Chrome Cady: A Quote Woman on the Run

By Jimbeaux Dean

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Too bad! Chrome Cady is chock-full of quotations and we don’t know nuthin’! But life is for learning, sometimes the hard way.

Chrome Cady is a raunchy tale of running away to a world of watching and being watched, colored ambiguous by nonbinary gradients in which male and female intermingle. It’s a ribald romp of friendship and artwork fueled by the Power of Belief and the faith to Begin Again.

I—me, the author, Jimmy—I am considered a genderbender, but I’m just me. This book is about androgynous, transgender, intersexed, and other “genderqueer” folks leading our lives in pretty much open-hearted acceptance of the so-called “gendernormal” people among us.

Enter a world of luminous paintings, laughing bells, booblers, and fireflies. But don’t expect to stay long: Everyone goes away.

And check out those quotations!

Please: If you see Cady Villanueva [McKessnor] Anderson Stroble _____, give her a hug, give her this book, and tell her to call me!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jimbeaux Dean
• Release date: Sep 3, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370986279

Jimbeaux Dean

Hey there! I'm Jimmy, also known as the artist JBD. I'm a lifelong collector of quotes. One of my favorites is: I hate quotations. Tell me what you know. —Ralph Waldo Emerson When the other side of my soul ran away, I gathered my favorite quotes into a book of stories about our world, in hopes that the good energies would pull her back. We're a raunchy bunch so consider yourself warned. People think I'm a genderbender, but really I’m just me. My book is about androgynous, transgender, intersexed, and other “genderqueer” folks leading our lives in pretty much open-hearted acceptance of the so-called “gendernormal” people among us. So please: If you see Cady Villanueva [McKessnor] Anderson Stroble _____, give her a hug, give her my book, and tell her to call me!

Book preview

title page

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We spin in an ever-turning circle, and it is our delight to change the bottom for the top and the top for the bottom. You may climb up if you wish, but on this condition: Don’t think it an injustice when the rules of the game require you to go back down.

–Boethius

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Copyright Page

Poem In the Gloaming by Meta Orred from Poems (1874).

Artwork of Tibetan fox by Julie Bueria aka Fowell. Used by permission.

Artwork Midnight Under the Streetlight by Hans Jónsson aka Miniar. Used by permission.

Artwork The Scream (Der Schrei der Natur, The Scream of Nature) by Edvard Munch [public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Thank you, Ken, for the cover photo, Gilgamesh, and the Corinthians verses.

Thank you, WikiQuote.

Thank you, Quote Investigator.

Thank you, American Trans Man.

See the print version for more quotations and licensed material.

Copyright © 2017 Jimbeaux Dean (MullinsHead)

LunaC River Press

ISBN-13: 978-1370986279 [epub]

ISBN-13: 978-1540489418 [print]

I hope you know

this is for you.

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If you will it, it is no dream; and if you do not will it, a dream it is and a dream it will stay.

—Theodor Herzl

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Other Titles

Separate but Sequel

A Saint Among Sinners

One Born Every Minute

Come Home

Let Me Come Home

Have Piles, Will Travel

To Err Is Human: O the Humanity!

The Last Time I Saw David

The Last Time I Saw Richard

It Wasn’t the Last Time!

Shit Happens, Then You Die

C-A-D-Y

The Blue Version

Cracked

A Slice of Cadylife Pie

Heeeeeeeeere’s Cady!

Flowing Uphill

Cady Villanueva [McKessnor] Anderson Stroble ____

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

Contents

Genesis here

Exodus here

Learnings here

Samuel here

R here

J here

h here

Roller Coaster here

Trace broccoli here

Seth2Steph here

MON here

The End here

Chrome Cady Playlist here

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Nurse: Doctor, the Invisible Man is in your waiting room.

Doctor: Tell him I can’t see him.

---

Chapter 1

Genesis

Hi, everyone. It’s me, Cady. Jimmy thought this story would be best told by me, so blame him.

We realized we were losing these stories and you know what Sammy said: Write ’em down! (I wish I could get the growl of his voice in there.) So here we are, writin’ ’em down. As Charlie would say, we had to do it to make the world run right.

