Shadow of Myself

There comes a moment during every day when I know I can fly. This moment isn’t felt by the non-writer that exists inside me because I am his otherworld creature. A creature he would like to ignore. He doesn’t fly. He is happy walking along a winding road, between the high primrose lined hedges, passed a rambling old farmhouse. He’s a good enough man, kind enough, contented with his lot, he will tell you. Fuck him. His trouble is he thinks he’s only got himself for company. That’s not true. I’m here to remind him.

When I come, he knows he’s losing control. I don’t tell him to pray, I resent him convincing me what to write. Here’s the thing, he is unable to face the chronic and acute fear that creativity often causes, refusing to accept the evolution of expression, how it extinguishes anxiety. He cannot come to terms with the idea I was born on a fast flying cloud, carried by a wave to a distant shore. He prefers the writing of commerce; not words he desperately wants people to read.

The very notion he could, one hour a day, lose himself in the depths of graves, mingling with bones, or live for a moment within the serenity of a herdsman, feel the clinging hope of the beggar, or hold a child muse, only makes him uncomfortable.

We are both the son of a fisherman, but only I am the face of many, the heart of all, and the space on which a creature’s words must fall.

I can never run from him, but careen down paths writers have trod, feeling the same sun, drinking from the same streams, meeting the changes they must have met while on their pilgrimage road.

I’m the spirit of his love grown older, every long walk taken in a misty rain, a fabulous opera, a whirlwind, and the deadly sweetness of his infidelity.

He knows where to find me, the darkest of nights, in central parks, in every shopping mall, pool room, and deli, ordering carrot salad or chicken from the spit. I’m every river that goes to every ocean, every moment, long or short. I am the outside and the inside, the distant and the near, the magician and the rabbit, a mansion, a stony end house, and the lateness of the hour. I’m the wind that drives leaves through iron railings over three dozen nights of winter. I’m the quickening footsteps leaving a hotel room, the snow falling in Amsterdam, the girl waiting on the Spanish Steps, whispers in doorways, and the bill of the heron puncturing the moon.

I’m a beast slouching in his mind.