Intimate Stranger

WRITERS WANDER

Writers are the scattered or lost tribe of the world. They originated from one belief — even the tenets have since been lost — shared rituals and music, and the same place, which was an oasis port on the edge of dark badlands. Because of a history of roaming and Diaspora long, long ago, the individual members became stultified in separate languages and they took on as protective coloring the customs and the beliefs of the populations among whom they lived. They may have given their hearts to the people. But when they meet they recognize one another by a look in the eyes as if squinting against the sun, and by the clumsy gestures of hands. Their hands are uncertainly looking for sugar signs of sharedness. This they will see, maybe with mortification, remorse and shame: that they are indelibly marked by the same stubborn illusions, the same shortcomings making their fit into life an awkward one, the same yearning for projecting connectedness and for initiating transformation. As they go about their business of assessing ass (this is a slight sleight of hand, I’m sorry) they have the same timid desire for transgression. Speak not of transcendence, friend. They’re not sure how they relate to the other tribes of the Book, and perhaps they don’t really care. And they intermarried over generations and ages and seasons to the point of becoming mongrels and bastards mistaking themselves for dogs when they see a mirror. All they do know is that despite the distances of exile and fusion, they have the same phantom aches and passions that put them apart from the preoccupations of their environment to start with. Does the dog ever consider losing its dog-ness? This tribal condition can be isolated as a genetic weakness that one is unaware of but which will rise like a cloud of flies in your face the day you open a book — it is the first day it is the last day — to obscure your self as in a mirror or a sunken Atlantis. So this is where I belong? This is where I will become whole? Of course, it doesn’t work out that way. Once inside, you’re lost for good. And for bad. The consolation, friend, comes from recognizing your affinity with the other lost souls flailing around for purpose and for meaning. With those barking at the stars in the night. Ah, the pleasure comes from realizing that the sicker you get the better you will feel; the more isolated and alienated you are the more you are tied to others of your kind.