Tori Amos came to Pittsburgh on November 6, 1998, on her “Plugged ’98” tour. I had been living and breathing her music for two years at that point. She had gotten me through the worst of middle school, she had been the reason I started reading Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics, and she was going to be only four hours away from my hometown in Athens, Ohio.

My mom let me skip a day of school and drove us to Pittsburgh, a city we both loved anyway, and we went to that concert together. I made a huge glittery sign that the guards made me throw away before we entered. I was 14, and most of the audience was older than me and younger than my mom. When Tori came onstage, I screamed and screamed and screamed. The show was incredible, even if my mom did get disgusted and bored by Tori’s ten-minute version of “The Waitress,” with its world-filling refrain “I believe in peace, bitch.” I bought merch (my mom paid for it). I was giddy for hours after. My mom and I had a great weekend together. As far as first concerts go, it set a high bar.

A post came up on Tumblr a few weeks ago, promising bootleg downloads for the whole tour. My heart stopped. I clicked the link, but it was dead. I wrote the owner of the blog, asking whether there was a new source for that particular date. I told her why it was important to me, but when she wrote back, she only said that she’d be out of the country for the next few weeks and that she’d get to it in March.

My mother and I are in that crowd somewhere. I’m waiting for the pirate to do her work.

*

I was going to say something about it last week, but I couldn’t formulate it. Last weekend marked the six-month anniversary of the day my mother died. She died on a Friday, but the date was August 24, and February 24 was a Sunday, and I wasn’t quite sure which day to commemorate. I know I stood in my kitchen, in the morning sunlight, thinking about the ride to the airport, thinking, “Huh, so this is how it feels to be a person whose mother has been dead for six months.”

The only way I can face it is to be incredibly blunt about it, and I don’t know if that makes people uncomfortable or not. This is a fact about me that’s never going to change: my mother died of brain cancer shortly after I turned 28. No one who ever meets me in the future will get to meet her. (When my grad school cohort was just starting to get to know each other, I wasn’t sure how to bring it up. I tried to talk about it in passing, as context, but there were moments where it stopped all conversation, and I didn’t want to be that person who wants everyone looking at her. “Hey, I’m reminding you that my mother’s dead! By the way, did I tell you my mother died of brain cancer? Let me tell you about how my mother died!”)

I still don’t know how to talk about it with people who haven’t been there. There are things I can say with other people whose parents have died that I can’t entirely share with those who haven’t lost like this. The one that means the most to me is something my dad said, shortly after it happened: “If this ruins your life, then we haven’t raised you right.” I knew instantly what he meant by that, but I’ve told it to others and seen them gasp.

A few months ago, I was talking with my therapist about an unbearable guilt for not being more destroyed, and worrying about correlations. My life got so much better in the months after she died; I finally applied and got into my top choice grad school, I found a career that fulfills me and makes me wildly happy, I fell in with a group of people who are — to a one — a joy to spend time with. She never got to see that, though, and I couldn’t move forward while she was still alive, I was so consumed with grieving. She often asked me, sometimes visibly upset, when I would find a boyfriend, when I would quit my job and do what I wanted, when I would stop stalling and move into the next phase of my life. When she would see my happy and taken care of.

I am, Mom. I wish you could see it. I hate this. I love you. I am.

*

My grief hits me when I’m alone. Right before I fall asleep, I’ll think about her in her plot, about the dirt I shoveled on top of her. I’ll think about her shroud, and the plain pine box I carried while wearing red high heels. I can’t view images of dead bodies anymore; when Sibyl Crawley died on Downton Abbey, grey and struggling for breath in her bed, I was too stricken to stop the episode. Lucky for me my friend Jess was there to step in. I’m not interested in a lot of the things my friends are — The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones. Too sad. Too much loss. Too much pain wrapped up in storytelling.

A few weeks ago I was getting ready to do an assignment at a brewery, my first piece of reporting where I didn’t know the people I’d be talking to. I assembled a cute, comfortable outfit and put on my face — a rarity, since I don’t ever wear makeup. Concealer for the circles under my eyes, powder to even out my skin, mascara to define my lashes. I had some time before I had to leave, and iTunes was on shuffle. A Kate Bush track, a favorite one, came up: it’s the culmination of a song cycle about a woman setting out to drown herself. Her future self, the old woman promised by the life line in her hand, appears to her. Come on, let me live, girl.

I ruined my makeup. I couldn’t stop crying. It hit me out of nowhere. I had to go, and be sociable, and report, and record. I couldn’t let this get in the way of my work. But she had wanted to live so much.

*

Living with grief is stunting. My life stopped for the five years in the middle of my twenties, and there was nothing I could do about it and still stay true to myself. I didn’t date, I didn’t travel, I didn’t explore, I didn’t experiment. Even when things were good, when Mom was in great shape after the first surgery and treatment worked, it took me years to stop answering the phone with fear in my voice; I couldn’t make myself believe my parents weren’t calling with bad news.

I’ve been wildly angry about this, in private, and there’s no one I can blame for this — and there’s also no reason why I can’t have those adventures and experiences now. I have to fight every day to remind myself of this. You are always your own worst enemy, even if all the rest of the world forgives you.

Does anyone talk about this? I haven’t looked for a community of people in their twenties who have lost people they love. I don’t know how much other people know about the kinds of things people lose in trench warfare grieving. I don’t even know if it’s wise to say this much, where my friends and family and potential employers can see. What do we say? How much do we share, and with whom?

There’s this wonderful miniseries from about 2000 called The Tenth Kingdom. It’s a mish-mash of fantastic characters and fractured fairy tales, but one emotional center of the story is the heroine’s quest to understand and confront the mother who abandoned her as a girl. This two-minute scene is true, more than I ever could have understood when I first saw this show, and that’s where I’ll leave this for now.

*

I never know how much to tell. I experienced so much, those last few months, and my father, who was her caretaker, went through even more. Much more. Miles and miles more. I don’t feel I have a right to say what I saw and felt. No way would Mom want that, or allow it. I don’t know what’s more private than dying, and my mother was proud of who she was and what she made of herself and of the people she loved. I could never betray that, or broadcast that betrayal — and that’s how I think of it, as a betrayal, no matter what journalism says about commitment to portraying the truth.

Since she died, I’ve been able to think of her more and more as she was before the cancer. When I dream about her, it’s ordinary: we’re in the car or in the kitchen or on vacation, just talking. When I wake up from those dreams, it takes a minute to reorient myself. Oh. Right. I am awake and my mother is gone and I can’t tell her about that thing that would make her happy.

For a long time I was scared I would only be able to remember the bad times, that the seven months after she was declared terminal would cancel out the 27 good years I had with her. One fact that I’ve thought on many times in the past has been that the body cannot remember pain, only that it occurred, and that seems to be true in this instance too.

