#DirectToWeb – Craig Spence

Feet First in Love

Part 1 – The forensics of love

Nice sandals!

I didn’t say it out loud, of course—not right away—and can’t determine to this day if the thought was true. I mean sincere in all its dimensions, down to the place where sole smacks concrete reality. But it was the best I could come up with on the spot, and even though I didn’t voice the sentiment, she heard me. That’s the trick I believe: Think things before speaking. Sometimes keep them as thoughts forever because you’re bashful, perhaps. Or maybe because the person you’re interested in is perfect and you could only detract from that by wheedle-wording your way into her affections.

I had instinctively done an up and down of the sandals’ occupant—that checkout scan we males of the species do when attracted by something potentially sexual in our peripheral vision. But it was her footwear—and I must confess, her feet—my roving eye locked onto. Her toes were painted pink!

Not gaudily, in that slapdash way you sometimes see and feel embarrassed about—usually for bubblegum teens. The polish had been applied with artistry. Details like that say something, don’t they? She had a conception of self that was bold and subtle, I figured.

So maybe I was indulging just a little. But it’s okay to try and fathom why someone’s special, isn’t it? And at first, we have to draw assumptions from observations as seemingly insignificant as pedicure, don’t we? You’re a liar if you say no. The forensics of love are based upon minute chips of evidence, hinting at theories made up as we go.

To me, the convex surfaces of her nails were intriguing as conch shells turned inside out. Can you imagine such a thing? My eyes stuck on the tops of her toes for a breath or two, then—without my thinking, without conscious intent—zoomed in on her sandals, recording every facet of those elegant slippers.

Even as my eyes went about their rogue’s work, though, part of me realized there was nothing so very remarkable about Gloria’s sandals… aside from the fact that she was in them. I can think of a thousand movie stars and a thousand more princesses who would have turned up their noses if asked to wriggle their dainty nether digits into such a pair of Walmart flip-flops. But on Gloria’s feet! Oh my!

Part 2 – The ‘Oh My’ of it
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“Oh my!” as grandmother would cry when occasion warranted. Of course, her delight was usually over events as homey as cherry pie coming out of the oven or particularly brilliant works of crayon art, not over anything so exotic as the footgear of a complete stranger. For grandmother, agape wasn’t so much about miracles as discovering the miraculous in everyday things—about seeing through the veil of ordinary and triggering suspirations as emphatic as a last gasp.

By the way, mentioning Gloria’s name right now makes everything from here on in non-sequitur. I didn’t know her name at this point in our story. True, I was cultivating an intimate relationship with the bone structure and musculature of her feet, the same way Toto might have got to know Dorothy before they ventured into Oz. But that’s not the same as knowing a body’s name, is it? Love works backwards. We fall into it, then double back, tracking down the meanings and consequences of ’til death do us part.

I’ve broken sequence because I can’t bear talking about Gloria as ‘her’ or ‘she’ without giving name to those theoretical references. I have christened her even though a name at that point would have been as naively symbolic as graffiti sprayed anonymously on whitewashed stucco, or rote declarations carved into the trunks of trees or the planks of park benches. At that point in our relationship, her name would have been a catch-all of fantasies. A concatenation of dark eyes, long black hair… an aura you could best see through eyes half-closed.

In truth, if Gloria had dematerialized before I got a chance to talk to her—whisked out of her sandals by powers unknown into some sci-fi Nirvana beyond the frequencies of daytime TV—nothing would have seemed remarkable about her footwear left on the corner of Quadra and Hillside. Other than the fact that the sandals were there, placed carefully on the cracked concrete as if the intersection were a portico into some alternative dimension and she had been called away suddenly. Barefoot.

Part 3 – Shoes neatly placed
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The thing about Gloria is she even stands with her shoes neatly placed, and she never just kicks her footgear off. She’s neat that way. Fastidious. It makes me laugh. And because of her, I place my work boots carefully on the mat inside the vestibule door too—toes pointing toward the wall, heels knocked together. She’s aware of details like that so it pains me to bring disorder into our lives, especially when it’s so easy to do things right.

There’s meaning to the precise placement of feet on a sidewalk. Someone needs to see that. Imagine yourself in the presence of a goddess. You’ve been schlepping your way through life down at the pit, a latter-day Sisyphus crunching stones into various grades of gravel, then suddenly she’s there, and you know she is a goddess, that she already knows everything she needs to. What do you say to her? What’s your conversation starter?

In a way, Gloria was aware of every rhinestone glued to those bargain basement sandals of hers. Not individually, of course, but as elements of a sensory field, if you will. I wondered which tiny mirror I might have been reflected in, standing beside her, my bike held between us like a barrier. What did she think of this guy? Of his long hair and never-quite-matured beard, his knobby tired bike? She hadn’t even glanced my way—a sensible rebuke. But I did want her to appreciate the nobility of my feelings… that if the sun could be positioned just so behind me, I too would glow with my own halo effect.

