Delmarva Review, Volume 14

By Delmarva Review

WELCOME TO DELMARVA REVIEW VOLUME 14, an annual, independent, nonprofit literary journal. In this, our largest edition, we selected the new writing of seventy authors that stood out from thousands of submissions during the year. Volume 14 includes ninety-eight poems, thirteen short stories, twelve creative nonfiction essays, and seven book reviews. In all, the writers come from twenty-five states, the District of Columbia, and four foreign countries. About forty percent are from the Delmarva and Chesapeake region, though the review welcomes the best new writing in English from all writers, regardless of borders.
The cover photograph, Tangier Island Light, taken at dusk is by contributing photographer Jay P. Fleming. It was taken as part of Fleming’s work for his wonderful new narrative photography book, Island Life, capturing “a pivotal moment in time for Smith and Tangier.” Life on these isolated islands in the Chesapeake Bay—the largest estuary in the United States—is often considered frozen in time, but Fleming has delved deeper, documenting work and life on the islands “as the very forces that sustain them also threaten to take them away.” While not the theme of the book, or of the Delmarva Review, climate change remains highly concerning. There is no preaching here—just the facts, images, and human stories—and you are likely to learn something new from the content (see the book review in this edition). The rest is up to you.
No singular theme emerges from this issue of the Delmarva Review. As a literary collection, we continue to focus on the best new writing and what is at stake or at risk emotionally or intellectually in the author’s work. The book opens with thoughts about life and death, where we realize the uncertainty of our days. Other topics include loss, desire, aging, equality, haunting regrets, bullying, beliefs, the pandemic, and the list goes on. Ultimately, themes revolve around change. It is through human change that we are forced to discover truths that guide us on our journeys or, perhaps, to make sense of where we have been. This is where our truths count most, usually with discomfort and little room for alternate deception.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Delmarva Review
• Release date: Nov 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005744724

Delmarva Review

Founded in 2008, Delmarva Review is a literary journal dedicated to the discovery and publication of compelling new fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction from emerging and established writers. Submissions from all writers are welcomed, regardless of residence. We publish annually, at a minimum, and promote various literary and educational events, to inspire readers and writers who pursue excellence in the literary arts.Delmarva Review is published by the Delmarva Review Literary Fund, supporting the literary arts across the tristate region of the Delmarva Peninsula, including portions of Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia. Publication is supported by a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council, with revenues provided by the Maryland State Arts Council, as well as private contributions and sales.

