--Chapter One--
	It was the end of the world and the beginning when Madeleine
arrived in Amsterdam.  "Four months," she'd said, and "Europe," and she
told them, "let me go."  Four months beginning then, counting downwards
towards December, four long months because the world had broken open
left her standing there alone left her (gone away) and so she went.
	She was leaving, now, she was off, and no more education no
more finals no more anything the world was over the world was new the
world was Amsterdam and Madeleine was in it, all alone.
	She would meet Amber there and Bernadette and Jack (Jack
remembered Amsterdam with joy, wandering up and down the red-lit streets
the Red Light streets the women in the windows naked naked bared to
bones the girls beside him Amber here, here Bernadette, and Madeleine
behind him drifting off; he turned and smiled at her; she smiled back,
Jack remembered well, she smiled in the red light and her eyes looked up
at him and life began.  But Jack had not arrived yet, not arrived--he
had, of course, but not for Madeleine, who took the tram to Leidsplein
and her hostel, Jack was not a thought not an idea he did not yet exist
or maybe it was she, and he was living, but they were not both together,
had not known the other would be there) but as of yet she only locked
her backpack up and lay down on the bed to rest awhile.
	She thought at once of home and calling home, of talking to her
parents, and she did (call them, she phoned, she dialled pressed the
buttons spoke into the box and voices travelled as they didn't couldn't
to her home her home was goen her parents there but home she couldn't
call it could not speak she did not live there now.  Six years she had
been gone, six years of dorms and then apartments six whole years and in
the phone she heard herself at 18, 14, 10, herself at 7 and at 4 and)
Mother greeted her and wished her fun.  "Let me go," she'd said, as if
they hadn't let her go already, but it was too late now, she'd turned
her back on Philadelphia, on NYC, turned her face to Holland and to
Amsterdam and so she smiled though her mother couldn't see and so she
laughed she said, "I will," and saying made it so.
	Amsterdam, she thought, and looked out at the darkening sky,
the Vondelpark, the streetlights, and she smiled.  Abraham and Isaac
came, she though, and Jacob--Joseph?--came the three of them, the jolly
fishermen, they came, and me.  They sailed the universe and when the
pieces fell, the world began anew in Amsterdam.

	Before, when she was Maddy, was like this:
	She went to school and loved it not because the school was _so_
because she made it _so_ would not allow it otherwise.  She went to
school and she was Maddy now and not the girl she'd been (for this was
also a new world this world that broke apart and left her Holland in the
waning days of August; it was new.) She met Amy there who wasn't Amy
soon as she was Maddy and not Madeleine and she and Amy(not) were in a
club and were elected leaders both of them with B_____ (and R____ the
second time) and thought they knew it all because they knew they didn't.
	Maddy hated Socrates.
	Maddy loved school _so_ and Madeleine loved Maddy loved to be
her thought she was her did not know the name chance could not change
herself.  I'm growing up, she thought.  Perhaps she was.
	Before the world was Amsterdam when Madeleine was Maddy it was
that.
	And then it stopped.
	She had just awakened when it did (she always found that she
was backwards waking when she died and starting new worlds when the
summer faded) when her new (old) world when the flight when everything
but Maddy ended.
	She was Madeleine.
	She was no one, like Odysseus.
	She was adrift afloat asea she was awake she was dreaming
screaming crying she was not she was.
	(Keiran asked her when she found him in an Irish Pub, "What
were you thinking?"  Madeleine said, "I was dead.")
	She wrote in her journal at night when no one saw her, "Would I
die if everyone could live?" and told herself the answer yes but did not
know.  She wrote, "If that's not true then I must _make_ it true, or
else what use am I?"  She wrote, "What is the point?"  She closed her
book and wished the world away: it had already gone.

