In the first place, I humbly ask the Great Spirit for inspiration so that I may speak truthfully and well. *** Sunlight bounces off stream water to fling mobile designs on the undersides of leaves. The brew is bubbling fiercely now. *** Some people were traveling through the forest looking for a place to settle up near the River Wahoya when they found a region where the plants changed from green and brown to brilliantly multicolored like butterfly wings. Blue birds were flying out from the flowers of wild cane plants with rainbow leaves. Walking into this enchanting space, the people reached a village full of dazzling humanoids with scintillating, multicolored face- and body-paint and tunics and crowns, the colors flashing and changing all the time. “Who are you?” asked the travelers. “We’re the Multicolored People of God.” “Can we please settle near you?” “Yes, but don’t come too close.” *** “That drug you told me the Indians take. Ayahooziedoozie or whatever it is. You want to know what tripping does to people? I’ll take you to a mental hospital and you can look at some of those people drooling in the back ward. I spent far too much time and energy raising you to want to lose you to drugs.” *** Like flaming sparks, Norse runes tumble up from the earth, through the cedar floorboards of the hut, into the soles of your feet, race through your body giving off light, shoot out like fireworks from your curled fingers and tongue. *** A man went out hunting with his blowgun and darts. On the bank of a river, he found a baby playing by herself on the sand, all alone. He thought he might need to take her home and adopt her. Looking far up the river, though, he saw the mother, a powerfully-built young woman crouching ankle-deep in the water, perfectly still, waiting for fish to approach. Almost too fast to see, she pounced, and a great splash went up from the water. She sprang to her feet with a wriggling fish in her hands. In a moment, the man would realize who she was. *** “I’m sorry to tell you this, but it’ll be impossible for you to become a shaman.” “Why?” “Because, my poor, mentally-challenged Dodo, a shaman is a social role in a native tribe. If you’re not a member of the tribe, you can’t be a shaman. Any shaman who tells you otherwise is only using you for your money.” *** “Listen. First, there’s no need to be afraid of the dark. Fear of the dark is a weakness you humans have. Second, it’s OK to be upside-down. We sussed it out long ago. It’s no big deal. Third, we get a kick out of scaring humans for the fun of it. We just have to fly near and you freak out. And, finally, we experience many different kinds of love.” *** The rain stops. The clouds begin to clear. Everything’s wet. You somersault backwards down a hill, laughing, shouting, singing at the top of your lungs. *** And that’s why I’m telling this story. Breathing in the breeze. Like the multicolored macaw I’ve been around a lot . I fly so he flies so fly I . I’ve been around a lot Like the multicolored macaw Breathing in the breeze. And that’s why I’m telling this story.

Moonless, clear night, northern Michigan, February, 1985, frozen lake glowing dully, snow crystals reflecting the Milky Way. A hundred-foot-wide spiral is developing on the surface of the lake, curving clockwise toward the center. Inscribing it with his shuffling feet is a tall, gangly, white teenager. Navy blue down jacket, leather Patagonia hiking boots, gray wool cap with a Greenpeace patch sewn on. Wide green eyes and a small chin give him the look of a hairless cat. The boy’s lips are moving. What’s he saying? “…Gi, go, gi, go, gi, go….” Chanting to the rhythm of his steps, he shuffles through four inches of powder snow and starlight atop the ice. Left foot gi, right foot go. Bootsoles don’t leave the ice. Gi, go, gi, go. An acronym from computing: garbage in, garbage out. The quality of the input determines the quality of the output. This explains my life, he’s thinking. What can be expected of me, if the input was so bad? He’s drawing the gigo spiral both as a landscape-art piece (homage to Robert Smithson’s 1972 Spiral Jetty) and as a signal for help to whatever God or gods might deign to glance down. Sucking the freezing air into his lungs, trying to stare into the future as the seers of old were said to have done, he feels the closeness of the spirit world, but he can’t reach it. Recently turned seventeen, he’s the most intelligent and most fucked-up person in the world. He wants to fly up and dissolve in the cold wind that glides without thinking above the frozen land. His body can’t support the transformations he wishes to undergo. Therefore, he would like to die. To die. That’s what Elena wanted. Or didn’t want. She’s with her family in Miami now. In the middle of the night, she stood in her shower with a razor blade pressed against her wrist. Finally decided to withdraw from the school instead, leaving him without her mad mind that matched his own. Every time he goes inside himself, all he feels is pain. It’s the core of his being. If he were different, he could get it out by hurting people. Punching someone. Joining the military and killing people in foreign lands. Or getting a pistol and shooting his classmates. Each bullet that left the barrel would pull one nail out of his heart. But any time he’s ever hurt someone, he’s ended up feeling worse than they did. So he’s left with no one to harm but himself. He thinks again about jumping off the balcony in his dorm and breaking his leg. The pain would give his mind some clarity. Or shooting himself in the forehead. One blast and all the thoughts would be gone. He’s convinced if he survives to adulthood he’ll be a great poet. All the signs are there. He’s lonely and sensitive. No one really understands him. He feels more intensely and thinks more deeply than other people. He’s willing to endure the suffering he knows the muse requires. The words of the poets who came before him are flare guns burning holes in his darkness. From the history of literature, he has inherited hundreds of barrels of rusty symbolism. And he can turn a phrase, turn it into a lion, scratch it under the chin so it purrs, dissolve it in a shower of sparks. He trudges on, gi, go, gi, go, breath-plumes lit by stars and snow. Here in northern Michigan, at Interbergen School for the Arts, the boy majors in creative writing. He’s no good at short stories—can’t imagine plots or characters (“There’s no narrative drive here,” the fiction teacher said)—but he can take a thought and coat it with words, and let that dry, and peel it off, and that’s a poem. “By the time you’re twenty-one,” the poetry teacher said, “you’ll be publishing in the best journals in the country.” And despite his psychological problems, for the first time, he’s one of the popular kids. Maybe because everyone’s a bit mad here. It’s all the art that does it. Or the sunless winter. Some girls even like him. Maybe because at close range, he smells of mad genius. Maybe they’d like to be able to say, decades later, “I messed around with the famous poet when he was a crazy young man.” Or maybe they just like him. But it’s not easy for him to see why. Since he was thirteen, the inside of his head has been like a Stephen King novel about Hieronymus Bosch and the Marquis de Sade on vacation in Auschwitz. The boy didn’t ask for sick thoughts. Doesn’t want them. Can’t drive them away. They live under his roof like a nest of flies. He’s almost gotten used to their buzzing songs about rotting and shit. He thinks they may even be the real him. They tell him to hurt people. They tell him he’ll like it. He figures they’re the spawn of the rage and jealousy he feels toward normal people—happy people; stupid, sleeping people—whose souls weren’t ripped in half when they were four. Visions of torture swarm him like fanged, beaked demons around Saint Anthony in the Renaissance paintings his dad showed him in museums. So will he be the crunchy prey of madness? The next Charlie Manson, Jack the Ripper? I’d rather die, the boy swears as he gigos forward, seeing his tall, gangly body lying in a coffin, dressed in a dark blue suit. His dad’s brother and sister hold up their collapsing brother. His mom wails in her grim second husband’s arms. Womb to tomb, baby. Gi, go, gi, go. What keeps the boy alive? Literature and lovemaking. The first time he and Elena did it, he couldn’t believe anyone had ever enjoyed it as much as they did. Afterwards, breathing each other’s breath, they cuddled like Adam and Eve, sweat and brown hair mixed and mashed on their pressed-together foreheads. But now she’s gone, and most days, he feels like screaming. He reaches the center of his spiral, pulls off his mittens, jams them in the pockets of his navy blue down jacket. Wind whistles and moans. If I shot myself in the forehead now, he thinks, the wound would become a whistle, a clean, empty hole moaning in the wind. He reaches for the sky and silently begs the winking stars to take him out of this dream. When they don’t, and when he’s done feeling the cold air whip across his hands, he quietly retraces his spiraling steps and heads for the dorm, and Brubaker. *** Vibram soles, car-tire-black with a thin line of yellow, trickle snow-melt on the doormat. Crosslegged on his bed, cheeks flushed, the boy holds his icy toes in his hands to warm them through damp socks. A dim smell of wool and foot. For a few moments, the only sound is the punk song on his roommate’s stereo: guitar, bass, drum kit, an incoherent shouting. Then Brubaker erupts: “She didn’t want to kill herself! If she had, she would have done it, instead of just talking about it. Speaking of talking, you’re a pretty good talker. Why don’t you talk some sense into your head?” Quarrelsome/haughty/sad/pissed off/convinced he’s right, the boy stares at the floor and chokes out, “Everything I’ve heard about people who commit suicide says that they sometimes do talk about it, so if anyone ever says they’re contemplating suicide”—his voice rises—“you should take that really seriously. I’ll tell you right now, I’m thinking of killing myself, and the fact that I’m telling you is no guarantee I won’t.” Brubaker shakes his head. “That’s bullshit and you fuckin’ know it! Nat, man, I know your parents have got you convinced you’re a genius. You’re their only kid. I get that. But if you are, you’re the dumbest goddamned genius I’ve ever met! Plenty of geniuses walking around here are a hell of a lot smarter than you.” Leaving the damp footprints of a genius or madman, the boy stalks into the bathroom. Fills an empty Sprite can from the tap. Takes a bottle of aspirin out of the medicine chest. Stares for a second in the mirror at his own eyes like green and black pills. He plunks back down on his bed, unscrews the childproof cap, plucks out the cotton, shakes a white tablet onto the moist palm of his left hand. The music has ended, and the room is quiet save for the humming of amplifiers and of the fluorescent lights above the boys’ desks. “I’m gonna fuckin’ end this,” he tells Brubaker in the sudden stillness. “Right now.” His roommate watches him gulp the first aspirin with a swig of water. Then the second, then the third. But ultimately, Brubaker’s right: he doesn’t quite want to die. After twenty, he smacks can and bottle on his desk, saying, “Now go get whoever’s on duty! They have to drive me to the hospital! Go!” A thirtysomething doctor with a broad, brown beard gives him a blue hospital gown, a little bottle labeled Syrup of Ipecac, and a huge steel bowl to vomit in. The boy screams bile into the concave mirror. When it’s over, his and the doctor’s eyes meet. The doctor seems to see some value in him that he doesn’t see in himself, and with his eyes, asks him not to do anything like this again. At the same time, the doctor looks as if he’d love to beat the hell out of whatever’s harming the boy, if only he knew how.

How slowly we rise How slowly we fly when we rise, when we rise to the sky How long is our song How slowly we sing How slowly we sing with our wings when we sing with our wings How long is our song Under the sky with the light in our eyes How slowly we rise