Book preview

Table of Contents

Delmarva Review

Copyright

Preface

Nonfiction

Featured Writer, Nonfiction - George. R. Merrill

George R. Merrill

Caroline Bock

Sarah Barnett

Laura J. Oliver

Alfred Fournier

Irene Hoge Smith

Billie Pritchett

Brandon Hansen

Sue Eisenfeld

Jill Dalton

Lillie Gardner

Kristina Morgan

Fiction

Featured Writer, Fiction - Susan Land

Susan Land

Joe Baumann

Ronan Keenan

Marlene Olin

Andie Davis

Craig Dobson

Abby Provenzano

Emily Shilton

Alexa Weik von Mossner

Michael Gazda

Tara Thiel

Fatimah Iqbal

Poetry

Featured Writer, Poetry - Adam Tavel

Adam Tavel

Gibbons Ruark

Diane Thiel

Catherine Carter

E. Ethelbert Miller

Richard Tillinghast

Shirley Hilton

John Palen

Jessica Gregg

Judith McCombs

Samn Stockwell

Richard Peabody

Brian C. Potts

Jona Colson

Benjamin Harnett

Katherine J. Williams

Abby Caplin

Chase Dimock

Jill Michelle

Abigail Johnson

Bryana Joy

Susana H. Case

Holly Karapetkova

Stephen Scott Whitaker

Sophia C. Vesely

Louise Robertson

Amy L. Fair

Suzanne O’Connell

Kelly R. Samuels

Will Cordeiro

Irina Moga

Devon Miller-Duggan

Michael Carrino

Paul David Adkins

David Galloway

Sayan Aich Bhowmik

Kathryn Weld

Margaret Mackinnon

Adam Tamashasky

Book Reviews

Review by Wilson W. Wyatt: ISLAND LIFE

Review by Anne Colwell: QUESTIONS FROM OUTER SPACE

Review by Harold O. Wilson: A PLACE TO HIDE

Review by Katherine Gekker: BY BROAD POTOMAC’S SHORE

Review by Sue Ellen Thompson: THIS FAR: POEMS

Review by Gerald F. Sweeney: THE HENRY BAGWELL STORY

Review by Harold O. Wilson: NEW VOICES OF POTOMAC

Contributing Writers

Contributing Editors & Board – Volume 14

Orders

Delmarva

Review

Evocative Prose & Poetry

Volume 14

2021

Delmarva

Review

VOLUME 14

Cover Photograph: Tangier Island Light by Jay P. Fleming

Delmarva Review publishes evocative new prose and poetry selected from thousands of submissions annually. Designed to encourage outstanding writing, the literary journal is nonprofit and independent. It welcomes submissions in English from all writers. Please follow the submission guidelines, during the submission period, posted on the website: DelmarvaReview.org.

In addition to sales, we are thankful for the generous financial support we receive from individual tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council.

Send general correspondence to:

Delmarva Review

P.O. Box 544

St. Michaels, MD 21663

E-mail: [e-mail]

Copyright © 2021 by the Delmarva Review Literary Fund Inc.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021917657

Paperback ISBN: 979-8-4518830-4-4

Preface

WELCOME TO DELMARVA REVIEW VOLUME 14, an annual, independent, nonprofit literary journal.

In this, our largest edition, we selected the new writing of seventy authors that stood out from thousands of submissions during the year. Volume 14 includes ninety-eight poems, thirteen short stories, twelve creative nonfiction essays, and seven book reviews. In all, the writers come from twenty-five states, the District of Columbia, and four foreign countries. About forty percent are from the Delmarva and Chesapeake region, though the review welcomes the best new writing in English from all writers, regardless of borders.

The cover photograph, Tangier Island Light, taken at dusk is by contributing photographer Jay P. Fleming. It was taken as part of Fleming’s work for his wonderful new narrative photography book, Island Life, capturing a pivotal moment in time for Smith and Tangier. Life on these isolated islands in the Chesapeake Bay—the largest estuary in the United States—is often considered frozen in time, but Fleming has delved deeper, documenting work and life on the islands as the very forces that sustain them also threaten to take them away. While not the theme of the book, or of the Delmarva Review, climate change remains highly concerning. There is no preaching here—just the facts, images, and human stories—and you are likely to learn something new from the content (see the book review in this edition). The rest is up to you.

No singular theme emerges from this issue of the Delmarva Review. As a literary collection, we continue to focus on the best new writing and what is at stake or at risk emotionally or intellectually in the author’s work. The book opens with thoughts about life and death, where we realize the uncertainty of our days. Other topics include loss, desire, aging, equality, haunting regrets, bullying, beliefs, the pandemic, and the list goes on. Ultimately, themes revolve around change. It is through human change that we are forced to discover truths that guide us on our journeys or, perhaps, to make sense of where we have been. This is where our truths count most, usually with discomfort and little room for alternate deception.

The book contains three major genre divisions: Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, and Poetry. An editor’s interview with a featured writer opens each section. The interviews are designed to set a tone for the writing that follows. They provide readers with a window into the authors’ intentions—what they were thinking when they wrote the piece or the choices they faced. We hope this adds an interesting dimension to all the writing presented. Volume 14 also includes seven reviews of recent books of special interest to readers.

Delmarva Review was created to provide both established and aspiring writers with a valued venue to present their best work in print at a time when many commercial publishers continue to reduce content or are going out of business. For electronic reading, we have been among the first literary journals to publish an eBook edition. Both editions are available from major booksellers online. The printed book is available from participating specialty bookstores.

