​I had been volunteering at the Museum of Printing History for more than a year, accumulating studio time to work on book arts projects. I was finally ready to to set my first type, and wanted to start with a modest project. A single page of text would he a good beginning, and a succinct and meaningful poem would be ideal. All the past fall I had I had been watching episodes of Inspector Morse and its successor, Inspector Lewis, on PBS Masterpiece Theater, as much for the wonderful poetry by A. E. Housman and others as for the drama of the series. The action takes place at Oxford University where multiple murders must be solved without disturbing the dreamy academics. In the episode "And the moonbeams kiss the Sea," Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem, Love's Philosophy is found in the pocket of a murdered art student. An early suspect is another artist with a quirky personality, perhaps somewhat autistic. He seems unaffected by the murder of his friend and lover, is amused that the police have found a "body in the Bodleian," the ancient library at Oxford holding manuscripts of English poets back to Shakespeare and Chaucer. Oxford is the university of my fantasies, and any drama set there is sure to charm me.

For weeks after seeing the episode my mind was full of the Romance of Shelley's life and early death, his passionate loves and committed atheism. The end of the episode finds Inspector Lewis at the Shelly Memorial on the Oxford campus marveling at the icy cool sculpture of the drowned Shelley by Edward Onslow Ford. My first project would be the love poem of Shelley's youth.


The first decision was to choose an appropriate font. I wanted it to be from the times when the poem was published in 1819, but that was not the only restriction. It also had to be present in three sizes: title, body text and present in the museum's collection in sufficient quantity to account for all the letters. The font called Baskerville was a classic early 19th century font that filled the historical requirements, and there was enough of the 11, 12 and 14 point foundry type letters to accommodate the poem.

The second decision was the choice of paper. A machine-made paper would not be distinguishable from a printout from a computer printer. I chose instead a handmade paper made of abaca fibers by the papermaker at the museum, Kathy Gurwell.The paper was a soft paper with a lot of individual variation, and was a lovely shade of beige. Every sheet bore a deckled edge, and the size of 8.5" x 11" left a generous amount of paper surrounding the poem.

The third choice was which press to use, one of the Kelsey platen presses, the Washington press, or the Vandercook proof press. The Kelsey is self-inking, so it would be faster to print a large number, but I only needed 25 copies and did not mind hand inking. The Washington is a little harder to register each sheet, and requires more muscular effort per sheet, so I chose the Vandercook. Each sheet is fed into the press with a rolling motion, so the work flow is smooth, and the hand inking would not be a chore for twenty five copies.

The fourth choice is ink, and the alternatives are rubber-based offset ink and oil based printing ink. Though rubber-based ink is slower to dry, it stores on the shelf longer for intermittent printers like myself. I normally use rubber-based ink for my linocut prints, so I stayed with that.

Foundry type is stored in drawers (cases) filed with a California case layout. I opened the case and with the compositor's stick in my left hand, placed the letters upside down (nick up) into the stick in the order of the text. After each line I checked the tension by adding thins, combinations of brass (2 points) or coppers (1 point) until the letters no longer had any slack nor were too rigid. Setting the entire poem was an afternoon's work. When the lines are turned right-side up, it reads backwards, as it must to print the correct direction.

The following day I arrived early with my paper, ink, roller and cleanup materials in hand. Printing was almost anti-climactic, and in just an hour or so I had all the copies I wanted. These went onto the drying rack, and when I returned the following day the copies were thoroughly dry, and I redistributed the type back into its proper cases.

​When my daughter announced that she was getting married, I was elated. Her intended is a fine man who cares about her and is dedicated to his daughter. I will be pleased to have him for a son-in-law. After the news sunk in, I wondered how I could help with the plans. Fathers of young brides have historically been tapped to pay for the event, but in the modern era of self-reliant women who often marry only after establishing themselves, this practice is often set aside. In any case my monastic lifestyle rules out a significant role in the financial aspect of the celebration. But I wanted to contribute in some way, and I soon realized that I could lessen the burden by printing the wedding invitation as a letterpress project. I was delighted when she agreed that I could take on this task. 

I have been a printmaker since 1998, and have been volunteering at the Museum of Printing History since my exhibition there in 2008. My first letterpress printing there was a poem by Shelley done in December 2010, and I was anxious to extend my experience at the art of text and foundry type. We consulted back and forth on the text of the invitation, the paper, and the font and after six weeks of communiques I was ready to set the form. We had picked Liberty Script, a fine font which the Museum had in abundance in 14 point and 12 point, the sizes I needed for a line length of 20 points. At 72 points per inch, a 20 point line is 3.6 inches. I set the type upside down with the nick up in a compositor's stick held in my left hand as I pulled the type from the case with my right hand. Thus, when the stick is turned upside down, the text reads backwards as it must for printing from lead font. Since the text was to be center justified, I placed an equal number of spacers of whatever sort I needed (quads, em-spaces, en-spaces, etc) on both sides of the text, then adjusted the tension with thins of 1 point (copper) or 2 points (brass) until the tension was just right before moving on to the next line. 

