LETTERS TO THE ALIEN

The following letters make up the script of a theatre piece presented as a one man show in New York and Seattle.

Dear Alien,

In these days when we eat, sleep, make love, and consume each other at Warp Speed I wonder if I’d like to pre-determine the sex of my first child simply because I could. (If I were going to assist someone in having a child. Which I am not.)

In these days when Human kind is completely unconvinced of its having any responsibility for itself, thus, giving birth to blind, stupid power. I wonder if I’ll ever be famous. Which I am also not.

In these days of symbols, secrets, disinformation, gender-fuck, neo-dependency, pseudo sex, desperate loving, TV watching, clueless culture, uninspired breathing, and insipid rules...I wonder what it’ll be like later?

What does one do? What does one do when one discovers that certain things in life lie? (And always for a reason if you’re paying attention.) What does one do when the Bottom is falling out with equal velocity and panache as the Top is ascending? That Balance Thing again.

Some people go out and buy a car or something. Others steal. Still others refuse to go out at all, preferring instead to peep through the Levalor blinds. But only when they’re afraid there’s not something out there.

I’ve been told I ramble...so I do. I’ve also been told I sleep too much. Too much. I attended school for an eternity of youth and have been fighting against it ever since. And I knew something creepy was happening when all the cars started looking alike.

********

Dear Alien,

We are a world completely dependent on something that does not exist. (Outside our selves.) Still, somehow, and for some inexplicable reason we continue to look for the answers outside our cooool selves. It’s a dependency. It’s an addiction. This..this dependency...this..this addiction...this invisible, hand-holding need to cope with what we perceive to be un-cope-able drives us forward. If not up. It propels us. And lightens our load by taking responsibility off our shoulders and placing it on any one of a million things in our past. Our parents, let’s say. Or our first grade teacher who, being the repressed soul he or she was, did not understand the purple hippopotamus (colored only slightly outside the lines), therein destroying any chance our poor "child" had of ever attaining true perfection in the art world. Therein sentencing us to a world of graphic design logos from Madison Avenue advertising agencies.

Pity the poor hippo.

*******

Dear Alien,

In our slow and steady climb up the ladder of several lives toward perfection, I hold it’s wise to ask yourself a few questions:

What must we look like to some god-like-thing? How silly. Look at that dress! Look at that air! I need a cigarette.

I was born in 1953. What year were you born? (It often tends not to matter in the least but sometimes it can come in real handy.) I was a channel for lack of normalcy in the late sixties. I had a lot of older friends and family and my mother was a teacher who taught about stuff so she was fired. This meant something to me at the time. Something about authority. I’m not sure. I’m still working it out. I’ll get back to you.

There were lots of hippies around. Maybe you remember them? Maybe you remember at least how they dressed? Often quickly.

Oh, great...now that I’ve told you what year I was born you have an immediate picture in your mind. Forget it. It’s nothing like that.

Anyway. I was born. My father was a truck driver who didn’t know his heart till much later in his years and my mother, at the time of my birth, was in love with him ‘cos he was a good dancer. I’ve been told on good authority that when the nurse showed my mother my new and naked form, mother laughed. Couldn’t stop. I guess I looked kinda funny. The nurse wouldn’t give me to her ‘cos she didn’t think it was cool that a mother should laugh at her newborn. "Jesus Christ," I’ve been told my mother said, "I love him. He’s just funny looking. NOW GIVE HIM TO ME!"

I seem to remember bits and pieces of this incident. I vividly remember going to the hospital to be born. I looked out my mother’s naval and can still see the hospital lights whizzing by above us. There were no sirens though. But we were in a hurry. Now mother says she can’t remember the exact time I was born. I find this hard to believe. I would think that when the hell of childbirth was finally over I’d know exactly what time my pain ended. But, then again, I am sometimes obsessed with time. All I know is it makes it difficult to get an astrological chart done. Probably all for the best, all things considered.

I can’t really remember exactly where I was before I was born. Can you? Some people can. The five year old daughter of a very dear friend of mine told her mother once: "I can remember when I was big and you were little." Mama freaked. They were driving at the time so the subject was dropped. Pity the poor hippo.

*******

Dear Alien,

What do you see from your place? Can you see earth from where you are? Is she crying? Is there the slightest hint of a salt-water tear down near Australia somewhere? Or, is she blubbering? Blubbering near the once haunted woods of Maine?

She still turns ‘round. This I know. ‘Round and ‘round so quickly as if to rid herself of the prickly-heated, leather soled, stomping feet of us. The people who hinder her.

How is she viewed by other planets? Is she cheap? A whore who always knew she would be. Always knew she’d have to make a living off the lonely, old, desperate men who hold her future. Or, is she a good one gone wrong? Wrong by being wronged and wronged unjustly. Saint or sinner? Mother or bitch? (These seem to be the only choices allotted her gender by the malevolence of patriarchal pleasure’s power structure.)

There used to be trees here. There used to be woods. And faeries. Who would dance to the timber of your voice. In Maine. Deep in the woods of Maine. I don’t get to the woods much. But, when I do, it always feels like the home I was abducted from at a very early age.

In Maine the faeries made tea from poplar bark with smoked pine nuts offered as aperitif. Everytime I laughed (which was more often than I would have bargained for) they danced. They don’t use fire other than to cook. That’s why lightning bugs stay low to the ground in the early evening in the summer in the woods in Maine. To cast light and some heat over the heads of the faeries.

Faeries don’t stay up real late you see. No. That’s the domain of gnomes and elves. No. Faerie circles take place at around twilight and end when the sky turns to pin-cushioned, mind-bending black. The occasional, slow strobed of the winged illumination’s departure serving as a distant signal that sleep does call and dreams await the forever young and innocent.

Not all faeries welcome you right off. At least they didn’t me. I think some were frightened at first that I might move too quickly and crush them. I promised to hold very still and took my boots off just in case. There was about a baker’s dozen of them and once Community Business was out of the way (after a somewhat embarrassing scene involving one thinly naked faerie who was upset about something in another language) came revelry and dancing.

I was the only music. They moved to my voice like double-ply tissue paper. I quoted what little Shakespeare I knew, burped some very bad verse I had written at a very early age and soon ran out of stuffy memorization. (After having done the Pledge of Allegiance twice, since they seemed to like that one best.) So, I started singing:

"Annnd noooow.....the ennnd is neeeear....annnd so I faaaace...the final curtainnnn..."