I glimpsed her profile, then surveyed the intersection for clues. Perhaps there were points of convergence, shards of data that proved we dwelt in overlapping dimensions. Which of the drab architectural features could I point to and say, There, that’s us. The San Remo Market Deli & Café? The Salvation Army Community & Family Centre, across Hillside? The Money Mart (real people fast cash) diagonally opposite? The Sally Ann thrift store on the west side of Quadra? The garbage receptacles and bike racks at every corner to dispose of stuff we no longer valued and lock up the things we did?

We were none of that, and perhaps—without knowing it—denial was the point of convergence I had in mind, the notion that we were something other… or could be.

Part 4 – Nice Sandals
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“Nice sandals!” I said.

No kidding! I said it out loud. Breathlessly. Disguised as a brash joke, because any second now the light on Quadra would wink green and the little silhouette that says walk would let her get away, and I couldn’t let that happen without at least a memory of me—strange and deformed as it might seem—hankering after her. Things had spiralled into a place where an inkling of madness is the only reasonable state of mind, not stark raving lunacy, but a sort of emotional Pi, never quite defined, always panicked by another increment of yearning.

If only we had it in us to feel that way about every living thing, we would truly be incarnations of our imagined gods.

The light changed. Gloria stepped off the sidewalk into the intersection. I walked beside her, thinking: This is it. It’s finished. She still hadn’t glanced at me. I studied her profile for signs. She wasn’t ready to offer any, and how could I blame her? But I took comfort in the fact that we were walking in the same direction, that the inaudible pat of her sandals on the pavement didn’t seem hurried or doubtful. She was willing to abide my company at least.

Gloria strode on like the dancer she is, back straight, black pantaloons fluttering in the breeze, pleated jacket conforming precisely to her slight, angular build. Did I imagine it, the faintest hint of a smile turning up her lips? I’m not sure, but the words rushed out of me anyway, when I saw what I took to be a cue, as if I’d been waiting to blurt my intentions for just-about-ever. “Maybe you won’t take it wrong if I walk with you a-ways?”

Creep! Is that what she was thinking? She stopped, looked straight at me, her head swivelling round like a security camera on a pole, eyes locking on. This is it, I thought for the umpteenth time. It’s finished.

Then she smiled and laughed out loud, and… Oh my God! Oh my!

Part 5 – Sounds of Silence
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We plan on having kids someday but there’s still lots of time to think about how I might answer if one of the little rascals ever asks, when they’ve attained the age of reason or at least a mature state of curiosity: “Hey, Dad, how did you and Mom first meet and fall in love?”

Perhaps, if I framed it as a joke, I could admit to my temporary state of foot-fetishism at the corner of Hillside and Quadra while I was on my way to the pit and Gloria off to her studio. Or maybe I could fast-forward to our first date, on the evening of that first day, at Café Fantastico, just a couple of blocks away from our point of departure. I paid; Gloria objected; we laughed at the clumsiness of it all—our perfectly memorable ineptitudes.

To be honest, I was amazed she showed up at all or that I’d asked her to when we parted ways that morning, me pedalling down Bay Street, heading for the pit; her, carrying on up Quadra. Gloria walks without making a sound. It’s like she rolls the soles of her feet through each step, feeling the ground beneath her, sensing its contours, its tilt, its flaws and fractures. Silence is what she leaves behind when she walks away from you or out of a room. Don’t get me wrong, she’s not an angel or anything, and I’m not a worshiper. But that silence she leaves in her wake? Your instinct is to fill it with thoughts of her.

Part 6 – Rippled Glass
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The circular patio table we chose on the sidewalk outside Café Fantastico had a rippled glass top, so I could still make out Gloria’s feet after we sat down. They became a point of reference—their muscular arch, perfectly articulated toes andmeticulously painted nails a sort of permissible zone of psychic gravity, which assured me the rest of her was still there, that she was real in an incomprehensible way. There’s a difference between comprehending someone and figuring them out, I think. Comprehending is like hugging your partner, knowing you’ll always be wondering how amazing she is; figuring her out is like taking her apart so you can adjust the mechanics of her soul – like tuning a bicycle.

A lot of my friends have got round to asking me in one way or another why I majored in philosophy at UVic. They don’t come right out and say: “Hey, you could be doing a hell of a lot better than crunching gravel down at the pit if only you’d go into law or something, or maybe take a few more PSYCH courses, get a master’s? Get into counselling? Or teaching? Heck, why not try for a PhD in something or other; you’ve got the smarts.” And maybe they’re right; maybe I will someday. But all that misses the point – the vanishing point of our existence, you might say. I can’t map this out in a straight line, like if I was a crow flying from here to there, and landing on a lamppost in the very epicentre of Nirvana. Life doesn’t move in straight lines or elegant curves that can be described by some sort of derived calculus.

I didn’t know it at the time but took philosophy so I could understand the meaning of Gloria’s feet, seen through the rippled glass of a patio table. Intimacy is the sudden awareness that your partner is too beautiful to take in at a glance, that you have to look away, take time to grow yourself into it, expand your ability to appreciate every facet of her being… now there’s a word that takes me back to the Big Bang of prenatal existence.

