The Care and Feeding
of Wild Things

I've built a career, a life even, around the conviction that every moment is inextricably connected to the one before it and the one that follows, a continuum of interlocking fragments, which, viewed from a distance, reveals a coherent design. So here's my dilemma: I can't view a series of disparate events without feeling the need to link them thematically. It's the burden of historians in general and art historians in particular, this compulsion to connect the dots. But maybe some moments should be liberated from the chain, allowed to stand alone, full and complete as a Vermeer pearl.

As an MFA student in the art department, I can take electives in any area, so I've been filling in a lot of the gaps in my education with art history courses. Some of the courses have been disappointing, dry and academic, and don't help me with my painting at all. I have all these questions. I want to understand where I fit into the broader picture. Finally, last semester I found a professor I think can help.

It began with a squirrel one July afternoon two weeks ago that began as humid and unexceptional as any midsummer day around here. But that's the mystery of life. We wake up every day thinking we know what will happen, more or less, which allows us to go about our lives without buckling under the weight of the truth, which is this: terra firma is nothing more than a convenient illusion. Life is shifting beneath us all the time while we fix our sight on some distant point on the horizon. You can be comfortably married, as I was, writing, teaching, living an agreeable life when your husband decides to love someone else, and after a lengthy succession of surprises and decisions, you find yourself looking at the world upside down and liking what you see. But maybe I'm going too fast here.

I have recently rented a carriage house on East Shore Road, a potholed country road in upstate New York that runs to and from a remote but bustling college town. Having spent my first year crammed into a small, noisy apartment just off campus that was loaned out to new faculty, I am thrilled with my new home, which has been remodeled, somewhat eccentrically, in lieu of rent, by two architectural students. What had originally been one large open space now comprises a living room, kitchen, and two bedrooms, each with a loft.

There is ample evidence throughout that the two architects had conflicting sensibilities. First of all, the living room is as spare and understated as possible, a composition in blond and white, whereas the kitchen is Rococo-meets-Dada: over the stove is a wall of joyfully mismatched hooks of various shapes and colors, and the little built-in table by the window stands on legs shaped like a woman's in stiletto heels. The room in the back, the one I have chosen for my bedroom, is the more conventional of the two: a normal rectangular room with a small maple loft built to hold a queen-sized mattress, and white walls throughout. Minimalism at its most elegant and functional, the type of understated design that would earn a solid A in class. The other room features a large, Italian-toned mural of artichokes (which a colleague of mine in the architecture department explains is a local pun for architects) strolling around the Piazza Navonna in Rome. There are artichokes in quiet repose in front of the Fontana del Moro, and artichokes walking past other artichokes, sipping wine at cafes. Carrying forward the theme, the loft across the room has an artichoke-green railing and steps, like a miniature balcony. Despite my better judgment, this is the room that sings to me, and the one that I have chosen for writing and research, my higher callings, or so I like to think.

While the front of the house is flush with the road, the back abuts deep woods through which, I had been told, one could eventually reach the lake. My first two attempts at finding it were thwarted by a flawed sense of direction, a city-bred mistrust—fear, actually—of nature, and substantially overgrown trails. The third, I can now see in hindsight, leads to everything else I want you to know and, incidentally, to the lake.

From a squirrel's perspective I must seem, well, big. By human measures, I am of average height and weight, and my way of moving does not seem to distinguish me from others of my species. So why did he single me out, this squirrel? Why did he decide that I was the one to approach, cajole, and, over time, befriend? Did he know in his primitive way that his actions would alter the course of my life? I doubt it. In the end, he is really just a rodent, and a fickle one at that.

If you look beyond the professor clothes and the professor role that she wears, there is something glowing about her, a brilliance. She knows so much about art, and she's so passionate when she talks about paintings. Paintings. Beautiful paintings. She takes us places it seems she's reluctant to go herself. Radiant places. There's something about her that makes me want to push and prod until she opens up and tells me things she really knows, not just the material edited for class. Not just the things on the syllabus. I know there's a lot more to this woman; you can tell she has this vast comprehension of art and the way art links things together, and I want more, because I know there's so much more there.

