This is the doll given to me by my mother when I was a wee one. She crafted every inch of her out of scraps. She's been with me all of my life absorbing all of my cries and whispers.

When I was in second grade in Hakone, Japan, during a move, she fell out of a box into the dobu, a gushing open sewer, that ran alongside the road where the moving truck was parked. My father without a moment's trepidation jumped into the sewer, which was at least 5 feet below the sidewalk to wade through the smelly water after her, because she was a piece of me.

Not unlike Danny's friend Tony in The Shining, who sensed the undetectable and spoke the unspeakable to Danny, I suspect my alternate force resides within her well-worn terrycloth belly and reminds me to listen to the shine. She is the representation of a lucid production. Not over-worked, never complicated, just a pure, clear and unadulterated form of expression.