There’s a theory I’ve been trying to work out since I wore the funny cap and gown at my UVic graduation: I call it bracketed infinity. Essentially, it means you can choose any two points, or moments, or encapsulated surfaces, and the space-time-continuum between your arbitrary beginning and end will be infinite. We divide up our experiences as if they were exponentially duplicating editions of ourselves evolving through some process of mitosis, taking place beneath the painted exterior of a Russian doll. But every manifestation of me or you is complete, whole, infinite.

Get it?

Can’t say as I’ve figured it out yet myself, so you’re smarter than me if you have… All I know is, when I wake up beside Gloria, and we smile, my future, past and present are right now, in the moment.

Bird of Paradise

The bird of paradise does not live
in lush green tropic forests,
doesn't stroke with flashing wings
a Caribbean sky.

But she might.

This species does not trill
her heartfelt, joyous anthems
from a leafy, palm-treed hillside
under a dazzling, foreign sun.

But she could.

This mystic creature you will find
in the shimmering, shushing fabric
in the irridescent patterns,
in the brilliant woven mists
of an imaginative mind...

Just waiting to be...
Freed.

                           For Diana

ImagiNation

Creative writing takes us places we have never been, invents new worlds, converts ideas and memories into things experienced in the mind’s eye. That’s the first half of the creative cycle; reading is the second. It’s the intent of authors and poets to incite creativity in the minds and hearts of readers.

Creative interaction has always been a driving passion for writers, and—fortunately—we live in an era when that fundamental, almost instinctive urge can be channelled into new formats, reaching new ‘audiences’. We can engage our readers (and listeners) before, during, and after the writing and publication of our ‘books’.

Let me share a couple of examples.

I’m rewriting a story titled Entrapments, which I rediscovered after it had sat on my MS shelf for some years. Right now, I’m getting to know the characters. In the mix: an aging prostitute, a journalist, an art critic, an artist, a petty crook… and so on. I’ll be reaching out online for ‘enactors’—people who have lived those personas or are very familiar with them. I want these contacts to feel engaged in the creative process and to enjoy the experience.

My most recently released novel, The Mural Gazer, was the second I have posted online as a work in progress, inviting readers to join me page by page as the story unfolded. My first online novel, The Boy From Under, is also available online. Both can be purchased in print via my Amazon.com author’s page.

Again, the purpose of creating literature online is to engage readers and writers as early as possible and to invite questions and commentary as the story emerges. Other possibilities and benefits?

Links can be inserted into an online story as supplementary information and graphics.
An audio edition of the story can be made available in the same space as the print edition.
Feedback from readers can be welcomed and responded to.
Literature can be shared instantly, at a lower price, and with reduced environmental costs.
Other books on an author’s shelf can be linked seamlessly…

The potential for writers to meet readers via new digital technologies excites me. It’s daunting, too. But in an era when young people in particular are being drawn more and more into the online universe, authors have to establish a niche—let’s call it ImagiNation!

Every picture tells a story

*Be Still and They Will Come by Diana Durrand inspired Craig Spence to write Waking Dream (see below). Photographs, paintings, sculptures—any art form—can resonate in the minds of writers.*

If you are interested in a workshop that engages participants in responsive writing to shared images (photos & paintings), please contact me. More info below…

Every picture tells a story, which makes art a source of inspiration for writers. The same goes for music, dance, and every other art form out there, but the visual arts, especially, are a trove of ideas.

Open up a family photo album and memories are triggered by the images you see. That’s a source for writers whose chosen genre is memoire. But images from other collections can also inspire.

What if your mode is historical fiction? Take a walk around Chemainus and every wall comes to life in your imagination. You can feel yourself being drawn into the large-as-life scenes and back in time—hear sails luffing, wagons clattering, trains chuffing, the rhytmic stroke of paddlers in dugout canoes.

Is there an image that inspires you? Perhaps it’s not even a specific picture, but a sequence made up of many related images, times, and places.

Craig Spence was inspired to write Waking Dream when he saw Diana Durrand’s mixed media piece Be Still and They Will Come, which has been displayed at the Cowichan Valley Performance Centre. Art galleries are great places to go in search of inspiration!

Stories or poems inspired by images aren’t descriptive exercises; they are works of art in their own right, which add a literary dimension to what you are experiencing.

Art, in the deepest sense of the word, is not meant to be ‘looked at’—or read, for that matter; it’s meant to be ‘invoved in’. Looking at a painting, or reading a story, becomes an imaginative act-—it’s participatory. So stories and poems based on imagery are works of art in their own right.

Would you like to participate in a free workshop built around responsive writing to shared images?

Waking Dream

They came to her
in a dream
on paws as soft
as evening light

They huddled in
the contoursof her restless soul
creatures of the land
between day and night

And she lay perfectly
still…
For an eternity…or so it seemed
Aware only of their being
and her delight

She dared not move
or even think…
of stirring…
for if she did
her moment…
she knew…
would take flight.

Craig Spence

Proof’s in; now the work begins!

It’s been a long time coming, but my proof copies of The Boy From Under have arrived… now the work begins!