A note about the editors: all the contributing editors are experienced and recognized in their fields. This year, in addition to the Contributing Writers biography section, we are including a brief listing of the volunteer editor biographies under Contributing Editors & Board. These volunteers read all writers’ submissions and contribute to the final makeup and design of the Delmarva Review. There are no profits. Selections are based on literary skill. The work behind the scenes is all for love of the literary arts.

The 15th Anniversary Delmarva Review submission period is open from November 1 to March 31, 2022, for poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. All submissions are electronic through the website: DelmarvaReview.org. The review does not charge reading, publishing, or membership fees. While we receive thousands of submissions, the editors read each one and respond to all authors by May, if not before. Acceptance is competitive and a mark of literary achievement.

As an independent, 501(c)3 nonprofit literary organization, we are greatly appreciative of the funding support we receive from individual tax-deductible contributions, sales, and a public grant from Talbot Arts with revenues from the Maryland State Arts Council.

Wilson Wyatt, Jr.

Editor

Email: [e-mail]

Nonfiction

FEATURED WRITER – NONFICTION

GEORGE R. MERRILL

AN INTERVIEW AND PERSONAL ESSAY

Interview by Executive Editor Wilson Wyatt

Wyatt: Professionally, you have been a priest and a counselor to many people over a lifetime. In addition, you are a published writer and editor of nonfiction articles and commentary. On another track, you developed personal skills as a photographer, which along with writing seem to be forged from a deep creative spirit. In your personal essay, which follows, you write that when you were a boy, the school principal seized upon your youthful interest in your father’s camera and encouraged you to put it to use for the school. This was life changing at the time. He became an early mentor in your life. Who are some other mentors? What about for writing?

Merrill: During midlife, I discovered the personal essay, initially the essays of Lewis Thomas, Annie Dillard, and E.B. White. It was as if the whole world had opened up. These authors were not lecturing; they were exploring what fascinated them.

Having an informed mentor is to an essayist what the spiritual director is to his or her directee: they can’t tell you what to do, but they’ll help you figure it out. I took a nonfiction workshop at Goucher College. I was euphoric, like the junkie on his first rush, high on essays. I wrote one and sent it for publication to the Georgia Review, one of the country’s premier literary journals. For perspective, you might think of me like a high school kid––exuberant in his innocence––sending his What I Did on My Summer Vacation essay to The New Yorker.

My essay described the great ice storm on the Delmarva Peninsula in the '80s. While clearing ice from the walk, I watched a deer in the woods by the stream coming to drink. I went out the next morning. I saw her dead by the stream, which had frozen solid. The essay had some decent descriptive material, but it was essentially mawkish, sentimental, and overwritten. To make matters worse, I submitted it in single-spaced columns, like newspaper print, ignoring the journal’s submission guidelines.

Predictably, I received a form rejection slip, my first of many. The editor of the journal at the time, Stan Lindberg, jotted a few pithy handwritten comments on the slip: Little too preachy. You might consider being less certain, more tentative. Read carefully the submission guidelines.

I felt dismissed. I told a friend, a writer, and showed her the slip. She laughed. Do you know, she said, these comments are from one of the most revered editors in the country. That he even took the time to write them is a commentary on how, in that sorry manuscript and sophomoric presentation, he saw something worth encouraging.

There are people, some I knew, others I never did––even editors––who wanted me to get it and said things to me that I did not want to hear, only to help me say what it was I wanted.

Wyatt: Everyone faces adversities. Some are handicaps. How we deal with them become the themes of many of the greatest stories in literature. In your personal essay, you talk about overcoming certain handicaps and emotional experiences as a boy. How did they lead to your spiritual path, as well as to your love of writing and photography?

Merrill: Survival is not an exercise in heroics. It’s a matter of discovery. By taking your own inventory, you can learn what you have to work with.

Spirituality was a significant factor in my life. I was drawn to the mystery of God when very young, which was enabled in my explorations by my pastor, who was also a kind mentor. There was religious language itself—specifically, the lessons during the services read from the old Book of Common Prayer and the King James Version of the Bible. I understood little, but I was beguiled listening to Elizabethan English read aloud. The enchantment was auditory—the poetry and music of the language. I would better understand the narratives later in my life. Biblical translators had a graceful way of making their case, with some significant exceptions.

