MY FATHER IN THE SUBWAY III (oil on panel, 1984 22 × 28 inches / 57 × 72 cm)

Painting reproduced by permission of the artist, Max Ferguson

He has a kind face. I will ask this man. One that surely has seen and shared its own world of troubles. I will ask him. He with Moses’ breath in his lungs. Who once, I do not doubt, in a time gone by, was not of this city of dreams. The face and form of his ancestors. This outcrop of nature. This clay grown tall. I’ll ask him. Yes, him. He has kind eyes. Of an age and demeanour unafraid of a stranger’s approach. A stranger’s plea.  On another day. If the world had turned out otherwise.  With a different set of causes and conditions. Then I might have told him something more of myself. Maybe the story of how I rescued the lamb that had got trapped in the thicket. When I was a young boy. Far from here. How I’d pulled it from the thorny bushes. Held it close to my chest, though I was barely much bigger than itself. Then took it back into the field to its mother. Or how I used to walk along the dusty track with my grandmother. Holding the small pitcher of water to give as alms to the wandering monk. My grandmother, poor as she was, with two balls of sticky rice wrapped in palm leaves in her bag. We two, waiting on the road side for him to pass by. The ancient monk shrouded in his vows of silence. Day after day we’d go. One day after the next.  These are things I would tell you, might tell you. 
If we’re to become friends. If we already were.  Now not these things. But of Mr. Leitz the landlord. He who presses us for more money. Who threatens us with authorities I know nothing of, but fill me with fear. And my wife who is terrified to go outside our tiny rooms. Not knowing what is said in the streets. What is shouted. What is not. Wherein lie the threats in this ramshackle alien city of cars and mountainous buildings. Keeping our children close by her side for fear of all that is unknown. While I work two and three jobs to satisfy the demands of Mr. Leitz the landlord. Can he do to us what he says he can? You have a gentle face. A wise presence. Of this and other worlds. You can see we are connected. By the simplicity of blood. Of flesh. Of our elemental nature. You, like me, will know that if we were to die. Here. Now. Together. Fall to the ground together. Then we would merge. Dust into each other’s dust. Melting back to earth.  I feel the surge of wind. Presaging the train. And with its arrival your sudden departure. Robbing me of my one chance. To connect. With someone my heart tells me will help. Will show sympathy. Empathy. So now. I must step forward. Be brave, for bravery is needed. ‘Sir … Please help me … Tell me what I can do.’   

Doll Hospital (2005, oil on canvas)
Reproduced by permission of the artist, Max Ferguson.

I like Saturday. It has two “A’s”. The others only have one “A”. But my best days are Mondays and Thursdays. That’s when I come to Grandpa’s shop. Sit on this stool and watch everything that happens. Then at night, lying awake, I see it all again in my brain. Every single second. I love to stop the pictures in my mind. Pause. For a special moment. Like Grandpa gluing the hair on the baby’s head.   O n Tuesdays and Wednesdays I go to my other grandfather. He’s called Pops. He doesn’t have a shop. He has a room with a big TV. We watch horse racing. On Friday I stay with my mom at our house. She does lessons with me. On the other days she’s a waitress at a diner in Mahattan. She used to work on Fridays. But now she looks after me. She’s trying to find me a new school, but I heard her telling Grandpa they’re no schools around here for me. I used to go to school until they said I’m on the A-Spectrum. The school can’t work with kids on the A-Spectrum. Adam, who was my friend, said it’s the Alien Spectrum. Grandpa says it’s the Amazing Spectrum and we’re the only two on it.  Grandpa’s teaching me things. Letting me help. I love it when the boxes come from the delivery van. Twenty right arms wrapped in tissue paper. All alike. And a box of heads. Same shape. Same eyes. Same 
bald heads. He lets me set up all the dolls’ heads on the shelves. In order. Grandpa says it’s okay to have a bit of a jumble. That life’s like that. So he leaves some in a muddle and says I needn’t let it worry me. Like I did the time at school when we were lining up outside the classroom.  The first day I was behind Ingrid and in front of Benjamin. All the others were where they were. But next day everyone was in a different place. My head went buzzy. The teacher got angry when I screamed. Her face was so twisted. I got scared with it all and ran off. Round and round the playground.  Grandpa plays games with me. Sometimes he changes things around on the shelves. Turns one head upside down or makes the eyes look in a different direction. I always know what he’s done. Just like when he switched the photos in the frame. He’s helping me. He tells me how I can be in the world. How I can find my way. I tell him my secrets. Like different colours for different days. And how I see what I see. He says we are more alike than the dolls’ heads. That makes me tingle. When I grow up I want to work in the Doll Hospital. Putting the heads on. Knowing how things fit together. With my grandfather who doesn’t watch the horse racing. My Grandpa who’s with me on the Amazing Spectrum.
​