When all the lines were set, I placed the form (the type to be printed) on the bed of the Vandercook press and placed furniture around the text, including horizontal and vertical quoins to tighten the text and prevent slippage during the printing process. I planed the letters by tapping with a rubber mallet to make sure no letter stuck up too high, checked that there was no lateral slack by pushing backwards and forwards, then tightened the quoins to secure the form on the press bed. I inked in red (Pantone 199) with a hand roller, and printed on Fabriano Medioevalis. 

​

23 January 2013 was the 30th anniversary of my father's death. I still miss the guiding influence has had over my entire life; he was for me a barometer of what a man should be. He continues to have influence as a benevolent and loving voice I often hear when I am in doubt. "What would Father say?" is a question I still ponder. His voice was never stronger than I heard it on 16 July 2002.
   That summer my sister Mary organized our periodic family reunion to be held at Sylvan Lake in the Black Hills of South Dakota. It was to be something of a sentimental journey for me. I had lived in South Dakota from 1956-1963 while father worked at the Edgemont Uranium plant where he was the general manager. We often went to Sylvan Lake for summer vacations, and my sisters Ethel and Diane sometimes joined us there for weeks at a time. So Sylvan Lake was a per
   The first leg of the journey involved a plane trip from Houston, Texas to Rapid City, South Dakota. I arrived at the airport quite fatigued. I had booked a departure from Houston at 7:40 AM, and spent the previous night trying in vain to sleep on a very hard bench at baggage claim. My plan was to spend the night inside the terminal, but I had failed to understand that only ticked passengers with a boarding pass could enter the security cordon protecting the comforts of the terminal proper. Ticket agents could not issue boarding passes until they opened at 5AM, so I was forced to find a spot to wait outside the security zone. I had not flown since before 9-11 when everything changed at airports in America.
   The flight was uneventful, and far briefer than the time I had spent listening to passengers collect their luggage from red-eye flights in Houston. I had slept most all the way on the jet, aided by a dose of Zanax I had taken as we left the ground in Texas. The entire Rapid City airport could have been set down in one corner of baggage claim in Houston. Exhausted, I had a hard time collecting my thoughts as I disembarked. Energetic tourists in leisure clothes bustled about their hurried schedule, and crisp terminal workers had a casual look even when wearing the standard corporate uniform. Everyone was talking about the heat. There had been a heat wave, and the mid-afternoon temperature was hovering about 102 degrees. They spoke in an accent with a tempo and twang that I had forgotten. It sounded comforting and familiar, like suddenly meeting up with a childhood friend for the first time in many years. I ventured outside to catch a glimpse of the Black Hills, and the heat was palpable, so dry that it was not at all unpleasant. The smell of dried grass suffused the air and I took in deep breaths as I examined the low rise of dark hills to the west. This was not the stark, soaring of splendor of Colorado where we had gone for Mary's last reunion. It was gentler, more human and oh, so familiar to me. 
   Back inside, I loitered around the baggage claim area waiting for the bags to clear. Rather than wait at the revolving conveyor belt like all the other passengers, I wandered over to the advertising kiosks placed along the wall. The spired Alex Johnson Hotel advertised as the premier hotel in the town of Rapid City, looking very western with its cowboy-culture decor.  The picture poked at me like a memory trying to gain re-entry into my mind. Was this the place I remembered from my early adolescence? An elderly lady jostled me in her aggressive haste to get at her bags, and my reverie was broken. I was in no hurry and did not want to jostle with those anxious to be gone, so I hung back. Though I would have been content to be the last to leave the baggage area, my bag was among the first to show. I reached over and removed it from in front of the impatient lady. 
   At the rental car booth I stated my reservation number and filled out the final forms. Directed to the parking lot, I found the car and settled into the seat. The impatient lady emerged from the building with a girl and young man and who carried her bags. They filled the trunk with her luggage while they expended a great deal of excited chatter. I felt tired from the sedative, and glad that I did not have to force myself to be conversational. I idled the car and made sure I knew where all the pedals and knobs were situated. I owned no car and seldom drove, so I had to acclimate myself to the alien terrain of the automobile. At length I was in motion and on the freeway into town. A bicycle would have been dangerous on this road with no shoulder. I wondered if anyone here in South Dakota preferred two wheeled transportation, and if that was even possible. The drive to the Motel Six where I had a reservation was mercifully brief, and once there I lay down on the bed to relax.
   When I awoke two hours later, it was too early for dinner, and I was too restless to hang around the motel room.  I remembered the historic Hotel Alex Johnson and resolved to go out in search of it to see why it seemed so familiar. I didn't look at the map, I just started driving, but somehow seemed to know what streets to take. As I approached the downtown district, I could easily see spires and distinctive, almost alpine roofline of the hotel - the tallest building in town. Though a regional urban center, there was little traffic of the kind I was used to in Houston, and I was easily able to park within a block of the compelling edifice. I pulled into a convenient parking space and got out to go over and get a closer look. I felt drawn there, somehow certain of my steps and intent upon my destination. 
   Rounding the corner, the first floor facade brought a flood of memories from so many years ago. Suddenly, I remembered being with Father who was in town on some business he had just concluded. Mother and my sisters were out shopping, so it was just me and father, four or five in the afternoon, and he says, "I want to take you out to a dinner at a special place." At the intrusion of this memory, I suddenly realized this was the same building where we had eaten so long ago. Would there still be a restaurant? "Unlikely," I thought, but I determined to perambulate the block to savor the experience before seeking out a Waffle House or some similar inexpensive eatery. 