	The Vondelpark was long and green and the ducks by the water's
edge nibbled on Madeleine's backpack.  She drew the water and the trees
but left the ducks alone--no movement in her still life.  (The French
called still life _nature_morte_ and Madeleine remembered writing on it
when she hadn't yet met Maddy, writing how her bowl of lilacs smelled of
roses, lilacs dried and dead and spindly with the lingering smell of
potpourri.)  The ducks swam off.
	"Well fine," she said, "good-bye then," but of course they did
not quack.  _Duck_Pond_in_the_Vondelpark_ she wrote and signed her name.
	She was not much at art.  At writing yes, at poetry.  She
poured herself out on the page despite not knowing who she was.  She
portraited her family stole their souls with ink and college rules she
dreamt and fantasized and looked at masterpieces in museums but could
not copy them.  Her hands were made for other things than paint or
charcoal strokes.
	She acted sometimes, then when Maddy wasn't born, and even yet
as Maddy and as Madeleine she pulled on other faces in the morning in
the evening took them off and laundered them.
	She liked it best when she made people laugh.  To make them cry
was something power something but it came too easy to her sad things
crawled inside her head and out her fingers laughter, though!  To make
them laugh was _oh_, she liked it best.  It was in the laughter she met
Jack.
	They found their way there seperately.  Madeleine, who didn't
drink, looked for an evening out away from reading in her bed or seeing
films she'd seen before and for more money in the States, got a discount
ticket to the show and went to hear the laughter little knowing she'd
meet Jack (though wouldn't she meet everyone that way, English-speaking 
tourists bound together shy from natives and the native tongue?--but
Jack was different.)  Jack hoped secrely to meet somebody (he would only
be there for a night but he was lonely on his own in Amsterdam) and here
at least they would be sober not the loud guffawing of the drunk nor
breathless giggle of the coffeeshop (Madeleine declared once she had
seen a shingle, "Internet and Coffeeshop" and entered for a latte; Jack
was charmed.)
	Bernadette and Amber seated next to them began the conversation
asked their names and told their own and Jack said, "I am Jack," and "I
am Madeleine," she shook his hand.
	In her mind she stood at five foot nine a curving hourglass
with long brown hair and fine blue eyes and in her mind she barely
reached five two and fat and dumpy flat flat hair her eyes to small
above a double chin and in her mind she said, "I'm Madeleine," and shook
his hand.
	In Jack's mind she was just a girl but then they talked they
watched the show they wandered in the darkened reddened streets and then
she smiled in Jack's mind and then and then she smiled at
him--Madeleine.
	He asked her, "Write to me?"  She said good-bye, she caught the
tram back towards the Leidsplein said good-bye and shook his hand she
smiled, said good-bye he watched her leave.

	When people asked him Jack said he was from Wisconsin as they
would not know the town.  Kieran was from Dublin but said Ireland
instead and made the island one.  Madeleine, six years from home when
asked said, "New York City."
	She could not tell you why.

	Keiran met her at the show the day Jack left, and asked to buy
her beer.
	She did not drink of course the doctor's orders but she smiled
anyway she said, "Coke Light?" as if a European.  Kieran laughed.
	Sean and Dylan joined them ("They're me mates," said Kieran and
she said, "I'm Madeleine.") they drank a pitcher each they said, "We're
Irish," and they ordered more.
	Later in the bar a drunken man called her beautiful and tugged
her wrist.  The thumbpring was still there in Copenhagen when she saw it
she thought Kieran when she saw it pulled her sleeve she saw it
constantly until it faded out.
	Kieran gave her no address but told her, "Come to Dublin."
	Madeleine said, "Yes," she said, "I will," and smiled when she
smiled.
	She told her mother, "Amsterdam is lovely," told her father,
"Lot's of fun," and, "Love you; miss you too."  She called her brothers,
too, she mentioned Jack and Kieran but she did not say, "I changed his
world," she did not tell them, "He changed mine."  Perhaps she did not
know or understand.  Perhaps she thought they wouldn't.  Or she did not
think at all.
	She wrote, "I met a boy," and then she wrote, "but first a boy
met me."

