I understand that I am not only with my father and grandfather and Marie as family, but also as a writer. I am sketching them. The mechanical hand in my mind that never stops is charting and sketching and composing them. I feel that I am with them, but also at great distance from them. I fictionalize my father as he speaks, as he gestures, what he says and does, what he doesn’t say and do. I am creating from him on the fly, a sort of metaphysical free sketch, drawing from his reality and unreality, and in that sense I am also creating myself. It is a relationship based on invention and rooted in artistic license. A part of me hates that I am doing this. Or maybe not hates but feels somewhat cunning and diabolical. And yet I can’t not do this, it happens naturally. I participate almost by default. It is an action that breeds a degenerate form of intimacy, which a part of me craves.

   My grandfather the human, and my grandfather the character, exist side by side. The recording angel on one’s shoulder is the same as the recording devil. It’s the recording itself, and not the nature of the one who’s doing the recording that is most important.