   At the corner, though, I was stopped by an impressive entrance door. It was a carefully hewn of fine wood and obvious quality. This was a more expensive restaurant than I usually patronized. Stickers proclaimed affiliation with Diners Club, MasterCard, and American Express, so I would be able to charge the expense to my vacation. Certainly, there was still a restaurant here, but surely it could not be the same! That was forty years ago! I hesitated at the threshold. It was early for dinner, and a hotel restaurant might well be closed during mid-afternoon. Nevertheless, I tried the door. The handle was heavy and luxurious, and as I pulled to open the door, I was drawn into a veritable time machine. It was indeed the same as I remembered! My memories filled in the interior contours with complete accuracy. I couldn't believe it! The attractive young hostess approached me with cheery greeting, a menu, and a gesture into the dining room. I motioned to the other side, an aspect that seemed somehow most familiar. 
    "Can I sit there?" 
    "Yes, of course. Please, sit wherever you like." 
    She brought me into a narrow alcove with a banister which overlooked the hotel lobby. There were only three or four quite empty tables, and I requested the table at the end, the one with the best observation of the lobby. I took my seat and looked up at the wagon-wheel chandelier and Native American scrollwork. I slowly scrutinized the menu. Prime Rib, the most expensive dinner in the restaurant, beckoned forcibly from the pages, and suddenly I was flooded with emotion. I remembered father's dinner as if it was yesterday.
    He said to me, "The food here is really good. The prime rib is excellent."
   "I don't feel like bones." 
    He laughed good-naturedly, "Prime rib doesn't have any bones! Order it medium rare and it should be very tender and juicy." I felt embarrassed by my ignorance, but father was not making fun of me. He probably had a martini earlier, that usually put him in an expansive mood. He had finished with a business meeting earlier in the day, and it must have gone well as he was feeling generous. I remember father as he stretched out his legs and admired the ceiling. Strange that he has been dead for twenty years now, yet in my memory he is as alive and full of character as if he were in front of me. Mirroring father's gesture, I looked up at the painted ceiling of today. The paint seemed fresh enough, perhaps at least a few years old, maybe more. Was it the same as what my father saw? The waitress came back to see what I would have. 
   "Have you decided what you want?" 
   "Do you have Prime Rib tonight?" 
   "Yes."
   "Let me have that, medium rare." 
   "Baked Potato?"
   "Yes." It had been a long time since I had baked potato with all the fixings, too much saturated fat is bad for my cholesterol. 
   "Salad Dressing?" 
   "Blue Cheese." I won't be worried about cholesterol for once.
    She retired to leave me to my solitary musings. Separating the restaurant from the hotel proper was a half-wall with etched glass. The lobby was small and intimate, a few heavily stuffed leather chairs placed casually here and there for hotel guests. My memory was becoming sharp. The decor had not really changed at all. I pulled out my notebook and sketched the A-J-H logo from the back of the custom-made chair opposite.
   My father's presence became palpable, almost as if he were looking over my shoulder. My eyes filled with tears. 'Good god, get a grip,' I thought, 'Don't start crying here!'  The waitress returned with the salad and placed it in front of me. I hoped she hadn't noticed that my eyes were moist. I savored each forkful of lettuce, lingered over the blue cheese. Suddenly, I realized that I was not sad at all, there was no need for tears here. This was a precious chance to commune with my father and with my past. 
   I visualized my father sitting opposite. I could make out his senatorial profile, the languorous command he always had over his large-framed body. In my mind he turned to me, as if to answer a question. I was always asking him for advice. He seemed to know what people could be counted on to do. 'Am I on the right track?' was my silent question.
   'Yes, you are doing fine. Your life has been harder than I had thought it would be, but you've done okay. You had more happiness than you might have had.' 
   'What about my being gay. Are you all right with that? We never had a chance to talk about that.'
   'Remember, your mother was only sixteen when she got pregnant, so you should understand that in my youth, I was driven by sex as much as you were. Neither of us were thinking about consequences, and although your choices were ruinous for your health, my choices had far reaching consequences as well. From my perspective in the hereafter, your brand of sex is not so very different.' His tone switched to the fatherly mode he adopted when about to give advice, 'We are just two souls now, son. While I was alive I didn't understand gay sex because I never knew anyone who was queer. Everyone thought homosexuality was perversion, and I would not have wanted a pervert for a son. I see things more clearly now. Because nobody ever talked about it, I had the sense that sex was something dirty. You never had that kind of "hang-up," as your generation calls it. You led a very promiscuous life compared to me, and I suspect that kind of promiscuity must have been very seductive. It offered temptations any man would have found attractive. I can appreciate that now that I'm dead. You are not so strange to me as you have been thinking for so long.'
   In his living form, father was quite a prude, and any kind of sexual talk would have embarrassed him to the point of blushing. He didn't live long enough for the two of us to have an adult conversation about sexuality, neither heterosexual nor homosexual. All the same, I always had a sense that he knew what lust was all about. Unfortunately, in life he could no more have spoken about it to me than he could have discussed it with his parents. Of course, my relationship with my father didn't end when he died, and having this conversation was very soothing to me, even if I was inventing both halves of the dialogue.
   My prime rib arrived, and I set aside my conversation with Father. I picked up my fork and savored the tender meat. I lathered three pats of butter onto the baked potato and heaped it with bacon pieces, cheese and chives, like I was a kid again. No child myself now, I had turned fifty four just ten days earlier. How long ago was that first dinner here? It must have been the summer before we went to Texas. That was in 1963, so Dad's prime rib dinner would have been in 1962. I seem to remember some vestige of snow on the streets outside, so it must have been early in the year. Since I was born in 1948, I would have turned fourteen the summer of 1962, so I would still have been thirteen then, right on the verge of manhood.   
   How old was father when I had the prime rib dinner at the Alex Johnson? He was born in 1907, let's see, ... In the spring of 1962, he would have been fifty four. My God! A chill went down my spine, and tears came to my eyes. I just turned fifty four! I am at the same age now that father was then!
   Father smiled back at me knowingly. A visitation indeed. Thank you father. 