Thanks to everyone who filled in the gaps of the stuff we’d already lost memory of. And especially thanks to everyone who filled in the gaps for stuff we never knew about! Imagine, Jimmy not knowing about stuff; he must have been at Judy’s.

Okay, let’s do this thing. Let’s go back to where it all started . . .

element chromium

Chapter 2

Exodus

I lowered myself into a deep squat. The platter felt heavy in my hands, but I knew the weight was all in the metal of the platter itself. Still, that little piece of dried out beef sitting in its congealed juices cost me some pretty coin. Reaching the bottom of my squat, I took a lungful of air and rose up quickly, bellowing, "You son of a bitch!" On the last word, I heaved the platter up, then ducked out of the way as it clattered on the floor. The meat stuck to the ceiling for a moment before falling. A little congealed juice stained the ceiling.

I wiped my snotty nose on my sleeve and looked at the small mound of mess on the floor; it wasn’t as satisfying as I’d hoped it would be. Stepping around the platter and dodging drips from the ceiling, I reached across the table and grabbed the bowl of mashed potatoes. Slamming it into the mess on the floor, I howled a wrenching cry that came from deep within. The porcelain bowl cracked but the glob of potatoes held together. Again, unsatisfying.

I was beginning to wind down, to tire of my own misery, to become aware that if I howled too much I’d attract the attention of my in-laws, Mitch and the Bitch, next door. The last thing I needed was the You Betcha Bitch waltzing in with her high-pitched Where’s my little sweetheart? greeting to this empty house with only me in it. And then I couldn’t hold back the moan of frustration and anger and rejection and sorrow that grew from my belly and rose up my throat, screaming past the slime of spittle and snot and lacrimosa.

Goddamn him! David had been cattin’ around his whole life; I knew that when I married him. But tonight?! I lunged toward the dining table, missing the meat and potatoes on the floor but kicking empty beer cans along the way. I blindly swung my arm, knocking over the vase of flowers. Flowers! I bought flowers and the roast and a case of beer. We couldn’t afford that roast; we couldn’t afford any of it. Goddamn him! This was supposed to be a celebration, I screamed internally as I collapsed down on my knees and kept collapsing, my face pressing into the carpet, depositing slime that spewed from my mouth as much as my eyes and nose. I no longer cared if my wails roused the dead. Or neighbors. Let her come here and find me like this. And let me listen to her accusatory What’d you do to chase him away? Goddamn him to hell.

What the hell happened, David? I shouted as I jumped to my feet, flailing my arms as I continued, Did you even make it to work or did some hottie cross your path? The reply was silence just before my flails banged into a wall. I banged the wall back.

This was supposed to be our big celebration. Today was supposed to be a gimme. ‘It’s in the bag, Cades.’ I heard myself imitate him. It was the last thing he said before we went to sleep last night. It’s in the bag, Cades, and then he kissed me and we went to sleep.

I gained a level of awareness, saw myself standing with my head against a wall, talking to an empty house. I straightened up and took a deep breath. Stepping over the dinner mess on the floor, I headed for the kitchen and grabbed a beer from the fridge. I’d bought a case of beer. A case! We couldn’t afford that. But we soon would be able to, after today, supposedly.

I downed most of the beer while still standing next to the fridge, so I grabbed a couple more. Let’s celebrate! I said to the emptiness around me. That was the last thing David said as he breezed out the door this morning: See you tonight. Let’s celebrate! And so I bought this dinner we couldn’t afford, because I knew that David wanted—more than anything in the world, even more than sex—to look me in the eye and declare a financial victory. It was something his life path had denied him and he wanted it.

Why were we celebrating? I emptied the can as my fuzzy brain tried to think. Carpeting. That’s what it was. I left the empty beer can next to the fridge and opened another, then stepped over the dinner mess and shuffled into the den. David’s desk was in the den. I turned on the den light and stood looking at the mounds on his desk. I’d never gone through his desk before; I was always afraid of what I’d find. I shuffled closer and the first thing I found was a place for my can of beer.

