Adam Fieled (editor, Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania): "Our Dance"
Taking it again to a place which might seem gratuitous,
Mary and I were two elaborate brains in two elaborate
bodies. I can only conjecture, about the texture of Mary’s
consciousness, regarding what sexual power I might or
might not have had over her. The anti-panegyric, as it were,
to David, Biblical Adam, and the man himself, which
centered on my oafishness, needs to be balanced by Mary’s
own implied confession of fragility on several relevant levels.
Mary took wifely time, at least some of the time, to do crafts
work around our marriage. Such as, putting together a hand-
crafted picture book about our adventure in Montreal. As I saw
her doing it, I understood that not every level of Mary’s brain
was glued to an unconventional frequency. What stunned me
is that when the book was completed, it was a fait accompli
to hand the book to me for safe keeping. Beneath her painterly
machismo, the photos in the book which could be used to
our advantage had to be bequeathed to me, because Mary
knew, in a world-weary way, that her shakiness rendered her
ineligible to keep the thing. Everything about us to he
consolidated would have to be consolidated by me. Does
consolidation, aesthetic or otherwise, have to be a man’s work?
So, over decades, for the oaf with Michelangelo’s stud as
a doppelganger, there is also the wry sense that Mary was willing
to admit, out of the side of her cannabis-caressed mouth, that I
was capable of a level of responsibility and responsiveness to
necessity that she was not. All her major photographs, in fact,
were bequeathed to me. She was intelligent enough, canny enough,
to know that if she put me at the center of them, I’d follow them through. Our dance.
© Adam Fieled 2026
Mary and I were two elaborate brains in two elaborate
bodies. I can only conjecture, about the texture of Mary’s
consciousness, regarding what sexual power I might or
might not have had over her. The anti-panegyric, as it were,
to David, Biblical Adam, and the man himself, which
centered on my oafishness, needs to be balanced by Mary’s
own implied confession of fragility on several relevant levels.
Mary took wifely time, at least some of the time, to do crafts
work around our marriage. Such as, putting together a hand-
crafted picture book about our adventure in Montreal. As I saw
her doing it, I understood that not every level of Mary’s brain
was glued to an unconventional frequency. What stunned me
is that when the book was completed, it was a fait accompli
to hand the book to me for safe keeping. Beneath her painterly
machismo, the photos in the book which could be used to
our advantage had to be bequeathed to me, because Mary
knew, in a world-weary way, that her shakiness rendered her
ineligible to keep the thing. Everything about us to he
consolidated would have to be consolidated by me. Does
consolidation, aesthetic or otherwise, have to be a man’s work?
So, over decades, for the oaf with Michelangelo’s stud as
a doppelganger, there is also the wry sense that Mary was willing
to admit, out of the side of her cannabis-caressed mouth, that I
was capable of a level of responsibility and responsiveness to
necessity that she was not. All her major photographs, in fact,
were bequeathed to me. She was intelligent enough, canny enough,
to know that if she put me at the center of them, I’d follow them through. Our dance.
© Adam Fieled 2026
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