That’s bittersweet, of course. A cousin recently presented me with a framed photograph, of me, my mom and one of my sisters, at his sister’s wedding. That wedding was the last good night: Mom had been fine for two or three years, but she had to skip the ceremony and most of the reception dinner because of a terrible headache. When my parents got back to Columbus, they discovered her tumor had returned. Things were never that good again after.

As soon as I’d thanked my cousin for the photo, I had to hide it. It’s a beautiful picture. I’m glad he gave it to me. We’re all so happy. When I saw it, all I could say was oh.

*

My mom doesn’t have a headstone yet. Jews wait for about a year to erect it. My dad has asked me and my siblings to start thinking about a ceremony for the stone setting, about what we’d want to do and say. When I think about what I’d want to leave at her grave (Jews will put small stones on a headstone, as a mark that they were there and remembered), my list is simple: Hershey’s Kisses, M&Ms and glitter. She loved to laugh, my mom. She was so much fun.  When I was younger, we used to have “Mom and Kid Days,” often involving a car trip — to Marietta and Parkersburg, to Columbus, to Pittsburgh. Those were the times it was okay that Athens was two hours from anywhere: I loved to just be with her, and tell stories, and talk.

I don’t have a lot of recordings of my mom. We never had a video camera while I was growing up, and Mom famously closed her eyes in almost every picture taken of her. I can think, offhand, of only two places where we still have her voice: a short video I made about three years ago of our dog, Gus, whom she laughs about in the background and calls “loooove bucket”; and the voice mail message on her cell phone, which sounds strangely formal and not entirely like her.

Before she died, even before she got sick again, I kept urging her to record all her family stories and Nora stories and favorite sayings. She kept insisting that she couldn’t figure out the computer, or she didn’t have time, or that her language wasn’t so good, so she’d wait until she was speaking better. I’m sorry she did, and I’m sorry I didn’t push harder, or sit with her and show her how easy it was.

*

These are nice stories, but all this healing that I’ve done, all the ways in which I’ve been able to cope with losing my mother — it doesn’t make up for the fact that she’s gone. That also needs to be stated. I worry, in talking about my own grief, that I appear insensitive or selfish, or maybe that I am insensitive and selfish.

More grist for the therapist. I’m scared to tell you all this, reader; maybe I should have said it earlier, or maybe I shouldn’t be saying this at all, but please take it accordingly. I’ve never done this before.

*

I interviewed a doula yesterday. I sat in on the last hour of a class she was teaching to expecting parents, knowing very little about what a doula actually did. By the end of the hour, I’d already come to the conclusion that she was, perhaps, the coolest woman in Chicago (and that was before I found out she’d just retired from roller derby), but then she glanced at her watch and back at her clients. “Do you mind if we go ten minutes over?” she said. “I want to tell you a story.”

“This story is the oldest written story in the world,” she said, and I sat up straighter, because I knew at once where she was going with this.

The doula told and acted out the Descent of Inanna, the Sumerian story of the goddess of heaven and earth who answers a call to go to the underworld, who gives up all her splendor and all her armor and all that defines her at each successive gate, and who dies and is reborn, but first spends three days hanging from a hook until her friend Ninshabur and the god Enki help her return.

Watching it was like seeing a panel from a Sandman comic brought to life, a woman telling a woman’s story about a hero’s journey about birth. The telling was at once sacred, irreverent, modern and comforting. (“I am Inanna, queen of heaven and earth, ruler of seven temples. I am a poetess, I am a warrior, I am wife to Dumuzi and mother to two sons. Here is my crown of wisdom, here is my measuring stick, here is my breastplate that says ‘Come at me, men.’ My cervix is four centimeters, I won’t have an epidural and you’ve already read my three-page birth plan.”) The doula told them that they wouldn’t fully understand it until they’d given birth, and that she hoped they could write to the group after and say what it was that meant the most to them, and what they understood now that they hadn’t before becoming mothers.

I was observing at the back of the room, grinning and enthralled. Later I said to a friend that this doula made me want to have a baby (I don’t want a baby now), which my friend said was probably the highest compliment you could give to her. But at one point in the telling my throat closed over and I had to fight back tears, sitting there alone with no one holding my hand.

It came when Inanna was dead and hanging from a hook in the underworld. She’s lost everything, she has nothing to ground her, she’s crawled through mud and dust and darkness and come through to this new place with nothing left for herself. She doesn’t know who she is anymore. Her friends come for her, and tell her it’s time to return aboveground. “No,” she says, “I’m fine, I can do it myself. I just need a little more time.”

Ninshabur and Enki take her off the hook, and they lead her into the sun, and they tell her that they love her, that they’re so proud of her for doing this hard thing, and that now she needs to come back, changed as she is.

After I interviewed the doula, I told her about my reaction to her story, and what it meant to me as someone who has experienced not birth but death close at hand. She asked (and I’m paraphrasing; she was straightforward and compassionate, not full of “hippie bullshit,” in her words) if I had had any sacred moments with my mom when things were at their worst.

I said yes, and told her a story I’ve never told anyone else, and left.

*

Now that it’s March, I check back on that bootleg page every so often. Somewhere in that crowd, I’m screaming and my mom, who has turned off her hearing aid, is probably checking her watch. She might not be, though. She might be clapping. Or talking to me about the songs. Maybe there was one she really liked. I wish I could remember; I wish I’d had time to ask.

There’s a quote in the songbook for Tori’s second album, Under the Pink, and it’s about a stream in the Rockies, and it ends with a sentiment something like “maybe you don’t have to make it to the ocean to be whole again.”

I’m waiting for the pirate to do her work, but I’m doing some work too. There’s something narratively pleasing about hearing the doula’s story now. Inanna comes back; that’s what she does, and that’s why we tell these stories and why we need to hear them.

I love you, Mom. I hate this, and I miss you. I love you, and I’m going to be okay.

Turns out I’m super into this. Can’t wait until I get to do this and write about it too.

Ed, who thought we were from McGill and asked us what provinces we came from

The prof liked the composition on this one. They’re loading beer into this trunk, by the way.

The welcoming committee — I wish I’d been able to get closer, as this family was just wonderful to watch.

This Union Station cab flagger (what are those guys called?) looked like one cool cat.

Interaction! I really like this shot.

This dude is owning it. I would love to drive one of those baggage carts.

This guy is actually playing to a group of people braving the cold for a smoke break, but I liked the shot with the pigeons most.

Today I sent in my FAFSA and have been making calls about immunization records. This week I was accepted at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, something which makes me scream inside (and sometimes outside) every time I remember that it’s real. I’ll be starting in early January.