	When Madeleine was young before despaire creeping crawling
clawing at her mind before depression wanting to do something to do
nothing sitting in her room and dreaming of the world outside when she
did not know that life could be anything but what it was she wrote
nonetheless of different worlds.
	She wrote of witches, queens, of girls exploring who they were
of death (what other ending could their be?) of fathers brave and loving
and, sometimes, she wrote of princes, too.
	She wrote a lot when she was young, and still she wrote more as
she grew of poetry and fiction make-believe and worlds that were created
long before she found her way to them and worlds she sought out with her
friends and world the flowed from her imagination.  She played with pool
balls and they weren't balls but children living in the pockets off to
school (the triangle a bus) and oh adventures plays and learning teasing
poor 8 ball without a sibling and she talked to trees and people told
her parents, "What a child!"
	When Madeleine was young she knew her destiny, saw fame and
fortune on the stage, the screen, saw Pulitzers saw Little Old Lady
Madeleine writing in her attic selling books she knew her destiny she
knew.
	Then she had no friends both their fault and her own for
following and leaving others far behind for not running fast enough she
had no friends she read her books and dreamed her dreams and underneath
she worried, was it real? and dreamed the more so it would have to be.
	When Madeleine was young she knew and then she didn't but
pretended anyway and then when she was Maddy knew that she knew nothing,
Socrates and all, and still she wrote:
		Sometimes I dream of salty air and the kiss of fire.

		The skies are gray, angry,
		and water laps at my skirts,
		and my legs are numb.
		There is iron, I think, and jagged rocks,
		and before I wake he is there,
		white horse and sword
		and then there is nothing
		and the dream is over.

		I dream sometimes the sword is mine.

		I dream sometimes that I never married,
		that my children were born in squalor,
		that I never knew the stars.

		It is easier in those dreams.
		A hard life, a good life, and then nothing,
		and the end of the dream is the dream itself.

		There never was a snake to eat me,
		never a snake to slay,
		never a man on horseback
		a sword
		a flash of metal and rock and foam.
		
		Then I wake.

		The gods pluck people from the earth
		raise you to the stars like a favor.
		You are dear to them,
		and so they pull you from yourself
		and call it destiny
		and ever after you look down on normal lives
		and watch for men on horseback
		who never come
		and girls who know better than to dream
		who never get saved.

