Interruptus

The story takes place at night.  No, wait.  It’s the daylight, with shadows cast here and there.  Or it’s night if you like, a night-time of the mind.  Our character is a nameless face.  You simply have to imagine a face on this stick figure, and there it is.

I am our character.  Unless you want to be.

My face is a shifting sight.  This could be the earth or the moon.  The future of the past.  Because I am the word that is dropped in the wrong place, sometimes misheard.  Philosophers call it The Other.  What must it be the have the powers of a god, the completely Other?  To watch as the universe passes by?

I know that feeling from being passed on the street, in the hallway, a conventional gesture, a common exchange.  This is what always passes between us.

I’ll never know because my name is Stanley (no, it’s not) and I want to be park ranger (museum curator).  In me you see yourself because that’s how this works.  Or you think of someone you know named Stanley, but it’s still about you.  You see yourself in Stanley and compare yourself.  We wake up, groom in front of the mirror, and never leave it behind.  Not completely.

As my friend walks away, hood up, into the rain-soaked evening, or the sun-blaring day, I make a few suggestions about what we might do next week.  My voice is never loud enough and so I decide one day it will be.  Sometime in the future when I can decide what exactly I want to be like.

JD DeHart