A few months ago I renewed my passport. My last was issued in June of 2001. I remember sitting there looking at the photo of that girl and feeling both distant from and protective of her. She has so much ahead of her — college and 9/11 and California and improv and fumbling through her twenties and writing novels and road trips and fights and career angst and losing her mother. Especially losing her mother. Then I started to wonder if I was being too precious and literary about this moment, but that path seemed like a waste of my time. Feel what you feel and screw feeling ashamed of it.

I can say without qualifiers that this has been the worst year of my life. My mother died of brain cancer on August 24. Nothing I can say can make sense of or communicate what that’s like, so I will just say that I love her and miss her and have been thinking of her so much this week.

Yet the phrase that kept popping up when I shared this news was I’m so proud of you. That’s exactly what she said to me my whole life, and what she would have said now. I can’t tell you what it means to me to hear it from all my friends and loved ones. She was a little less gone every time I saw those words.

This week I also left my job of three and a half years. I have a month of funemployment ahead of me, during which I intend to do every fun thing I’ve managed to not do yet in Chicago, as well as the more mundane things I’ve been neglecting (you do not want to know what my kitchen or my apartment in general look like right now). (Yes, some of this includes working on Innogen & the Hungry Half — many have been asking!) I’ll also have eight days in Seattle, which, between spending time with my nieces (and their young Great Dane) and marathoning British TV with Joe Armstrong in, is going to be beyond splendid. I need this month. I need a month that’s just good to me.

I’ve often felt like it’s hard for me to look back on a year and notice the arc or the personal changes. This year has been a stark one, bad and good.

Hug the ones you love and tell them so.

Statistically, the hard times cannot go on forever. And at last, they didn’t.

Happy December, friends. May the next year be new.

My first flight, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, was scheduled to leave Midway around 1:30. I’m terrible about packing. I always tell people I have packer’s block, and can only do it the morning I leave. It only takes me half an hour at the outside, so I was prepared to enjoy a leisurely breakfast at my Lincoln Square apartment with a huge mug of my favorite tea. Until, of course, I remembered that I wasn’t giving myself nearly enough time to navigate a major airport on the busiest travel day of the year. I’m not saying the scene that followed was from Home Alone, but it’s not as far off the mark as I like to admit.

Read on for life lessons, horrible fates and a first-hand account of driving through Big Sky Country at night. (Fun fact: Wyoming and I share a birthday!)

Just outside of Boulder, Colo. Hey, we climbed a mountain!

Me, my brother Josh and my sister Erika

At the Dick and Lynne Cheney Plaza at the University of Wyoming in Laramie

Penny, my niece’s four-year-old Yorkie, and one of two reasons why I’ve changed my mind about tiny dogs

I’m having this issue with a history play at the moment. Over the summer, the BBC released The Hollow Crown, a tetralogy spanning Richard II, both the Henry IVs and Henry V. Despite the fact that Shakespeare’s history plays have never really been my thing (I tend more towards the weird stuff), I was always going to watch these productions: Tom Hiddleston plays Prince Hal/Henry V. Now, he does a magnificent job, as does everyone on the cast and crew, but for me, someone else stole the show. Thanks to Joe Armstrong, I’ve become a total Hotspur fangirl.

Harry Percy came along for me at the right time, in the right performance, and I can’t get enough of him. I love his ferocity, his authenticity, his nonexistent threshold for nonsense, his complicated relationship with his wife. I’m fascinated by how much Hal steals from him when he becomes king: his sense of honor, his righteous anger, his boldness in the field, even “We few, we happy few,” all of these are echoes of gallant Hotspur. Harry Percy is also a train wreck: he was just never going to live that long. But to me, his fervor is both intriguing and intoxicating, and the fact that he very nearly wins the day at Shakespeare’s Shrewsbury compounds my interest.

It’s no secret that Shakespeare played fast and loose with facts in his works. The actual Harry Hotspur was not a contemporary of Harry Monmouth’s, but of his father, Henry IV. He didn’t fall in single combat with the Prince of Wales but was, in the grand tradition of Harold Harefoot at Hastings, shot through his visor with an arrow when he lifted it to get a breath of fresh air. His wife’s name was Elizabeth, not Kate — though to be fair, that hardly stops anyone from calling women Kate in other plays. And yet there’s just something about the characters from the play. Shakespeare’s version of Hotspur is so vivid, even a great figure in his own right like Harry Percy can find it hard to compete.

It’s messing up my expectations, though. Reading fiction that hews to historical facts is proving a baffling experience. I’ve tracked down two novels that center on the Percy family and the events that The Hollow Crown covers. One is A Bloody Field by Shrewsbury by Edith Pargeter, better known as Ellis Peters, author of the Brother Cadfael mysteries. The other is Lion of Alnwick, first in a trilogy by Carol Wensby-Scott. Pargeter’s book is heavy on politics and military history; Wensby-Scott isn’t writing a bodice-ripper, but her text is unappealingly hostile to women, who seem to achieve agency by being horrible to each other, having children and competing for the attentions of men.

Lion of Alnwick, so far, focuses more on Henry Percy, First Earl of Northumberland, who is Hotspur’s father (confusingly for readers of Shakespeare, called Hal in the book). But Pargeter’s Hotspur is recognizably related to the man Shakespeare portrays. Though he is a skilled diplomat and restrained in temper, the narrator constantly calls attention to how open and unmasked and vibrant Harry Percy the man is. He has an effect on people by knowing who he is and not caring who doesn’t like it. Any Hotspur must be made of magnetism/dynamism/charisma/self-certainty, it seems; Hotspurs must also only talk in paragraphs, and Pargeter obliges us on that front too.

It still doesn’t feel right, though, and I get restless when I try and read these books. Turns out I don’t want more adventures featuring Harry Percy, I want more adventures featuring the cast of Shakespeare’s plays. Is it just because Shakespeare (or Joe Armstrong) showed me Hotspur first? Is it just because this text is Shakespeare?

Part of me wonders if Shakespeare’s version of events is more appealing because the end is easier to stomach. Henry IV Part 1 gives Hotspur a valiant fight scene and some poignant last words; his enemy who slew him mourns his passing (though he also lets Falstaff violate the body and cart it around like “luggage”). The truth, at least per Wikipedia, is much grimmer:

Prince Henry, upon being brought Percy’s body after the battle, is said to have wept. The body was taken … to Whitchurch, Shropshire, for burial; however, when rumours circulated that Percy was still alive, the King “had the corpse exhumed and displayed it, propped upright between two millstones, in the market place at Shrewsbury.” That done, the King dispatched Percy’s head to York, where it was impaled on one of the city’s gates; his four quarters were sent to London, Newcastle upon Tyne, Bristol and Chester before they were finally delivered to his widow. She had him buried in York Minster in November of that year. In January 1404 Percy was posthumously declared a traitor, and his lands were forfeited to the Crown.