He crossed my path just after I spotted the lake for the first time. This was a moment of quiet exhilaration for me, having finally deciphered the labyrinth of trails that led to water, and more or less tamed my fear of things that move in bushes and underfoot. In every direction the floor of the woods was dappled with white trillium, the state flower. As I caught my breath, a small squirrel paused beside me, and as I set off again, so did he. I stopped. He stopped. Riffling through my bag, I found an old lemon wafer and extended my humble offering.

"Here, little guy," I said in my friendliest tone. He didn't move.

"C'mon, I won't hurt you." He seemed to be making serious eye contact now but still wouldn't budge.

"Ok, if you don't want it, sorry, but I think you do," I said, hoping he might be susceptible to innuendo. Sure enough, as soon as I started down the trail, so did he. This time I tried another tact. I simply squatted and held out the cookie, and after a moment's hesitation, he ran up, snatched it, and shot off into the woods. Thus began our relationship, and in the larger tableau, the trinity of woman, squirrel, lake.

I got the idea for a painting from a lecture she gave on Raphael and triangular composition. I'm playing with the idea of trinity, of three separate things that are essential to make a whole: Alicia, her stepfather, and me. If Alicia's stepfather hadn't been such a bastard, then she wouldn't be who she is and maybe wouldn't see me as a soul mate, her wounded male reflection. Professor Kulik gets me thinking like that, making connections between things that I never saw before. I want to be able to see the connectedness of things better.

Because it is summer, I have time on my hands. The book I am supposed to be writing on the Venetian Renaissance exists as a slight pang of guilt and little more. My first year here was spent adjusting to a new college, new courses, new advisees, and a dearth of new friends. Before coming here I had taught in Chicago and now pine occasionally for my ex-life in my ex-city. The notion of leaving my ex-husband 1,000 miles behind had great appeal, but I miss the midwestern friendliness that I always had taken for granted. Easterners really are different, reserved, and less approachable, and my shyness only compounds the problem. I never really thought of myself as a social being until I came here and experienced a more profound estrangement than I ever could have imagined. Keep that in mind. A woman cut loose from her past can be reckless with her lonely freedom.

Instead of buckling down to some serious writing on my new balcony outperch, I find myself making daily treks to the lake. I'm eager to encounter the squirrel. Days go by when I don't see him, and then he just reappears. Through trial and error, I have come to understand his preferences. He has no appetite for carrots or other nutritious vegetables, and although he has never declined a cookie (he seems to share my passion for Mint Milano), the maternal voice in me says not to infect him with my sugar habit. The staple of my offerings is nuts, and now he comes right up and gently lifts almonds from my fingers, using two paws. Three days ago he began accompanying me all the way to the dock, doing his squirrel tasks in my vicinity, and coming by for a nut now and then. I never feel lonely when he's around and almost always do when he isn't.

And there's something else about Professor Kulik. If she devotes her life to beautiful things, amazing pinnacles of human expression, why is she so sad. I can see in the corners of her mouth as she smiles that she is sad. My theory is that she's a sensualist trapped inside an academic.

Life in this town has yet to open up its arms to me, but I take solace in my courses and the occasional student who shows a spark of enthusiasm. Teaching here presents a challenge because, for lack of any good art museums, I have to rely entirely on books, slides, and digital images. Throughout the decade that I taught in Chicago, I would send my students to the Art Institute to experience the power of masterpieces firsthand. Here I try to bring images to life with narrated slides, but I feel that this past year I have achieved only limited success, if yawns from listless students are any indication. So the book is on hold, my teaching is losing its edge, and my social life comes down to a squirrel. Such are the dimensions of my existence. You might assume that I am miserable, but I am not. It is hard to be miserable when you discover a dock on a beautiful lake, and you are working your way through a wonderful book on Giorgioni while your friend (so what if he's a squirrel?) putters about. Believe me when I say that I waste no time mired in self-pity. I've had entirely enough of that with the divorce and am happy to settle for just about any situation devoid of anguish, even if it means devoid of everything else as well. 0+0=0. This is an equation I can live with, at least for now.