Coat Check Girl, painting reproduced by permission of the artist, Max Ferguson.

​Do you know that I’m looking at you? As you look into the distance. The girl with far away eyes. Can you tell, from the space between us? From that which flows? Do you sense that I’m wondering about you? I’m wondering if you’re wondering is this a man I could fall for? Fall head over heels for? You look above and beyond. Gazing into space.  Do you think we could love? If I told you of my heart and what I make of this world?  When we talk (we will), you (the girl with far away eyes) and I (who’s falling in love with our future), I will tell you about the man I’m thinking about as I think of you. Of his eighteen years as a forest monk in Lampang. Living off the alms of the poor. In silent meditation. In solitude. And I’ll tell you why I think the universe brought us together. Yes, you and me, for sure. But also me and the forest monk. Some will say we meet by chance. All of us. Others see it otherwise. Streams of water in quest of a single path. A shared channel. The monk and I, together on a bench in the milky sun seeking and finding complicity. Me with my quantum entanglement (will you run from me at the words? the implication?). Of dualistic nature collapsing upon itself, choosing a single outcome. Like fate. Like destiny. Like you and I at this single instance in time. And he, the forest monk, sublime, smiling, speaking of grasping and attachment. Of identities. Here and now. From moment to moment. As I wonder now what all this means to you and me? Now. If I resist the draw to seize this moment.  And yet, in this instance (for an instance is all it is, is all it takes) you beguile me. Your demeanour. All the atoms connected in the universe.  Soften the mind. Into action. I’ll go into the street. But please don’t disappear. Don’t fall in love with another. Stay gazing as I rush into the cold and icy New York night. And I will empty my wallet. Three hundred dollar bills. And I will beg the men that pass me by to sell me a coat. Any coat. Here. Three hundred dollars. And one will say yes (for it’s in all our natures), hurriedly checking the notes. As cheap and threadbare as the coat might be. And I’ll come back to the space in which you gaze. And offer up to you my coat. A gesture. I will hear the sound of your voice. Like an angel it will be. Like breaking a fast. And I will tell you what I know. Not of science. Not of the presence of absence. But of longing. Of love. Of distances coming together. Of love and of the life you and I will forge together. This man with the threadbare coat, and you, the girl with the far away eyes. 

The Road not Taken (Oil on Panel, 12 x 12 inches, 2016)
Reproduced by permission of the artist, Max Ferguson.

  It was Lawrence’s idea. This triple bill. He’d pushed for “The Lost Highway” over “Mulholland Drive”, but was outvoted. Now, as it turns out he’ll miss the show. En route to another journey altogether.
 
  Atop the ladder, as he stretches to fix the “V” into its allotted place, Lawrence’s mind is on higher things. Tomorrow will be his one-hundred-and-first skydive as a jump-master. Qualifying him, under the United States Parachute Association rules, to use a Go-Pro to video his clients. He’s made sure that his first customer of the day will be Miriam. The parachute will open to put the brake on the unbelievable exhilaration of the free-fall. At that very moment he will whisper into Miriam’s ear the words he now rehearses in his mind, And, as she says ‘yes’, which he’s sure she will, he’ll take the ring from his pocket and slip it onto the third finger of her left hand. The diamond will glitter in the rays of the rising sun. All filmed for posterity. A witness to all. A gentle descent back to earth and a marvellous future ahead.
 