		Sometimes I dream of iron and hissing and fire
		but I know it is a dream
		because the heavens are cold
		and Hephaesuts forges
		deep below the mountains
		where smoke will never reach me.    
	She wrote but did not know if she was Andromeda or those
Andromeda watched; she did not examine it further.
	Maddy secretly longed to find a boyfriend.  Madeleine, when she
was Madeleine again, longed firstly to be comfortable alone, and then to
find someone and find her comfort in him when she could.  She wanted
children, not to raise them but to have them.  Wanted jobs but not earn
them just to do them.  Wanted fame but not too much.  Wanted life (and
death too, sometimes--not to seek it or be sought, but just to know
peace if it should be peace, just to smile in her sleep one night and
slip away and never worry never curl in bed and cry never wonder why the
world why people why--never wonder.  Then she thought, but oh, to lose
the dreams! and wanted life again.)  Madeleine wanted Kieran to want her
and wanted herself to want Jack (though not the two together) wanted
home but did not know where home was wanted love and sex and happiness
and laughter.
	Rembrandt's house was filled with art but mostly by his
students or his teachers mostly copies mostly art but was not filled
with Rembrandt.  Madeleine, like Rembrandt's house, felt empty.  She
wrote her grandmother:
		Dear Grandma,
		I am writing to you now from Amsterdam!
	She wanted to write:
		I know you're lost; I'm lost as well.  Please
rediscover who you are, and I'll find me and we can be ourselves again.
	She wrote:
		I'm going to the Van Gogh museum tomorrow, and I've
come from Rembrandt's house--that's a lot of Culture, don't you think?
	She wanted to write
	She wrote:
		I miss you.  Love, as always.
			Madeleine
	Madeleine loved to write.  Everything was clear in writing, how
she wanted it to be, and she could be herself or not and no one cared.
She wrote to Jack but only when he wrote her first:
		Dear Madeleine,
		It's me, Jack _____ from Amsterdam.  (Well, really from 
Wisonsin but we met in Amsterdam at _Boom_Chicago_, remember?  Of course
you do, it only just happened.  Sorry.  Just--I wanted to say that I had
fun and I hope you did too.  Good luck with your trip, enjoy, and write
me back sometime, okay?
		You freind from Wisonsin,
			Jack
	and she:
		Dear Jack-from-Wisconsin,
		it is I.  Madeleine.
		Actually, my friends in college called me Maddy and you
can too if you prefer--I like them both.  You cannot call me the
hundreds of nicknames my parents use, though, and to prevent such a
thing I won't even share them.
		I went back to _Boom_Chicago_, so of course I remember
(it was only yesterday, you know!)  I saw Amber and Bernadette again,
and we met some Irish Boys; I had fun.
		Alas, I must spend tomorrow doing laundry, as I'm
nearly out of clothes (when the skirt goes on, the pants need washing,)
but I hope to see Anne Frank's house before I leave.
		I am oddly unexcited by seeing Copenhagen; Amsterdam's
been unreal, you know?
		Of course you know.
		Love, (she always signed everything love)
			Maddy (or, if you prefer,)
		Love,
			Madeleine
	At night she laughed and smiled with Keiran and Jack checked
his e-mail again and again.
	"Beer!" Kieran said and grinned at her he grinned he grinned at
_her_ he grinned and ordered.  "Beer!" said Madeleine and Jack wrote:
		Madeleine,
	"Off home again now," said Kieran.
	Madeleine said, "Copenhagen next."
	"It was wonderful to hear from you so quickly," Jack wrote.
"It brightened up my day (it's still the daytime here, you know), even
if you won't share any nicknames with me that your parents use--just a
hint?"
	Kieran asked her, "Want a smoke?"
	"Oh," said Madeleine, "Well--"
	"Go on then," Kieran said.
	Her fingers brushed against his.
		Guess not.
	"Yes," she said.
		It's weird to be back in Wisconsin after travelling so
long--you said Amsterdam's unreal, but Wisconsin almost feels false now,
flat and painted and the coffeeshops just sell coffee.  What I really
miss, of course, is the Red Light District, ha ha ha, and seeing you
blush in the Sex Museum.
		I bet your skirt looks nice.
	"Right then," Kieran said.  He smiled.
		Copenhagen's probably wonderful; I bet you'll forget
about Holland in a heartbeat.
	Madeleine said, "Yes."
		Don't you forget about me.
	"Look me up in Dublin."
	"In December," she said.
	He nodded.  "Check the pubs."
		Love,
	"Mmm," said Madeleine.
	"See you."
			Wisconsin Jack
	Kieran waved.
	She wouldn't write him back till Copenhagen faded into memories
of buses and cold and the rain falling upside down on her face on
Tivoli's Daemonen ride (he smiled when he saw her name and opened the
e-mail at once and Madeleine she changed his world she changed except
she never changed anything she never changed not she not her not
Madeleine.)
	She wrote:
		Dear (Not),
		Amsterdam is indescribable.  Boys, and art, and
windmills and tulip bulbs.  I browsed an hour in a Delftware shop but
decided not to start my trip by buying breakables and I wanted to browse
at Waterlooplein (outdoor market) but it won't stop rainging--might as
well be England--and oh! I cannot wait for Dublin--but anyway, I'm off
to Anne Frank's--did I mention there are boys?--and there's this
fountain I keep trying to sketch but I can't do it justice (you know me)
but I wrote a poem about it; that's nearly as good despite being rather
less than a thousand words.  Clearly that saying was started by
photographers.  Disgruntled ones, at that.  I have to go--Anee Frank's
and then I'm off to Copenhagen.  How is grad school?  I still say that
math is hard, but you know me.  Boys!
		Remember the time we said __________ and B___ nearly
lost it and you threw the frog?  I was thinking of that today, (mostly
thinking, "Frog!") and oh, I miss us.  Everything was perfect then.
Except not, it sucked and I will never run another club as I live and
breathe but still...
		I miss us.
			Maddy
		P. S. Ha ha here's the poem don't think you can escape!
			-inserter of liberal arts into your natural
science world
		There is a fountain
		on the way back to my hostel
		of two fish, spitting.
		
		One of them
		shoots water gaily
		all the way out to
		the stony rim
		of the fountain;
		the other dribles down
		his front
		and misses the spittoon
		and doesn't leave
		the barcolounger
		when dinner is ready.

		It's not his fault--
		his favorite show is on,
		people watching,
		and so he spits all night long,
		tail parked high,
		back arched,
		and stains his chest
		with water.
		P. P. S.  I know.  It sucks.  Ready it anyway.
			Love always,
			Maddy
		P. P. P. S. Write back soon!