So much has changed since I typed ‘The End’ onto the concluding page of this novel’s first draft. From a writer who believed his work was done once those two words were appended to his manuscript I have morphed into one who believes the creative cycle is never really completed, and that his books have to be actively and joyfully promoted and shared.

The first step will be getting proof copies into the hands, and minds, of beta readers and reviewers. If you want to join that helpful group, let me know. Alas, I only have five print copies to share, but I’ve posted an online edition of the book too, which will be free for all you betas out there.

If you like psychological mysteries, I think you’ll find the Boy From Under an intriguing read from front cover to back…

Room 215+3/4

*Two beings can exist in the same space, at the same time, and yet be on entirely different planets…*

It was like stepping into a time tunnel and heading back more than 50 years, walking down that long corridor; passing students chatting, laughing, hurrying heads-down between classes; then up the stairs and into Room 215, where he was expected to share his observations as an author and sometime poet.

He stepped over the threshold with a sense of foreboding. An eerie premonition that, despite the sameness of it all, everything had changed in the half century since he’d celebrated his graduation from St. Laurent High School back in 1969… and awakened the next morning to a splitting hangover.

My hair has greyed, skin wrinkled, reflexes slowed and primal urges waned, he thought. My kids have grown up, and I’ve become a grandfather… I’m history.

While the students settled in and Ms. Drury introduced him, he realized there’s nothing like making a presentation to a Grade 12 English class to remind you just how ancient you have become. How irrelevant!

Unlike indigenous peoples, North Americans of European extraction – the majority in Room 215 – don’t really have a tradition of cherishing the wisdom of their ‘elders’. To them senior citizens are alien creatures, apparitions from the world of rotary phones, black and white TV, Underwood typewriters, cursive script and cheap gasoline.

Generation Pre, he figured. As in ‘pre anything digital or online’.

A Google reference had informed him that he’d be addressing students of Generation Z, ‘our first true generation of digital natives,’ according to the write up. ‘Born into a technological world, information has been placed at their fingertips and social media use has become the norm.’ The article was titled ‘Gen Z and Gen Alpha in the Classroom: The Importance of Digital Learning’. It ran under a photo of a girl wearing a pair of virtual reality goggles, her hands reaching out to touch something he couldn’t see or even imagine.

He considered it an iconic portrayal, troubling with its certainty that two beings can exist in the same space, at the same time, and yet be on entirely different planets. My version of Room 215 might just as well be off Platform 215³/₄, he thought. An utterly alternate reality.

Buck up! he rallied. Don’t be pathetic.

And so began his laboriously prepared presentation. Later, he would describe the episode to Maria as, Sort of like being a fly, droning around in a room, looking for a place to land. “I’m still laughing at myself.”

When she consoled him, he shook his head. “They were being honest, hon, not rude. And I learned more in that hour or so than I care to admit.”

“Like what?”

“That even when kids are smiling and nodding at my rambling, for them it’s like talking to someone who’s dialled the wrong number, long distance, from another world.”

“I’m with them on that one,” she joked, and they had a good laugh.

Thankfully the session had ended on a high note, he remembered. They had a brief conversation about how authors deal with rejection, which he morphed into an oblique commentary on his then-and-there. “I referred back to comments I’d made earlier about the writers’ vocation of ‘experiencing and expressing life’, and his belief in the personal importance of the literary cycle… “How that gives you the strength to push through and carry on,” he explained.

“Then, when Ms. Drury said thanks as I was packing up my books and papers, the students gave me a fulsome applause!”

“You’re sure it wasn’t just because you were leaving?”

He ignored the quip.

“I suspect it was in recognition of a determined effort by someone hopelessly out of his depth. Appreciation for his refusal to give up – like cheering on a water buffalo who’s blundered in a pit of quicksand.

“I do believe they were telling me to keep trying.”

Not that they’d want me to book another performance before the end of their last year in high school, he thought. But perhaps to inflict myself on the Generation Alphas, who will soon be occupying their seats in Room 215… or is it 215³/₄?

“I have to say, daunting as it remains, the thought of having another go appeals to me,” he admitted to Maria. “And I sort of hope I’m invited!”

They hugged, then got on with the business of preparing dinner.

The Shove

*I imagine it hovering next to my ear… sucking all the private nectar out of my brain.*

Toward the end of our session Dr. Nolan said, “It would help if we knew what your daily routines and rituals are, Bob. Don’t you think?”

He has a way of doing that… inviting me to approve every next step in our ‘journey’ so it will be my fault as much as his if we get lost in the metaphorical forest or I walk off a cliff. I suppose I could have said, ‘No way. I’m paying you to get me out of this mess!’ But that’s not how things work.

Besides, I’m not paying him; my boss is. It’s one of the ‘employee benefits’ we lucky clones at college receive for dedicating our souls eight hours a day to the education of a cadre of snotty rich kids. ‘Education?’ That’s a laugh. I could just as easily teach a bunch of baboons the intricacies and nuances of English Literature.