‘I love this cinema job,’ he said two nights ago as he and Miriam were eating pizza after a Hitchcock double-bill (“The Birds” and “Vertigo”). ‘But it’s always been a means to an end. To get my licence. And to think of it ... now I’ll get to make my own films ... up there. Where it’s so quiet. So still. Four minutes between heaven and earth. Floating. Suspended. Film making and skydiving. My perfect combination!’
 
  For Lawrence has been a risk-taker, a risk-seeker, all his life. Deep-sea diving. Freestyle climbing. Even a stint as a bounty hunter. He’s relished every challenge. The riskier, the more extreme the better. 
 
  He made her smile. His optimism. His sense of adventure and fun. But Miriam was terrified at the prospect. The idea of jumping into clear air. Fourteen thousand feet up in the sky. With him. In tandem. Just so she could be the first person he films?
 
‘But it’s crazy dangerous,’ she’d said when he first suggested the idea.
‘Couldn’t be safer,’ he replied.
  He always had the stats at his fingertips.
‘In the last year only one person died world-wide from sky-diving. Do you know how many people died cycling bikes? Or pedestrians crossing roads?’
 
  Eventually, she agreed. She’d meet him at six in the morning at the tiny airport by the river.
 
  Tonight, sitting on her balcony she resolves not to back out. Even though he said she could. She decides to call him. To reassure him of her commitment. Maybe even say the words to him she’s scared to say. In case … of what? Her own aversion to risk?
 
  His phone rings. He reaches for his pocket. The ladder totters. He spreads his arms. Skyward. An attempt at balance. And, with the “V” still in his hand, Lawrence shudders in the awful realisation that this shorter fall might prove to be the deadliest risk of all.
​

Juke Box (Oil on Panel, 20 x 30 inches, 2016)
Reproduced by permission of the artist, Max Ferguson.

Not the Patsy Cline. Too clichéd. Even as crazy as it’s been. Ever since the summer. It’s creeping past midnight. The bus is waiting outside. The driver just called out we’ve five minutes to departure. Then I’d better not risk Bohemian Rhapsody. Not the KD Laing either. Too close to the bone, as they say.

So you won’t be coming after all. No Thelma and Louise. No Kathy on a Greyhound Bus looking for America. 

It was good of you to let me know. To call me up. Not just to leave a text with an unsmiley face. At least I got to hear your voice. To sense how sad you are. You said you were sorry. That you had your bags packed and ready. You’d even left the note on the mantelpiece for your husband. So like you. So old school. You said you’ve already shredded that message. Mixed it in the recycling bin with the empty dogfood tins and milk bottles. Like our love, I replied, with a timid attempt at irony. You even said “in the final analysis” (words you often use in your English classes), when you told me you couldn’t bear to leave the kids behind. Remember that magical weekend at the beach when you said the time was right? That the twins’d soon be off to college. That our moment had come. Maybe there’s more to leaving behind than leaving behind. 

If this was a movie then I’d be playing “our song”.  To heighten the scene. To match the mood. But I’m not sure we have a song. So it’s no go to country, there’s no need for blues, more like dancing in the street in my blue suede shoes. You see. It’s okay. You taught me poetry. You showed me how stories can unfold. Strong powerful women. Carving out their own lives. Their own loves. I’d sat at the back of the class. My hair covering my face. But I hung on to your every word. Of Sylvia Plath. Of Sharon Olds. Of writers I’d never heard of. Adrienne Rich. Eileen Myles. June Jordan. I hid behind the veil of my own curls. Catching glimpses of your beauty. Your body. And through the flames I felt desire ignite. I swooned at the sound of your voice. When you read from Orlando and told us of the magnificence of the Bloomsbury set. The wolves and bells aringing. Lust and loving in long lush English meadows. Of rolling hills and misty heathlands. 

You mightn’t be beside me on the bus. But it was you who set me on this journey. Opened up the frontiers of a life unimagined. California dreaming. Like I’ve dreamt every night since you told me to dream a little dream of you. 

So don’t be sad, my love. Hey, maybe I’ll find us a song. To be our song. And I’ll sing it. On the road. All the way through the night to San Francisco. With flowers in my hair. 