14 January 2013: I picked up Kitty's ashes today. The smoothly finished wooden box was surprisingly light as I turned it over in my hands. On the underside was a round plastic plug, but when I tried to lift it out, it was so tightly wedged I didn't get a look at her ashes. Back home I placed it on her chair where she slept most nights through this winter.
   I don't remember precisely when Kitty chose to adopt me. The first time I saw her was a marvelous Spring day . She was asleep on the back porch, and when I opened the door, she scurried off down the steps. Full-grown, I thought she probably belonged to one of my neighbors. The next day she was back sunning herself on the second-story vantage point where she could keep an eye out for approaching dangers. When I peered out at her through the window in the door, she looked up at me with a little less alarm. I opened the door, and she again fled down the steps, this time pausing to look back at me to see if I was in pursuit. Within a couple of days she only seemed a little annoyed at my intrusions, and began to hold her ground, loath to leave her comfortable spot.
   After I saw her drinking rain water on the carport, I began leaving water in a bowl on the porch, which she drank with un-cat-like abandon. Before the week was out I had gone across the street and purchased a box of cat food. This she ate with great vigor, so it seemed clear she was currently without a caretaker. What I found strangely endearing was her meow, more of a throaty screech than a feline meow, halfway between a growl and a purr. Whether she was born with this aberration or acquired it through some trauma, I never could learn. Her vocalization explained why, soon after she started hanging around, the little boy in the next building knocked on my door, breathless with an urgent message of warning, "My mom, she says the cat has a disease and you shouldn't touch her." His mother was overcautious, I thought, or perhaps she didn't want a straggler cat underfoot or made up a rationalization to keep him from getting too emotionally connected to a pet she would not let him keep. I was apparently second choice from the beginning.
   At first she wasn't too interested in coming inside. I would leave the kitchen door open, and she would saunter in and inspect the kitchen, sniffing curiously here and there. I had a swinging door between the kitchen and the living room which made a great "swish" when I would push through. The first time she witnessed this strange phenomena she was quite alarmed and retreated back onto the porch. For days if the swinging door was open, she would approach it with care as she peered into the living room. One day she confidently pushed past and into the rooms beyond. I waited for several long minutes without following her, because I didn't want her to feel like I was making a trap. "You approve of your new lodgings?" I asked her when she returned to the safety of the kitchen. She made some cat response that I took to mean, "It will do, I guess."
   From the first she did not like to be touched. It was several weeks before she would lay on her back in a cat's version of "I trust you" and allow me to touch her. The fur on her stomach had been recently shaved, a fading remnant from some surgical procedure, I supposed, most probably she had been recently spayed. I could not understand why an owner would abandon her after taking the trouble of spaying her, and speculated that she had run away from masters she no longer trusted. Further supporting this hypothesis, she did not like to be petted, and would usually pull away after a few strokes. If I persisted, she would gently bite my hand in warning, then harder if I did not get the hint. She was a poor groomer, and frequently had hairballs on her side from her lack of attention. When I tried to comb these out, she would growl, and then bite. I left her alone for the most part, though eventually I felt a bit shamed that she looked so ratty. She looked so derelict, I thought it would be a good idea if she had a collar to demonstrate she was cared for and not an abandoned cat to be picked up and exterminated by animal control agents. I brought home a nice flexible velcro collar, and thought it would be a struggle to get her used to it. I planned to put it on her neck for only a couple of minutes at first, then take it off and repeat the next day for a longer period until she became accustomed. But when I wrapped it around her neck, she took to it immediately like she had always worn one. I never took it off again, and she lost it only a few months before her death and I never had a chance to replace it.
   She became comfortable in the apartment, but always seemed to prefer the outside. The apartment complex where I lived, Wilshire Village, was on a cul-de-sac, so there was very little traffic. She was a street-wise cat, and knew enough about the dangers of cars to avoid them when they were operating, so I did not fear she would be run over. I provided her with a litter box under the table for emergencies, but she seldom had to utilize it. For such a ratty feline, she was curiously fastidious about her litter box. If there was anything remaining from last time, she wouldn't use it, preferring instead the rug in the kitchen or living room. I had to keep the box scrupulously clean when when she was confined inside for any length of time. If she made a mistake on the floor, I would push her face toward the pile of feces and bellow, "No, Kitty!" but she was immune to my discipline and eventually I gave up attempts at training.
   When it was cold, she became an inside cat. On frigid winter days she would lay in front of the gas space heater in the living room for hours at a stretch. At night she would sleep on my bed, down near the foot out of the way of my thrashing. She had a fondness for my pappa san chair in the living room, and I would sometimes have to push her aside to sit in it. I always got the sense that she tolerated me only because I was too big to evict.