Selling carpeting. Major yawn, but David took to this new job with his usual enthusiasm. He worked his butt off during training, probably because we both knew that this job HAD to work, or else David would be sent to hell: Anderson Implements to work with his father. Many sons would be honored to work with their fathers, but Mitch . . . wanted David to be someone else.

It was a done deal, landing that carpeting contract—that’s what David said. And he sure polished that presentation. I thought that even the wad of papers covered in sales pitches that he took along looked good, though I didn’t know why he needed a wad of paper; they were doing the presentation electronically, with bright colors and cool animation. You gotta leave something behind to seal the deal, he explained to me.

I gently sifted through stacks on his desk, not knowing what I was looking for. It was supposed to be a whole office building of carpeting. I was through the layer of recent crap on David’s desk. The beer was starting to hit me bad; I needed a smoke. I found a roach in an ashtray and lit it up.

Then I found David’s little black book. It was actually a little pocket calendar, years old, that David wrote phone numbers in. I flipped through the pages. The majority of the entries were just initials. Girls, I figured, since some had stars, even multiple stars by their phone numbers. Then I saw an entry that was just one letter: J.

Holy shit.

David talks to Jay.

I mean, of course. But wow, he’s never told me about talking to Jay.

The last time I saw Jared was at his wedding and the memories came flooding back as I finished off the roach. It was supposed to have been my wedding, too.

It was senior year of college. We’d just gotten home from bowling and Jay padded toward me in his dirty white socks carrying a box. He set it down on the table by me. It was wrapped in brown package paper that you never see used to wrap packages. It was tied with string. If one of Jay’s grandmothers had been alive, I would have thought she’d sent it, but she’d have put a return address on it.

What’s that? I asked.

I don’t know; it came in the mail, he answered as he cut the string and worked his way in. He pulled away the tissue paper and I saw three figures. He made a sound like he’d been punched in the gut as he pulled one out of the box. It was a hand puppet. It looked like a woman. The man puppet looked a lot like Jay. Shit hissed from Jay’s throat as he picked up the little girl puppet. She was a toddler-type little girl.

What are these? I asked, acting totally confounded while refusing to recognize the obvious.

Puppets, Jay answered.

I can see that. What do they mean? I wanted to hear it from him.

Jay put the man puppet on one hand and the woman puppet on the other and proceeded to tell me about a girl he knew from high school. He’d always wondered what happened to her after their freshman year fling. She liked to make puppets.

She was good at it; I had to admit that, but didn’t.

Fling? You mean you had sex. You used protection, right? I don’t know why I asked. Just to rub it in, I guess, as I felt the earth falling away from my feet. I’d had sex a million times with David and Jared and never got pregnant. Dumber than shit David was smart enough not to get all his various girls pregnant. Genius Jared gets his freshman fling pregnant.

So, what now? Do you think she wants child support or something? That sounded to me like an easy way out of the mess: throw money at it.

Jared did the paternity test thing and there were lots of long talks between us and between him and that girl and probably between him and David. And Jared called off our wedding and asked that girl to marry him.

Jay asked David to be his best man. David then asked me to be his date to the wedding.

Are you nuts? Why would I want to be there for that?

Come on, Cades. Who else am I going to take?

Daves, I said, you know a gazillion other girls. I am not going to go watch Jared marry someone else.

I went. David sat at the head table with Jared, where he flirted with the bridesmaids all around him. I was off at some far corner table with strangers. They were all strangers. A room full of strangers except for David and Jared and Jared’s parents and sister, who I thought really liked me. They avoided me that night. I got pretty drunk but no, I did not cause trouble.

Until the ride home.

Stop the car now! I screamed while rolling down the window. But I didn’t make it totally out the window.

The next morning I pulled myself from bed and out to the front yard where David was putting the car door back together after cleaning the window mechanism.

Cades! How’re ya feeling? Better, I hope! he greeted me cheerily, this guy who just cleaned my puke out of his car door. I think that’s when I decided that I could do worse than to marry David. So I married him.

He calls himself my Booby Prize. Yeah.

When the roach was gone I shook myself loose from the memory flood and opened the top desk drawer, where I found David’s date book, one of those DayTimers that Mammoth Rug made him buy. There on today’s date he’d scrawled Stroble Ent Chic.

