Grey All Over

Andrea Actis

• Publisher: Brick Books
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781771315401
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Canadian Poetry
• Index: Literature

"Please stay with me, please stay here, please cause poltergeists in my stupid apartment…"

Late in the evening of December 13, 2007, Andrea Actis found her father, Jeff, facedown dead in her East Vancouver apartment. So began her passage through grief, self-reckoning, and graduate school in Providence, Rhode Island, where the poetics she studied (and sometimes repudiated) became integral to her gradual reconstruction of wholeness. An assemblage of "evidence" recovered from emails about paranormal encounters sent and received by Jeff ([email protected]), junk mail from false prophets, an annotated excerpt from Laura (Riding) Jackson's "The Serious Angels: A True Story," and transcripts of Actis' dreams, conversations, and messages to the dead, Grey All Over not only celebrates a rare, close, complicated father-daughter bond, it also boldly expands the empathetic and critical capacities of poetry itself. In pulling us outside the comfort zones of received aesthetics and social norms, Actis asks us to embrace with whole seriousness "the pragmatics of intuition" in all the ways we read, live, and love.

"When a loved one dies, there's all this stuff to deal with, and in the midst of grief we begin to collect, sort, document, store, and discard. Andrea Actis has taken the stuff surrounding her father's death and created a book that is, like grief, in turns heartbreaking, wise, chaotic, drunk, wry, and always unflinchingly honest. This powerful testament of survival is for anyone who has felt the 'déjà vu in reverse' of grief. It is for the living." —Sachiko Murakami, author of Render

"Love letter, experimental poem, meditation, conversation with the dead—Andrea Actis's compelling debut is unlike any memoir I've ever read. In one passage, Actis digs out the biggest piece of bone she can find in the vessel of her father's ashes and gently bites on it. Reading Grey All Over I had a similar sensation. Ash. Bone. Love." —Jen Currin, author of Hider/Seeker

"This absolutely beautiful work makes plain that seriousness feels like love." —Aisha Sasha John, author of I have to live.

Grey All Over

Jeff where are ya? I need to ask you something.

From: Dave Barrow <[email protected]>

To: Jeff Actis <[email protected]>

Date: 2007-07-07

How’s it goin Jeff?

What ya been up to?

Did you get my facebook invite?

C’mon join up it’s a hoot.

It’s not too hard to figure out once you sign up.

Your ID is your email address.

Now this might seem like a weird question about our past, but I have to know if you remember this.

It definitely did happen!

I need to know if you remember this too.

It plagues me man.

Do you remember what you, I & Jim saw in the Rivercrest schoolyard when we were riding our bikes back from my house heading back over to Henley Cres?

You & Jim were riding double & I was on my bike.

I think you were on Jim’s handlebars but it may have been the other way around.

We had just entered the school property at the Harefield end of the building and had just passed through the teachers’ parking lot, coming up on turning the corner of the school to actually enter the schoolyard.

It was a summer evening about 8 pm give or take.

We were about 9 or 10 years old and we were riding really slow, gabbing away, when something we saw stopped us dead in our tracks.

Whoever was on the handlebars actually jumped off and froze as did the rest of us.

Can you finish this memory Jeff?

I can tell you this...

I was over at your area hangin out with you & the guys on Henley almost every day of my childhood, every summer & weekend until dark or later for years and I walked or rode home through the schoolyard every night in the dark.

After we saw what we saw,

I didn’t pass through that schoolyard for at least a year.

I just took the long way around.

Stayed on the roads.

That may be why I recall the incident so vividly.

Get back to me soon,

I’ve been dying to ask you this,

Your good pal,

Dave

---

Re: Jeff where are ya? I need to ask you something.

From: j. actis <[email protected]>

To: Dave Barrow <[email protected]>

Date: 2007-07-09

Hi Dave,

Ok..you’ve got me really scratching my head over the schoolyard story?? I mean..do YOU know or remember what we saw? or are you asking me what we saw?

Was this before hallucinogens?

Please refresh my memory..

for now..

Jeff

---

Re: Jeff where are ya? I need to ask you something.

From: Dave Barrow <[email protected]>

To: j. actis <[email protected]>

Date: 2007-07-10

Okay Jeff, I really wish you had of remembered this because you’re really going to think I’m nuts now.

I’m far from being an artist but I tried a sketch & attached it to this email. I drew this from the point of view from behind our heads.

We were facing west.

As I said we were riding along at a snail’s pace, gabbing away as 10 year olds do, when this thing popped out from around the corner of the building and just stared at us.

As I said we stopped dead and froze.

I saw this out of the corner of my eye.

It was about the same height as us which was probably about 3 or 4 ft tall.

It looked like another kid except its head was quite round and luminous.

There were no features except a hint of almost slit eyes and mouth, situated very close together which appeared as almost shadows. No hair.

You know when you look at the full moon and it’s very luminous but if you really look you can see some very light gray areas? Exactly like that!

I estimate this lasted about 30 seconds when it suddenly popped back behind the school out of sight.

The 3 of us looked at each other with a “What the hell was that?” look.

Jumped back on the bikes with you back on Jim’s bars and rode straight out of there, careful to make a very wide turn around that corner of the building so as not to get too close to it.

But as we rounded the corner we could see every inch of the entire schoolyard and there was no one to be seen. They had even taken the portables away so we had nothing obstructing our view.

We even slowly rode all along the back of the building checking every doorway and nook and nothing.

So what do ya think of that?

We were way to young for drugs then.

Dave

---

previous letter

From: Dave Barrow <[email protected]>

To: Jeff Actis <[email protected]>

Date: 2007-07-14

Well Jeff,

By your lack of response, I would say you’ve written me off as some kind of nut.

I hope not, cuz I’m really not.

Anyways, hope you still email me once in a while,

I really get a blast talkin with ya.

Dave

---

Re: previous letter

From: j. actis <[email protected]>

To: Dave Barrow <[email protected]>

Date: 2007-07-15

Dave,

Sorry to not reply until now..This is the busiest time of the year for me and most nights rather than drive home i just sleep on the boat that I’m working on..it’s a long drive home and hardly seems worth the time driving.

Now..and get ready for this..

I honestly had no recollection of that night..zero..none..but now that has changed..dramatically. Your little sketch actually got my heart racing..and yes it did happen. I haven’t stopped thinking of it since recalling it..and the image is now vivid in my mind. What i see in my mind’s eye is this.. as you said..his head seemed to almost glow..like a light bulb was behind a translucent mask. And it was quite small... guess we were also small at that time but I recall I thought it was smaller than us. It seemed a long time of ...

Table of contents

• Soul Ash
• Does Andrea Dream of Electric Dead
• 2007–12–14
• Description of a Struggle
• Testing Testing
• Grey All Over
• Volta: One Poem
• 2018–09–06
• Seven Things
• Notes
• Thanks
• About the Author