This scenario makes my blood run cold. For all that I enjoy certain kinds of body horror (Innogen and the Hungry Half is all about doppelgangers and psychology), I’m not good with bodies. I’d read fiction about Lady Percy receiving the ruined, piecemeal corpse of her beloved husband, though; that sentence, “She had him buried…”, somehow speaks volumes that bear exploring. But I haven’t found that story, and I’m not sure it’ll be in A Bloody Field by Shrewsbury or Lion of Alnwick.

It doesn’t seem fair to dismiss Pargeter or Wensby-Scott for not being Shakespeare. Still, I may have to wait until The Hollow Crown is out of my system to try their books again. That may be a while — have I mentioned that it’s giving me novel ideas? Yet it makes sense to me, when I think of Shakespeare’s Hotspur in light of what I’ve learned from improv. That Harry Percy, meant for two hours on a crowded stage, is a raw nerve of unfiltered emotion and passions — terrible to live with as a real person, true, but for the drama, incomparably gripping. No wonder I want more of him — and if I can’t find more, apparently I plan to make it.

I guess there are worse fates.

My favorite podcast for puttering around my apartment is NPR’s All Songs Considered. Last month Smith was a guest DJ, to promote her new album, and before hitting “play” in iTunes, I had no idea what to expect. What does it mean to be the 65-year-old Godmother of Punk? I admit I only half-listened while I did my dishes—until her first song stopped me in my tracks. It was an anthem for the people of Japan in the aftermath of the tsunami, and the opening invocation gave me chills. After that, I listened, and became both interested in and impressed by this woman who spoke softly and beautifully about Amy Winehouse, growing up in New Jersey and her love of poetry.

Luckily for my newfound curiosity, Patti Smith has written an autobiography of sorts, Just Kids. I say “of sorts” because it’s more properly the biography of a friendship, an amazing bond between her and the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. I had heard of it when it came out a few years ago—it had won widespread acclaim and a number of awards. In an effort to curb my terrible book-buying habit, I hit up my library for a copy, but Patti has defeated me: I think I need to own this book.

If you only read Just Kids for its parade of fascinating experiences, discovering late ‘60s and early ‘70s New York from its underbelly to its heights, you’ll get a great deal out of this book. If you only read it for her prose, which is marvelous, you’ll absolutely enjoy yourself. But you can also read it for the contact high of her incredible love for Robert. She lays out their secret language, their struggles, their explorations, their growth as people and as friends, and it’s a gift to be allowed inside it.

Just Kids is a period piece, and it’s tempting to wish yourself into her shoes, to imagine hanging out with Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix. Smith does not cut corners about the unglamorous parts of artistic poverty. As much as she writes about beauty and excitement and creation, she doesn’t spare us the lice or the hunger or the deaths of friends. We’re not spared heartache even in the happy times: throughout the book is the specter of Mapplethorpe’s death from AIDS, engrained in the text from the first sentence.

This book is a biography of a friendship, though, and the most interesting thing to me about Just Kids as a period piece is how the mechanics of friendship have and haven’t changed. Patti and Robert are always making each other little gifts; they express themselves to each other with a lot of tactile effort and physical creations. They take long train rides or spend hours at diners together; they write letters and make collages or poppets or jewelry. Today, for those ordinary adorations, we send links or texts or posts on a Facebook wall. I found Patti Smith because of a podcast, on iTunes, on an iPod.

For me, this raises a lot of questions about authenticity, and why, when we have all this technology and the amazing things it affords us, we’re so taken with nostalgia and “retro” and vintage experiences. I saw the music video for Beirut’s “Postcards from Italy” for the first time while reading Just Kids, and it’s assembled entirely of ‘60s-style home video footage, some staged and some, perhaps, “real.” Someone once said that there must be a German word for the longing you feel for a memory you never made, and I get that feeling from this video. Someone is documenting this vacation, but everyone else is entirely present. Which, today, almost makes it a fantasy world.

I have wonderful, meaningful, important bonds with people I haven’t met in person, and the point of Just Kids is not to valorize Robert and Patti at the expense of how we live in the world today. We’re authentic, however we choose to reach out to people. It’s wonderful to be able to see inside someone else’s authenticity, though. Just Kids is fearless in that respect, because that necessitates vulnerability too. If authenticity is building yourself up, being your own maker and choosing how and what you love, then Patti Smith has it—and that is, in the end, pretty punk rock.

Originally published at Oy!Chicago.

Fans of books that have been translated to film can surely sympathize with the tension that followed: when you love a story, you want to be sure it’s done right, while at the same time you’re excited to see what new elements the reinterpretation adds. I have a pretty specific play in my head when I imagine the text. Thankfully, the jolts I got from this student production were, for the most part, good ones.

Shakespeare’s play, uncut, can be terrifically long. The director wisely both eliminated plenty of lines (and large chunks of the end, which clarified it a great deal) and, fascinatingly, combined characters. Philario, who hosts Posthumus when he arrives in Rome, and Caius Lucius, Augustus Caesar’s consular representative (and invading general) to Britain, were merged, as were several minor lords and ladies with other walk-on characters. The faithful Pisanio was played by a woman, and filled the role of all the palace servants. Casting a female Pisanio, of course, means that her interrogation by Cloten in III.5 takes on a sexual threat which adds a new terror to her plot. A female Pisanio also brings to mind the orchestrations of the resourceful Paulina in The Winter’s Tale.

Individual praise must be heaped on certain actors. Cloten was fantastic, blustery and fratboyish and entirely caught up in his own privilege. Iachimo was sly and hilarious; his scene in Imogen’s bedchamber was appropriately creepy, as was his final defeat contrite and satisfying. Dr. Cornelius managed to steal the final scene with some well-timed incredulity, and Belarius had an interesting darkness to his performance. Imogen played to the absurdity and comedy of her part very well.

I think this is where I have to talk about the play I have in my head, though, and it’s very much shaped by another play I saw at UChicago’s University Theater during my time there. The show was The Rover, by Aphra Behn, and the first half was played very much as a raunchy, delightful comedy. Just before intermission, though, the action took a sharp turn: the titular Rover, celebrated until now, without changing his tone, forced himself on one of the female characters. The starkness of the tonal shift affected me deeply. I tend to read a similar shift in Cymbeline.

Seeing this production was both a pleasure and an interesting affirmation of the play in my head. Because Cymbeline is, for many reasons, an outrageous, hilarious play. Blurbs often call it “Shakespeare’s fairy tale,” though I think that gives little credit to fairy tales. Imogen raves on and on and on about her lord Posthumus and how she loves him; Posthumus is similarly prone to extremes, though he tends to talk more about himself and his feelings. Cymbeline is a terribly inept king, and the Queen a cartoonish poisoner and would-be usurper. The plot twists which culminate in the reunions and confessions of the final scene stretch incredulity to its limits. I tend to think Shakespeare is playing with his previous works, but a certain reading of this play can appear to consign it to nonsense.

