Todd Fredson & Sarah Vap

Todd: "Sarah reads a lot. Is a very fast reader (and walker). Sarah likes watching adorable children, innocent creatures, really. She leaves cupboards and drawers open--this refusal of closure is a form of delicacy. Which she also practices very early in the morning, via Ashtonga yoga. Failed handstands often disturb the neighbor downstairs. Her cat, Iris, however, is strangely attracted to the borderline recklessness and settles in on the mat where sarah's feet must inevitably land. Sarah shares a gift-ledge between apartments with Mary Kay Zeeb, a middle-ground for unseen kindnesses, the sort of objective tenderness Sarah learned playing faux team sports as a child (relay swimming and showing/riding horses)."

Sarah: "Todd Alan Fredson is both massive and precise. As a child he dreamed of playing soccer in the Olympics, and watching a Mike Tyson fight live. He would tell you he's sixth generation from Mason County, Washington. Todd thinks about his family, and Mason County, always--and they're present to him though he's not there right now. He served in the Peace Corps in west Africa--the Ivory Coast. He is currently at Arizona State University in the M.F.A. program for poetry--though this summer he is traveling around South America with me. (Sarah.) He has won many prizes, and published many beautiful poems... but that's only a small part of his greater wonderfulness.

"Todd's an enthusiastic actor, a voracious eater, a complicated dancer, and is magnetic... he is approached by anyone everywhere about god knows what. In the past few hours he has given a man an apple, been asked to buy Valentine's Day cards, drugs, and some mysterious proposition including Playa Blanca (White Beach). Also, Todd notices things. For example, driving past the amusement park north of Bogota, he pointed out an enormous statue of a naked man, green like The Hulk, with a crown and a torch... the Colombian naked-man statue of liberty.

"Todd's a host of angels, a gam of whales, a mob of daffodils and a covey of thoughts. He's titillation, kindness, and magic."