Genesis

Abnitio. In the beginning. In the beginning is fear, is rage, is a large hand outstretched above a crib padded in bright colors. In the beginning is my mother's voice calmly erasing my bad dreams. In the beginning is nothing but my mother's words: Virginia and Maine and grey and green.

I was conceived in Virginia, in Lynchburg, a town-name which always makes me think of Billy Holliday. I was born in Maine, a state my mother fills with slabs of slate and ice-chopped water and a wooden house with a frozen yard and newsprint crumbling in the walls -- grey upon grey. My mother hates Maine and remembers it for me.

Lynchburg is a green place, and wet. It smells like caladryl and thick-veined broken leaves and asphalt goo and talc and cottony ladysweat. I have been there twice since I could talk and I am going to move there--by myself--last of all. Lynchburg, Virginia is a sauna of dazzling verdance and broken glass. During the day everything is too brightly hugely green to see the sky, only at night or dusk do other colors reach any kind of permanence. Lynchburg is where I am someday from.