Solzhenitsyn on a Tuesday in the Red Hall.

My literary eyes are forever seeking out the oddities of life, as if I am now living in a Russian gulag, as the winter comes calling to the Northwest. Exhibit A: I was on bus #39, en route to downtown Seattle, when I saw a group of large deciduous trees garbed in multicolored sweaters. The trees stood in a park by the municipal courthouse, their limbs and lower trunks custom dressed in woolen rainbow hues. On closer inspection, the sewing was so exacting that it seemed only magicians or elves could have done the work. But how? And, why? Did it matter? Yes. Art is about the out-of-the-ordinary. It shakes us like a tsunami from the slumber induced by our cubicles and ordinary lives. But the objects below the sweaters were of more interest: here there were low-lying lodgings for the homeless, constructed of blue tarp, cardboard, and silver duct tape. It was a wake-up call.  And then I saw a middle-aged black woman in winter clothing walking towards me. I did not immediately understand her mission. She was pushing a metal luggage type cart filled to the top with plump brown bag lunches. She stopped when she came to me and I introduced myself. I soon discovered she was part of her church's outreach to the homeless. Naturally I had to know what had motivated her to come out on a Tuesday when the temperature was hovering around thirty-five. She explained that she had been in a head-on car accident the previous year and had broken her leg, ribs, and arms. I assumed there had been a cash settlement, and that afterwards she had had her epiphany to help the homeless. I didn't get that part of the story. Maybe she had her epiphany years earlier. Her name was Julie Tucker. I told Julie I was underemployed and new to the area, and she smiled and handed me one of the bags and explained that it was a good lunch and contained an orange, pretzels, cookies, and a ham and cheese sandwich. Another woman had a similar cart and was handing out bottled water. I asked Julie what she thought about the sweaters, and she unabashedly said the sweaters would be better used to keep the homeless warm than putting them on the trees. I didn't disagree with her, but as she walked away I stared again at the trees and their magic rainbow colored sweaters. If I were in the homeless shelters it would be those trees with sweaters around their trunks and lower limbs that would make me smile, and I would remember that despite all the things that had gone wrong in my life, there was joy and whimsy in the world. The vision would ignite my optimism. There are still angels in the world: they masquerade as sandwich ladies. The sight of those sweaters may be keeping some homeless people alive. And then, still glowing from the experience, I walked down 4th Street and went in the main library. I meandered a bit as I often do. I sent a few emails, made one phone call in the stairwell, and ate the bag lunch. Then I had two more whimsical experiences. The first was a panel of six LCD screens that sat behind a reference desk. Words and colored lines passed from right to left and down from one screen to the next. What was this? The reference librarian explained it was the brainchild of a man from UCSB, my alma mater. George Legrady created the electronic artwork, titled "Making Visible the Invisible." It presents an unusual way of analyzing and visually mapping the items people are checking out. In other words, every time someone checks out a book or whathaveyou, it registers on the monitors. It looks like random poetry, and taps into the collective mindset; like a self-portrait of what people are thinking about at any given moment within the library. And while still mesmerized by the screens, I saw a red staircase. I had to go investigate it.  I felt like I was entering another dimension, a portal to something as I went up one flight, but to what? Suddenly I was entering a place that instantly conjured up a host of emotions simply by being the color RED. And when I say, "RED," I mean even the floor was painted RED. Red is feminine, it encapsulates sex, love, jealousy, anger, and seduction. When you are in a RED HALL you feel different; the endorphins are replaced by hormonal frenzy  Your heart races. You are back in the Stone Age. The color enters your eye gates and goes down the long red DNA stairway and knocks on the red door of your soul, and you hear the sound of tribal beats, and envision the flickering shadows on the cave walls, cast by the red flames of a cave fire. What mastermind had conceived this? What mad, mad architect was toying with me and everyone who arrived at the Red Hall? It was the spawning pool; and I had been led to it by the surreal lime green staircases and escalator. I had seen a portal in the wall while going up one green escalator. People's faces were being projected in a sort of solar system display. The faces and mouths were saying individual words, as if words themselves, random words, were poetry. On the backside of the Red Hall, past the technology meeting rooms of Boeing and others, I saw the backside of the lime green display. I saw parts of human beings sliding past and upwards on the escalator. I could see them but they couldn't see me. I was down the Rabbit's Hole, in the Elvis Rumble Room, reading Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn.

Lily died today.

Lily died this morning, and her parents are still in shock. They knew it was a possibility from the beginning, because Lily was born premature, and she arrived weighing less than two pounds. Her time here was short, only a few months. She spent most of her life in an ICU of a hospital in Colorado. Her parents brought her home recently, because she appeared to be big enough to be able to breathe on her own. She had underdeveloped lungs, which are apparently common among  premature babies. It was a sink or swim situation, and for a time it seemed Lily would make it.  There were plans to bring her to California because there is more oxygen at sea level, which would make it easier for Lily to breathe. Lily had the best parents any child could want: they wrote about her progress on a blog that showed images of Lily as she grew. Less than two weeks ago, Lily had reached six pounds, which was a milestone. She seemed perfect on the outside, but her lungs gave out. Lily is at peace now. She was a miracle; she beat the odds. Her parents and grandparents would have liked her to grow up, and go to school, and experience all the good things this world has to offer, but God had other plans. What kind of God takes little children? Is God cruel, and unjust? We understand when an older person dies, but we see no mercy  when a child dies. Lily was the first grandchild of a woman I once dated a long time ago in California. I spoke to my friend on the phone this morning; when she answered she was crying. There weren’t many things I could say; no words were adequate. We live our lives in a vacuum, a perpetual state of uncertainty, clinging to hopes and dreams for ourselves; our children; and families. We are forced to believe in the substance of invisible things. We have very little proof of a hereafter; but little miracles like Lily ought to be proof enough. We live our short lives never knowing with certainty that God exists, cares, or hears our prayers. The universe is vast and beyond understanding. Love is the only glue holding everything together. I have experienced the death of very few people, and that in itself seems like mercy to me. I have lived longer than some and not as long as others, and each day is a miracle. I never knew Lily, but I loved her vicariously through my friend. My friend and I are in the same place: divorced, single, the parents of grown children, and not yet grandparents. When we pray we pray with the hope that there is justice in the world, and that God’s ear is infinite and open to not only us but voices without measure across the ages, and expanses of time and space. Faith is the substance of things unseen. But faith doesn’t entirely soften the loss of Lily much for her parents or her grandmother. God speed to you Lily; you gave it your best shot, and you breathed the good sweet air for a time, which is better than not at all.