The Stroble Enterprises website showed a building rising into the sky and talked about office space for lease. I clicked on the little map to see where its LaSalle Street address in Chicago put it.

I set myself up on the couch with my laptop, another roach, and the TV about to start a movie and did a stream of conscious tour of Chicago. The movie that started up was Harry and Tonto with Art Carney and the cat. I found a nice page describing the neighborhoods of Chicago, where I wandered in a virtually random way. It was the art galleries that mesmerized me, and soon I was seeking them out.

I could take being an artist, though I didn’t feel very artistic. My job as a compositor (the current version of a typesetter) made me feel a little artistic, in a technical sort of way.

I found a gallery called deBarges. It was a ways from the Stroble Ent building but some of its paintings were luminous. Their light banished my dark sorrow for just a moment.

With a sigh at the artist’s life I’d never have, I looked up at the TV to see Harry singing to a caged Tonto. My throat tightened. Normally, I would pour tears as I watched this scene, but I was all cried out and still glowing from the paintings on my laptop screen. Yet damn! that lump in my throat was growing. I watched Harry turn away from the soon-to-be-dead Tonto and walk slowly down the corridor. My eyes welled up as I googled the words to Harry’s song:

In the gloaming, oh, my darling,

When the lights are dim and low,

And the quiet shadows falling,

Softly come and softly go;

When the winds are sobbing faintly,

With a gentle unknown woe;

Will you think of me, and love me,

As you did once long ago?

In the gloaming, oh, my darling,

Think not bitterly of me.

Tho’ I passed away in silence,

Left you lonely, set you free;

For my heart was crushed with longing,

What had been could never be;

It was best to leave you thus, dear,

Best for you and best for me.

In the gloaming, oh, my darling,

When the lights are dim and low,

Will you think of me and love me?

As you did once long ago?

The lyrics streamed straight into my heart: Left you lonely, set you free. It was best to leave you thus, dear.

Leave.

The tears stopped pouring down my cheeks.

Leave.

David may have left me.

Dammit! Straighten up! I mentally slapped myself. Only a post-beer depression could make me melancholy enough to think that David would leave. This was his house; his parents, Mitch and the Bitch, made sure I knew that when they set us up here. He wouldn’t leave. He might not come home for a while; that’s happened before. But he’d come home eventually. It’s his home.

And then from some dark corner of my brain, a voice asked why I was here, if it was David’s home. I was here to be with David. And David wasn’t here.

I never really felt at home here, with Mitch and the Bitch right there.

I could leave.

No. That’s a ridiculous thought. Why would I do that?

Because I was miserable.

I could leave.

No! I’ve got a job. I’ve got a place to live in. Where would I go?

I could leave.

It became a rhythm thumping in my brain: I could leave. I could leave.

It was best to leave you thus, dear, best for you and best for me.

I was singing the gloaming song to myself when I finally crawled into bed. It was monstrously late and I had to go to work the next day. But my eyes wouldn’t close. Lying on my back, I kept walking through Chicago neighborhoods, visiting art galleries. The word leave kept bouncing off the walls of my mind; leaving was the mirror image of stuckness. Stuckness was something Robert Pirsig pointed out as a good thing in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, because it was the predecessor of true understanding. I felt stuckness in the darkness all around me, but I also felt a developing understanding.

Once you realize you’re stuck, getting unstuck actually broadens your world.

Leave.

Fortunately I was too damn busy at work the next day to think at all, except to have a talk with my boss.

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Our greatest strength lies not in never having fallen, but in rising every time we fall.

—Oliver Goldsmith

I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be.

—Albert Einstein maybe

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When I got back home, David’s car wasn’t in the garage. The house was still empty. And smelled kind of funny. It wasn’t yet five o’clock, so I called Mammoth Rug and asked for David’s supervisor. And got handed from person to person as we-all tried to figure out who David’s supervisor was. I was sitting at David’s desk in the den, going deeper into the mass on top of it, looking for any clues, when I said to the next new person, I’m looking for David Anderson’s supervisor. He was on probation in sales. I was learning the key words.

