James Harold Stranger and the Maniac Prophet

Most of the week my computer is infected with the blank Google posting screen. It isn't writer's block. I want to write. I love to write. I just am not sure what it is I want to write about. So I leave the blank screen up there, a temptress, a whore sitting in the window waiting for me to walk by, stop a moment, admire her sensuous curves, fantasize for a few seconds, then open the door and walk in. Make love to me, she whispers. I oblige. I know I will pay for this sin. Her hand is outstretched, naked beast. Pay me, she demands.

Yesterday, I started writing a book on her lovely face. The first paragraph hung there for hours, like a skinned possum over a fire, slowly burning up. We will not eat what was burned tonight, my temptress tells me. As I gaze into the fire, an ember flies up on the wind the fire has created. It rises high above my head, shimmering like a star. A new character is born.

All day today, I considered his fate. Not his hair color or the crooked smile on his face, but his fate. Will he live or die? Will he be a flawed hero or not a hero at all? Other embers danced around him- more characters. They took shape, burned hot, lit fires on the hillside and burned the ground all around me.

Soon I was dancing around the fire, shaman writer conjuring up people, places, scenes, dialogue, stories of life and death. I had become a witchdoctor of the tale-mad medicine and even stranger- his name suddenly chiseled in fire upon the rock of time- James Harold Stranger. Most folks call him Jimmy.

The first paragraph was now burnt and lifeless. The story would not begin this way. The story with no ending, no outline, and the whore waiting for me to place it upon her moist lap. James Stranger is alive and finding his way in the world. His story will soon begin- after the first paragraph has been viciously edited.

Away from Google and further into the day Waterbunny and I made an offer to buy a house. We met our Stephen/Jason in court this past week. He remains in jail. One day he will be released. I studied him in that small courtroom. He will burn this house to the ground. It is there in his eyes- dead eyes of a dead soul.

Stephen's dark ravings outside our home have become ironically prophetic.

It is time for us to leave.