Deaths in my nuclear family also shaped the direction of my spiritual path. One death, which I write about, was especially profound. My family would never discuss it. They retreated into a code of silence. Each of us was consigned to live alone with our pain, quarantined, as if infected

My school days were suffocating. I was ‘learning disabled,’ which today would be called ADD (attention-deficit disorder). I couldn’t accommodate learning tasks as the other kids did, effectively angering teachers, disappointing my mother, and earning me the contempt of classmates. I spent a childhood feeling alone. I learned to live in my imagination—a very consoling place, I might add.

There is a wonderful concept in traditional Christian spiritual practices. It comes from St Paul’s iconic declaration that one finds strength by directly engaging his or her weakness. As you might imagine, this is not a hip idea in our consumerist culture that lionizes winners while barely concealing its contempt for losers.

I’ve discovered the redeeming quality in this spiritual worldview and followed some of its invitations.

Its exercises are a little like creating photographic images, which I have been doing for 74 years. To create a viable photograph, attention is given to the glittering highlights as well as the deepest shadows. When we can develop detail in both, the big picture is revealed more accurately. Real life is not just a binary black-and-white scene; it’s filled with a broad spectrum of shades.

I was thrilled to discover my place in the big picture. For a kid who started out barely able to read a book with comprehension…or write a coherent sentence, with lots of grace and persistence, I discovered there was a lot more in my quiver than just broken arrows.

Wyatt: One final question. In your personal essay, you describe yourself today as an aging person, an octogenarian. You’re looking back 78 years. You say you don’t know the measure of your days, but their velocity seems to escalate more rapidly. Can you elaborate?

Merrill: I am living the final chapter of my life. I do not know exactly the measure of my days, but I can feel their velocity increasing. I am confident now that I am conversant in the shadows and highlights through which lives are lived and by which engaging photographs are composed. In the personal essays that I write today, I take care to preserve detail in shadows, no matter how dark they are. I don’t block any highlights, either, since what constitutes good photographs or a meaningful human story is where darkness meets light. The idiosyncratic way shadows and highlights converge and overlap reveals the big picture and tells the story of our lives.

George R. Merrill

A SHOT IN THE DARK

IN 1945, WORLD WAR II ENDED and the lights came on all over the world. For me those lights shone only three months. Then they were extinguished with a shotgun blast I never heard and a flash of light I never saw.

My father, an Army officer, returned safely from overseas that August following the war’s end. The day when darkness descended was a Saturday at noon in late November, two days after Thanksgiving.

I was eleven then, and I liked spending time at the candy store. It was the hangout for neighborhood kids. We bought sodas and smoked cigarettes pilfered from the packs our parents left around the house. I planned to be home for lunch. My father was leaving for New Jersey on a hunting trip. My mother arranged for us all to have lunch together.

I went inside. Near the foot of the cellar stairs, by the furnace, I could see my father lying on his back in my mother’s arms as she cradled him slowly back and forth like a baby. His chest was covered with blood. She looked up as I entered, and I saw her expression—dazed, horrified—as she struggled to grasp what had happened and not wishing to grasp it at the same time. My father, an experienced hunter and a veteran of three years of combat in the European Theater of the Second World War, had killed himself with his own shotgun.

What happened next seemed like a dream; my aunt, with no more explanation than there had been an accident and that my father had been hurt, ushered me to my room. She told me to wait there. I sat alone. I heard people rushing up and down stairs and past my room, attending to God knows what. I heard fear in their hoarse, muffled voices as they spoke in half whispers. What wasn’t said I already knew, but I wanted to hear someone say it; I wished a human voice to put the unspeakable into words so that my mind could begin to wrap itself around what it couldn’t embrace. I awaited a word, a sound, something to make it right. I longed just to be held so I could feel something besides waves of panic. I wanted to hear from someone else what I couldn’t listen to in my own heart but kept hearing. The truth remained unsaid, and the pain began at that moment and endured for months and years after that.

