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Is calling you

I didn’tMy ames with me, a welcoun drea clues and grids that ca in more than one word at a time was barely possible I’d awaken with a few clues -- "tropical evergreen" (eight letters) or "islands of earth" (eight letters) -- still in rid But "The Blue Beyond" didn’t affect round, somehow

The other onlookers at the track ht of us by now, but no one ever spoke to us I supposed they ealthy horse owners, most of them Even their casual clothes, however rus, not talking e aluh the da with the solden essence of su to hold it in s In a few days the season would be over, and everyone here would be soradually would be replaced by scents of fireplace smoke and dead leaves steeped in rain, later supplanted by the icy white essence of snow

Separated from the rich ones only by yards was an entire corooms, and "hot walkers" Many of them spoke to each other in Spanish Kathleen had toldseason, July through Labor Day Then most of them moved on, who knehere

But Kathleen and I didn’t talkWe seemed a little shy of each other After we’d sent "see you next sues to Justin and Trent, the horses we loved best, we headed don on our bicycles

We wound up at the library Besides the library, the drugstore, and the park, there weren’t irls without o to on bikes, as were the lake and the Yaddo Rose Garden

Don Saratoga Springs catered to upscale shoppers; along and off Broadway you could find coffee shops, clothing stores (Kathleen called them yuppie dudstores), several restaurants and bars, and an overpriced thrift shop full of ner jeans" So fun of them, until the store owners told us we’d better move on

It orse at the jewelry store; if the oas there, ouldn’t even enter, because he’d say, "On your way, ladies" But if only the young saleswoer in and pore over the cases of glittering rings and necklaces and brooches Kathleen favored diamonds and emeralds; I went for sapphires and peridots We knew the name of every jewel in the store If the saleswo to us, Kathleen had a bold reply: "You’d better be nice to us We’re your future customers"

No one ever asked us to leave the library We went straight to the computers to surf the Internet Kathleen coachedfor the perfect boots, while at another I moved from website to website, deter for "vahtfrom the fantastic to the obscene (which I couldn’t have accessed had I wanted to, thanks to the library’s built-in censorship system) However, I was able to visit a feebsites that posted requests fro other vampires for solace, instruction, or ested many factions in the vampire community; some drank blood and others refrained (termed "wannabes" by one site, "psychic vampires" by another); soressive, while others soundedthemselves as "donors" But I found no raphs

As I continued lanced over at Kathleen, but she seemed intent on her own quest and didn’t meet my eyes

The Wikipedia site offered a wealth of inforins of vampirism in folklore and fiction, and it linked to topics such as "Hey," which I made a raphs, however, it offered only this: "Vampires typically cast no shadow and have no reflection This ely confined to European va the vampire’s lack of a soul In modern fiction, this raphed"

I sat back in lanced toward Kathleen But her terht behind lanced over my shoulder, her eyes, full of questions, met mine

I carried those questions ho myself to ask my father any of them How do you ask your own father about the state of his soul?

For that was one of the early definitions I’d found: upon beco a vampire, a mortal sacrificed his soul

Of course I wasn’t sure I believed in souls I was an agnostic -- I believed that there was no proof of God’s existence, yet I didn’t deny the possibility that he ht exist I had read selected chapters of the Bible, Quran, Kabbalah, Tao Te Ching, Bhagavad Gita, the writings of Lao-Tse -- but I had read all of them as literature and philosophy, and my father and I discussed them as such We had no ritualized spiritual practice -- orshipped ideas

More specifically, orshipped virtue, and the idea of the virtuous life Plato talked of the ie, temperance, and justice A disciplined education would allow one to learn virtue, according to Plato

Every Friday, my father asked me to summarize the various lessons of the week: history, philosophy, mathematics, literature, the sciences, art Then he would synthesizepatterns and parallels and symmetries that often dazzled me My father had the ability to trace the historical evolution of belief systeent and coranted then; my actual experiences of the world have shown me over ti and such articulation

And why do you suppose that is the case? An argument could be made that only those who are free of the fear of death are able to truly apprehend huet back to the story now One day we met as usual in the library, and I think ereabout Dickens But I wanted to talk about Poe

After all my complaints, I’d decided on ar Allan Poe fro the previous week I’d read "The Tell-Tale Heart" without much interest, and "The Black Cat" with considerable un-ease (it conjured ies of the unfortunate Marht buried alive, and "Morella" caused hts

"Morella" is the na, yet shall I live" She dies in childbirth, and her daughter grows up unnahter is at last baptized, her father names her "Morella," whereupon she replies, "I am here!" and promptly dies He carries her to her hter was the mother

Note how italics have crept into these pages Blame Poe

In any case, I had questions about "Morella," and about myself I wondered how like my mother I was I didn’t think I was ht, I’d had an intense, if sometimes conflicted, sense of self But since I’d never known her, how could I be sure?

My father, however, was not to be sidetracked Today ould indeed talk about Dickens’s Hard Times Tomorrow, if I insisted, ould return to Poe -- but only after I’d read his essay, "The Philosophy of Co set aside Dickens) we did return to Poe -- rather gingerly at first

"I approach this lesson with a certain trepidation," an "I hope that we’ll have no tears today"