   She had a weird preference for native water. If it rained, she drank from the pools on the carport. If there was heavy dew on car windshields, she would lick it off clean. Neighbors complained how her tongue marks made it hard to see until they used the washer to clean it off. She would leave little tracks on the car hood as she tongued the glass, so her culpability was always apparent. Her tongue was so rough it tickled, like a tiny wet brush. I could hardly bear it when she offered to lick me, something that came seldom and unpredictably.
   When Wilshire Village was condemned by the city in 2009 and all the tenants were evicted, I worried she would not be able to adapt to a new situation. In the first few weeks at my new location on Crocker Street nearer downtown, I scrupulously kept her inside as we settled in. The apartment was a converted house, with psychologists offices on half of the first floor and all of the second floor, my small efficiency on the first floor seemed irrelevant to the function of the house. In the back there was a patio and a real back yard, although a parking lot infringed on half of it. Upstairs above the patio was a second story deck, and it was there she came to prefer to hang out, upstairs like the old place, where she could keep a look out. As she entered old age, she became more sedentary and seemed to spend most of her time outside in nap mode.
   One day I noticed a lump behind her ear. I thought it was a tick at first, but it was some kind of watery tumor. Over the next few weeks it grew by steady increments. I packed her up in the "Pet Taxi," placed the carrier on the handlebars of my bike, and pedaled off down the street to the closest veterinarian. From the moment I placed her in the carrier, she growled loudly and did not stop throughout the entire examination. The vet took a sample and diagnosed a non-malignant tumor. I could have it removed for $900, but she said it was largely a cosmetic issue. I really didn't have the $900 so Kitty lived with the flopping tumor for the next two years. Eventually, she tolerated the watery tumor the size of a Kumquat behind her right ear and a couple of smaller ones behind her left ear. Sometimes she would shake her head as if to dislodge them, but mostly she ignored them altogether.
   She stopped grooming by 2012, and began to look more and more like an abandoned street cat. Through the summer she stayed outside nearly all the time, mostly napping on the upstairs porch. She would come down only when it was time to eat, at night she slept under the building next door. In the Fall I noticed that her breathing was heavy. For weeks I postponed taking her to the vet, making excuses that it was too hard to get her to the vet on my bike, that I could not afford to have her tumors cut off.
   Then I noticed her breathing was labored, and I could not postpone it any longer. I persuaded a friend to take me to an inexpensive vet on the north loop and they discovered a mass in her throat that was presumably cancer. The external tumors were the least of her problems, they said. There was nothing I could do but make her last days as pleasant as possible. At night she wheezed so loud that I had to wear earplugs. At first still she was still getting some quality time on the upstairs porch, but the weather turned cold and she was trapped inside most of the time. With her confined to the apartment, I had a chance to check her more often. I began to notice her eyes were widely dilated most of the time. Chris said that meant she was in a lot of pain. Kitty would sleep for a while, then get up and stand in the middle of the room wheezing, then get back in the chair and sit there staring off at nothing. I anguished over putting her down, but my friend Chris told me it was strictly my decision. When I finally said it was time, she concurred. She knows a lot about cats.
   Chris agreed to come with me to the vet one final time. In the waiting room she chattered away the whole time, distracting me from the process unfolding before my senses. Time was racing too fast. Although I knew it was the humane thing to do, I did not want to go through with this barbarous act to "euthanize" Kitty. Strange term, euthanize: "Eu" for good or true, "thanatos" for death; was this anything like a good death? In the examination room they asked me to bring Kitty out of the carrier. She was limp at the bottom of the Pet Taxi as I brought her out in my arms. She had not made a sound since I had put her in the carrier at the house, no growling, no complaining whatsoever. As I held her she stared off in space, her eyes huge like saucers. They brought out an electric razor, "You're not going to shave her?" I reacted in alarm. Somehow I imagined a barbaric body shaving resembling the shaming treatment rendered to Nazi Collaborators while jeering crowds pushed toward the offenders.
   "No," Chris said, "they need a clear view of the vein so they can insert a needle." As the electric razor buzzed off a patch of fur about the size of a half dollar, I thought of when I discovered her shaven stomach in our first days together. Odd that this act of being shaved bracketed our time together. As her execution proceeded, time seemed so very laden with kitty's last seconds. My sense of time was a paradox, at once seeming to slow ponderously while at he same moment speeding by far too fast to embrace thoughts of a time without Kitty. Then the needle was in her vein and it was over. Kitty's huge lifeless eyes stared out into the universe. I could hardly keep my composure, I wanted to weep, but felt that if I started it would be too hard to stop. They asked me if I wanted a few minutes alone with her, and I said no, but they could see that I needed it and left me with Chris anyway. She consoled me with assurances that I had done the right thing, and at the right time. It seemed right, it seemed a ... a good death, a true death. She was the first creature I cared about that I watched the life drain out of.
   Until my dying day I will miss that crotchety old girl. Perhaps I will be thinking of her then.