Sometimes when I ask questions in class, she pauses, as though splitting her answer in pieces and giving me only a morsel of what she could. I don't know how I know this, but I'm sure of it, that she keeps as much as she gives. Maybe more.

Alicia suggests that I invite her to my studio and show her my work. Alicia is so together—sometimes it's hard to believe that she's only 21. I think it's because she's been through so much already. Alicia thinks that maybe outside of class she'll drop her guard a little. I mean, she's only, what, 10-15 years older than me and we're just two people. And we both have curly hair, the color of cardboard. I wonder if I can call her Maria.

The note on my door says simply VISIT MY STUDIO SOMETIME?—Rick, 273-0236.

Alongside the undergraduates and the doctoral students in my department, I have a sprinkling of MFA students in my courses. They usually amble into class late and ask a lot of questions. Rick, smart and high maintenance, is no exception. Always a bit disheveled, with traces of paint on angles of his lanky frame and in his curly hair, he seems to have one foot in another universe and one in a class where he doesn't quite understand the rules. In the two courses of mine, Renaissance Italian Art and Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Painting, his hand was perpetually in the air. He asked questions that were often so off-kilter they would leave me momentarily baffled. For instance, on the day I was supposedly thrilling the class with slides of the high Renaissance, Rick asked whether or not it could be construed as a low point in art because it marked the era of scientific formulations and rich patrons. Where was the raw energy and the hunger? Another time, as I was discussing Boucher and Fragonard, he asked why no one criticized eighteenth-century French painters for being shamelessly sentimental. And during my final lecture of the semester on the eighteenth-century fascination with the theme of the sublime as transcendent vastness, he said that if you can label something that easily, then it is no longer sublime.

My heart sank a little each time I saw his hand shoot up, and I was glad when the semester was over. But the thing is, unlike the majority of the class, he was thoroughly engaged in the material I presented. More than any of the students, he cared deeply about the history of art, and I suppose I know that, as exasperating as he could be sometimes, he was challenging me in good ways.

Rick's studio is on the third floor of the art building, an old turreted red brick Victorian that once housed the physics department before science funding bought a brand new facility. As usual, the art department was given hand-me-downs and was grateful for even that. The smell of turpentine, faint upon entering, becomes stronger as I climb the stairs to the graduate studios. Rick's door is open a crack, but I knock on it anyway, to announce my arrival.

"Hey!" he says, looking up from the floor, where he is painting a strip of canvas the exact same blue-gray as his eyes.

"Wow!" is all I can manage, as I go around, taking in the full effect of his studio. Almost every inch of wall surface is claimed, and the only available working space is the floor, already covered with scraps of canvas and a constellation of paint cans.

"Sorry about the mess. Careful with the paint. I meant to clean up for you, but, well, you know how it goes."

I'm not sure that I do know this, but I hope that, in the course of the visit, I might learn. In Chicago, the art history and studio art departments were so separate that I had little exposure to art students. I have never seen paintings like these before. Large irregular canvases are stapled to the walls, each one wearing thick paint. Occasional images, a foot, a small tent, a female torso, a wedding band, rise from or merge into impastoed surfaces, and the communion between abstract and representational qualities is masterful. There is music in the layering of paint, and his images have a kind of enigmatic charge. It is much stronger work than I had expected, and I realize that I have never given Rick much consideration as an artist.

When she looks at my work, I hold my breath. I don't know why I care so much about her opinion, but I do. I'm not in love with her or anything, but maybe I'm infatuated with her knowledge, the way her mind works.

When I come to the three-sided painting that takes up nearly a whole wall, he says that he got the idea from my lecture on Raphael and triangular composition, which catches me by surprise. The possibility that my lectures can generate anything beyond doctoral theses is exciting.

