Confession the fifteenth: The Hole in the Yard

I’m not from here. I’m an alien. But not in the social sense, like an illegal alien smuggled from another country, in to the city, on the run from the authorities, no, no. I am an alien in a completely literal sense. I’m a real life alien. I’m not from this planet. I’m not even from this solar system. How do I know? Well, I don’t really know for sure. It’s just this feeling I get. I know, I know. You think I’m insane don’t you? But please, I ask you only this: do not judge me until you’ve heard my story, my complete story, which I will try to convey to you tonight, on this dreary night of November. In actual fact, I have no idea really. I tend to be drawn to theatrics and crazy ideas. Isn’t everyone? In reality, in all actuality, I’m just a writer. I’m just a lonely old writer trying to make his way in the world, just like everyone else. I am nothing special. I am nothing out of the ordinary, but oh! imagine, imagine what it would be like if, that’s what I do all the time. What if this? And what if that? All kinds of fantastical alternate realities open up, but really, in the end, when the eyes come from the page and the fingers creep away from the keys, what is left? That is the enigma; that is the dilemma; that is all that is, all that is tragic in this workaday world, the gap, that palpable gap, that exists between what could be, what should be, and what is. There are some moments, rare moments indeed, where that gap shrinks away almost to nothingness. Those are the moments I hold on to dearly, though they are but few. I do want to tell you a story however; I am a writer after all, trying to make it in this wretch of a city. It is not an easy task, though I do not expect anything to be much of a breeze in this city, mind you. I will tell a story no doubt though, and I’ll tell one soon. It will most certainly not be my whole story, but a mere part, a mere happening that happened not long ago. Or did it? I am a writer after all. I don’t believe a thing of written word. Give me a drunkard in a dingy, dirty, disgusting bar any day over a carefully constructed story or fable. I would wager you would find more sincerity than could fill a glass from an old madman at a bus stop than the entire western cannon of literature, but that’s just me, and who am I? Merely a writer? Merely and alien, from outer space? [More...]