The ‘mess’ I’m talking about occurred three months ago, when I shoved Lenny Hertz and he tripped over the coffee table in the staff room. He bruised his elbow, a small price to pay for his crude arrogance. I apologized and helped him up, but he lodged a complaint anyway and the verdict turned out to be anger management counselling with Dr. Nolan.

It’s my penchant for ritual that got me into trouble, he believes… or rather, he’s nudging me toward that belief. The sessions last an hour, the conclusions marked by his hummingbird alarm. When the hummingbird zooms through the room – an audio avatar emitted by an app on his iPhone – we are supposed to sum up our day’s progress, and prepare for the next session. Dr. Nolan always smiles when the hummingbird hovers, as if he’s imagining it landing on his shoulder.

I hate the hummingbird, because it reminds me where I’m at, and why, and what we’ve talked about during the last hour. I imagine it hovering next to my ear, sticking its pointy beak inside, and sucking all the private nectar out of my brain.

The objective of my ‘conversations’ with Doc Nolan is for me to become aware of the ‘detonators’ that caused me to shove Hertz, and to be able to ‘defuse’ the situation when – not if – it recurs. His logic goes something like this: I am ritual bound; my rituals are sacred; if anyone makes fun of my rituals, anger builds; if, like Hertz, they don’t stop making fun when I signal my displeasure, I am likely to explode.

My theory is much shorter: Hertz is an asshole.

Doc Nolan says we have to ‘unwrap’ the meaning of words like that. They are the labels we slap onto our ‘perceived enemies’ to avoid having to them becoming real people. “What you have to do, Bob, is become aware of the human beings who have become the antagonists in your life’s stories, and deal with them on a mature level.

“Make yourself bigger than them, then invite them to grow up with you.”

In our fist sessions Doc Nolan and I reconstructed the day leading up to the staff room incident. In retrospect he forgave me. Said I’m not alone, when it comes to living by rituals. “Everybody has ‘em,” he proclaimed. “We like to think of ourselves as ‘free spirits’ and ‘spontaneous’, that’s how the marketeers portray us, but truth is, as soon as we start analyzing our lives we find they are made up of routines, which are actually the stem cells of ritual.”

That assurance in place, he said: “Describe a typical morning, Bob.”

Anger management training is not so much an exercise in healing as a perverted form of punishment, it occurred to me in that moment. For session after session you are forced to decide between the truth, or denial, or silence, or a lie. And you realize gradually that you’re not going to shove dickhead Hertz next time, because you’ll have to go through this kind of counselling torture again, and again… that you’d rather leave him to his smug taunting and go put your fist through a bathroom mirror or something…

“Bob?” Doc Nolan coached.

The first thing I do in the morning is look at Maria, lying next to me, and thank her for being there, and hope I will be able to make her happy. I have to confess, I’m not the best of husbands. I’m boring, I know. And weird in so many ways. And resentful of Maria’s interminable efforts to ‘liven me up’ and get me ‘eating healthy.’ The least I can do is love her, and renew my vow to make her smile, keep my love from becoming threadbare.

“And after that?” Doc Nolan prodded, murmuring in that tone counsellors have mastered, a subtle frequency that sounds like benediction emanating from somewhere deep inside your own brain.

Lordy, I found myself mocking. If only I had a couch to lie on.

“Bob?”

“After that, I hang ten and stretch for the sky.”

“Hang ten?”

I sit on the edge of our mattress, a gigantic aerial raft of memory foam, my tootsies dangling like pulled roots seeking ground, my crown expanding toward the overarching light. And there, in equipoise between being and not, I imagine the dawn of another day.

“You do this every day?”

I have to admit, his surprise gave me a fillip of pleasure. The thought of my own counsellor thinking of me as a nut case made me feel special. I pictured him at his next mind-benders’ convention, offering me up a an example of weird and wonderful that would surely outdo the tales of his colleagues…

And my feet hadn’t yet touched the floor.

“Then what?”

The rites of brushing teeth, letting out the cat, shuffling into the kitchen and getting the coffee brewing seemed hardly worth mentioning, although none of them are routine, now I think about it. Routine is the things that happen on autopilot. You’re not actually there. I’m a priest at my bathroom sink ablutions; a prophet, sending Rusty out into his dangerous world; a saint, counting scoops into the French press for the coffee I’ll offer Maria in bed. But Doc Nolan wouldn’t appreciate that. Those daily chores are too ordinary to parlay into anything verging on madness. Quirky, perhaps, but in unexceptional ways.

What he was really rooting around for, like an earthworm in my gut, were the five affirmations, and that clumsy ballet I perform in their honour every day, when I think no one’s watching… Maria excepted. She has intruded on my ritual often enough to know about it. We laugh when she refers to it as the platypus’s dance of the sugar plum faery; laugh even harder when I accuse her of being unkind to platypuses.

“The five affirmations?”

Value Life; Complete the Circle; Give with Joy & Grace; Receive with Gratitude and Appreciation; Experience and Express the Tetrahedron. I sometimes wish I was a hologram so I could enact those things with the fluid movement they deserve, a whirlwind of flashing light, limbs spiralling like constellations, toes and head axles of a universe without boundaries.

