I suppose that one might wake, disturbed from sleep perhaps by that harsh light filling a window lately dark, and, wakened and walking to the kitchen or the bathroom, might glance out a front window and see me standing on my porch, gazing at that white orb. They might compare the sight to a scene in some dream they've had. I imagine them concealed there in their dark room, posed like someone in the vast silence of a Hopper painting, watching me standing here posed like someone in another Hopper painting on the opposite wall of a deserted gallery, my feet stuck to my angular shadow which bends from brick pavers onto paler wooden siding. That I can see my shadow when I turn makes me feel as real as I would appear to be to that imagined watcher. I am reassured that the morning will not bring visitors who will walk through the gallery and see us there, framed and immobile in our respective settings.
Sunday Verse
The Blank Book
by Russell Edson
The book was blank, all the words had fallen out.
Her husband said, the book is blank.
His wife said, a funny thing happened to me on my
way to the present moment. I as shaking the book, to get
all the typos out, and all of a sudden all the words and
punctuation fell out too. Maybe the whole book was a typo?
And what did you do with the words? said her husband.
I made a package and mailed it to a fictitious address,
she said
But no one lives there. Don't you know, hardly anyone
lives at fictitious addresses. There's barely enough reality
there to provide even a mailing address, he said.
That's why I sent them there. Words all mixed up can
suddenly coalesce into rumors and malicious gossip, she said.
But don't these blank pages also present a dangerous
invitation to rumors and malicious gossip? Who knows what
anyone might write in his absent-mindedness? Who knows what
chance might do with such a dangerous invitation? he said.
Perhaps we shall have to send ourselves away to some
fictitious address, she said.
Is it because words keep falling out of our mouths,
words that could easily start rumors and malicious gossip?
he said.
It is because, somehow, we keep falling out of ourselves,
like detached shadows; shaking as if we could get all the typos
out of or lives, she said.
Well, at least, if this doesn't hurt reality, it does,
in fact, give reality a well-earned rest.