They stopped. Frozen. Transfixed by something they were not talking about. At first I thought it was the selection I’d made and went to apologize, but found I could not move either. Nothing. Except my eyes. Which I could also not control. They scanned over the suddenly very still collection like a tourists’ in a gift shoppe with only one more token to buy, hoping to god they’d take a check. And I had either gone deaf or silence had literally surrounded us. Watching, in the distance, from the near dark, as the deer flies made a hasty exit.

One faerie, the one with no hat and a big, feminine belly, moved to the center of the clearing. I could barely see her round, little form in darkness known only in the woods in the summer in Maine. She squatted, closed her eyes, made a "peeping" kind of sound and released a dew-drop coated, dew-drop dropping of an offspring. The other faeries moved quickly now, forgetting their guest completely. Silence gave way to regular evening forest sounds and a spider ran by unnoticed.

They cleaned, coddled, and cared for their own. When they finished they turned toward me and held out the infant for humanity’s appreciation. I don’t think I let them down. Its’ eyes were already open and black as beads. They blinked like poppies at a hoe-down.

I wanted to hold it. And they wouldn’t have minded. But I thought of the city and couldn’t. No amount of time spent in the woods now could ever compensate for the years spent outside the paradise of musty earth. No amount of good intentions nor child-fed longing could ever override the grit of even one subway ride. I was too far away now and could never completely belong to their world again. A world which, in the best of all possible worlds, we would all know were we not where we were now. I am the cousin of the enemy. The associated guilty who, despite all hope and despair, would have to die before their world even stood a chance.

I soon left. With the heart of the woods in my throat like a lump. And a vague promise of returning. They named the baby "My Way". And I went on my own.

That was a long time ago. Before computers even. I know that their future was past but I didn’t let them know. No. To attain the innocence of faeries is reserved for those who have trod the road of the wary many times. Never bother giving a faerie bad new. They’ll only dance.

I look at the woods from a distance now. And think about my way too often.

*******

Dear Alien,

I used to drink about five pots of coffee a day. Then, one day, I did some deep Hatha Yoga breathing (what little I could remember from my days of trying to attain the Christ energy) and when I stopped the exercise I didn’t drink coffee anymore. Go figure. But, I was faced with a number of problems.

One. People don’t like you as much when you drink tea. Tea is a pain in the collective ass. Librarians and teachers and wimps and sick people drink tea.

Two. Waiters hate you. And it can be a real problem if you want to pop into some quaint, little cafe in the Pacific Northwest for a nosh and a slurp with a friend who is in desperate need of attention because if she gets coffee and you get tea you’re gonna have to wait a full fifteen minutes before the fucking water cools enough to drink without scalding your thin but somewhat sensual lips. When it finally does cool down enough to drink it’s time to go.

The third problem, the one I finally just couldn’t make peace with is it tastes gross.

I also cut down on my cigarette intake the day the tea drinking started. About ten a day. It’s kinda funny to tell a non-smoker you’re smoking ten cigarettes a day. They don’t get it. "Is that good?" The ask, meaning well, I’m sure. "Good? IT’S FUCKING ASTOUNDING!"

Then they smile. And tell you "that’s good". And it’s suddenly ok. Why?

(Was that last part dull? I’m sorry. I’ve been told I ramble...so I do.)

Sometimes I wonder if I can communicate with anybody. Do you? I ‘ve been told I make quantum leaps in logic and deduction. But I look at it as not sweating the small stuff.

*******

Dear Alien,

Whenever I think about the war in the Gulf I feel like something has been erased in my mind. Something I cannot grasp is still in there waiting to be grasped. All I know is it will forever live in my memory as a milestone. I reacted very strangely when that war broke out. Even with six months warning and all that that it was impending. I still held that it was a political play of some kind and everybody’d get out of it without too much mud on anybody’s face. Then, at four o’clock on that particular afternoon (West Coast Time) the bombing started. I’d never heard the word "sortie" before. I guess they used it in Vietnam but I must have been too young. I still haven’t looked it up. And I still have mud all over my face.

*******

Dear Alien,

I believe in creative visualization so I’m sure this book will be published. And maybe the publisher will want to release it during the holidays. If so...HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

(Just in case)

*******

Dear Alien,

I was once accused of having a cozy universe. (This may have been truer than I would like to admit at the time).

We were having your typical conversation about the Light and the Dark and Which would Win and how this Very Conversation wasn’t happening anyway and how Ridiculous the Point was because of course there can never be a Victor in Light or Dark because it’s always a Question of Extremes and it will Never change but go on and on and on until we All Drop Dead of Exhaustion and he said: "You have a very cozy universe."

I rather liked the appeal of that.

I don’t know that ‘cozy’ is the appropriate word but ‘supportive’ works for me. As does the universe. As do I. As do You. Now.

*******

Dear Alien,

I am the first to admit that that which is referred to as Love in this society is continuous in its elusivity as far as a definition is concerned. I am sure that Love exists. Somewhere. I am not sure, however, that it is within the rather limited reach of Modern Day Man. Modern Day Man would rather walk the dog than investigate the complexities and contradictions of that which is referred to as Love.

My first love had white blonde hair and glasses to match. We tried to teach each other how to kiss one afternoon after school but only managed to interest me in a career in being cool.

"Sure, I know how to kiss.." Sayeth I to my firsteth loveth.

"Well then, kiss me..."

"Well...not till you take off your glasses...well, not till you stop making that face...well, not till I finish my cookie!"

You know. Hard to get.

I haven’t played so much hard to get these days as hard to find. I’m usually ok with life and love when I fall in love or life. It’s what they do that freaks me out. I’m fine with my obsession, really, and I deal with it accordingly. You know, say, if my lover and I have a fight, I steal a car, drive it to where they work, park outside and watch them all night. I know they’ve seen me there. I’ve seen you there.

But they always want what we cannot give. Why is that? They’re not there to give us a fabulous fuck or the correct time. Neither a fabulous time nor a correct fuck. Love is about giving what one can. I don’t think most people know that. I know I don’t.

Personally, I’m more interested in the grunt of love anyway. You know, when you’re back suddenly grows a hump and ‘hey, honey’ is a growing growl, and nobody cares who takes the trash out. I like the security of anonymous sex and I resent the insertion of the rubber. But that’s another subject.