If I were to direct this play—every theater person’s favorite words, especially from a not-really-theater person—I would run wild with that for the first half of the show. There is a heightened reality at play here—the rules and lives of court—all of which break down rather spectacularly, starting in the middle of the plot. The outrageous actions of the protagonists—betting on a wife’s honor, ordering her death, fleeing into the Welsh countryside, spurning the Roman Empire—all begin to catch up with them, and in every instance, it’s a shock. Imogen cannot believe how abandoned she has become; Posthumus cannot comprehend that Imogen is dead at his behest; Cymbeline cannot maintain his hold on his kingdom, and increasingly rages and acts on impulse. Cloten behaves as he always has, but reveals a violence that is the natural extension of his character, and shocks the audience with threats of rape, murder and mutilation. I would love to see the protagonists suddenly start playing their lives straight, struck by the enormity of plot developments and the consequences of their actions. I love characters confronting a world that no longer caters to their vision of it.

Cheek By Jowl production of Cymbeline (2007), Tom Hiddleston and Jodie McNee

Of course, there’s always that fifth act, when everything works out. And of course it does: they’re back at court, where the world is ordered and arbitrary. Except now our lovers have had this life-changing experience. They must completely reevaluate their relationship with each other, considering how thoroughly Posthumus has betrayed Imogen, despite his being gulled into it. Some interpretations of the text criticize it for Imogen’s sharp drop in lines after Act IV, but I think this can be played as Imogen observing the world for the first time, rather than charging into it and erupting with the first emotion that she feels. It’s what begins to differentiate her from her father, who has the same issue. The conclusion is always an opportunity to show who has changed and who has not.

Clearly I have a lot of feelings about Cymbeline, and could go on at length. (See my mini-essay about Cloten for a taste of that, and of course, I’m more than happy to respond to thoughts in comments.) That kind of obsessive interest is a good engine for a story, though. There’s always something the author hasn’t said or hasn’t considered, even if that something is the notion that perhaps Posthumus and Cloten were once the same person. But other interpretations are wonderful; it’s a wonderful conversation, and it makes you ask all kinds of questions that weren’t even on your radar. I think I will happily see Cymbeline onstage, whatever and whenever the opportunity. Still, I’m glad my first encounter was such a charming one. Now, to convince Cheek By Jowl to share a wide release of its 2007 production…

IMOGEN, daughter of the king of Britain, has reluctantly accompanied POSTHUMUS, an orphan and her dearest friend, to the Minervan Exposition, newly arrived in Londinium. The star attraction is a demonstration of wireless technology by an engineer named RIGANTONA, reemerging after a seventeen-year absence from the public sphere. As Imogen and Posthumus wait for the demonstration, she is approached by one of her father’s chieftains, asking the king’s position on a recent revolt in Illyria. Rigantona peppers her remarks with indications of pro-British independence sentiment. However, Imogen recognizes Rigantona’s equipment from a recurring nightmare, in which Imogen and Posthumus flee through a hall of machines while Posthumus’s voice cries out far behind them.

Posthumus hopes Imogen, as a lady of influence in politics, will introduce him to Rigantona, who could provide him with a career. Imogen visits DR. CORNELIUS, a biologist under the patronage of King CYMBELINE, to ask about Rigantona’s background. He reveals that during the last Minervan Exposition hosted in Britain, Rigantona’s device failed and shorted out the entire exhibition palace, leading to great scandal and her downfall. Imogen then meets with VARINIA, a financial officer of the Roman Empire, who warns her about letting pro-independence movements go unchecked, as in Illyria. Imogen’s final obligation of the day is a private dinner with Cymbeline and Rigantona. She is shocked to see an exact copy of Posthumus, only to learn that he is CLOTEN, Rigantona’s son.

Imogen’s mind races throughout the dinner about how Cloten can look so much like Posthumus. Cymbeline reveals that he is in talks for Rigantona to install a new wireless security system in the palace. Rigantona is nothing but charming to Cymbeline and Imogen both, though Cloten is nothing but awkward and obnoxious. In conversation, Cymbeline uses the old British name for Londinium, Lud’s-town, which Imogen takes as a startling sign of Rigantona’s influence. Imogen retreats to Posthumus’s quarters to reassure herself that he is still him.

The next morning, Imogen tells Posthumus about his double. Posthumus accompanies her to the national archives to further investigate Rigantona. On the way, they encounter both a group of anti-Roman protestors and Cloten himself, who snubs Posthumus and flirts with Imogen. Official records for Rigantona and Cloten reveal little, but in Rigantona’s patent documents, Imogen again recognizes the machines from her nightmare. She asks Posthumus if he remembers how, seventeen years ago, they snuck into the Minervan Exposition at night, and that they fled after shorting out Rigantona’s machine by touching it. Posthumus has no memory of this.

Posthumus spends the next several days avoiding Imogen after she has implied that somehow he and Cloten are linked by Rigantona’s device. Imogen tries to go about her business, and takes another meeting about Illyria, anti-Roman elements in Britain and a pamphleteer defending the empire. She agrees to approach the king about the matter, but Cymbeline is dismissive, leaving Imogen in high temper. A visit to Dr. Cornelius reveals that Rigantona and Posthumus have just met, which Imogen had been hoping to prevent for fear of Rigantona realizing how Posthumus is connected to her and to the event that once ruined her prospects. Frustrated with her inability to settle the matter, Imogen sneaks out of the palace in disguise and sets out to interrogate Cloten. Posthumus, on a similar mission, joins her.

Their quest to find Cloten takes them to Sower Street, the most disreputable neighborhood in Britain. Posthumus and Imogen quarrel about what each hopes to learn, but when they finally find Cloten, he is drunk, horny and belligerent. As they bring him home, he mumbles about events in his past that indicate he remembers the night of the split, when Posthumus became two people and Cloten was left behind in the dark. Imogen realizes that Cloten has the same recurring nightmare she does.

The next morning, Imogen is reprimanded by Varinia for neglecting her statecraft in favor of gadding about. She provides her with proof that Cymbeline has approved an increase in military spending, a probable sign of coming trouble. Imogen prepares herself for a meeting with Rigantona. She watches construction crews begin installation of the wireless security system, and she confirms that Cymbeline and Rigantona have spent the night together. Posthumus tells her that he believes in the split now, but he wrestles with the implications. When Imogen finally faces her, Rigantona knows exactly why she has come. The two sit down to share their accounts of the events surrounding the split.