   I looked down on him unobserved from the balcony, so he didn't see me until I called out.
   "Picturesque, Isn't it?"
  He peered up at me, suddenly alert. Apparently, he hadn't counted on any of the residents remaining on the property. He looked a lot like Sam Jaffe, the actor who played the Einstein-like professor in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Dressed as I was, barefoot and clad only in a thin t-shirt and shorts, he clearly saw I was no threat to him, and his alarmed expression gave way to curiosity. Still, he didn't say anything. It was my dream, after all, not his. He turned to face me, looking up expectantly, and the great arms of the old oak seemingly embraced him. I loved that old tree whose shade had cooled the environs of the otherwise austere landscaping.
   Suddenly, I felt a little precarious. At my back I could feel an eerie vacancy, but didn't turn around out of fear that my apartment had already been cut away from the building to leave me suspended on ungrounded masonry. I reached out to steady myself by grasping the handrail, but my hand tore at at empty air. I looked down and saw that the demolition men had cut the banister off my back porch in preparation for the eviction. All that was left was a series of short little square pedestals not quite flush with the concrete.
   Feeling quite giddy, I might have tripped and gone over the edge, but instead I lowered myself carefully and sat down on the top step. I cradled my cup of morning tea in my hands and took a sip while surveying my domain as I had done so many times before. I wondered at the intruder's purpose in being there, and was about to initiate a conversation with him to determine his reason to be on the property.
   Yes, I was back at Wilshire Village once again, caught in a dream and returned to the place I spent so many years as resident.