And this time the guy said, Yeah, that’s me. Who are you?

I’m his wife, I said, unsure if I wanted to claim the connection.

Anderson—he’s the numbskull that screwed up my Stroble deal. That was a sure thing, that deal. It would have given me a lot of points, stupid asshole.

Can I ask what happened? I said, not sure that I wanted to hear.

He comes in with this stack of paper—I tell him Short, Sweet, Simple, and he comes in with this stack. It was Sweet, but it was not Short or Simple. So he tosses this stack of paper at the client like he’s dealing cards and it crashes into Stroble’s coffee, spilling hot coffee in the guy’s lap. Crap, I couldn’t blame the guy for throwing us out of there after that—I mean, boiled nuts and all—but still, that deal was a sure thing, stupid asshole.

So . . . what does this do to his probation? a small voice asked; I think it was mine.

He exploded into—I guess it was a laugh—and shouted, Like he still works here! and hung up.

Shit.

Stroble. There was that name again. David had massively pissed me off, but we were still on the same team or something. That ogre Stroble, however, was not a team player and maybe should pay for his sins, whatever they were. Drinking coffee, I guess.

I should have been tired. But I was energized in a restless sort of way. That rhythm was still thumping in my brain: I could leave. I could go. Stepping over last night’s dinner mess, I walked back and forth around the house, gathering things, necessary things. Right in the middle of the living room, I was building my pile of necessities. I was leaving. I was going.

I didn’t have a plan in my brain, but I printed out the address and directions to the deBarges gallery that so mesmerized me.

Soon I was hauling things up to my car. The garage was up at the top of the hill, where it was level and cheap to build, where we could just roll down to the road if we needed to get out through a snow-covered driveway.

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I learned this, at least, by my experiment. That if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.

—Henry David Thoreau

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My heart ached at the thought of leaving this little piece of ground. It was ours. We loved it. I loved it. I had to give up who I was.

---

When it gets dark enough, you can see the stars.

The brightest thunderbolt comes from the darkest storm.

---

I opened the service door into the garage. It felt so familiar and so foreign. I opened up my car and the sounds echoed. I was mocked by the big blank spot where David’s car should have been. I turned my back on it and loaded my car.

It was late, or early, when I loaded my cooler. The last item. I deliberately made it a totally nonsentimental item; I was so massively sentimental. I walked around the house looking for last necessities. I was glad it was too dark to see outside, see my yard, my little piece of Earth. I grabbed my cooler and walked out the front door. Left the front door hanging open, though the storm door slammed kind of shut. I crammed the cooler into my car, threw open the garage door, and climbed into the driver’s seat, the only open spot in the car. I felt myself falling apart; exhaustion and sorrow rippled through me. As my eyes welled up and streamed, I took a deep breath and turned the ignition key.

I left the garage door open as I drove away. It was probably a gift that I’d left the house front door hanging open, the way the house was beginning to smell.

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Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle.

—Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.

—Vincent van Gogh

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A professor of linguistics was lecturing his class. He told them that in some languages a double negative meant no, while in other languages a double negative had a positive meaning. He then told them that in no language did a double positive have a negative meaning.

From the back of the room a student responded, Yeah, right.

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Chapter 3

Learnings

deBarges does not want the likes of me anywhere near his gallery.

You can get a place pretty cheap if you’re willing to walk up six flights of stairs.

Hanging out in an artist hangout doesn’t make you an artist.

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For things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.

—Aristotle

No matter where you are, start there.

Sapere aude

Dare to know

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Maybe

A farmer was talking with his neighbor. The neighbor said, Terrible news about all your horses running away!

The farmer replied, Maybe.

Some time later they were talking again. The neighbor said, How wonderful that all your horses came back and brought other horses with them!

The farmer replied, Maybe.

Some time later they were talking again. The neighbor said, How terrible that your son broke his arm trying to train one of those new horses!

The farmer replied, Maybe.

Some time later they were talking again. The neighbor said, Wonderful news that the king’s soldiers didn’t conscript your son because of his broken arm!

The farmer replied, Maybe.