It’s about Universal Love, what about that? Ain’t that a kick in the arrow? Oh, you know, that Love that supposedly permeates the entire universe and is seemingly only accessible to Indians, crazy people, and certain politically correct Lesbians. Universal Love is, so they say, the glue that hold the universe together. It’s the line between the Yin and her brother. The space between the molecules. You know, that god-thing. I hold that Universal Love is a concept soon to be patented and sold. I believe that...

....Oh, what?....they did?....Oh, really, when?....well, where was I?......oh.

Excuse me. I was just informed that Universal Love had already been patented and sold. Did you buy any of it?

I was also in love with the blonde girl on Mod Squad. It was unrequited until much later, though. After that show was canceled and before "Twin Peaks". She was kind low at the time. (Love, you see, also makes you lie.)

Once I stared at an album cover for Peter, Paul and Mary so hard that I burst a blood vessel in one eye. I was trying to will Mary Traverse to life ‘cos she sang so pretty. To awaken and float around the two bedroom apartment with me while we listened to ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ and Pete Seeger songs till my mom came home.

I’ve found it far more difficult to fall in love with men. Men aren’t meant for that kind of love yet. It’s too complex. Women are closer, but, nowhere near. Men are too concerned with how big their dicks are and women are too concerned with being competitively open.

Have you ever had a relationship? I haven’t. I’m not sure what that means, anyway. What’s the definition? I believe that if we were all required to strip naked once a week no matter where we were and just laugh at each other for a full fifteen minutes we’d be a much healthier society when it comes to love. I don’t think that’s ever gonna happen though.

*******

Dear Alien,

I woke up one day and all the best celebrity positions were taken.

Then I hit a roadblock the size of the Muncie Mall.

It convinced me I couldn’t do anything anymore so I didn’t.

I still ate.

I breathed ok most of the time.

And nothing could stop me from sleeping.

Dreaming did not come as easily, though.

*******

Dear Alien,

My father was a redneck truck driver from Yorktown, Indiana who spent his later years sucking back Stroh’s beer in the Dickey Mouse Tavern on Highway 32. He smoked Camel straights and his steaks were eaten raw. But hamburgers were done well or not at all. Sent back. Back to the kitchen with Mama that sometimes had milk.

The house I remember best, or most anyway, was dandelion-gone-to-seed yellow and damn big. Too big for my thinking now but not big enough for the child I meant to be. Our side of town was what could have been called ‘poor’ but only if followed by ‘white trash’.

I went back and saw where the house used to be once. Found it gone. Replaced by years of thoughts of fleas on dogs and backyard pussy-willows gone soft and rich. The property having been bought out long ago by our old neighbors the Zebelles for the express purpose of tearing down the melancholy structure to make way for their cotton-candy/candy-apple wagons used only in the warmer months for state fairs and pocket-lining. We had only rented.

Rented the times when the shine on your skin went unnoticed by you and the sun was a friend not a threat. When spiders and sirens were somehow alike and the sharp, summer lightning spelled god.

There is no door through which to request intrusion now. No stairs to climb nor remember to sweep. No back yard porch to stack dirty clothes on or jump off of to bravely show others your wings. Justly gone. Rubbed out of my eyes like a busy day.

My father’s presence is everywhere still. Even here. Where nothing exists but gravel. It is here he returns like a bottle. And here do I follow him home.

*******

Dear Alien,

It’s not as simple as it sounds trying to maintain all the various cools necessary in continuing on the road one must continue on the road to. (Or is that on?) I walk backward sometimes so as not to look back ahead of myself. Friends indicate that blinders would be simpler. I tried them in my twenties but they pinched my head.

*******

Dear Alien,

Did you ever have the kind of day when your bones felt hollow and you wanted to keep something that wasn’t yours? Yeah. We all go through shit like that. Maybe that’s what

we’ve forgotten as a group. We share everything. There is nothing a person goes through or thinks that has not been gone through or thought about by someone else. Oh, the words are different, sure, but the thing itself is the same. What makes us think we’re so damned special? Is it some desire to be separate from each other? I think it is. That and something else.

When the days go by so slowly that you’re taking it personally, when you view other people’s lives as answers waiting to happen to you, when you catch sight of a freshly painted apartment with Spring windows so open to air that you’d like to live there instead, when you smoke to get even with god, when the light of day is as intrusive as a neighbor who never calls before coming by, when the promise of sex licks it’s lips all around you but does not whet appetite, when nothing you say or do or want or feel can be said or done or gotten or felt, when time won’t stop, when you just can’t dance and never could, when a call from an old friend chews like old meat, when the line you got in was not shorter, when you cannot shrug off the lies of this life, when you’d really rather be Madonna, when you don’t believe this one’s for you, when everything feels too important to be that important, when the Mercedes won’t start, when the baby keeps crying, when your favorite dress doesn’t suit you, when nachos make you angry, when the trees are dusty, when you don’t give a simple shit about who died for you coffee beans, when you wish you were older, or smarter, or better, or richer, or whiter, or deeper, or simpler, or other, take heart. It could be worse.

You could be Florence Henderson.

*******

Dear Alien,

It really comes down to a question of motivation, doesn’t it? At least it does for me and I know I’m not that different. There is a sudden, obvious vacuum that permeates everything from the songs we sing to the food we eat. Any attempt to revive it, it seems, is as useless as trying to resuscitate road-kill. The best we can do is feel sad. slightly responsible, and scrape the carcass off to the side of the road. Something. Something has replaced us with...something else. Like a smaller picture hung where a larger one had been for years. Showing the faded, dirtier wallpaper that had once surrounded the picture for what it is. Just kinda faded and dirty.

In preparation for her day, my Gramma would lessen the hold on her bobby-pinned curls and shake her Kentucky head like a wobbly glass. Her toes had cardboard between them to box in the pain of her corns and she didn’t mind insisting on wearing open-toed shoes with a slight heel. I never knew her husbands, of which there were many. My natural Grandfather, whose name escapes me, was either number three or four. Her room was blood red with accents of scepter gold, betraying a secret wish to have strayed into the less acceptable lifestyle of "whores and eye-talians".

That room, which was known for its closed, draped windows and no dust, acted primarily as a backdrop for a huge painting above her endless, heavily quilted King-sized bed. The painting showed a younger Mary Agnes Bedell in Jamaican drag of all things. Slightly, heavily silhouetted, her long, dark hair was loosely held up by a precarious white lily. She pinned you down with orange-lidded eyes. Hands joined together just under her chin, elbows out, in the position of a plane propeller half-cocked. Her bare breasts, though hidden by shadow, were more than apparent to pre-pubescent eyes and it was clear that appearances did not matter to this young woman. This young woman held secrets and would take them to her grave.

