This blog will be dedicated to creative writing, encompassing all things fictional: Fantasies, Short Stories, descriptive flash-fiction, Poems, and the odd semi-fiction (after all, all lies have a grain of truth in them). All of my writing will be in italics, introductions, notes, tangents, etc. will be not be in the opposite of italics.
One more note. The titles of each post are not the titles of the pieces (those are either noted before the piece, or marked as untitled, or just not titled). These titles are quotes from songs, and the artists are credited at the bottom, along with a link to the music (if I can get it). I urge you to listen to it.
And now, without further ado, the first piece to be posted to Wandering Moon (!)
Goodbye
Back when I still worked at our little traveling circus, I knew a guy. Well, I mean not intimately or anything, I didn't even know his name. But after every performance (I tight-rope walked. And ran, and did hand-stands and strewed flowers and anything else imaginable on a high-wire) this man would give me a small scrap of paper, complement my performance, and leave, before I could say anything. And each piece of paper had a word, or two words, on it, sometimes three. Sometimes they were completely random and made no sense, sometimes they were pertaining exactly to the current situation I had gotten myself into, though I really had no idea how he knew what was going on in my life. Somehow, I was never really worried by his presence and his slips of paper. He was just a part of life. Wake up. Go perform. Finish and get paper from the man. Go home, have dinner, and go to sleep to wake up and start all over again in the morning. Though knowing me, my days were fairly less predictable than that.
The papers sometimes said things like LOOK NEAR. Sometimes, they said things like THE MOUNTAIN-TOP. I took whatever message it was in stride and kept my eyes out for it in the world. But these messages from this man were not the most curious thing about him. It was the tattoo. Now, working at a circus as I did, I had seen my share of strange tattoos. But his was the best one I have seen in all my years. This man was relatively tall, around 6' 4'', and he had light brown tousled hair the color of root beer, though it was graying at the temples. He mostly wore gray, as if to blend in with the background, so only his face stood out. The man had an unusually large nose. It stuck out like a falcon's beak, but rounded. It was not an unpleasant nose, it was just remarkable. But the size of his nose was not the most interesting thing about it. The tattoo was the thing that really stood out. For, you see, on the tip of his nose, crawling up the bridge of it, was a tattoo of a splendid summer sky, with clouds spotting the robin's egg blue background. If looked at on a summer day outside, you could imagine his nose to be slimmer than it was, the tip blending into the summertime.
I thought he must be such a remarkable man to think up such a usefully ridiculous adornment. It drew me to him, as if the tattoo created an aura that invited intellectuals, people who had had strange lives and were willing to accept most anything that to others seemed oh, so out of place. People like me. So we met, day after day, week after week, unspeaking in our exchange. He would linger, now, and I would catch his eye, but though I was the fearless, daring one to be walking so many feet above the earth each day with no regard to my safety, I could not manage one single word to this man. As I said before, I did not even know his name. And I think that is why I was so drawn to him. With a name, a label, an attachment to this world, he was not as alluring, he was just another wonky admirer, or so I would believe in my tiny mind. But I did not believe this, for he was still an incomprehensible, unknown being to me, our only link a fragile, white thread, just little notes, fluttering as birds might, unseen in the night. And I kept every one of them, those notes. For years after, I puzzled over those 31 little notes, for my mind alone to comprehend, or not. And, as circuses do, after those 31 days, that month of July, I moved on, away, and did not see the man for many years. Many, many years.
* * * * *
I was so much more learned, so much older, when I had come across this man again. I had quit the moving and with it the circus, the life no longer being mine. I saw him in a library. It was in Seattle, and the sky was gray and cloudy, a filmy gray gauze veil transposed between the world and my face. Even inside, you could smell the rain. I had checked out a mystery, (my favorites) and had sat down to bury myself in the latest murder, but something caught my eye. I looked up, past the people sitting at my table, to a man. A man who sat but three tables away, a man whose name I didn't even know. And his face, cheekbones sticking proudly out, limp silver hair peeking from under an old-fashioned gray pinstriped fedora, his shoulders bunched up awkwardly, his eyes concentrating intently on his book. And could it be? Could he....be? Never would I have recognized this wizened, lean old man, but for the tattoo on his slightly wrinkled nose. The warm July days of years so far past came filling up my senses. I could hardly gasp but for the surety of it. And I moved my hand, made a gesture as if to rise, to walk over, to greet him. But I found I could not. I found, before me on that table, doubts of my strength, of his memory, of my importance to him. I promised myself that before I or he left, I would go over. I turned my head to my book, but all I saw were the notes, now hidden safely in an engraved wooden box inside of a bright tin box hidden by a portrait of the circus high away in my loft. And I fingered the pages of my book, made as if to rip them out, but what good would that do? So I sat, agonizing, my soul tearing, piece by piece, to drift down and settle at my feet and so weigh them down. And when I opened my eyes once more, the lights outside were dimmed, there was but one man left, sitting at the reading tables. I forced myself up, dragging my body forwards, until I was a table away. And still the man did not look up. I saw his hand moving furiously, I saw the words as if in a dream, but I could not read them. He held no book, but a Journal, a notebook, bound in leather and embossed with dulled silver. The nib of his fountain pen flashed, inviting me closer. I sighed; knowing it would come, it would have to happen. I closed my eyes to gather my thoughts, and readied myself to step forwards. But when I opened them again, they revealed a different scene from when they closed. The man, his glorious sky along with him, had left, swept away like the wind, like a long lost summer's day. I let out my breath, found myself shaking, now.
Forlornly, I myself prepared to leave. But then a fluttering caught my eye. Paper! He had left a final gift, he knew I was there, he had remembered! Trembling, I reached for the note. The Final Note. Reading it, I felt a relief wash over me, purge my questions, and imagined the man brace his body against the wind as he walked down the street and made his way back to his life. I knew what went on in his head, what went on in mine. I finally understood. And the words were not the understanding, it was the note itself. Carefully carved into the dove white paper was a picture. And it came upon me that for all I didn't know of the man, he did not know of me. We were nameless souls and this note was our name. There was a sun, a bloom of black and white color, and on each ray of light was perfectly inscribed each and every note he had written me, and I knew that this was Life itself. And encircling the sun, having it nestled within it, was a crescent moon, the silver shining out, just as bright as its opposite. And I knew that that was to be the unforgiving, all-encompassing Death for which we all come to at one time. And I understood, that was our name, that was us. On the other side, in the familiarly strange block letters of every other note, it told me what I already knew. GOODBYE, it said, goodbye. and I knew that the moon shone intensely on that man this night, lighting his tattoo as never before, lifting him up, caressing him to a final slumber. I knew he had come this night for me, that he had always known me all these years, and tonight, it was chosen. That tonight, I, instead of he, had bid a fond farewell.