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Chapter 4

Samuel

Ahhh, I planted my butt in my favorite booth at Barges, the artist hangout hamburger joint. Heaven: a beer and a book. The beer was . . . cold and the book was Sexual Alchemy. I don’t know why I bought it. I mean, I understood how its title scratched two of my itches—I missed David like crazy and I hadn’t read alchemy for a while. I’d left behind my copy of Red Lion simply because I didn’t think of it. So I’d been over at BudD’s, the neighborhood used book store, looking for a copy when this book jumped into my hands.

I hadn’t gotten far into the book or the beer when suddenly the earth shook beneath my planted butt. Grabbing my glass so it wouldn’t topple, I looked up to see a huge bear of a guy sitting across from me. He had hair everywhere and wore a sweatshirt with the crest of a college named Nowhere. He grabbed the book from my hand, growling, They have a book on this?

He shoved his wire-rim glasses to the top of his forehead and flipped through the book, growling, I’m an alchemist, too. I’m growing a homunculus in my manure pile. I put on my Good Bullshit smile. He replaced his glasses and tossed the book back, saying, Human and humus—you know, soil—have the same root. Then, Sexual alchemy is a misinterpretation of alchemy. Wanna see my lab?

I laughed, What a good pick-up line.

His eyes grew big. No, no, not with you.

Great.

He kept growling, No, you look like a nice person. I mean, you don’t shoot, do you?

Shoot? My confusion gave him his answer.

---

A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.

A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.

---

No, hey, come with me. He stood up. Leave that stuff. I can get ya better beer than that.

It might have been bad beer, but I emptied the glass anyway, then grabbed my book and ran to catch up. Then I ran to keep up. Fortunately he didn’t go far: across the street, down a little ways, and over to a house. I quickly tried to spot a manure pile before we walked in a side door into a great room—I mean that as in a large expanse of space. The furniture was sparse, but the windows were many. Posters full of words dotted the walls. I could make out the poem Oh Captain! My Captain! and another was The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat. That second one had shreds of cloth hanging from it. Across on the other side I saw an easel holding a white canvas.

He stopped to open a door to a room, allowing me to catch up. He hit the wall switch inside and light flooded from chrome skulls on the walls.

Oh that’s cool! I mainly meant the skulls, because the rest was pretty overwhelming. It was like a large walk-in closet with counters along each of the three black-painted walls and shelves going up one of the walls. Every surface was (rather neatly) crammed with stuff: crucibles, glassware, stands to hold them, books, jars of powders, jars of unidentifiable things, more books, a microscope, a simple collapsible telescope, a pair of curly toed shoes, stuffed animals—taxidermied, that is: a squirrel sitting up on its haunches and a weasel with its front legs up on a log. There was just so much, I couldn’t take it all in and didn’t know what to say. Except that I really liked those cool chrome skulls.

Yeah, a friend made those for me, he growled in reply.

The shelves that climbed one wall were jammed with books; I wondered if there was a copy of Red Lion in there somewhere. The facing wall held a flat sculpture of a chrome tree with a squirrel and an eagle at the top; multiple roots ran out the bottom, down to bowls on the countertop, where there was a small clearing of space. Leaning against the chrome tree was a paper dragon. On the far end countertop, amidst the piles of jars and bowls of who knows what, a large chrome hypodermic needle glinted bursts of light. Oh, that kind of shooting.

The bear growled, So what alchemy have you practiced?

I answered, I’ve done one ritual in my life—magic, not alchemy. It got me the job I wanted. So I believe in the power of belief. But alchemy? Nuthin’. I’ve just read about it.

The bear nodded. Yeah, that’s how it is for us. In old societies, certainly pre-literate societies, people did rituals. Now we just read about them.

I looked at him as I said, Reading is to rituals as rituals are to experience.

Meaning what?

Meaning, pre-literate societies did not do rituals; they lived life. They studied the signs and went hungry when they were wrong.

As Pema Chödrön said, ritual is about joining vision and practicality, heaven and earth, samsara and nirvana. It’s using ordinary things to express our appreciation for life.

---

Step aside from all thinking, and there is nowhere you can’t go.