Closing Time/Village Vanguard (Oil on Panel, 20 x 30 inches, 2016)
Reproduced by permission of the artist, Max Ferguson. 

Don’t look away. If you turn your back on me. As you’ve done so many times before tonight. If you turn away and busy yourself with bottles and glasses. I’ll still be in the reflection. Your reflection. Go ahead. Rearrange the Christmas tinsel. But I’ll still be here. When you turn around. Waiting. Even if you close your eyes. You’ll never close me out. Closing time. Opening time. It’ll all be the same to me. So, turn this way. Look at me.
   You cannot deny me.
   I will not let it happen.
   I will not go away.
   Don’t close me out
   You say you’ve given me all you can. All you have to give. That you’ve your own life. A life away from me. You say your love lies elsewhere. That you never really came to love me. There was never the time for that to happen. For you to get to know me. You say the time has passed.
  Well diddly dee, isn’t that just a surprise.
   Let me tell you how it’s been for me. How it is for me. Let me remind you of all you’ve given me. Of all you have to give. To me. Birthday cards that stopped when I was ten (I’ve kept them all). Then the phone calls (three times, out of the blue). And a sighting (once) through the school gates when I was in fourth grade (or so I was told).  I try to bring it back to mind. I squeeze my eyes closed to make my brain sift for that elusive image. And sometimes it does. Or I do. And there you’ll be. Frozen in time. Silhouetted against an Arizona skyline. Waiting for me to come out of school. Waiting, so ordinarily. But even if the memory was true. My image. You never waited. You were gone before you arrived.   Mom’s shown me all the photos. Of she and you before. But not one of me and you. Not one to hang on to. Never in your arms. Mom says not to blame you. That you and she were kids. But she stayed? Why couldn’t you? You, who even now, turn away from me.
   Before closing time I got to talking with Gerry, a lovely old man who’s been coming to the Vanguard forever. Gerry said that back in the day they used to have “Speak Outs” on Monday nights. One dollar to get in. One dollar drinks. There’d be all kinds of topics. People’d say all manners of things. Controversy was the theme, said my new old friend. He’s an unusual man, Gerry. He said he likes the sound of the word. “Controversy”. He said it sounds like it does. Well it’s Monday today and maybe I’ll sound like I do. Perhaps this is me speaking out. To you. Mainly in silence. No need for any more words.
  Just turn around.
  Look me in the eye.  
  Maybe we can speak out together. Now. Turning our backs on closing time.  

Handball (Coney Island) 2002
Oil on Canvas
11 x 14 inches
With the permission of Max Ferguson, the artist

Who knows? A gang thing? Some crazy random guy? A loner? Just one shot. That’s all it was. Hit Dyson right in the temple. He dropped like a sack. With the ball in his hand.  Still tight in his grip as he lay on the ground. When they told his grandmother, who’s raised him since he was a baby, she wailed. She howled and beat the sides of her head with her fists. How? How? She screamed. No, no, she cried. Why … why … a good Christian boy … please Jesus, Mother of God, please no.
It should never have happened. He wasn’t into handball. Basketball was his game. In fact, basketball was pretty much his life. It was only because Tyrone said that Marlene watched the boys play handball that he decided to join in. To show some skills. For he’d a real thing for Marlene, ever since third grade. To seal the deal he’d heard she’d broken with Jackson, what with his brother and the pending meth charge and her old man warning her off. So, maybe he’d be in with a chance. Maybe even lose his virginity before school breaks up for the summer. Now there was something to dream on. Almost as exciting as his basketball scholarship to Missouri that he’d be hearing about on the twenty-fifth of next month. Sometimes, at night, he’d weigh up what he’d want more. His first real sex before the summer school break? Or the basketball scholarship? Both please, Jesus (and if it could be Marlene for one and Missouri for the other, that’d be just perfect).
Just before the bullet, just before it all came crashing down, Dyson played a great shot, looked up at Marlene and she gave him the look he’d been waiting for, waiting for all his short life. 
Kids from his school pinned messages and ribbons, flowers and keepsakes to the fencing of the handball court. The following Saturday a rally took place on along Surf Avenue to protest at all the violence in the area and to demand an end to the drug dealing. No one was ever convicted of Dyson’s murder and no one responded to the call for witnesses. Maybe it was just a random act of violence in a world where violence is so often calculated and targeted.
But it’s endlessly strange how life has a habit of turning out. Jose Mendes Junior, from Camden, New Jersey, who if events had turned out otherwise would have joined his uncle’s garage business and given up on his dreams. Instead he took up a basketball scholarship to Missouri, officially vacated by a boy who, “due to unforeseen circumstances was unable to enrol”. The day before he left home, his grandmother, with tears of joy in her eyes, baked a milk cake to celebrate the first Mendes ever to make it to college.
Back on Coney Island, Dyson’s grandmother cried herself to sleep, just as she would do every night for the rest of her life.  
​