  
   These midnight returns to Xanadu are less frequent now. It has been thirty eight months since I was forced to abandon my squalid refuge in the heart of the Montrose. All that squalor is gone now, replaced by a  trendy new HEB that has been built on the site of my former address. I had gone there a few days before my dream to purchase some sushi for my final semester critique in printmaking. I cycled through the expansive parking lot, and paused to examine the health of the grand old oak that used to be "mine." She seemed a bit weakened, a few tiny branch-tips appeared to be dead, but overall there was an abundance of leafy growth from the Spring season just ending. Was this the first sign of weakness? Trees take a long time to die, several years for this aged centenarian, and death starts at the fingertips and works its way to the heart.
   I passed a red-haired grounds keeper talking to a couple of suited executives, perhaps relaying a status report. The suits moved off and I stopped and inquired, "Taking care of the trees?" He assented vaguely, and before I could stop myself, I added by way of explaining my interest, "I lived here for 25 years under the shade of this tree."
   "Oh" he answered, "In the old apartments they tore down?"
   "Yes, until they evicted me a couple of years ago." It was evident he had little knowledge of the world that had been erased here. He was glad to have a job, and certainly preferred the grounds now to any that might have existed on the grounds some irrelevant time ago.
   "Well, take good care of her. I miss her."
   He muttered something not disagreeable as he turned his attention to the plants at his feet. I wheeled my bicycle around past the suits and tied up at the lockup area in the front. Near the sinusoidal curve of pipe to accommodate two-wheeled patrons the management had tethered a set of repair tools and an air pump: they were going for a progressive urban neighborhood crowd. I locked up my bicycle and re-situated my bag from the back fender to my shoulder.
   When I was still angry at having to move from Wilshire Village Apartments, I thought I would never patronize whatever replaced my old world. As the electric doors slid silently open, I felt a sense of trepidation and almost turned around and exited. Instead I charged ahead and came into the wide high-ceilinged interior. There was an abundance of customers pushing their heavily laden carts filled with produce and packaged items. As I picked up my sushi the Asian ladies greeted me with a salutation, "Thank you!" in a Japanese accent corrupted by years spent here in the States. In the cheese section a woman in a garish white hair net sliced her product, oblivious of the distractions all around her. A slim young man with blonde hair tried to cajole me into a bite of free chocolate confectionery, seemingly a little puzzled by my refusal of this tidbit.
   I was the inconsequential man who knew the secret behind the curtain no one was interested in peering through. Everyone was there carrying out their business, feeling quite at home in their secure routines. This place was their favorite grocery store, perhaps, the place they shopped now instead of Fiesta across the street. Or this was their job and they felt comfort and security in the familiarity of their tasks. No person beside myself in this large space cared anything for what once was here. Everyone but me considered it a vast improvement over the derelict old buildings that were pushed aside to make way for progress.
   I pushed my cart to the cashier, waited for my turn, then paid with a debit card and was on my way. I had broken my vow to never shop at the store that so changed my life. I'll be back, of that I am sure.