—Sengcan

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Thousands of years ago, as people were collecting into villages and developing ‘urban’ skills [I did air quotes], they were forgetting how to read the natural signs around them. They left reading signs and listening to the wind to the oddball fellow living just outside the village, the guy we label today as a shaman.

Are you into that modern shamanism going around?

I nodded. It’s a path that leads where I want to go. But I’m still learning.

Aren’t we all? he asked as we looked at each other. I turned back toward the room as I asked, What sort of alchemy do you practice?

He shrugged, I see the universe as an organism to be nurtured.

I like that. I was entranced by the light pouring out of the chrome skull eye sockets and nose holes; it made the room contents glint and sparkle like gems. If I shifted a little, the light flashes shifted, too. It was like they were dancing with me and I wanted to return the favor. A smile broke over my face as I moved to make the light dance.

He growled, What’re you doing? You got the twitches?

With the awareness of being caught, I stopped and shrugged; my smile became more plastic as I mumbled, I was dancing. With the light. I shrugged again and tried to back out of the room. He was looking at me and not moving to let me pass. I shrugged again as I met his eyes and said, Light is special to me. My plastic smile was fading as I shrugged yet again and made new efforts to get past him.

He grunted something as he continued to stare at me, which sent me beyond self-conscious. More audibly, he growled, Of course light is special. We’d freeze without it. We’d starve without photosynthesis. His stare continued.

I took a deep breath. Well, yeah. But more than that. I haven’t figured it all out yet. It’s a path I’m walking through life. But somehow, for some reason, I know that there’s more to light than just warmth and the photoelectric effect.

He softly growled, Yeah. Me too. Then, C’mere, and I followed him across the great room, past the easel and blank white canvas, to another part of the house. He opened a door and hit a switch. The light was dim but sufficient for me to see that on black walls hung paintings in a hodge-podge non-arrangement. He said, This is what I do for me.

As my eyes adjusted, I was pulled into the room. The room didn’t need much light because the paintings seemed to glow. I knew I should savor each one but instead I moved quickly from canvas to luminous canvas, almost feeling on my face the light pouring out. This one glowed with colors laced around voids of black emptiness. In that one the glowing brilliance was almost too bright to look at and I squinted to study it. In another, ribbons of glowing colors embraced a black void that actually formed a vague sort of half a face. In another I could see a woman’s face emerging from the void, embraced by bright glowing colors of light. The shapes of the entwined light and dark formed their own dance from painting to painting; the void of black always seemed to lead, always seemed one step ahead, always seemed to win, but not by force.

I began looking for the half void, half face and found it in almost every painting. It called to me with a resonance I recognized deep within. I went back around the room again, looking for her, studying her context. I found the half face in each one except the one that was all flame, maybe a ship afire, with the massive flames reflected on the surrounding water, creating a scene that was too bright for me to stare at long. But I was sure the half face must be there, too. That was a funeral pyre and she was death.

Who was this bear man who captured death with such intensity of light?

No longer able to hold it in, I whispered, The light—these paintings—that light goes right into me, right through me. One hand covering my belly, I whispered, That face—so . . . It pulls me. My belly hand moved in small circles as I careened from painting to painting, frustrated by my verbal stammering. The light pouring into me was almost too much, the dance too beautiful to see constrained on canvas. The glows of color and the dull black void—the light of life and the snuff of death—aren’t struggling, they’re . . . giving themselves to each other.

He grunted. What do you know about it? I looked over to see him leaning against the door frame, staring at me. What do I know about it? I repeated silently to myself. Nothing. I’m just looking at your paintings. But as I looked at the paintings, working my way around the room yet again, I found my thoughts trying to spill out: This depiction of death has such light to it. Most people think of death as dark but it’s all about light and you catch it.

I ask again, what do you know about it? he asked again.

I said, I know that The Light we encounter when we die is pure unconditional love. Even the light we see every day is love incarnate, love made visible.

"You know this?"

I turned and looked at him full on. I’m nuttier than a fruitcake; what the heck if he knew it. I said, "I’m a deathwalker—a psychopomp—in training. I accompany dying people as they pass to the other side. For some souls it can be a