Amsterdam 3 A. M
Oil on Panel 2018, 12 x 18 inches
With the permission of Max Ferguson, the artist.

​I knew he'd come back. Later. After dark. Alone. This gracious gentleman from Beijing. I could tell Valentine thought much the same. We could see it in his eyes. The way he stared at me as he spoke, as he asked his questions. The lilt in his voice. The smell of excitement exuding from his pores.
I’m always happy to help Valentine. To talk with the visitors she’s showing around. Exposing them to Amsterdam. The liberal Dutch, with the coffee shops and legalised sex industry. We’ve known each other for nearly twenty years. Ever since she was an outreach worker handing out needles and condoms to the street-girls. I was a teenager back then. Fresh from the country with a raging smack habit. It was scary and dangerous and the vultures were as eagle-eyed in Amsterdam as in any place. The guy who pimped me was a professional. He injected me full of heroin and for that I did whatever he put my way. Yet Valentine always seemed to be there. At all hours. In the darkest corners of the city. With her backpack, flask of soup and kind words. She knew all our names. Where we were from. What we dreamed after. Trust grew between us. Then, when it mattered most, it was she who called the ambulance when I overdosed. And it was Valentine who was at my bedside when I came around. Valentine persuaded me to go to detox and rehab. And I've been clean ever since. Then I followed a time-honoured path. I did some studying. Fell in love. Had my beautiful daughter, Miranda. Fell out of love. I tried other work (even at Valentine’s agency). But I wanted to be an active participant in Miranda’s growing up. So I went back to the job I knew best, that paid well and gave me agency and control. It won't last forever, but what does?
Nowadays Valentine’s big in the Health Department, heading up HIV policy, speaking on the TV, travelling to international conferences. Dr Yeuwan was on a study tour for Chinese clinicians specialising in sexually transmitted infections. He seemed especially impressed by the doctor who visits us for weekly check-ups. And, like I said, he also seemed impressed by me.
Business had been slow today. There was a football game in town, so it was mainly young men strolling by, window shopping, swilling beer and chanting. Egging each other on, but no one crossing the threshold. I was thinking of going home. To be indoors before Miranda finished her shift at the restaurant. That's when I saw Dr Yeuwan. He was standing on the pavement as I sat patiently on display in my bay window. I smiled. Just the hint of a smile, but enough to put him at his ease. Then I outstretched my hand. Almost imperceptibly.  Wiggled my fingers. Time honoured gestures. Beckoning. Enticing. He moved from view. Then I heard the familiar turn of the handle and the opening of the door.