"The whole idea of the triangles intrigues me. Did you know in Canada there's a radio program called 'Set That Hypotenuse Loose'? In Halifax I used to paint to the CBC. They have some really strange stuff, but most of it's great. I was never much into math, but 'Hypotenuse' was always good."

"So you're Canadian?" I ask.

"No, I'm a genuine American army brat. Lived in eight states by the time I was 12. Halifax School of Art was the best art school that I got into, and it was cheap too. The four years I spent there were wild."

"Wild?"

"Yeah, everything was real intense. It was great. Everything was about art, all the time. Serious art. See that?" he says, pointing to an 8" x 11" sign that reads I WILL NOT MAKE ANY MORE BORING ART. "That was the title of a documentary about the school. It was the law of the land. No dilettantes there. Pretty pictures were taboo."

"So I can see why you have trouble with Fragonard and Boucher. To be honest, I find them a little frivolous, but that's a matter of personal taste, and I want you students to assign your own meaning to—"

"But that's the thing," Rick jumps in. "If you told us how you felt sometimes instead of just putting the work up and discussing it objectively, we might be able to understand our own feelings better. I mean, it's not like we don't need to learn the reason art looks a certain way, but isn't the way art evokes feelings as important as its context and content?"

I see where this conversation is heading, and, in no mood for a lengthy debate, execute an abrupt u-turn. Nodding toward a series of photographs over his drawing table, I inquire, "These yours?"

"No, they're Alicia's, my girlfriend. Amazing, aren't they? Her latest work is all night shots of living things, taken with a flash. She's an undergraduate—you'd never guess by her work."

I study the photograph of a horse rearing, its sleek coat luminous against the dark backdrop. There is something surreal and delicate about the way the image radiates at the center as the edges blend into darkness. This young artist has achieved a tenebrism as dynamic as Caravaggio's.

The other photographs are all of a naked man in what looks like a meadow, at night. Some of the images are blurred as he walks or moves his arms, nebulous and beautiful, and some show muscles gleaming in momentary light. All are riveting, extraordinary.

"And these are you?" I guess.

"Yours truly," he says, opening his arms operatically. "She's gotten into nudes, and I'm the only one willing to model outside for her."

"Her work is really distinctive. Maybe I could meet her sometime?" And then, blindsided by an impulse too quick to avert, I invite them to dinner. "I have a great place out on East Shore." I have stepped out of character, and I'm not sure what I am getting into, but on a certain level, I'm reveling in this spontaneous invitation. The new me. Blame it on the squirrel.

"Sure. We never say no to a free meal. Oh, sorry. I mean 'good company,'" he says, mischievously. We are both enjoying a new rapport.

The last picture is of Rick, with flailing arms that suggest wings. It is hung upside down, with him looking like a bat clinging to a dark ceiling. This is a joke from Alicia, he explains, because he is always bending over to look at things upside down. "It's the best way to see the world objectively. Have you ever tried it? You should. The best times are dawn and dusk. It's really a way to confound your expectations. Colors and composition are more striking and beautiful that way—you'll be amazed."

Maria gets my work, says that it's very strong, asks questions about where I get my ideas, about my sense of color, movement, how I use paint, why I paint. I tell her that when you're a kid and you never stay in one place long enough to make a best friend, you have to create whatever's missing for yourself. She also likes Alicia's photos. Alicia, who has nightmares, who cries out in her sleep. Who keeps me on track. It makes me want to beat Joe to a pulp and bring back one of his organs, the heart or the liver, to prove to her he's dead.

Rick and Alicia arrive precisely at 7:30. As I give them a brief tour, I notice that Rick has labored to remove all signs of paint, although on the back of his red T-shirt that advertises "Department of Redundancy Department" there's a thin streak of yellow. Try as they may, art students are always exposed by a telltale sign or two, if you look closely enough. Alicia's black tank top, low-slung black jeans, and spiky bleached hair say "art student," and multiple piercings and tattoos add "vaguely menacing." But she has a lovely, gazelle-like face, and her cover is blown when Rick introduces her as the "kid genius" and she blushes. I notice that her ears redden first, a barometer of active subliminal fronts.