Rigantona was a 28-year-old prodigy whose work was going to be establish her as a major scientific and policy force in Britain and the empire. When her device shut down the exhibition palace, she suspected sabotage by a rival; when she instead found a naked, crying boy of 8, she was determined to figure him out. When she realized that he was no ordinary child, she took him in to study him. Cloten spent years unable to fend off his nightmares and insecurities, while Rigantona slowly pulled herself back into respectability. Eventually they did come to love each other as mother and son, to the surprise of both. Imogen, on hearing her story, asks the bombshell question she’s been contemplating for weeks now: Was there another child at the scene of the accident? Is there another Imogen lost somewhere in the world?

Keep an eye out for the next chapter! In the meantime, you can always find me at Tumblr and Twitter. I’m always delighted to talk about Innogen (feedback is adored, no matter when the chapter was posted!) or anything else that’s caught my fancy.

Cambria: West of Britannia, unconquered by the Romans, ruled by coalitions of Silures and Ordovices. Sends no ambassadors, proclaims every dock an embassy. The free port at Milford-Haven remains open to all who come with nonmilitary and apolitical intent.

The road to Milford-Haven was unpaved, a bending, crooked thing parting the wide wilderness. Rigantona marched in a straight line, the chill spring damp still a shock on her skin and in her lungs. Behind her, the wagon wheel remained cracked, swallowed by a hole in the road, and Cloten continued shouting. He was 14 and rawboned, not yet shaving, not shy about leering at girls. She was 34, not meant to endure such things at this or any other age. The thought was dizzying, just walking away, relying on only herself again. She turned away from him mid-sentence and headed for the town the last mile marker had promised.

His tirade did not falter. She did not answer him. It had escaped her, the moment when she no longer thought of forgiving him—for appearing, for all the havoc, for the all-defining disruption. This was never supposed to be normal. She had wanted such different things. The Cambrian quiet took her in, without questions and without hesitations. She heard the sounds of her son fall away, and she kept walking.

Around a bend in the road, a woodsman surprised her. He stood in the center solid as a soldier on watch. Rigantona froze, staring at the ax in his hand. The woodsman hardly moved as he spoke. He inquired whether she owned the cart in pieces up the road. Two young men, surely his sons, emerged from the trees, dangerous and wary. Rigantona held still and affirmed her ownership of the cart.

A great shout echoed behind them. Cloten emerged charging up the road, his limbs windmilling. He threatened the woodsmen with grave violence if they so much as annoyed his mother. He stumbled to a halt by her side and glared. The two sons, handsome boys, reached for their swords, but the woodsman calmly offered to mend the cart. Rigantona looked at Cloten, who panted and kept his face ferocious. She dealt with the woodsman and dispatched the Cambrians. Once they were gone, she took Cloten’s hand and squeezed it. He scowled, though he couldn’t look at her yet, and told her he’d go keep an eye on their trunks.

The woodsmen were quick and able, and took their payment in news of Cymbeline and the British court. Cloten glowered all the while. They parted quickly, the Cambrians vanishing behind the trees. Rigantona and Cloten were in Milford-Haven by dawn.

* 

Circe device: Shorthand for conceptual prototype submitted by Rigantona to the XXIV Minervan Exposition in Londinium. A scale model system of generators and manufacturing elements that converted energy into discrete, portable, highly concentrated units (“Jovian bolts,” Jb) of solid matter. All raw materials and labor sourced within Britannia; billed as a centerpiece exhibit with widespread industrial implications. Part of the exhibit postulated suites of machines engineered to receive and utilize Jb units as freestanding power supplies.

The Circe device was the culmination of thirteen years in the professional sphere for Rigantona, who turned 28 in Londinium. Though she had earned both praise and notoriety within scientific circles, her time in the capital afforded her access to all citizens of the empire. Her private reputation was one of outspokenness, but her science remained unassailable and could not be overlooked. During her months there, Rigantona took frequent meetings with British chieftains, advisors to the king, Roman bureaucrats and groundbreakers from Egypt and Syria. One popular cartoon of the time depicted representatives of various interests eating from the palms of her hands.

Exhibition rules prohibit exhibitors from entering into contracts concerning submitted work until after the closing ceremonies. The weeks following any Minervan Exposition have traditionally been its busiest period, and as the Londinium close drew near, Rigantona had her pick of investors.

The Circe device was impounded in Magiovinium during the inquest into its catastrophic failure. In cooperation with authorities, Rigantona provided blueprints for the device, though upon disassembling it, investigators discovered that the blueprints did not entirely account for the final design. By that time, Rigantona had vanished, and none of her former patrons could call her up. An imperial court ruled that she forfeited any claim to patents derived from the Circe device, which were remanded to the crown and licensed individually in a ferocious bidding war.

*

Cloten: Rigantona’s uncle, executed by legionaries in the time of Julius Caesar for killing a soldier in single combat.

“Is this your son?” the Pallas patrol captain asked. The guards had her and the boy surrounded, though the still, dark machines made them skittish. Rigantona could see no opening; neither, she noted, could the boy. She slipped off her jacket, one hand gripping his shoulder, and draped it over him. He made no move to accept it, just stood at her side, limp and sniffling. The patrol captain stepped closer. “Is this your son?”

“Will you allow me to inspect the damage?” she said.

“Your machine did all this?”

“I will not know until I’ve inspected the site.”

The patrol captain shook his head. “The whole Pallas is a crime scene, madam. I’ll have to ask that you come with me.” He gestured at a lackey. Rigantona gripped the boy’s shoulder and leaned away. The patrol captain sighed. “Gavo, escort these two out. We’ll need to interview them—”

The boy whimpered. Rigantona held him closer. “Let me take him home.”

The guard relented. A carriage was called. The boy sat opposite her, embarrassed now by his nakedness. He tried to shrink into her fashionable jacket. “Who are you?”

“Quiet,” she said. “I’m thinking.”

By morning, he was her son. All the papers said as much. There was still time to correct it, but she was too engrossed in him. He could not name himself, nor the person who sent him. He begged to be taken to the palace. He wept for companions he could not identify. He was quite certain he had no parents. He could only be a mole, an innocent-seeming root for her untapped and presumed maternal instincts. She plied him for information, any mistake that might tell her who paid him. An intriguing slate of possibilities emerged, but no one set of evidence was enough to convict.

The cook had a son, about eight, and about the boy’s size. Rigantona paid her to fetch suitable clothes for him. The boy would not sleep; if exhaustion took hold, half an hour later he howled and thrashed so violently he threw himself out of bed. If Rigantona tried to quiet him, he kicked at and hit her. “Who are you?” he screamed. He refused to divulge what haunted him.

The inquest proceeded without her; she refused most contact with the rest of the world. Days passed, then a week, then two. No further clues materialized, no taunting hint at who had orchestrated this. Rigantona began packing her notes. There was no hope of changing the narrative now; it had happened without her. It had happened and moved on. She would accept it. This could be exploited. There was still so much to understand and learn.