​The hour is late. The platform empty save for one solitary soul. A young woman. No more than a girl. Standing on the edge. Looking this way and that. Into the darkness of tunnels. Heartbroken for the first time. Cheated. Cut loose from comforting. Waiting for the night train. For a light to appear. A pinprick. A gush of wind. Presaging intent.
Meanwhile, far west on the Golden Gate Bridge. In this year of 1985, when the act of love is a death sentence. A young man teeters on the brink. Staring into the void between him and the watery depths below. Inky, swirling, inviting him in.
If he were to look up he might see angels waiting, crouched like gargoyles of mercy on the parapet. Their duty to perform. This beautiful boy coughs and spits.  The taste of death fresh in his mouth as the diamond in his newly pierced ear catches the moonbeams from the bay. Knowing what is before him. Not now. In this simple act. But the future he’s seen in the bathhouses and bars. The twisted emaciated bodies. Lost eyes surveying lost lives. He stretches upwards then takes his leap of faith. Above, an angel spreads her wings, flying in an arc towards the young man as he tumbles and falls, circling in his slipstream, whispering in his ear.
“Fear not, for I am with you, will hold you, enfold you, and bring you home.”
Toppling. Somersaulting. The earth, the sky, the vastness of the bay, steel and girders, girth and width, all a kaleidoscope of beauty, of life and living. And as his body shatters and splinters on the glassy surface the angel intercedes, swooping him up to beyond and mystery. Just as she will, in decades to come, shepherd the couple who jump from the burning towers, hand in hand, stunned at how a day can unravel and amaze.
And here at Grand Central Station this one young woman stands alone. Deep into the night. Hopeless and helpless in her thoughts of loss and sadness. Felt only as the young can feel. A tear trickles down her cheek, salty on her lips. She gulps back a sob that strikes hard at her heart.
Suddenly the wind ruffles her hair. She hears the sound of the train approaching. The hum of electricity. The rumble of wheels. She bows her head, as if in one last prayer. Then, forever attentive, her angel glides down from the eaves above.
And this is what the angel whispers, as the young woman feels his breathe upon her neck.
“For you will have a son, who will grow strong and tall. Known for his smile. For his exquisite talent. Acclaimed for the beauty he gives to the world. And you, his one and only mother, will sit with the husband you’ve loved for decades, in the front row at Carnegie Hall and listen as your boy beguiles and enraptures the adoring crowds.”
Listen out for the solace of angels.

"Deyrolle", oil on panel, 16x24 inches, copyright Max Ferguson 2019, used with permission

The blue tinged finch she once held in her palm. Quietly lifeless. And Ann-Marie no more than a babe herself. Seeing death in the raw. Stroking the fine feathers that once soared above the belvedere. With tiny fingers, gently opening, parting, the beak of a mother who’d carried the grubs and titbits to fledglings waiting in the uppermost branches of an ancient oak. The bird now quite still, its duty done. Cupped and nestled in the hands of a young girl who’ll one day head to Paris and to a life beyond her wildest dreams, among the wildest of animals, stilled and glassy eyed. A menagerie for her to map and sketch and marvel at. Predators and prey scattered hither and thither in rooms and corridors unfamiliar. Continents colliding in passageways and cellars. Animals and birds, reptiles and insects out of place, yet happy and contented in each other's company. Even a winged unicorn to conjure God’s imagination. Yet on that blue-finch day Ann-Marie’s innocent eyes beheld in wonder her first encounter with mystery. With such compassion she’d taken the little bird into the forest and laid it to rest beneath the fallen leaves of autumn. Reverently. A pine cone for a headstone. And she said a prayer to the sky. From the Bible. The Talmud. From the Koran where animals and birds pray by their very being. 
Then in years to come, now a woman of note, of substance, stroking the fur of the tiger still and proud, she chronicles the size and weight, the look in the eye, the keenness of sound. What ways this creature must have gone? What sights he must have seen? Like once, lifetimes ago, before he had a name, when he saw a princess standing by the river. The princess in a long flowing dress looking up and down for a place to cross. But it was deep and the current raging. The tiger told her to climb upon his back. She knew to trust him. The tiger swam like a crocodile. When the princess got to the other bank, to her land, she lay down and gave birth to a baby. When she arrived at her palace she named the river Tigris in honour of her saviour.
There’s magic if you look for it. In words. In stories. In unicorns and small blue birds. Even in silence. Now the tiger’s gaze is fixed and steadied, focused on the Rue du Bac and the elegant mammals looking in from the street beyond. Storing away her notes, the bird in its hollow grave, Ann-Marie's work is over. She touches with her fingertip the claw of the Lord of the Forest. A connection. Igniting, reviving, the power and majesty, the might and the fury. Turning off the lights she leaves the Deyrolle to rejoice in the full moonlight that floods the passageway. Then she walks, one step at a time, mindful and respectful of what is left behind and of what is yet to come.