One drippy Tuesday, Gramma stormed in, ripped open the door to her boudoir, climbed onto her mammoth bed, lifted the gold framed memory from its perch and threw it across the room, cracking the frame just enough to ruin it. The canvas ripped easily, spreading unexpected dust into the red air.

Gramma came into the living room wiping her hands. "That takes care of that!" She said firmly, expecting no questions and receiving none.

Later that week I peeked into her room and saw that she’d replaced the painting with a landscape. Cheap and inappropriate against the red and gold brocade wallpaper I had a sudden love for. This painting was almost the same size as the other but slightly wider and not as long. At the bottom of its non-committal black frame was just enough of the brighter, redder wallpaper as to underline the incongruous nature piece.

No one knows what happened to her that day to warrant such behavior. She took it to the grave. The painting was either burned, given away, or rolled up and shoved someplace as yet unfound. There are various theories. But they cannot erase for me the Jamaican Gramma I never had who, once upon a time, convinced the world that she was a Goddess. And reminded it on occasion should it forget.

*******

Dear Alien,

Maybe it’s because we can’t help it. Maybe all of our homogenization has finally caught up with us. Maybe the times are not being delivered anymore and nothing brings comfort other than the thought of ending and starting all over again.

If it were merely a question of one thing we wouldn’t understand it. And, perhaps, if it were left up to us entirely we wouldn’t either. But, I digress. I see us walking by with what we have settled with and I am unsettled. But....what was I talking about? What was the point? Can there be following without backing up?

Maybe it’s because we can’t help it. Maybe we’re just too bored. Maybe it’s the weather or maybe the weatherman. When the weather affects nature more than man, find yourself nowhere near a bank machine. With or without your card.

*******

Dear Alien,

A friend once told me about a dream he had. He was walking by some water when he fell in. He thought about drowning. Instead, he grew gills. And the sun looked different now.

One spritely Sunday morning when I happened to be ten, I marched bravely off our little cement stoop of a back porch where we used to keep the keg, and bounded out into the deep summer grass with a load of intent to ensure my belonging to the sweet Mother Earth. The grass to my ankles was welcoming cool and my toes did a dance unforgotten. I heralded my arrival to the crows, climbed onto our splintery, redwood picnic table bench (which previously had been only dragons or shield), perched skillfully on the very edge being just too light to throw off balance, brought my palms together over my head and did a perfect dive into the terra most firma. Landing on my head.

It was more surprising than painful. There was no blood. I remember laughing. Rolling in the grass back and forth while the dandelions applauded the attempt. We laughed out loud, and the clouds were clapping too, as the earth rejoiced in wonder at how well her little trick had worked.

*******

Dear Alien,

Coffee can taste like chalk and still be coffee. Coffee has more faces than most gods. The face I know best is colored, having five to ten percent white influence poured into her natural, black pool like a water-color. More submissive with a shot of sugar, she remains no less aggressive. Housed in many styles, she follows to lead my day. Today she’s flirting with me.

Uncomfortable and awkward at home she lured me out to find her at her favorite Bistro. Sleek and seductive in her shiny, black best she fills her cup like...hot coffee. Opening me up to more gratification, she demands I call Winston for a menage. There’s no point in hesitation. She has the lead and she knows where to take it. My gut will leap at the taste of her as she enters me through my mouth to make the morning worthwhile.

Winston smokes.

*******

Dear Alien,

"Hey." The girl said in a voice too soft for most communication, barely cutting through the chaos of the restaurant’s necessary clatter, like a fork in pasta. Symmetry balanced their table still. Too young in love to allow thoughts of future messes.

"I wish I could paint that picture..." she hesitated, "but, I’m afraid I wouldn’t do the subject justice."

Silence as sustenance appeared.

"If you didn’t smoke so much pot..." she started, "you’d remember your dreams."

"I remember my dreams fine."

Utensils separating portions. The ritual of eating. She chews on the left. Perhaps a bad tooth. This restaurant has stucco walls and serves mostly breakfast.

"Maybe a spider plant for that one window."

"Or a jew."

"When you think of buying a cheap chair what place comes to mind?"

The waitress, their senior by at least twenty years, will be leaving this restaurant soon. Moving back to the Midwest to marry her childhood sweetheart who hadn’t done any better either. The plates cleared. The cups refilled.

"You’re so quiet today."

*******

Dear Alien,

My best friend in high school was a dwarf named Alice who, in later years, took to wearing a nun’s habit and frequenting the local gay bar. You could always count on Alice for a dance or a sympathetic shoulder. Through post-pubescent tumult we plodded, her physical abnormality giving me more credit than was warranted, and my very presence affirming her continued existence. Friends in the face of high school’s facade, we would talk on occasion of the children we would never have. Combining our various physical flaws into an infantile mixture of sideshow show-stoppers, displaced seraphim, and Hollywood Myth. We could, on occasion, be pretty. We were pretty for the prom.

Though it was not the most flattering color, the bush green, child-sized taffeta formal she bought at K-Mart was the best she could come up with for the ten dollars allotted her by her mother for the purchase. It did not blend well with my blue rented tux, but she gave it inappropriate life with her squat, yet undeniably female, frame.

Her mother, Dee, gave us a lift to the gym in a white, 1968 Chevrolet Impala, having been loaned to her by one of her current beaus. She insisted we ride in the back like President and Lady Bird Johnson and we obliged by speaking in bad southern accents for a few minutes.

The late Spring evening sparkled by us quickly as Dee demanded attention by driving too fast. The passing street lights caught me off guard in the back seat, the light bouncing off Alice’s face in rapid, inconsistent strobes. She laughed dangerously at something her mother said and I noticed her perfect teeth for the very first time. Her tiny, bumpy hand slid lightly to my knee and they knew each other better slightly. We walked into the gym holding awkward hands and danced like tribes gone mad.

My friend Michael had some smoke so the three of us "bopped" out to his Valiant and piled into the front seat. We could hear the band still, though half a block away, and their sound was improved somewhat.

Alice, in the middle, was afforded double-toking as Michael and I, on either side, thought ourselves stoned. I don’t remember whose prick came out first but it was Alice who had coaxed them out of hiding. No difficult task considering the ease with which rented tuxedo’s zippers undo.

The band took a break, allowing us the audio pleasure of secret sex sounds heard in steamy parked cars and future bath houses. She offered me rear entry as, having completed the sentence, she filled her mouth with thoughts of Michael. We all closed our eyes.