The boy was screaming again. She hovered outside his door, listening for words. When the thump came, she burst into the room. He looked up at her from the tangle of sheets and curled in on himself, his hands over his face. Rigantona settled next to him and put her arms around his shoulders. “Oh Cloten,” she murmured, over and over. “Oh my boy.”

His muscles were thick with knots. Sweat and snot streaked the sheets. She could feel his uncertainty, and she soothed it, rubbing his arm. “She didn’t want me,” he gasped, after a time. “She left me behind.”

“I’ll always want you,” she said. “Cloten, I’ll never do that.”

 *

Cunobelinos: British rendering of Cymbeline. Vassal king of Britannia during the XXIV Minervan Exposition. During the long exhibition year, when Rigantona saw him, he remained haunted by the death of his wife, and more so by the theft of his two young sons, already several years past. In character, she found him brusque, military, impatient. For all her honors, it was the first time she had met a king. Their time together was brief and perfunctory.

She grew up on stories of the British kingship, alongside a suspicion of the invaders. Sorviodunum, her birthplace, chafed at the Roman fort and the Latin name it was given. All in the town were either veterans of the war against Caesar or orphans of it. Rigantona knew a language she could speak anywhere in the empire. It opened many doors to her, and with it she learned a great deal.

Cloten was not bright. Accepting this hurt Rigantona more than she could fathom. All her attempts to reveal herself to him in the language she knew best resulted in catastrophe for them both. He had no instinct for science, and machines rattled him. But kings he understood. He knew all the histories of wrongdoing in their nation. He could leap headlong into any conversation about Britain. He found friends among the curmi-drinkers and storytellers. He and Rigantona built many kings, an ideal king, together.

 *

Mitosis: Described recently by Aurelius Chaeremon, formerly a genial rival of Nonus Cornelius’ at the University of Alexandria; the division of cells to enact reproduction.

Rigantona had no name for the other Cloten. The doubling, which she confirmed more by inference than proof, would never leave him. For years he sobbed into Rigantona’s arms and pillows about the light lashing out, the terror of being abandoned, the horror of his helplessness, the betrayal of his body, the transgression that brought him there. The endless repetitions would, for a time, reveal new layers to the event, but Rigantona grew weary and harried. At that age, comfort did not come easily to her, and she worked hard to reason with him to the other side of his dreams. He would not or could not grow inured to the trauma. Rigantona told him that if Zani could not protect him, he should be fired, though Cloten gave Zani many extra chances.

When Chaeremon published his observations of the process, Rigantona could hardly sleep. That the cells split into no more and no less than two new bodies seemed the most promising indicator in years. Biology had never been her strongest science, however, and she wanted to be sure of the theory. Under a pseudonym, she entered into an anonymous correspondence with the publishing journal’s editor, to clarify the implications of and uses for mitosis. These were never published due to other, incriminating content.

Rigantona observed that the daughter of the king behaved strangely toward Cloten when introduced. One day in the palace, a young man approached Rigantona and introduced himself. His name was Posthumus Leonatus, ward of Cymbeline since birth. He was interested in the sciences, was an excellent fencer and had a Roman manservant named Pisanio. He was Cloten’s complement and mirror in every way. Rigantona had been patient long enough not to unleash her throng of questions; she smiled and tongued the backs of her teeth and skimmed her insights from the surface. The princess, when she joined them, had trouble meeting her eye.

Lady Imogen described how she and her companion snuck into the exhibit room and approached the device. She could not recall who set off the generator, only that its energy arced toward the two of them, and they were both knocked unconscious. Rigantona took care to describe the fail-safes against electrocution in the generator; it had to be touched to complete a circuit. The princess could only describe pain, and blacking out. Posthumus did not remember the incident or the hours surrounding it, nor was he, the favored double, granted any dreams.

 *

Phosphorics: Developed by Lusitanian chemical engineer Rhetogenes after observing bioluminescent phytoplankton on the beach northwest of Olisipo. Installed in the Londinium Pallas to accommodate concerns about the exhibition’s electrical grid. Phosphorics rely on alternative energy sources (often solar) to provide light, operating independently of generator systems. Though not widely touted to the public, given the high cost of production, they were repeatedly lauded to certain investors, even in conversations unrelated to Rigantona’s Circe device.

The inclusion of phosphorics in Pallas renovations was a late concession to skeptics among the curatorial cohort concerned about infrastructure. The earliest objections were not specific to the Circe device, but Rigantona perceived that the most conservative estimates of the grid’s capacity came from individuals threatened by economic independence from Rome. When the Circe device was admitted to the exhibition, further objections arose regarding safety risks to attendees and neighborhoods. Rigantona again rejected the notion that interested observers might visit her work at a safe distance from the city and the other machines, insisting that the Circe device would serve and inspire all Britons, not just a limited set. Rufus Sergius made the peace offering, suggesting the curators address perceived hazards with thoroughly vetted fallback measures.

When the Pallas went dark, as every engine sighed, as every running gear stuttered and spun and choked, the phosphorics woke up, pouring flickering green-blue light from the walls. Rigantona was already marching when they came on. Her feet knew the shortest way to her exhibit room; she didn’t need eyes, any more than she needed doubt, shock or fear. Guards with swinging lanterns, only set one or two to a wing, called to each other in panic. Rigantona balled her fists, thinking only of names: Sediacus, nephew to a senator; Audagus, who oversaw the shipping docks; Iudocus, a busybody easily bought; Veloriga, professor of state-approved theories.

The wailing began abruptly, so inhuman she wondered if the zoological park was at fault. The sound ricocheted over all the metal surfaces. Shapes flickered in and out of sight, shadows and figures and reflections. She hurried faster, angriest now at the inelegance of the sabotage. The phosphoric light undulated as if she cut through still water.

In the room where her device lived, all she found was a boy, naked and huddled into a corner. He shrieked at her, nothing but thin shoulders, a mess of hair, quaking knees. She trapped him against the wall him and demanded his name. He tried to bolt past her, clamoring toward the corridor, but she grabbed his wrist. It was then that something inside her lurched: his skin was soft as a newborn’s. She yanked him toward her again. “Wait, come back, wait for me!” he screamed, still writhing and pulling away. Who would send such a thing against her? Who sought to bring her down with only this? “That’s not me, that’s not me,” he keened. She stared at him, and the dark, quiet generator. Where was the catch?

 *

Rufus Sergius: Former curatorial sub-liaison for manufacturing and industry for the XXIV Minervan Exposition. Middle son of a wealthy Roman British family; his grandmother married an admiral of Julius Caesar’s navy. Assigned as Rigantona’s handler, a fruitful relationship for them both. Lead curator of the present exhibition.