   Proust is famous for his lengthy ode to his memories of a pastry from his childhood. For the famous author, each time he tasted "petite madeleine" he was instantly brought back to his grandmother's house in Combray and his childhood there. I have my own madeline memory, though its origins are far murkier and took most of my adult life to properly identify.
   At first, when I was in grade school, it was more like a smell that would waft through the back of my throat, followed by a hint of a taste. It resembled peanut butter, at least that taste is close to what most people would recognize. More accurately, it resembled  a strange concoction made of sesame seeds that my mother would sometimes acquire from the foreign gourmet section of the grocery store in Rapid City. We lived in Edgemont, a town of some 2500 souls then, but now a nearly abandoned relic of 774 idle stragglers. Rapid City was the closest thing to a city in the western half of South Dakota of 1958, a couple of hours drive through prairie lands where once grazed millions of bison. Rapid City had a population 40,000 then (and even now only 70,000), and seemed quite altogether a city.
   Mother called it "helva" and she had tasted it when the family lived in Türkiye when I was an infant. I remember the first time she saw it in the supermarket she cried out in surprise at finding it in America.
   "I haven't had helva since we left Turkey," she exclaimed when she saw the can in the meagre import section. "I must have this!" she said as she placed several cans in her shopping cart. About ten years before the family had lived in the back woods of Turkey, where father was a consultant to the government of Turkey. Mother took the mystery cans home and hoarded them carefully for special occasions or particular guests, but I knew where the stash was and found the mixture strangely compelling. Among the ranching folk of Edgemont, my parents were considered cosmopolitan because they had lived in a foreign county, and this constituted proof of their elite status, for me and for the community.
   The ground sesame seeds evoked for me a strange sensation. It reminded me of some similar but distinct taste from my earliest memories. I tried to concentrate on how that mystery food from so long ago tasted, but I couldn't quite wrap my mind around it. I would let the candy-like fibrous mass slowly melt in my mouth and try to squeeze from it the memory of what it reminded me of. At ten, I was no longer a baby, and was beginning to develop a sense of nostalgia. I begged my mother to buy "Pablum" for breakfast cereal, even though it was marketed for infants. To adults, I suppose, it signified "something that is trite, insipid, or simplistic," but I had a tangible and sentimental attraction to Pablum. The mild cereal taste and soft pasty structure brought me into a feeling of being coddled, like having my back scratched. This emotional space was situated somewhere near the dawn of my conscious mind.
   Helva scratched away at a deeper part of my subconscious mind, a time even before Pablum. With the Helva, I couldn't get all the way there, there was some intermediary that Helva reminded me of, but I didn't have a name for that deeper morsel of the ultimate comfort food. If I closed my eyes as a the dollop of Helva dissolved into fluidity on my tongue, I could almost get there to grasp the taste of what I craved. Once the Turkish treat had all been eaten, I found that I could conjure the taste of the secret unknown potion purely from my memory. That memory would come to me throughout the years that followed, often unpredictably. I would be sitting there in an idle moment, midpoint between my last intake of victuals and the one to come. Astride memory and anticipation, their corrupting influence was minimal when that taste would once again begin in the back of my throat and linger there taunting me with questions of its identity. Sometimes months would pass between the intrusions of these sensory memories, but they never actually left me. The solution to its identity came slowly, mediated by a protein shake.
   In Houston there has been a significant Middle Eastern here presence for decades. When I first came to town I shopped at Antone's Deli where I would find "Halvah" as the imported bilingual label spelled its product. I would eat falafel there from time to time, or gyro sandwiches. Later a student of mine from Lebanon introduced me to Baba Ghanoush and Hummus, and in a few more years these could be found at the Whole Foods grocery store. Eventually, I learned that hummus was easy to make and I resolved to try my hand at the recipe. It was a simple set of ingredients: lemon juice, garbanzo beans, tahini and garlic. I became fond of hummus and thus tahini became a staple in my refrigerator. Like Halvah, it is made from sesame seeds, but tahini is far different in texture. Halvah is like the inside of a Butterfinger candy bar, but less dense and more fibrous. Tahini is more like runny smooth peanut butter. There is no sugar added, so it can't be mistaken for candy. Helvah can be spooned up and eaten like a confection, but tahini seems to be reserved for recipe concoctions or spread on toast like its American cousin.
   Then one morning I was out of the walnuts that had been my healthy-fat contribution to the protein shake I had been having for breakfast. I substituted tahini and was pleased with the taste of the new additive. It soon became a staple for my shakes, even when I had walnuts on hand. Some subtle flavor in the mix was strangely soothing, familiar and comforting. As I made these morning shakes, it became my habit to lick the tahini spoon of the remnants remaining after I allowed the spoonful to slide onto the blueberry-apple-banana-oat mixture. Gradually, I came to realize that the tahini was the mysterious taste from my childhood I had been looking for. The  realization was slow, and depended on changing brands from Biladi to Joyva, the latter roasted with a nuttier flavor. The mysterious taste reached deep into my childhood and lingered on my palate, infusing the back of my throat with a distinctive roasted nutty flavor. Eureka!
   But why tahini? I moved to Turkey when I was just beginning to walk. I suppose I was eating baby food, probably made from fresh ingredients pureed through a Foley Mill, a strange kitchen implement used to make applesauce. I still have that same Foley Mill my mother must have used in Turkey; I use it to strain cranberries for my cranberry-kumquat compote. Mother considered the Turks rather primitive, and eating in Turkey for her was a dangerous international adventure. I doubt there was any peanut butter there, and in those days peanut butter was one of the first solid foods brought into a toddler's diet. I suspect that tahini was substituted for peanut butter and may have been my first favorite food. So now it is back, and my early childhood is now brought into my geriatric present.
   As from the poem by T. S. Eliot:

   ... the end of all our exploring 
    Will be to arrive where we started 
    And know the place for the first time