Michael and I were finished before the band had even snuffed out their cigarettes. We tucked our shirts in silence, deafened by the endless crinkle of taffeta surrounding the Valiant.

*******

Dear Alien,

THE RITUAL OF BEING ALONE - Part 1

The Ritual Of Being Alone (trade-mark) offers us direct access to attaining a peaceful state of mind. Being Alone is a victim of very bad press. Somehow, someone has convinced many Americans that Aloneness makes them incomplete in some way. As if simply spending time with One’s Self is a practice to be shunned and avoided, and about which, any self respecting individual should be embarrassed. Nothing could be further from the Truth. Quite the opposite is actually the case. If One is constant in Being Alone, that which is referred to as "lone-li-ness" will cease to exist. If you work it right! Buying this book is your first step to peaceful self-awareness and Alone-ness-ness. Read on, oh, Solitary Soul and find your Self waiting to be visited. Not that there’s anything wrong with being Alone or anything.

The Ritual Of Being Alone (trade-mark) does not apply to watching television to escape Being Alone. Not until much later in your Alone Developedness can a television be used for attaining Oneness with Oneness. This will be dealt with in greater detail in a later chapter. For now, we suggest you stay away from your television for awhile. Except maybe the Home Shopping Network or one of those infomercial things.

When One is Alone, One can be aware of the molecular motion in One’s body. Try it right now. Put down the book (not facing down as you don’t want to ruin the spine), close your eyes, and imagine the molecules in your body zinging around like itty-bitty rats in a maze. Go ahead. We’ll wait. Now is the time to cue your audio tape. (Only for those of you who invested further in this program - tape not included with purchase of paperback.) Play selection one. Though the theme from Jeopardy may not appear to be appropriate, if you stick with it, we think you’ll agree at how pretty the colors are.

There. Wasn’t that fun? Another fun exercise to try when you are Alone is reversing the spin of your own molecular structure. (Chapter 10) This exercise takes semi-intense concentration but the physical effects can be quite flattering and you will eventually be able to amaze your friends by disappearing before their very eyes.

We here at the Aloneness Center located on beautiful Solitude Lake in upstate New York believe that it is important for you to know the company you will not be keeping anytime soon. So, a few of our clients: one name you’ll recognize and a very successful practitioner of The Ritual Of Being Alone (trade-mark) was Mr. Harry Houdini. He studied the Ritual Of Being Alone (trade-mark) to the 2nd level only and built a highly successful career on what little he had learned. Another famous practitioner of The Ritual Of Being Alone (trade-mark) was Mr. Jimmy Hoffa. We’re assuming he’s moved on to the 3rd level. So, as you see, now that you are willing to be Alone, you’re going to be in some very good company!

In a nutshell: The Ritual Of The Beingness Of Aloneness (trade-mark) enhances One’s personal journey to the Godhead by connecting directly with the CEO of matters spiritual, therein improving all life experience. It affects nothing less than the You of Your Self and will bring positive energy to all decisions you (and only you) will make in the future. Everything from career choices to bettering One’s love life.

Begin by throwing a party for yourself.

Pick a day on the calendar. (Any day is fine but a weekend night is preferable as it will make you feel more important to your self.) Choose your day and write on the calendar: "My Ritual Of Being Alone (trade-mark) Party - WAHOO!" (The use of WAHOO - exclamation point is important here as it lends an air of excitement to the evening and will plant a subliminal message to your inner child that is anticipatory in nature and will also have a direct effect on the success of the event.)

Make sure you give your Self plenty of time. Plan ahead. Give at least two weeks for preparation as you want to make sure you’ll be able to attend and you don’t want to make your Self feel as if it was assumed you’d be free on a Friday or Saturday night.

You will want to pick out the perfect invitation card next. Nothing too fancy as it is not recommended to begin your first night Alone in formal surroundings. Formality lends itself toward a certain unspoken snobbery or "one-up-man-ship" directly liked to any social occasion. The evening should be casual but not jeans.

Once you’ve found the perfect card add all pertinent information and scribble a casual note on it along the lines of:

"Love to see ya!"

"It’s been too long!", or

"See you there!"

Be careful not to sound needy. This will frighten you away from your Self. Something upbeat but non-committal is always best.

Now sign it, send it off and forget about it. In a few days you’ll receive the invitation and decide whether or not you should attend. Check your calendar (But NOT the one where you wrote WAHOO exclamation point as this tends to confuse), see if you’re free and RSVP in two days time. Leave a message on the machine and make sure that you mention that there is no need to call back. You will be there.

The rest is child’s play. Depending on your taste. Some may want to bring a small gift, others feel their presence is enough. You know what you want best so be the perfect guest.

Remain at the party for at least on hour even if you’re bored. You don’t want to offend your Self and a one hour commitment accompanied by a viable excuse is appropriate. DO NOT OVERSTAY YOUR WELCOME! This cannot be overstated. Be sensitive to your Self around you and know when the party is over. If your jokes don’t make you laugh or you are repeating stories you have already heard then quietly excuse your Self and thank your Self for your hospitality.

These, of course, are extreme cases, and we think you will find, as most do, that you are welcome in your home for as long as you wish to stay. And you will probably want to stay for awhile as you will find your Self fascinating!

Before the evening has ended make sure you offer some help in straightening up. We’re sure the offer will be kindly declined but it’s always a nice touch and is a guarantee to being invited again. Most of all: enjoy your Self.

This is Part One of The Ritual Of Being Alone (trade-mark). In Part Two we will discuss The Ritual Of Being Alone With Your Thoughts (trade-mark) or: Thinking Allowed.

*******

Dear Alien,

I don’t know where I go when I sleep, do you? I know that I disappear. The romantic in me would like to believe that I float out into the cosmos like Shirley Maclaine and dance divinely with the spirits of dead Gypsies. But, it’s more like me to zip over to New York City to be the guardian angel guide to a middle-aged woman in an ugly dress who has found herself lost in some of the darker streets of Brooklyn. Then, wing my way to a confessional in Chicago to invisibly hold the hand of a young, male priest who is praying devoutly for the courage to "come out" as a homosexual to his superiors. Excluding god. Who already knows.

Sometimes I run a little late and my body wakes up before I do. I return to find myself, naturally, with a cup of coffee and a hard roll, staring blankly at the morning paper and wondering why no news is making sense. Re-entering my body is a little like slipping into a warm bath and, sometimes, I wake up drowning. We find the calendar together and occasionally roll our eyes.