Shortly after my father left for Europe in ’42, my mother and I had wallpapered my room. The paper was popular then—a mural, with ships, tanks, and planes at war. The ships were pitching in the waves, firing rounds of munitions, while tanks barreled over hilly terrain. An American plane soared upward leaving in its wake an enemy fighter plane—a Stuka with smoke trailing from its fuselage. It spiraled downward to the earth. No soldiers appeared in the scenes, but only the industrial material of war doing its tasks of killing—lots of iron, but no blood. The scenes, once stirring, became frightening.

Sitting alone in the room, I fabricated a story. My father was an undercover agent for the Intelligence Branch of the Army, and it was necessary for him to feign his death in order to undertake the assigned mission. Even his family would have to be deceived. I needed only to wait for the mission to be completed, and he would then reveal the ruse and life would return to the way it was. At an early age, I learned how much comfort denial brings when the world crumbles, when your father is lying near the furnace in your cellar, cradled in your mother’s arms, dead.

His suicide left me with nothing, no legacy to hold. The heritage to which I was entitled as his son––a father I could confidently identify with, the person through whom I’d understand my own manhood, who’d care for and protect me––had been violently denied me by his own hand. Something dark and terrible lived inside him. Did something as dark and deadly lie within me, too? Was that his legacy to me? I was left with questions, no answers, and a myth, which, if scrutinized, would evaporate. The gun had a faulty mechanism. It went off accidentally. The family ranks closed around this myth the way Mafiosi swear to honor a code of silence. We never talked about it.

At home, I looked for a sign, something to reassure me that I could be my father’s son and be safe in that identification. I’d go up to the attic from time to time and rummage through some of his belongings. The attic contained his collection of guns, a few of his uniforms, and a small box containing a magnificent assortment of American Indian arrowheads he’d collected over the years.

The guns frightened but fascinated me at the same time: two shotguns, a six-shooter, and a small revolver, silver plated and stubby, different from the others. The arrowheads were beautifully fashioned from flint and other stone, all, oddly, in the shape of a heart. It was peculiar, I thought, considering the predatory end they served.

In the library, I found my father’s camera. The discovery would change everything.

The camera belonged to my father, a pre-war German camera called a Voigtländer Brillant. It had been there since he’d left for the war. He never used it again. Like his guns, the camera’s gadgetry intrigued me: boys love gadgets, and the Voigtländer was a gadgeteer’s delight. It was a reflex with a coal-black stippled Bakelite casing. Its chrome lens rings, shutter, and aperture controls shone prominently against its coal black body. The camera, when I first saw it, seemed to insist that I pick it up and look it over. I did, and thus began a lifelong romance with classical black-and-white photography, making images with an instrument I know my father loved. But it differed significantly from his other passions: when you shoot guns, somebody’s killed. When you shoot with a camera, no one dies; you’re actually saving them for posterity.

THE WAY WOUNDED BODIES DO, an injured spirit becomes symptomatic. In my case, symptoms appeared in my school performance. Teachers’ chief complaints would go something like this: George never pays attention; he daydreams; he doesn’t finish his assignments; he’s lazy and won’t apply himself. Miss Richter offered this definitive diagnosis that became the occasion for still another parent-teacher conference when my mother was requested to come to school and discuss my poor school performances. The conferences––and there had been a number of them––proceeded with liturgical predictability: Conviction of my sin first, then my expression of proper contrition, the promise to reform my ways and pay attention and not daydream. Then absolution was pronounced, and I was given another chance. Within three months I was totally symptomatic again, daydreaming in class and not applying myself. Miss Richter was at her wits’ end. My mother was sad and exasperated, and I felt lost and afraid––I did not understand. Was I just dumb? I was remanded to the principal’s office for remedial action, which, among students, was considered the last resort. I went to his office. In the waiting area, the secretary, Miss Lipshitz, had her eyes icily transfixed to her typewriter, never acknowledging my presence. Things did not bode well.

