray-white distance, Chad could barely make out the river as it flowed along like a stream of liquid lead.

He felt an ache to be in Georgia, to be with Mom and Dad, and his brothers and sisters.  They would be laughing now, probably, and drinking eggnog, and sitting in front of the hearth.  “Chilly outside,” Mom would say, though “chilly” to her would mean fifty-three degrees with a slight breeze.  And Dad would throw another log in the fire, then take Mom onto his lap and hold her close.

But all Chad could do here and now was look out at the snow, look down upon the streets and sidewalks and storefronts adorned with holiday wreaths and lights in the windows.  Just sitting there.  Or, was there something else he could do?

He left his room, and locked the door.  Before he walked away, he tested the lock twice.

♣

The video store was down at the corner, just a half mile away.  But it seemed like hours to get there.  The wind had turned harsh, and the afternoon was fading like a dim memory.  It was nearly dark when Chad went out, though it was just barely past four o’clock.

When he entered the shop, he was covered with snow, and very eager to get out of the elements.  The first thing he noticed was the shopkeeper, a balding fat man with a thick, bulbous nose, standing behind the checkout counter.  There were no other customers.

He went over to a shelf labeled “Classics.”  The shopkeeper immediately came up to him.  “Can I help you find something in particular?” he asked.  “I’m about ready to close.  Most weeknights, I’m open till seven, but not Christmas Eve I ain’t.”  The man’s accent was so thick, Chad thought he could hear the chowder coating each word.

Chad asked him if he had Meet Me in St. Louis.

The shopkeeper looked hard at him, as if noticing something about him for the first time, and not liking it.  “Ain’t from around here, are ya?” he said.

Chad shrugged.  “Georgia.”

The man grunted.  Fingering through the movies on the shelf, he pulled one out and handed it to Chad.  “Well, here you are,” he said.  “Lotsa years, this is rented out for Christmas.  You got lucky.”  They went to the checkout counter, and Chad filled out the necessary paperwork to become a card-carrying member of the store.  All the while, the shopkeeper fidgeted and stared at the pen as Chad wrote, as if willing it to move faster.

When Chad released the pen and slid the papers back across the counter, the shopkeeper processed the order at warp speed and handed over the cassette.

“You got it for five days,” he said.  “Live it up.”

Chad nodded, and walked out.  As soon as the door had shut behind him, he saw the shopkeeper flip over the “Open” sign.  “Sorry, Closed,” it now read.  Then a stiff gust of wind came up, and he started back for The Mill.

♣

Knocking on Mr. Coomtromb’s door, Chad was strangely nervous.  It seemed backwards.  Coomtromb was the one who was supposed to knock on his door.  When there was no answer, he knocked again.

“Mr. Coomtromb . . . Coom . . . open up,” he said.  “I rented a movie for us to watch tonight.”

The door swung open.

“A movie?”  Coomtromb was in his night clothes already.  “Which one?”

Chad showed him the case.  For a moment, he worried that the old man was going to drop over from a heart attack.  His hands flew to his chest, and his mouth gaped open.

“My great goodness,”  Coomtromb said.  “Words fail me, young man.  It has been years, years, since I last saw that wonderful movie, that wonderful, wonderful scene!  But . . . but I don’t have a VCR.  Even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to operate it to save my life!  Oh, no!”

“That’s okay,” Chad said.  “I have one, and I even know how to use it.  We can watch in my room.”

“Oh, yes, that would be fine, fine!” Coomtromb said.  “But first, I must pop some popcorn—I have a microwave, you know, and dentures, too, have you ever seen me wear them? I usually don’t like to, but for popcorn, well . . . And I must pour some beverages, and open some snacks, and . . . Come in, come in!  You can help me prepare!”

Chad went in.  The first thing he noticed were the Christmas figurines standing atop a cluttered desk.  He was about to approach them, but Coomtromb had other ideas.

“Come along with me, my young friend,” Coomtromb said.  “I am so looking forward to the show, and we need to get ready.  Let us not delay!  My microwave is extremely temperamental, you know!”

He followed the old man into the kitchen, where they made popcorn—Coomtromb burned it on the first try—opened a bag of pretzels, and grabbed some orange sodas from the refrigerator.  Then, fully stocked, they went to Chad’s apartment, where Chad contributed eggnog and even a little sparkling cider to the mix.

They sat on the sofa, the popcorn bowl and pretzels between them, the drinks on the coffee table, and watched the movie.  Coomtromb stared at the television screen, rapt.  Several times, his eyes widened to the size of silver dollars, and once he laughed so loud it was hard to make out the movie’s dialogue.  He asked Chad to rewind the tape so they could watch the scene again.  “And I promise,” he said, “this time I will not laugh, and we’ll be able to hear.”  But he did laugh, and they didn’t hear.

Chad enjoyed the movie more than he thought he would, but he kept waiting for the pivotal scene.  The scene Coomtromb had talked about so often.  And when it came, the old man cried like a little girl.  “I’m sorry,” he said when it was over.  “I can’t help it.  I’ve never been able to help it when Judy Garland sings that lovely, lovely song.”

An hour later, standing in the doorway, Coomtromb thanked Chad.  “That was the best Christmas present I’ve had in a long time,” he said.  “You have no idea, my friend.  And, whatever you do, don’t concern yourself with the figurines.  I’ll bring them back, day after tomorrow, you’ll see.”

♣

Christmas came and went, and Mr. Coomtromb failed to deliver the figurines.  Whenever he talked to Chad, the topic of the figurines did not come up.

He talked to Chad less and less as time pushed on.  Chad started his job at the beginning of January, and usually worked late.  Additionally, a couple of new residents had moved in, which distracted Coomtromb.  But sometimes, on a Saturday, the old man would knock on Chad’s door and come in; sometimes, early on a weekday morning, Coomtromb would stop him in the hall and ramble on about the past, about the old Palace Movie Theater, about wishes and dreams.

Regarding the figurines, though, Coomtromb was silent, and by the time spring at last beckoned, Chad knew he would never see them again unless he requested their return.  And he planned to.  His parents had called and told him they wanted to visit in the fall, to see the New England foliage at its peak of color.  That wasn’t the holiday season—but it was close enough.  He knew his mother would inquire about the figurines, and probably would want to see them, or even ask for them back.

The evening after his parents’ phone call, he stepped into the empty hallway and approached Coomtromb’s door.  He raised his hand, ready to knock.  That’s when he heard it.

Coomtromb was in there, playing the song.  Through the solid wood of the door, Chad could hear “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” and he could picture the old man, his eyes as wonderstruck as a little boy’s, staring at the singing porcelain angel.

“After all this time,” Chad said softly.  “After all these months.”

The song stopped.  A moment of silence.  Then the song began to play again.

Chad let his hand drop to his side.  “Sorry, Mom,” he said, “I just can’t.”

He turned around, walked slowly back across the hall, and went into his room.

******************************

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike