He hoped I hadn’t been blaming myself, because blame was a waste of life force. My father said we must live with the eyes of a child, because it is the only way to truly live. We can never know the answers of infinity.

I didn’t say anything at first. How do you respond to something like that? Then I said, with more force than I was expecting, “I do know I was only eight.”

Ocean’s eyes got watery and then he said he had to go meet a friend. He went off, striding down the beach now that he had rested, the sun shining on his bald head. It wasn’t raining, for once, in that rainforest of a city.

I still think about my father when I look at the mountains here.

And I see her still, Morgaine, at the edge of the ragged cliff by the splintered driftwood bench, her arms out, thrusting up and down. I see her lifting off, hear the flap of her wings and the harsh caw of the crow as black feathers disappear into the mists.

Beyond All Things is the Sea

Birdie says to go tits to the wind.

And I am going tits to the wind.

When the utility van whips around the corner, I crash from one hard side of the vehicle to the other, Birdie at the wheel, yelling too late, “Brace yourself, girls!” I am ripping off my poufed wedding dress when Birdie makes the turn. The wheels lift up for a second and bits of lace fly through the air. The van tires smash down hard on the road and throw me again.

I don’t crash forward. Somehow, I flip in the air and smash my back against the metal wall of the van. My whole life has been about crashing backwards, an effort to exist in perpetual motion. I live for the thrill of the bolt. It’s the only way I can throw off the past. Cast away what I don’t understand, run from a life which has felt like a tunnel collapsing on me.

An hour to the airport. The flight is leaving in an hour. I look at Elizabeth sitting across from me, trying to grab the round black suitcase on the floor by her feet. It sailed to the other side of the van, too, when Birdie took that last turn. Birdie and Elizabeth, the Bail-out Squad. And I know that it’s the last bail-out.

Birdie and Elizabeth were my childhood friends, my best friends all through high school before I went to university where I almost finished my master’s — classical studies. I enjoyed the Greeks and Romans. The classical studies department was located in a series of grey Victorian houses that ran along a quiet street with huge, sweeping trees. I still don’t know the name of the trees. There is oblivion in the blur, a relief in the skewering of the everyday, keeping truth distorted so there is no worry of ever really seeing it.