But I’m only human, and Hertz caught me unawares, doing my clumsy dance in tune with the final chant of the fifth affirmation. I was balanced on one foot, the other leg stretched out behind me, arms reaching toward the horizon to give and receive. Spirit is the fourth corner of The Tetrahedron, and I was lost in its meanings, so immersed that I didn’t notice Hertz suddenly there, behind me in the staff room.

I knew Dr. Nolan couldn’t possibly understand. At best he could misunderstand and misrepresent. “Spirit consists of four definitions that are beyond comprehension,” I explained.

“Go on.”

“Infinity, Eternity, Omniscience, Omnipotence.”

“God?” he guessed.

“Not God,” I corrected.

“What then?”

“Not God,” I repeated.

I admit it was wrong for me to have shoved Hertz, even though it wasn’t really much more than a nudge, which he exaggerated into something more dramatic. But the idea of Not God next to the reality of Hertz was just too much for me to take. I confess, I wanted his smug, leering face out of my sight and I won’t forgive myself for that, even though it wasn’t a sin, it was just being stupid.

A State of Repose

So I only get to imagine the photo I might have taken of him in front of the clattering bird he had once flown on its metal wings, me behind the camera, Dad looking impossibly old and feeble, but heroic just the same. I only get to remember that touristy shot as it might have been, an explicit moment where – with the click of a shutter – we got to forgive each other our complicities, our sins, our armageddons.

The earliest evidence of my existence isn’t preserved as a proper memory. It’s been reconstructed based on family photos, blurry black and whites captured by an Eastman Kodak ‘Hawkeye’.

Dad’s never in those seminal shots because he’s the guy working the camera, and I don’t figure in many or them either because my older brothers Frank and Kevin were the stars along with my sister Natalie.

There’s one of me in a baby carriage, parked on a sidewalk, my face wrinkled and scrunched up like I’m getting ready to howl. If I try really hard, I can imagine Dad hunched over the view finder, divining just the right moment to trigger the shutter and capture another chemically rendered pattern of light for posterity… this one of his prune-faced youngest.

What was going on inside his head? I wonder. What sequence in the charged neural plasma determined the exact moment the hologram of me got burned into the photo emulsion? And what was mother thinking when she scribed on the flip side of that archival image: “Arthur in his carriage at Portage la Prairie.”

Then there’s a shot of us kids and Mum posed in front of the family Christmas tree, taken in some living-room I can’t for the life of me remember. Frank and Kevin are playing with their shiny-new truck and grader; Natalie looks petulant and pouty, as if she already knows Santa’s never going to bring her exactly what she wants; Mum looks like she’s staring into the headlight of an oncoming car. I’m toddling in front of the montage, slightly to the side, looking doubtful – as if I haven’t yet figured out who this guy Santa really is, and why I’m getting presents and having my picture taken in his name.

Dad wasn’t much of a family man back then. I suspect he took the photo as a form of misrepresentation. But since the Hawkeye didn’t have a timer, he couldn’t insert himself into the happy montage – could only claim that he’d been there in absentia. How would he have fit in anyway: still young enough not to have succumbed entirely to the dreariness and pettiness of it all… to believe if you drank hard enough and laughed loud enough, maybe things would turn out alright. If he could have swapped himself into the scene quicker than the speed of light, I think he would have struck an intrepid explorer’s pose, looking over the top of the camera’s infallible lens into a future none of us could either foresee or forestall.

The first shot I can actually remember being in with Dad was taken on the edge of the Atlantic. The family trekked to Sydney every summer, our pilgrimage to Dad’s ancestral home. Our favourite destination from there was Kennington Cove, about an hour south, just past Louisbourg. To us kids the waves rushed in like liquid mountains, as if the God we still believed in had grabbed the far edge of the flat world and was shaking it like a sheet. Frank, Kevin and Natalie would have been out there in the surf, but I was too young. So I ended up in Dad’s arms. Mum must have snapped the picture.

His right arm is wrapped around me. I’m clinging to him and squirming at the same time, my left hand planted on his neck. It’s hard to tell if Dad is really aware of me or if he’s successfully ignoring my struggles, but I like to think we’re connected somehow. He is aware of the camera all right, striking a relaxed pose, leaning against a boulder, the ocean roiling in the background, hissing up and down the strand.

That photo sucks me in like the Atlantic’s undertow. Whenever I see it I am suddenly there, at Kennington Cove; held tight in my father’s arms; my chubby baby’s hand splayed against his neck and cheek. I mustn’t forget that. Despite everything else that would happen, I have to recall the tight muscles of his neck, the rough stubble of his cheek, him peering ahead as if there might be something dangerous, lurking out there on the bluffs, me fascinated by the breakers collapsing onto the beach behind, where Frank, Kevin and Natalie frolicked.

