1 I carved your name on my watchband with my fingernail. Where I am, you know, I don't have a pearl-handled jackknife (they won't give me anything sharp) or a plane tree with its head in the clouds. Trees may grow in the yard, but I'm not allowed to see the sky overhead... How many others are in this place? I don't know. I'm alone far from them, they're all together far from me. To talk anyone besides myself is forbidden. So I talk to myself. But I find my conversation so boring, my dear wife, that I sing songs. And what do you know, that awful, always off-key voice of mine touches me so that my heart breaks. And just like the barefoot orphan lost in the snow in those old sad stories, my heart -- with moist blue eyes and a little red runny rose -- wants to snuggle up in your arms. It doesn't make me blush that right now I'm this weak, this selfish, this human simply. No doubt my state can be explained physiologically, psychologically, etc. Or maybe it's this barred window, this earthen jug, these four walls, which for months have kept me from hearing another human voice.
It's five o'clock, my dear. Outside, with its dryness, eerie whispers, mud roof, and lame, skinny horse standing motionless in infinity -- I mean, it's enough to drive the man inside crazy with grief -- outside, with all its machinery and all its art, a plains night comes down red on treeless space.
Again today, night will fall in no time. A light will circle the lame, skinny horse. And the treeless space, in this hopeless landscape stretched out before me like the body of a hard man, will suddenly be filled with stars. We'll reach the inevitable end once more, which is to say the stage is set again today for an elaborate nostalgia. Me, the man inside, once more I'll exhibit my customary talent, and singing an old-fashioned lament in the reedy voice of my childhood, once more, by God, it will crush my unhappy heart to hear you inside my head, so far away, as if I were watching you in a smoky, broken mirror...
2 It's spring outside, my dear wife, spring. Outside on the plain, suddenly the smell of fresh earth, birds singing, etc. It's spring, my dear wife, the plain outside sparkles... And inside the bed comes alive with bugs, the water jug no longer freezes, and in the morning sun floods the concrete... The sun-- every day till noon now it comes and goes from me, flashing off and on... And as the day turns to afternoon, shadows climb the walls, the glass of the barred window catches fire, and it's night outside, a cloudless spring night... And inside this is spring's darkest hour. In short, the demon called freedom, with its glittering scales and fiery eyes, possesses the man inside especially in spring... I know this from experience, my dear wife, from experience...
3 Sunday today. Today they took me out in the sun for the first time. And I just stood there, struck for the first time in my life by how far away the sky is, how blue and how wide. Then I respectfully sat down on the earth. I leaned back against the wall. For a moment no trap to fall into, no struggle, no freedom, no wife. Only earth, sun, and me... I am happy.
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Attention: On Sun. Nov. 16th through Thurs. Nov. 20th, don't miss the pilot episodes of Unexplained with my good friend, George Noory, airing on the Sci Fi Channel at 11p (ET/PT). Topics include reincarnation, witchcraft, cryptozoology, UFOs, and strange tales.
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