Because I haven't had dinner company since I moved from the city, I have blown the whole thing a little out of proportion. These kids probably have not had a good meal in ages, I reasoned, so I took great care in planning the menu: risotto, salmon, asparagus, a salad of baby spinach and mandarin oranges, foccacia, and for desert, tiramisu. I am determined to feed them well and send them off with ample leftovers, so I end up preparing enough for a large family. As I bring out one dish after the other, I realize that my oak table is starting to resemble the crowded walls of Rick's studio, with barely enough room for guests.

Undaunted by this bounty, before I can join them, Rick has already finished his first helping of risotto. Alicia is more restrained but apparently no less hungry, as she quietly fills her plate to maximum capacity—twice. If eating were a competitive sport, this thin waif of a woman could hold her own against any man. In between mouthfuls Rick asks about the land behind the house. "Can you use it? Is it yours?"

"Not officially," I admit, "but I've been exploring it lately and found the path to the lake. There's a dock down there no one else seems to be using."

"That's great. You swim?" he asks.

"I love to swim but I haven't gone into the lake yet. I'm just getting used to all this nature. Too much green makes me nervous. In Chicago the lake is domesticated with roads and beaches. Here it seems a little dangerous."

"We could all go together sometime," Alicia suggests. "That way it would feel safer. I think you'd like the water. It's very soft."

I am surprised and touched by her gentle encouragement. "You know, there's a squirrel that follows me to the dock. I feed him nuts and he hangs around."

"Cool!" say Alicia and Rick in unison. "Alicia loves wild animals and strays. They're kindred spirits," Rick says with a wink. Alicia smiles shyly. I notice that the tattoo encircling her upper arm is a garland. The one around her ankle looks like barbed wire. But I can't quite make out the one on her right shoulder, which has graceful flowing lines that resemble some kind of bird.

"It's true," Alicia agrees. "I'm at my best around animals."

She and I catch one another glancing instinctively at Rick, wolfing down large portions of salmon, and smile together at this private joke.

"There's a kind of trust that I don't have with people," she continues.

"I think I know what you mean. I don't think I'd be nearly as eager to go the lake if I didn't think the squirrel'd be there. By the way, what's that tattoo?" I ask, touching my right shoulder.

"It's a phoenix. I got it last year in Toronto. Rick says it's the perfect metaphor for me."

It is then, over the latter part of the meal, that Alicia begins to come into clearer focus. In between sips of coffee and bites of tiramisu, she casually discloses that she had attempted suicide at 14, spent three months in a mental facility, and ran away two months after returning home. "It was Joe, my stepfather," she explains, as evenly as she had mentioned every other crisis thus far. "He was abusing me and nobody would do anything. My mom even called me a liar. So one day I just split and went to live with my aunt in Ohio. It was the last time I saw my mom. She wouldn't take my calls. Still won't. I have a half-brother I've never met." She pauses for a sip of coffee and I wonder if I should say anything. I can see by Rick's expression that he's intimately acquainted with this fractured terrain.

"Anyway, my aunt had this old Nikon that she let me have, and I used it to escape my shitty life. I finally had something to be proud of. It's weird but I know that the camera and everything that happened to me brought me here."

"Let's hear it for the camera!" Rick says.

"And how about a round of applause for the photographer," I add. "I think your work is very powerful."

"Thanks!" Her ears begin to flush. "It's been a real breakthrough year."

"Well, I haven't seen what you were doing before, but I think the night shots are dazzling. Are you still working on that series?"

"Well, sort of. I'm having trouble getting models besides Rick, and I've already used him so much. I really want to try female models, but my friends are afraid of ending up in my senior show. And they would, if the shots were good enough."

One hour and one more glass of wine later I do what I have to do—I offer my services. You would have too if you saw what I saw in her eyes. If you understood the staggering cost of her pierced and tattooed dignity, and how bravely she wrests brilliance out of darkness, the miracle of her work.

