 I, Charles, said “I’m in love with you, Jeannie!” She said, “No man loves me. They all think I’m too powerful.” I said, “You are certainly a Superhuman, ahead of your time. But I am a love genius and am sure that I could satisfy you.” She asked, “What is your philosophy?” I replied, “I am a firm believer in making this society one of love in which everyone is in love with a number of people. And with new genetic therapy, everyone can be beautiful looking. And everyone should go to “charm school” to make them a more engaging lover.” She said, “I am beyond love, I’m only interested in high science. Call me asexual, but really love is a dumb instinct. And I am amoral besides. Sex is good, but there is no such thing as true love.”
I said to her, “I’ve followed you for years and think, you just need to give me a chance to love you. I could make you happy.” She said, “What do you know about science?” I said, “I believe in “love science,” which involves loving between geniuses with a view to making brilliant love children. Surely you would like some offspring?” She said, “Yes, I like you. But how would you want to raise such a child?” I said, “We’ll follow the standard practices of our time and have the child born as an adult in the lab.” She said, “I’ve never had a child before and feel it’s high time I had one.” So, we grooved with one another… It was the best sex I’d ever had. Then we talked more about life and philosophy, and she exclaimed out of the blue, “I think I’m falling in love with you!”
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 I alight from peeling tonight’s carrots
to pruning the hydrangeas to nailing a new “4” on the door. In between a stop for some wine and to pick the next songs. Little is going on here. Nothing is leaking, smoking, going up or falling down. There are no deadlines or lists. I do what I want when I want and no more. Success is assured and doesn’t really matter. I’m piddling … and I’m so, so happy. Piddling ranges and changes. Yet always the “piddle,” if you’ll let me coin a word, gives a lot of joy for a little sweat. O.K., time to shine my shoes, refill my wine, write this line, and find that weed I was gonna pull.  You’re wearing planetary blue
today, your gaze turned inward to regard your self-geology. Yet something from the Atlantic intrudes on your compact solitude, something evolved in a tidepool distinct from tidepools you plumbed in your childhood by the Pacific. Planetary blue is the color migrating songbirds follow by day, their wingbeat quickened through thickets of radio waves broadcast just to confound them. You feel those signals mingle with respiration and heartbeat to birth you a bright new being that can live for only a moment. Your clothing drapes to resolve the gap between you and this other, this blue-winged creature no one believes will successfully fly.  An hour before dawn boulders
in the woods emit grayish light strong enough to wake people snoring in whitewashed suburbs or stashed in city apartments. Hiding in the woods, I’m used to this opaque illumination. But when I lived in the city I’d awaken in yellow sweat, unsure of which dream imploded. This post-glacial phenomenon hasn’t yet attracted scientists who could examine the light then crack open a boulder and assay its composition. They’d learn that only in sleep do stone and humans interact, preparing us for a distancing not even digital instruments can measure with any precision.  In the village of Nizhrilovskaya there dwelt fewer than two hundred souls. And as they slept in their beds through the long winter nights, spidery wisps of wood smoke rose into the brittle air from the chimneys of their huts. These izbás, each of rough-hewn logs, were clustered on the flank of a hill where a few of the farmers tended meager flocks of goats and sheep while others coaxed threadbare plots of wheat and rye from the rocky soil. Six days by wagon from Saint Petersburg, it was a world unto itself, as far removed from the glories of the imperial court as from the nocturnal firmament. So as they slumbered, the humble folk of Nizhrilovskaya, if they possessed the capacity at all, could conjure only in their dreams the resplendence of the tsar, his beautiful wife and their five children. And when word finally reached them many weeks after the fact that all the royals were dead at the hands of the Bolsheviks, they were stupified.
“It is the will of God,” declared the village priest with great sagacity from the altar of St. Sophia’s, the tiny church that occupied the center of Nizhrilovskaya. His flock, the old and the young, echoed this somber pronouncement, bowing their heads reverently and crossing themselves once, twice, thrice while the priest swung a brass censer to and fro, leaving the air redolent with the sweet spice of frankincense. At the age of twenty-seven, Father Pyotr Petrovich Bulgakov was a man angular of body and intensity of mien, an imposing figure in his black cassock and clerical cap, gold cross and chain. The pallor of his drawn face was rendered the more stark by a bushy beard and sunken dark eyes that not a few of the villagers swore in hushed tones could pierce to their very souls.  Paul’s confusion was dissipating, and intense anger was taking its place, as he stood in his bedroom on the family farm for the first time in thirty-two years. The five cardboard boxes stacked in the closet held his vinyl records he purchased years after he left for the city, books from his undergraduate years, he thought he had given away. Paul pulled a manuscript he recognized from his graduate class, “Reform, Revolt, and Revolution in the Maclure Collection.” The 72-page paper analysed four-hundred pamphlets produced during the French Revolution. All these items were taken from his house in Saskatoon, and the farm was on the Alder Ridge Road between High Prairie and Valley View in the south Peace River region. The trip was over nine hundred kilometres.
“What is that?” asked Jennifer, Paul’s wife. She had changed from her black skirt, white blouse, and jacket she wore in court to more comfortable jeans and blue shirt. She wouldn’t be recognised as a lawyer as they travelled through the small towns on their way back home. Paul liked her petit elegant appearance regardless of what she wore.
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