Latin and local newspapers loved Rigantona; they all praised her common touch. Packed rooms and worldly individuals fell to her with equal ardor. The public loved her for her belief in them. “Science,” she declared in a widely published quote, “is neither too mysterious for you to understand nor too obscure to relate to your life.” She made good on her proclamation, holding frequent lectures and workshops, free to all comers, on a host of topics, from physics to anatomy to the mathematics of music. When Rigantona came to Sergius with these ideas—the workshops, the collaborations, the columns in the dailies—he opened doors, and knocked on many more. She was a model public intellectual, and he was her modest and earnest advocate.

During the inquest into the Pallas calamity, he was not refused access to her quarters. Her rooms at Tincomarus Place were in ruins; all employees save the cook had been dismissed. “I will release no statement,” she said, as soon as he entered her study. Her eyes were bruises; her tattoos seemed to move of their own accord, caught up in her nervous, exhausted energy.

Sergius removed his hat and held it at his chest. “Your public feels betrayed.”

“They are not my public. I own them no more than does Caesar.”

“You gave your public the whole scope of your learning and understanding,” he said. “But you would not share that you have a son?”

Rigantona hooked an elbow around the back of her chair. She bowed her head. “I appreciate that this is a difficult situation for you.”

“Thank you. It certainly is.”

She rose from the chair and spread her hands. “But if you can just remain patient, if you can trust me, there is something that has happened, something so profound—”

“What leverage do we have?” If he’d been a man of a certain fashion, he’d have pounded a cane. Instead, he kept his voice steady. “All you can give them is your cooperation. That is all you have to offer anymore.”

Her eyes narrowed, her mouth thinned. “The courts have every piece of paper I’ve touched for the last two years. My work is impounded. I have testified as required—”

“A bare minimum, and little more.”

“I am busy,” she snapped. “I have another project.”

Sergius knew not to shout, or plead. “We want to see you rise above this,” he said. “The whole world wants to see you triumph, not slink away in disgrace.”

Rigantona approached him, and took his free hand. She made him meet her eye, as he knew she often did with investors, with proconsuls, even once with the king. “You must trust me. Do you trust me? Do you believe in me?” Sergius, in a moment of desperate, optimistic sentimentality, nodded. “This is temporary,” she said, and sent him on his way.

 *

Tancorix: Patroness, estate near Brocavium. Even though she lived far in the north, practically neighbors with the Roman-resisting Caledonii, she knew why Rigantona appeared on her doorstep, and welcomed the two exiles in.

Rigantona devised tests for the boy. She analyzed his skin, his hair, his reflexes, his stamina. She watched him play and cut into him with questions. She tried to map him on any plane she could. She monitored his diet and logged his vital signs. When he moaned and shrieked through the night, she recorded every discernible word until she could no longer bear the sounds.

Tancorix, a widow, had never had children in her estate. She battled Rigantona back, and took an interest in Cloten’s education. He had some math, and a little more letters, but reading and writing frustrated him into fits of temper. After some weeks, he came to Tancorix, shyly, and informed her he’d written a song. It was a ballad, musically engaging though lyrically stale, about a monster that turned into his mother in the dark.

The tests found Cloten perfectly ordinary in all anatomical senses. Though he was often fearful, exhausted, short-tempered and suspicious, he appeared sound enough in mind. Whatever his purpose, it was not yet realized, which required further deconstruction.

Rigantona accepted an invitation to dine alone with her hostess. Tancorix had a small table laid out for them. “He is a child, you know,” she said, sipping her wine. “He’s neither a bomb nor a spy.” Rigantona watched her, and made no answer. Tancorix sat back in her chair. “You focus on the wrong question, my dear. Is the more intriguing problem not why he is with us, but how?”

Later, Rigantona lay awake at night, listening for him, analyzing the tempo of his breathing, and wondered if it would stop, if some imperfection would betray him, hoping it would not.

 *

Zani: An imaginary servant and playmate of Cloten’s; an Italian-born Roman who had looked after him from infancy. Cloten had a large cast of imaginary companions, but he spoke most openly about Zani. In his earlier years, he was devoted to him. Later, he began to describe humiliating Zani with tricks or demands that he abase himself in his work. The frequency of these dynamics increased with greater exposure to anti-imperial education.

The year he was 12, Cloten dismissed Zani, claiming his presence was both oppressive and unethical. He swore he would never take him back, no matter how much he followed them or begged. Cloten experienced a spike in nightmares after he did away with Zani, but they abated quickly: he was beginning to drink with older boys in the towns, and though he came home ugly and combative, he regularly slept through the night.

Rigantona learned to pay attention to Cloten’s imaginary playmates. She often caught him holding long one-sided conversations. A very few times, he confessed that he spoke with a girl his own age whom he trusted more than anyone. To his great shame, he could not remember her name, only that she wore a belt with a tree on the clasp, and that she was hiding from him.

The daughter of Cymbeline mused on this in silence. She repeated a number of facts Rigantona had shared during their conversation, and circled back to the original night in question. “Could there have been another?” she asked. Did Rigantona see a girl fleeing the Pallas, as naked and disoriented as she had found Cloten?

“Oh, my dear lady.” Rigantona paused, and watched her. “The energy discharged by the device was immense,” she began.

“I see,” the princess said, and nodded to herself, surely confirming something she’d suspected all along. Rigantona asked whether that was why she’d come, and not to seek forgiveness at all. “I came,” the princess said, “because now I know I must find her.”

Rigantona had learned a great deal in seventeen years. She took the perpetrator’s hand in hers and told her she was forgiven all the same.

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Hi, and thanks for reading! Got some feelings? I would love to hear your thoughts. All content © Esther Bergdahl, 2011–2012. Thanks again, and hope you enjoy!

The last time I did this, it was only one way. I was coming home to Ohio after the most miserable summer of my life, and since I was in San Francisco, I thought I’d make the distance worth my while. Taking the California Zephyr in August 2006 was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I never quite managed to share the pictures from that trip; frankly, I made a stop in Rocky Mountain National Park with my brother and wound up with about 200 shots of mountains and pine trees and roadside elk. It seemed a lot to sort through, but it also felt private, in a way. I liked having that trip to myself. I’m in a much different place in my life now, thankfully, and I expect to share a lot this coming journey on a number of different outlets. For now, though, here are a few images from my last time around. Watch this space for some other things, interesting things, soon.

Reno, Nevada

Somewhere, Nevada

Somewhere, Utah

Union Station, Denver

Depot, Downstate Illinois

A philosophical statement if ever I saw one.

Conductor; I've always liked the memory of how he kept an eye on us and yet seemed to want to keep going.

Downstate Illinois

Things the sky does in the Midwest

I'm coming home.