As unbelievable as it seems, Maria is going to pose for Alicia. After dinner, Alicia is so excited that instead of going home, we drive my pick-up to our favorite beach. A chain blocks the access road, so we hike to the water and swim and make love. Later, Alicia sleeps soundly for the first time in ages.

I confess to spending a considerable amount of time contemplating what to wear tonight, what I will be shedding, and how. Whether to mime the peeling of an orange, or the quick unsheathing of foil around dark chocolate. In the end, I opt for neither, and settle on a practical one-piece bathing suit, which I cover with an old gray cotton frock. Alicia suggested that I put my hair up so that my shoulders will be visible, but this is not as easy as it sounds. Curly and disobedient, my hair refuses to be constrained, so I pull it to the nape of my neck, my standard method of coping. The sound of tires on gravel below signals Rick and Alicia's arrival, and I decide to let them deal with this hair as they please.

As practiced as I am at finding my way to the lake, it's a challenge by flashlight. Sandwiched between Rick and me, Alicia trips twice on roots, both times clutching her equipment as she falls, a mother protecting her child. Rick is steadier, although he is weighted with food and two bottles of wine that he's pilfered from a reception, blankets, towels, and water. But our progress is slow and laborious, and it takes close to an hour to reach water. And there it is at last, lustrous under a half-moon, a live and breathing presence. We stand there, taking it in.

"Jeez," says Rick, "this is amazing!"

"Awesome," adds Alicia.

Emboldened by the grandeur, I decide that it is going to be fine, even good, especially after a couple of bottles of wine.

We spread out the blankets, and as Rick lays out the food, Alicia sets up her tripods and cameras.

"So, how are you feeling?" Rick asks. "Still game?"

"Yes," I say, not entirely convincingly. We have not yet opened the wine, although Rick is making a valiant effort with a Swiss Army corkscrew in the dark.

"Well, remember that it's up to you. It's cool that you want to help out, but if it feels too weird, we'll stop. We don't want you to feel like you've been dragooned into this." Rick smothers a Wheat Thin in goat cheese, pops it into his mouth, and proceeds to pour three large Styrofoam cups of wine.

"All's ready," says Alicia, joining Rick on his blanket. She snuggles up to him, melding her body against his. It might be the gentle purling of the lake, or the unusually warm breeze washing over water, or, more likely, the wine taking hold, but I feel a subtle pull to be pressed into a sort of three-point composition with these two.

"Remember the lecture on the sublime?" Rick asks. "Isn't this a living example?"

"I guess you could say that."

"Is there anything here that doesn't fit into your description? I mean, it's breathtaking enough, isn't it?"

I consider this and realize that I have always reduced the sublime to a component of eighteenth-century landscape painting. But Rick is right, it doesn't get more sublime than this, but any definition of the term—especially the one I prefer—entwines fear and majesty.

"No, I think this is precisely what Burke had in mind. I just wish I'd thought of this sooner, that the sublime is really about experience wherever you find it."

"And how you use it?"

"Maybe that, too. Ask me when I'm naked."

"Speaking of which, Alicia and I decided it would be less intimidating if we all take off our clothes."

"And you'll model too?" I am envisioning triangular composition of the highly inappropriate kind.

"Nah," says Alicia. "I've already done him and I need to take the shots. We just want to make you less uncomfortable. Do you think it would help?"

"Well, let's give it a whirl and see," I say, clearly under the influence of wine and goat cheese by now.

The first step is the hardest—the removal of frock and bathing suit—and yields the biggest surprise; the delicious pleasure of humid air lapping over skin. Cloaked in darkness, I hardly feel naked. Rick and Alicia have also taken off their clothes but, standing at the far end of the dock, look like apparitions, nothing substantial enough to raise eyebrows or, of greater immediate concern, get me fired. I have never been naked outdoors before, and I certainly have never been naked outdoors with students. Pleading drunk won't constitute a sound defense. I know how these things work. Nonetheless, I can tell that I am, in fact, drunk.

Rick dips his legs in the water, pronounces it warm, and before anyone can blink, jumps into the lake and starts swimming. "Ooooeeeee, this is great! Why don't you guys join me?"

