[divisadero.]

behind steinbeck as most others are, michael ondaatje is an author whose body of work has changed me.

i first started reading ondaatje after taking a creative writing course at ucla a few summers ago. my professor was highly obsequious--whether earned by my own merit or not--telling me that, with more control and practice, my writing "could lend itself to comparison with ondaatje". not having read any of his work, i picked up a copy of the english patient in an attempt to dissect this comment. and so began my love affair.

i wanted to like ondaatje more than i did at first. i struggled through the pared down prose. granted, at the time, i had been reading such dynamic works as fight club and skinny dip (palahniuk and hiaasen respectively). in contrast to fight club's joyfully sadistic gewgaw of a story line and skinny dip's biting humor, ondaatje's careful style came as a change-up pitch.

truthfully, i gained more from the film version of the english patient. though to be fair, ralph fiennes with all his dreamy-dream-boat-ness is hard to beat. regardless of his role as a recovering burn victim for much of the story.

it wasn't until ondaatje came to speak at vassar that my opinion of him spun sharply out of the realm of respect to that of unconquerable obsession.

when his lecture began, i was showering in the volleyball locker room after a routine practice. after finishing, i sprinted from our gymnasium to main building, where a modest crowd of breathless devotees sat enraptured by ondaatje's sheer presence.

i walked through the double doors of the villard room--a high-ceilinged, rectangular hall--and realized that i had interrupted ondaatje's reading from his new novel, divisadero. with my entrance being less graceful than i had hoped, i found myself the subject of a few turned heads and whispers. perhaps it was that i had been inordinately rude, but michael ondaatje looked at me from his podium of high-dignity. i know this because i looked back...and for a moment, he held me.

forgive me. as always, i wax romantic. but let me be clear...there was eye-contact.

shaken as i was by the circumstances of my entrance, i quickly looked down to fumble with my things. sooner than i was prepared for, he began to read again. "as happens sometimes, the moment settled and hovered for much more than a moment." and i'll never forget the ensuing passage:

now and then our father embraced us as any father would. this happened only if you were able to catch him in that no-man's-land between tiredness and sleep, when he seemed wayward to himself. i joined him on the old covered sofa, and i would lie like a slim dog in his arms, imitating his state of weariness--too much sun perhaps, or too hard a day's work.

claire would also be there sometimes, if she did not want to be left out, or if there was a storm. but i simply wished to have my face against his checkered shirt and pretend to be asleep. as if inhaling the flesh of an adult was a sin and also a glory, a right in any case. to do such a thing during daylight would have been unthinkable, he'd have pushed us aside. he was not a modern parent, he had been raised with a few male rules, and he no longer had a wife to qualify or compromise his beliefs. so you had to catch him in that twilight state, when he had ceded control on the tartan sofa, his girls enclosed, one in each of his arms. i would watch the flicker under his eyelid, the tremble within that covering skin that signalled his tiredness, as if he were being tugged in mid-river by a rope to some other place. and then i too would sleep, descending into the layer that was closest to him. a father who allows you that should protect you all of your days, i think.

need i say a thing? not now. not ever.

but i will say this: that ucla professor was ridiculous to compare anyone to ondaatje. he is in the realm of the gods, lent to us for his lifetime--no matter the length, altogether too briefly.

with love,

your favorite fish