Mr. Abraham Rubin, the principal, entered the waiting area. Speaking softly, he invited me into his office. Instead of sitting behind his desk, he remained in front of it, where I stood. What would come next, I wondered. There, he arranged two chairs facing each other and asked me to sit.

Mr. Rubin didn’t mention my poor school performance. Instead, he asked general questions, casually. What did I like? How did I spend my time after school? He asked if I had any pets. I was surprised, wary at first; was he up to some kind of grown-up’s trick to trap me somehow? I responded cautiously to his questions and soon found myself talking more easily. I grew more confident that he had no punitive agenda. He seemed hospitable, like the sunny room we were in. There were large windows through which morning sunlight shone as though it had been poured. Slowly, words began tumbling out of my mouth. To my surprise, I found myself eager to tell him about myself…but not everything.

I told him about my dog, Pete. Pete had died just two months after my father. One day, the normally happy and gregarious Pete began snarling and baring his teeth at me and even snapped several times. Pete had contracted and died of distemper. Like my father’s suicide, distemper was an ugly death, although I said nothing like that to Mr. Rubin. When Pete came up in the discussion, the interview took a remarkable turn. I began crying.

The tears surprised me. Where was all the feeling coming from? Mr. Rubin sat looking at me inquiringly. I started talking about my father, and I told Mr. Rubin of that day coming home from the candy store and seeing my father dead in the cellar and my mother holding him. I never mentioned the word suicide. I couldn’t then, nor for many years after that. But when I finished telling him that much, I knew that he knew, and in his silence, I sensed his warmth. The conspiracy of silence about my father’s death to which the family held tightly, the myth that had been imprisoning me in darkness for those two years following his death, was exposed slightly in the kindly light of Abraham Rubin’s heart.

By then, I felt I had lots to say. I didn’t ever want to leave the principal’s office. I told him about discovering my father's camera, the Voigtländer, and all the pictures I’d taken with it. I told him that I really loved photography, but it was expensive; how I worked for Mr. Sullivan the pharmacist delivering prescriptions for fifteen cents apiece. I told him how each week I looked forward to delivering Mrs. Robins’ headache powders because she gave me quarters as tips. He seemed interested that I worked after school, and he lifted his eyebrows with interest. I told him how pleased Mrs. Robins was when I delivered her prescription—she was often in pain—and how her generous tips helped me with my photographic expenses. My suspicion and tension slowly dissipated, and I began to feel safe.

I talked almost nonstop. Mr. Rubin listened silently, a silence different from the one I had been living with. His was a silence that invited the light rather than the kind I was used to, the kind that confined me in darkness. His silence seemed spacious, as if in it, he offered me sufficient room to accept and to gently enfold everything my heart had been rejecting. It was a space that, not unlike the best photographs I’d made in my darkroom, accommodated a full range of tones, from the deepest blacks to the most brilliant whites, with shades in between. It was in this kind of space that I felt free to tell, if not the whole story, enough of it to feel sufficiently safe in embracing some of the pain of it. I recognized that he understood enough of what had happened to me to know how I had been feeling. He pondered what I was saying with ease. I felt his silent understanding. I still could not say the word suicide.

I wanted desperately to confide in him, to tell him more, but not about the suicide directly. To test him, I mentioned that I smoked cigarettes behind the candy store where the kids hung out after school. But I said I was going to stop. He listened without judgment. He grew slightly conspiratorial, suggesting to me that if I had to smoke, I should think about smoking a pipe because it would be less injurious to my health.

The wound festering around my heart, eating at my spirit and causing me so much pain, had been, by the oddest confluence of circumstances imaginable, diagnosed accurately and Mr. Rubin crafted some preliminary interventions. What was to be my punishment became my release.

With the wisdom of the serpent and the gentleness of the dove, Mr. Rubin offered me a partnership. He was in the process of initiating a school newspaper. He had been planning it for some time. He’d worked out most of the details except for photographs. Before I left his office that day, he asked if I would be interested in being the official school photographer. My task would be to photograph various school activities and bring him pictures every couple of weeks to review. He would choose the ones that he wished to appear in the publication. I was breathless.