I'm relieved when Alicia answers that "we guys" need to get some work done before the light shifts.

"But you don't need me, right?"

"Right!" says Alicia. "Maria, are you ready? This isn't going to take long."

"Sure. Just tell me what to do." I'm much more at ease without the thought of Rick watching from the sidelines. Alicia begins by weaving my hair into a single braid, which she pins up. After that, she arranges me in a variety of seated positions and shoots from different angles. I'm less self-conscious on the ground, but then she begins a series of shots of me standing. "Can you put all your weight on one leg and sort of lean into it. It accentuates the curve of your spine." Ah, yes, I think, the famous S-curve, so beloved of artists past and present.

As Alicia is about to shoot from the back, she remembers that she brought oil, and goes to retrieve it from her bag. "You don't mind, do you?" she asks, holding out the bottle. "This will make your skin shine."

"No problem," I say, as I begin to slather baby oil over my body. It feels like a layer separating my skin from the elements and I wish it weren't necessary. When I get to my back, Alicia offers to take over, caressing my shoulders and moving down gradually to the base of my spine. In my current state of sensual abandon, I don't want her to stop, but, of course, she does.

By the time we almost finish the third roll of film, Rick returns from his swim, wet hair falling almost to his shoulders. "You don't know what you're missing. The water is perfect."

Suddenly inspired, Alicia turns to me and asks how I feel about diving into the lake. "It could be the last shot," she says. "I'll take it from the side and if it works, you'll look like a bright arc disappearing into water."

How can I say no to a request like that? And so I stand, at the edge of the dock, looking into something deep and possibly treacherous, but beckoning. I sit to test the water and discover that Rick is right. It's almost tepid. Alicia takes a shot of me just before I dive, and then at the exact moment I spring off the dock.

My heart is beating wildly, the water is dark, and I have no sense of direction. Then I hear a splash and Alicia surfaces beside me. "Want to swim out a little?" she asks.

"Ok, but not too far, if you don't mind." I still seem to possess some rational limits.

"We'll only go as far as you like," she promises. But we swim long enough to see a flickering of lights on the opposite shore, invisible from the dock. My skin and every muscle in my body are responding rapturously to the water, floating and gliding, weightless. And now that I've tasted this moment, I wonder about other unclaimed experiences throughout my life. When we finally return to the dock, Rick, half-asleep on a blanket, sits up. "The fish return," he says in greeting.

Alicia wants to take a few more shots while I'm wet, and then it's over. I dry off on a towel and climb back into my frock. Suddenly exhausted from the swim and the wine, I wrap myself in a tattered quilt and doze. The next thing I know, it's the middle of the night, and the left side of my face bears the imprint of a wooden board. When I shift to the other side and see Rick and Alicia spooned together, I'm seized with a deep, inarticulate longing. I lie there transfixed by the nocturnal sky and the unknown. I believe I am inhabiting the sublime. Someone sighs in sleep; perhaps it is me.

When I wake in the morning, Rick and Alicia have already packed everything but the water bottle and the quilt that is tangled around me. "Here," Rick says, extending the bottle. "Breakfast." They have to meet a friend at the airport, but I am free to remain at the dock. We exchange embraces, and as they climb the trail, Rick picks a trillium (a state offense), tosses it to me, and disappears around a bend.

I really have no desire to go anywhere. As I lie alone in the early morning light, I scoot backward and hang my head over the edge of the dock. Rick is right. Viewed this way, the world seems new, vivid, and very mysterious. You should try it too, sometime, and then we can begin from there.

Alicia developed the shots today. As expected, they're incredible. Only one has a face that can be identified, and even though I think it's one of the most arresting, Alicia says she won't use it in her show. It's of Maria perched on the edge of the deck, arms around her legs, twisting around to ask Alicia what to do next. "This is it," Alicia said, "we're done." But she shot another picture, and this one shows a woman, open in her kindness, dressed only in a million drops of water, as she turns to ask what more she can do, and she is shimmering.