*******

Dear Alien,

A friend once said half-joking: "Maybe we’re just too sick to have relationships!"

I think she’s right. I think we are all too concerned with what everyone else is thinking or are overly concerned with what we are thinking or never think of anyone but ourselves or never think of ourselves at all. We’re just too busy.

We sit at opposite tables and flirt with our non-emotional future, overly emotional past, or contemplate the dead present and fail in our individual communications like AT&T gone haywireless. So. We communicate in other ways. We push our breasts up and out. We drop certain words like names out loud. We carry books we think you should read. We jog around the lake in designer bests. We play good music too loud with the windows open. We sit, sullen and misunderstood, pouting at the occasional genderless eye that passes. We serve our place.

And we do all of this by rote. Convinced that it is part of our identity we are unaware of the habitual continuance of our non-communication. Silence terrifies most people. It is either something to avoid at all cost or something for which one feels obliged to apologize. Our culture does not understand the place of its silences. Our silence is locked up inside some Fort Knox somewhere and we cannot make withdrawals. No great wonder we can’t hear the screams surrounding us.

Why is it we play at everything we do? We toy with the greater concepts locked back in the safe of our triple-locked minds and convince ourselves that they are either too easy or too out of reach. Love, Truth, all those guys have no place in our current world. They are outcasts.

"NO ROOM! NO ROOM!" Says the Mad Hatter.

We merely dabble. Christmas, Valentine’s Day, anniversaries, birthdays, and funerals are the sole beneficiaries of any hint of the oneness of humanity’s existence. Cards are sent, notes jotted, stamps placed and we wash our hands of the entire affair. We are completely alone together and cannot break through the invisible membrane surrounding us like an old turkey bag and breathe the freeing air of true communication. Not without being thought odd, at least. Crazy at best. And this resistance is unaware of itself and its source and its power. No. It casually runs us and our man-made world like the Mousetrap game from Milton Bradley, assured of its continuation by our unspoken consent and acquiescence. We are forever seeking perfection in each other not to be found. Have you ever noticed that someone else is always "too" something or "so" something else? They cannot possibly fit in with our split and limited perspective. That’s why I always break up with someone after they say something stupid.

*******

Dear Alien,

In the great quiet of our still lake soul there is a spot of light that pops a wheelie when it recognizes someone or something. It believes in itself and can sometimes make the car run on empty. It never goes out. Floating like the heavy bubble it is it keeps us on track by reminding us of our responsibility to it. Everybody has one and you can see it if you look. Housed in perfect center it moves with us, sometimes leading, forever going along for the ride. When angry, it grows red and pokes our eyes out. Sunglasses can cut the glare. This is where "god" sits laughing. Having all the answers, smiling, somewhat smugly, holding its breath and hiding.

This is the spot of healing and death. Decisions made here shake themselves free of our connection and make manifest the seemingly impossible. When it skips our middle management and naive interference, thoughts become things. Things known needed and, occasionally, thought wanted. It knows the difference between want and need and is tireless in its effort to instruct us.

But. We are out here. It is in there. Protected and safe from the hubbub of hype and humanity. Its ears are not invaded daily by inanities and alarm clocks. Its ears never itch. Its time does not exist. Show me a spot that has to peruse the want ads in a new town and wonder at its qualifications for any job worth having. Our spots to not get drunk or high to escape the miscalculated moves of the past or the petrified movement through the fears of being unworthy. No spot knows the pressure of its peers nor the sleek design of a 1960’s bar stool. Not spot spits out the smoke of addiction that permeates the noisy chaos of man on planet earth. Not spot scrubs itself spotless.

It just floats there. Bouncing slightly as we walk, moving a great deal when we sleep and laughs quietly. Amused at our joys and heartbreak equally. Shaking its headless head knowingly, like a metronome clicking in time to a child’s watery hands on a borrowed, beat-up Steinway.

*******

Dear Alien,

There are days when I do nothing but pray for the arrival of night. The night is a friend most parents don’t like. A bad influence who will surely get you killed or thrown in jail. My eyes change at night and I see better. communication with shadow is sensory and silent. There is less out in the open when secrets share themselves with danger.

Cool wakes up with sunset and stretches its long self like a black limousine heading down 9th Avenue. Teasing and tickling with French tongues through the night window, the early evening blows her promising breath in my ear; a passionate trick, easily recognized from previous nights in previous summers. She knows what works and the TV doesn’t stand a lonely housewife’s chance. And besides, night makes smoking make sense.

When the moon pretends to guide, when the night birds confuse, when the whistle of a night watchman can be heard two blocks away I salivate like a wolf and step like an Indian to hear the whispered, secret sounds of night. She calls to the part of me sleeping during the day. Recalling revenge on daylight’s expectation. She is the promise of a pill under my tongue replacing the pillow under my head and she doesn’t believe she’ll hurt me. Clothes fit better at night and the lessons learned here house themselves deep in my pores and won’t erase with the next day’s showering. We drive each other to the edge of morning, cracking our eyes closed at first light.

It was night when Betty the Dyke and I double-barreled it through the cracked streets of Muncie, Indiana, in hot summer pursuit of a sissy-beater named Jake. Jake’s modus operandi was to lure his way into an unsuspecting trick’s apartment with the promise of hot, male sex and pull a knife to the throat when nudity was most vulnerable. He never cut anybody so far as I know but a friend of ours had recently blown under the blade. So an APB was placed on the tell-the-street connection and we set up patrols.

Betty the Dyke and I had the 11PM to 2AM downtown beat, while Phyllis Tremelle, AKA "The Black Snapper" patrolled the outlying areas with her colorful court of drag queen royalty in three separate cars. Now Phyllis was about ten feet tall and black as a shoelace. Her considerable height was due primarily to the Glamour K-Mart wig she piled on her head which, when counter balanced by her four inch heels, made conversations a literal pain in the neck unless you were both seated. The only thing sharper than her tongue was her knife and either one of them could make you bleed like an uncorked geyser.

Betty the Dyke and I were talking about people we knew worthy when Jake’s van suddenly appeared to our left. Two blocks North on Walnut heading our way. We zipped through the stop light, pulled over and killed the lights. We thought, you see, he’d turn.

Betty the Dyke was a mechanic and the still, anxious hum of her clean V-8 supported our idling nerves securely.