The gentle cunning of his plan was how he had contrived to rein me in with some accountability by having me stay in touch with him on a regular basis, not under the auspices of my failures, but through the instrument of my photographic interests. By establishing this contract, he could keep an eye on me while not continually underscoring my liabilities. Becoming the official school photographer changed me: I looked forward to attending school for the first time and welcomed my visits to the principal’s office.

On my school photo assignments, the camera earned me social legitimacy among my peers I’d never had before. Everyone wanted me to take their picture. The social capital I amassed was marvelous; girls with whom I felt cripplingly self-conscious were now befriending me in order to have their picture taken. The prettiest ones, at that, and I made no distinction then about their enthusiasm in talking to me and the narcissistic needs that propelled it. It just felt good to feel respected and worth befriending, and that was all that mattered. This was also the case with the boys. I had only a couple of friends, but now I was something of a celebrity. Roy Butler, who often bullied me and made fun of me when I got glasses, for the first time was now solicitous, especially after I snapped a shot of him hanging by his legs upside down on the school playground’s monkey bars, his thumbs plugged in his ears, flapping his hands, his tongue prominently protruding. He was giving me the raspberry. I wouldn’t have understood it at the time, but there are perks in any devil’s pact: when a show-off sees an opportunity to be seen and the boy with a camera can supply it. Roy never bullied me again.

The social perks were but a part of the entire experience. I discovered the magic in performing the darkroom work of classical photography. Being in the dark was exciting, a darkness very different from the one I knew in the years after the suicide. I’ve read of the lives of distinguished photographers like Edward Steichen, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Gordon Parks, and how they recall developing and printing their first photographic image. They described it the way I’ve heard junkies talk about their first rush: they couldn’t wait to feel the thrill again. For me, and I know for others in those days, being a shutterbug was addictive.

There was, in all this photographic activity, a reparative dimension, a kind of subliminal healing going on just outside my awareness and not yet clear enough for me to claim or understand it. That would come years later.

In the cellar of our house, near the coal furnace where my father once lay in his blood, there was a rec room adjacent to what we called the ping pong room. It fell into general disuse, and it turned out to be a perfect place for a photographic darkroom. It had only one window, easily darkened, and a washtub just outside the door where running water was available. Only later did I begin to sense a spiritual dimension in my activities: here I was, only fifteen feet from where the biggest horror I’d ever known in my life had transpired, leaving me in such a dark place I thought I’d never see light again. Within those fifteen feet, I was unwittingly being situated to discover light and life in the darkness. In my case, it was the joy of creating visual images.

Years later, I saw in those happenings a parallel process of sorts, comparing my circumstances to the creation epic where the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. The tale goes on to say, And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. In the Biblical account, that divine motion was just before God said, Let there be light. The lights went on all over the universe.

I began emerging from darkness by returning to it, and I could feel the hope, for what I’m not sure, but just hope. The moment when I discovered light in the dark was seventy-eight years ago. However arcane and messy it is, to this day I still shoot with mechanical cameras and process black-and-white negatives and prints chemically in a darkroom. I know I could simplify my life greatly by going digital. The pictures rendered that way would have razor-sharp acuity and stunning colors and could be made with far less mess. It’s just that there was something about this antiquated process –– this magical relationship between light and dark—that will always be more compelling to me than any product it may render. Aren’t our spiritual lives all about its shadows and highlights, anyway? Classical photography is just a visual exercise involving this eternal theme. For any image to have a shape and a form, it must first contain contrasts. The contrasts are formed by shadows and highlights––darkness and light––the working material of photographic imaging and, as it turns out, spirituality.

I HAVE A MEMORY, a black-and-white memory of sorts. It’s a vague recollection of contrasting mental images generated by an event that happened when I was very young.

An apple tree grew in the backyard of the house I grew up in on Staten Island. In May, when it blossomed, the exquisitely delicate fragrance scented the air all around the house. It was the