Family photos are counterfeit memories, reproductions of light that has long-since been absorbed by the landscape or bled off into unalterable dimensions of space. We preserve them in battered valises, in dusty attics, in houses moved away from long ago. They never get thrown out; instead, we simply leave them behind for someone else to deal with. They molder away in dark attics, forever waiting to be discovered. Like crematory urns, they become repositories that reassure us simply by existing.

It’s the images never taken that define us – the photos not allowed.

I don’t remember a single photo of Mum and Dad holding hands. There’s a picture somewhere of Mum sitting on a grassy slope, her skirt hiked up above her shapely thighs. She looks directly into the camera, laughing at the man who would be her husband. On the back, in her neat script: “Taken near London, during the war.”

Odd, we still call it that: ‘The War.’ As if applying the title to any other of the murderous cataclysms that have bloodied and tortured the planet in the last six decades would be a misuse of language. Ten billion lifetimes since Hiroshima and Nagasaki supposedly put a full-stop to hostilities, and we still look back on that global paroxysm as present and playing itself out in the here-and-now.

I can’t be sure why there are no photos in our family albums of Mum and Dad holding hands. Never really thought much about it. I have a slight aversion to hand-holding myself – as if it’s a species of weakness, an act of self-delusion, like offering a stuffed toy to someone waiting in line, patting him on the back and saying: “It’s okay kid, everything’s going to be just fine.”

There are other pictures of Mum and Dad during the war: the one taken on their wedding day, Dad in uniform, clowning around, making a face, his hat turned sideways on his head, Mum laughing, leaning into him, his arm around her shoulder; My sister in a pram, somewhere in London, the lineaments of our shared genetic code showing clearly, even then, in her frown.

But there’s not a single image that breaches the unofficial secrets act. Not one that breaks the unspoken code adopted by sane men whose job it was to fly over the blighted, blasted cities of Europe and drop pulverizing incendiaries onto the innocents below: children, women, men. Dad never talked about it, so I invented that period of his life – his hands gripping controls, nudging throttles, easing the lumbering bird of vengeance up into the sky.

I once asked him to accompany me to the Royal Canadian Air Force museum, where the preserved carcass of a Lancaster bomber sits on display, as if it were some breed of mechanical pterodactyl. He avoided the topic at first, then turned me down flat. Mum said he was afraid he might have forgotten too much about those times, what it was like to fly those ancient machines and might have been embarrassed.

I think it was because he didn’t want to remember.

So I only get to imagine the photo I might have taken of him in front of the clattering bird he had once flown on its metal wings, me behind the camera, Dad looking impossibly old and feeble, but heroic just the same. I only get to remember that touristy shot as it might have been, an explicit moment where – with the click of a shutter – we got to forgive each other our complicities, our sins, our armageddons.

At Dad’s funeral they couldn’t get the hands right. The way they were arranged on his chest, against the blue serge of his blazer, under the Royal Canadian Air Force crest, was… and there’s no other language for it… fake, grotesque.

Rigor mortis sets in about 12 hours after death. The muscles tighten around the bone, jerking the limbs into a sort of fist, which is unable to let go because the enzymes that normally complete the cycle of clutching and releasing are no longer being produced by the body. It remains in that state about 48 hours, then as decomposition sets in, the body relaxes, accepting – it would seem – that it has truly died. Dad’s hands never did relax, so the mortician arranged them as best he could, the fingers meshed like cogs in a gear-train.

His face looked almost normal. You could tell there was something unnatural about it, like it might have belonged in a wax museum, but at least you could imagine it once having been alive. The hands are what I remember, though, the message they conveyed in their involuntary language of signs.

Experiences of a D2W Author

*Going direct-to-web is more than an experiment. It’s a mission.*

Nine years ago I began work on what would become my first direct-to-web novel, The Boy From Under, a crime thriller set in Langley, British Columbia. I have since taken the story offline, and will be republishing it after I complete work on my second D2W book, The Mural Gazer, which I plan to publish in a print edition this summer.

I launched myself into D2W because, like many writers, I was frustrated with the length of time it took to get my work published; with the trickledown process that left everyone up the chain earning money, while I had to pay off ‘reverse royalties’ before a penny would come my way; and by the challenges of getting my stories off bookstore shelves, into the hands of readers.

D2W as an adjunct to print editions seemed a promising concept, which might address those issues. I am still convinced of its potential, even though I have become increasingly aware of the daunting magnitude of the undertaking – not the technical difficulties, which are surmountable, but the steadfast loyalty of readers to books on printed pages, between covers.

That isn’t going to change any time soon, certainly not within my own lifetime. The iconic image of curling up with a book in a favourite armchair is not going to be supplanted by the notion of reading or listening to a novel on your mobile while jolting along on public transit between home and office. For the foreseeable future print will be the overwhelmingly popular choice of readers.

So why bother with direct-to-web at all? Why not let young up and comers crack open that niche market for a new generation of readers?

First and foremost, because literature is too important to a healthy, vital society not to secure its place in the online, digital world as soon as possible. I’ll have more to say about that in a future post, but getting books online has become an urgent priority for me because literature remains the most powerful mode I can think of for sharing ideas and feelings. It’s foundational to a society that explores its motives and challenges its actions.