I adjusted the side view mirror so I could clock the block behind me. Betty the Dyke’s face, not unlike Charlie Brown’s normally, was suddenly furrowed like a canyon wall as she studied the atoms in her rear view mirror, waiting for the chance to write home about something. That opportunity came and went as Jake, continuing down Walnut, bypassed our block and glided down the main drag seductively.

"Hold on!" Betty the Dyke suggested as she slammed into reverse, backing out onto Walnut street and into coming traffic. "Now there’s a difference," she growled, "between the manufactured squeal of tires one hears on TV shows and the actual screaming of real tires under one! They work in similar ways but the realities are completely different. More like sensurround, perhaps, is the adrenaline rush received by sudden motion and high, personal stakes! GLOVE COMPARTMENT!"

Not knowing what she needed I opened it. the small, downtown, dying commercial district was long behind us now as we headed into south Muncie in avenging chase of a baby killer. The gun leapt to my lap like a puppy.

"Aim for the tires!" Betty the Dyke bellowed as she reached for her CB radio. "Breaker one-nine, breaker one-nine, come in, Snapper, over!" I leaned out the car window and aimed at the back of Jake’s one-eyed devil machine. "Breaker one-nine, this is the Mechanic! Yo! Snapper! You out there, bitch? Come on back!"

"Tell me when to shoot!" I shouted, not knowing her plan completely.

"When you can hit him!"

The universe and the night work in tandem. Like clandestine lovers they meet and join quickly to satisfy their mutual, devouring need. I fired. The bullet hit Jake’s right tail light explosively just as Betty the Dyke’s front left tire blew for no apparent reason, throwing us into the other lane and ending our unfilmed chase scene.

"Powerful shot." She offered after we came to a bumpy stop.

Justice being what it can be sometimes, Jake was met near the mall by Phyllis and six of her drag queen court. She evidently played with him for a while by using her knife to cut his pants off, and ripping his underwear down the back with it while the others held him down. The story goes that he got aroused and Phyllis, for the first time in her life, ordered a man to keep it soft. She convinced him that Muncie was not the place for him and should any of us see him there "shopping" again she would make damn sure that he’d be able to "suck your own dick without bending over". Jake limped back to Anderson from whence he’d come and we never saw him again.

The night is my temptress. She lures me with the bait of youth and youthful longing. And Justice. Justice of the night, which, though often too quick for some, must always be served. And courted.

*******

Dear Alien,

Everybody down here is dying too soon.

One afternoon in Nineteen-something in the early Eighties, my best friend and cramped roommate tom came home from work crying. Someone he had known from his previous life in college had just dropped dead at 29 or 30 something of the "gay cancer". Now, I had not known up to that point that diseases had a sexual orientation, let alone a preference, and this came as quite a surprise to me. I didn’t even know they had a gender. Live and learn, I guess.

Anyway. I offered little comfort, I fear, as Tom over-played his rather dramatic scene in the kitchen. Eyes up then down then side to side-y, slightly teary, frowny lips and a scowl placed over the kindest of faces really. His poor, little mouth spewing unfamiliar, empty words of the grieving as he heaved his bountiful supply of fresh poppers into our tarnished, white plastic wastebasket, which was already over-plumed with trash and messy nonsense.

He wept the loss of single slices and certain freedoms. Of Catholic backgrounds naughty instructions. Of a mother, too lost to him now to care of any outcome, really. And of old dalliances, now withered and plucked from the mother-fucking earth too soon. Too soon for sense or good timing.

If it’s true that the dead shall rise again, then maybe we’re just making room. Or taking up too much. The sounds of the people have not sounded the same since Nineteen-something in the early Eighties. Death is only the concept. Dying is technique. A technique that only a few are lucky enough to acquire, I fear.

To never feel the horse hoof calluses on the bottoms of you tired, old feet after what must seem like a million years of walking on and on and on them. To never know what it’s like to not have children. To never see those never children never grow. To never experience the final parties and relieving humiliations of retirement. To have never really ‘shown ‘em what ya coulda done’. To never get old. This time round. To see if you can remember what it was like last time you did it. In that last life. That last time.. To never have enough to remember as your final days tick slowly by like rehearsals for a show you were not cast in.

There is a certain sense of relief for the dying elderly as they approach a door known to be there for seventy or eighty years. When you can remember what your forties were for and your childhood seems less and less unfamiliar. Death of the young is opposite itself. Like a nun buying crack downtown, or a baby explaining physics. No shadow is cast by the disappeared. And hair that still shines in the sun loses its place and appears awkwardly incongruous when crowning a gun-metal gray colored face. A face which, normally, would only be furrowed with the private problems of petty, waning youth.

My friend Tom had an ad in the Gay section of SCREW MAGAZINE that read: "A MAN CALLED HORSE - 977-4298". (A name which could not be argued by even the greatest of Katherines.) It was interesting to answer the phone at our house. A hatefully ratty railway flat surrounded by most of Hell’s Kitchen. We’d be lounging around planning a show, or waiting to be cast in one, or writing one, or telling our fortunes, or watching TV, or getting really stoned, or convincing ourselves, again, just how famous we were gonna be and the phone would ring. We’d look at each other, hope for whatever was best, and I would usually answer.

"Hello?"

"Hello....Horse?"

"No, this is Pony. Hold on, I’ll get him."

Then Tom would shower and split. leaving me alone with my stuttering philosophies and bad impersonations. Tom could impersonate anybody, and did so endlessly, but, his best were Katherine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Carol Channing, and Yma Sumac. (The latter being an acquired taste, I grant you.) I could never do impressions myself. Not till after he died. Unexpectedly. Two weeks after I moved West. None of us even knew he was sick. Though all of us wondered. It was too soon to talk about. It was the beginning of the plague. Nobody could deal on that level yet. Not really. Not like they do now. Amazing what we can get used to.

Another friend told me the other day that he had attended over 35 memorial services for the unforgotten young. He is only 37 or 38. Hell, my Gramma Wilda was eighty years old when she died and she had only buried about a dozen people or so. Friends, I mean.

If only we could all be Marilyn Monroe. Or James Dean. Or Jimi Hendrix. Or Janis Joplin. If only the night would carry us softly into the memories of our loved ones toward the shadowless, sinewy twilight of the slightly recollected heavens. If only the right time and the right place could both be served by our limited knowledge of the physical plane. Served here. Served now. Right here. Right now. If only the blessing of remembrance were better served by reflecting a deeper pool’s perspective.