Then there’s the creative possibilities D2W opens up. When I started down the direct-to-web path, I considered it purely from a publication and distribution point of view. Inevitably, however, it morphed into a mode of writing that excites me. The Mural Gazer was created dynamically. I know many authors will shudder at the thought, but I posted episodes as they were written – the online equivalent of an author writing his book in a department store window.

Over the years I have also come to appreciate the tremendous distribution and marketing opportunities of D2W. I can share The Mural Gazer with readers anywhere in the world as a text or audio book at almost no cost. Readers can access the book immediately when they see it promoted on social media. With a click they can open up the story on their mobile phones, laptops or desktop computers. After reading a few chapters, they can pay for the book online, too.

Finally (for now) there’s the matter of control, a decidedly two edged sword. I don’t really want to be a writer/publisher/promoter/bookseller because I value the knowhow of partners in the literary realm and would love to narrow my focus more on writing. For the time being, however, I have no choice. Until there are collaborative pathways from writing to publishing and selling, I will have to multitask as a D2W author.

A retired journalist and communications manager, I am in the tempting position of being able to take on that do-it-yourself book writing and publishing role. But I know it’s not a viable, sustainable model. What I envision are collectives, bringing the necessary skills together to see the dream of storytelling from conception through publication and sales in D2W and print formats made real.

That’s my goal for Books Unbound. I’m happy to share ownership.

What is a D2W Book?

**Screen views of *The Mural Gazer*, a Direct-to-Web novel**

What is D2W? The easiest way to answer that question is via a link to my Direct-to-Web novel The Mural Gazer. But before you click let me point out a couple of advantages D2W has already made available to you as reader and me as author:

First, I can share my novel with you in an instant, just about anywhere on the planet you can pull in an internet signal;
Second, you don’t need any dedicated technology to get into the story. Your laptop, mobile or desktop computer are your eReaders.

So back to definitions: A Direct-to-Web book is published as a website.

More specifically, it’s a website formatted as a book that reads like a print edition. If you’ve visited The Mural Gazer, you have seen its landing page, which introduces the story as would the front and back covers of a conventional book.

From there you can follow links to either Pullout, the opening scene, or the Episodes menu item, which takes you to the Mural Gazer’s table of contents. It’s the same type of decision you might make browsing a volume pulled from a bookstore shelf.

If you dive right into the story via the Pullout page, you will see an audio link at the top, which lets you listen to a reading. That’s handy if you happen to be riding on a subway or driving to work.

You can always jump to another page, or get back to where you were when reopening the novel on another device via the Episodes table of contents link.

Beneath the audio bar and at the foot of each page are links to the next episode. Every page links to its following episode, so you can read or listen to the entire novel as if you were turning the pages of a print edition.

That pretty well sums up the Direct-to-Web concept in terms of what you might expect from the design and layout of any book: accessible, convenient, portable and navigable.

There are a few extras, though.

You don’t need a light source to read a D2W thriller! You can be right out there in the dark and stormy night, scrolling through its pages in situ, while glancing over your shoulder for any ghouls that might be in pursuit!

The Mural Gazer can be readily shared via email and social media, so you can invite friends into your reading adventure. At the top of each page are social media and email icons that allow you to instantly send a link from the page you are reading to anyone on your contacts list. Books are meant to stimulate conversations.

Up in the menu bar there’s also a Contact tab, so D2W readers can connect with or follow authors if they want to share some ideas, ask a question or keep up with new releases. This feature is especially important if, like me, you are an author who sometimes chooses to write ‘dynamically’, inviting critique as the story unfolds in real time.

Not showing on this excerpt form the Mural Gazer are internal links. But say in the seventh paragraph of Pullout I wanted to give readers a snapshot view from the Malahat Summit on Vancouver Island, up Finlayson Arm? I could put a link into the text and take them there. Or I could link to a side story from the narrative, or provide supporting description for a word or phrase some readers might not be familiar with.

Of course, because the reader happens to have their internet device in front of them, they can do a quick Google snoop any time they choose to check out a scene or expand on a bit of information.

Finally, if you look at the widget area on both the Pullout and the Episodes table of contents pages, you will see a description of the book and a button that allows readers to ‘Buy-In’ to the story. Readers can get a sense of the story before – at any point – they choose to buy, and authors can choose just how far they want to allow readers to go before buying.

Eventually that space will also allow readers to purchase print and ePub editions of The Mural Gazer. D2W books complement their print editions, giving readers who like to read on screen the option – they don’t replace hard copy editions, which will long remain the preference of most book lovers.

The capabilities we’ve shared will be the subject of future posts in the Books Unbound series. The objective of Direct-to-Web publishing is to make it easier for readers to buy books and authors to share and sell them.

Sustainable Literature is the goal.

We’ll delve more deeply into the features of a D2W publication and how the reach and scope of literature can be broadened through the use of digital and online technologies in future posts. In the meantime, thank you for visiting what is, in fact, a Direct-to-Web book in the making: Books Unbound.

Up Next: Getting books off the online shelf