All thing end. They come to pass. That’s the point. And they’re over before you know it. And before you know it, you’ve been changed by them. Changed by things thought endless. Like hope. Like pain. Like death. Like dying. And like a good Yma Sumac impression.

*******

Dear Alien,

It was Sunday again and she ate her salad with the devotion of a nun at communion. Her crucifix, recently kissed, bobbled devoutly between her fatty breasts and breathed a little life into her day. How delicate this cow of middle age and settling. The preciously pulled back tint of her reddish hair still enticed her breakfast companion of older, more youthful years but she blew it with the headband. Delicately incongruous.

Like Emily Dickinson in chinos.

*******

Dear Alien,

People of power sure come and go quickly around here. First in, then out, then in again. For life this time. So in he’ll never be out.

Someone. One of the former hard-liners of the former Soviet Union was booted in the former buttsky awhile back for implying that the CIA had something to do with the fall of Russia’s economy. Yeah, right. And get real, please.

What possible interest would the CIA have in the downfall of communism or the opening up of new markets? Isn’t that just a little paranoid? Before long conspiracy theorists will be telling me that the CIA is also behind all those "true to life" shows like COPS or AMERICA’S MOST WANTED so that the American Public will see only young, black men getting arrested and hauled off to...well...wherever it is they haul off young, black men in America these days. Or they’d have me checking the numbers on my driver’s license wondering what possible use some computer might have for knowing where it can find me at any given moment. Right. And Michael Landon was Jesus Christ. They also believe that television is mass hypnosis and USA TODAY is intentionally empty of nay news so as to continue on in the slow, concentrated decline of the American Public’s attention span. Get a life, bud. Why ask why?

They’d probably like it if I got so spooked by various conspiracy theories that I actually began to wonder if the corner store employee was a CIA plant. So what if he has a perfect view of my apartment, and he stands outside a lot, even in the winter, and he always looks like I’ve caught him at something when I pop in for cigarettes? So what if he knew my name before I introduced myself and there’s obviously something he’s hiding?

I wouldn’t be surprised if they thought our War On Drugs was a fraud...or hype..to cover the covert actions of our own government’s on hands involvement in keeping the poor and uneducated under the thumb of various addictions. Why would anybody wanna do that? And besides, you can find crack anywhere.

And must they carry with them this "I told you so" kind of attitude waiting to happen? How can I take any of these ideas seriously? If I thought about even one of them for any period of time I’d lose my mind and all hope. What would be the good of that? What possible purpose could be served by my losing touch with the reality created?

I tell them "no!". "You leave me alone! I don’t care if you don’t see what’s going on around me. That’s just according to you anyway. Get out of my house and don’t come back! Leave me to my chores and giggles. Should they come knocking at my door someday I’ll deal with it then, thank you! You just go underground or something with the other dead and leave me the hell alone! Wheel Of Fortune’s on and I’m not gonna miss it.

*******

Dear Alien,

Maybe we humans have decided it’s our place in the universe to be gratuitously weird.

We’re born into perfect bodies we convince ourselves to hate with faces reflecting a soul we know little of. The reflection is perfect, of course, but usually not pretty enough. At least not pretty enough for the standards established down here by consumer advertising and short shorts. The kind of pretty you associate with chintz and dustbusters. Or ashtrays if you smoke.

It seems to me that just when I get used to the physical manifestation I’ve allotted myself, just when I can look into the medicine cabinet mirror without puking, just when I make peace with my face without makeup, it changes. Changes just enough to challenge me and dare me to not internalize the stares of strangers.

I wear my face on my face more than I’d like to, I think.

*******

Dear Alien,

I saw an old white lady in a Greta Garbo hat dancing in the park the other day like the African warrior she’d once been sometime before. I could see her hard, brown feet stomping the dirty earth below her to conjure up the core’s magic.

I looked up. The sky was the same today as it had been then. The breeze was just as soft and invisible. It may have been h otter in our heads for here it was early Autumn. All things were the same now otherwise She danced on as I passed, headed down the dusty road to the village where I was to find my bride.

Here I remain unmarried. And here her fat fit her fine.

*******

Dear Alien,

I was alone. And there were others. Red lights, like slow moving arteries, made traffic difficult. From that direction, anyway. There was no sun anymore. Just its remains: a few clouds; puff-violets, sinking fast, over with work now and looking forward to dinner.

It seemed to be a time of wondering and haunts from dead heroes. The mail carriers were killing themselves and still the mail found you home. Unfortunate absences proliferated. As if playing catch-up for money. And college girls sorted laundry on Saturday nights. Alone. Sometimes the beat goes on while, more often than not, it goes unheard by majority rulers. This was not a time of balance and those born under the sign of Libra moved elsewhere.

Nervous associations popped up nervously and this woman, like many others really, followed her thoughts downtown, carrying two shopping bags from the grocery and not much support in her heels.

"I have Pepsi." She thought. "That always feels better." I watch my reflection appear and then go as we enter a contract together agreed.

But these were the times when a dust bunny gathers on thoughts, if you’re thinking at all, which you are. The past was the future and few understood what one must understand, or ignore, if you’re wise. So, Pepsi or no, no one spoke any more, not really, though speaking would just fit the bill.

The priorities placed out of place, which confused, and brought great comprehension of little. And no one to blame. That’s the killer-a-diller. That’s the phone ringing suddenly, pulling you out.

These were the 90’s advanced quite a while. Overly prepared for its date. Jumpy and scented. Pulled together one more time for the approval of somebody else. Or maybe just lonely.

One day hot. Next day not. Cold. Real quick. Like a cleansing after a fire. That’s weird for these parts. Kinda dry. Now real wet. And cigarettes glance from the table in the corner of your eye. Great camels, like cocks, riding billboards in neon. Electrical buzzing to light up you life. Thanks for the buzz and all that. Half-hearted offerings permeated and beer will always be cheaper by the case. Runnin’ black man. Musta stole somethin’.

Walk on the green in the promise of summer. Stop at the red in the rain.

*******

Dear Alien,

I’m not crazy about the way things fade away. This is a relatively new discover for me. I was always aware of things going away, but fading is different. Fading away means you continue to have the original picture in your head of what that image had been like before. Before it started to fade. And it never makes you happy.

Maybe because of the tenacious grip we keep on the visual image of the things we love. We overwork our eyes in this culture. A slow fade can break your heart. That’s why the do them in the movies.

So, when people fade. I’ve found it a lot easier if you kinda fade with ‘em. Go along for the ride. Understand for them that when something fades, something else is going to fill the screen immediately.

******