i think it's incredible that millions of people would know exactly who i'm referencing just by muttering nevermore. what does ol' poe think about that, anyway?
my wonderful mother gave me the gift of an evening out so i could go enjoy a professor's discussion on edgar allan poe. how inspired and re-energized i become when i can openly, and without interruption, daydream of another's life! what it must have been like to be poe...what he was thinking and feeling and how he was reacting and the people around him who praised...and who shunned and scorned and were terrified of this man...this man who loved and died, all by the age of 40. FORTY!? that's a new-york minute away from me, and i feel i've barely begun my life. this man, and i agree with professor, this man who was merely curious most about the ones he understood the least. this man who wanted so much to be heard because he felt he had something to contribute. this man whose death remains a mystery, and this man who STILL can intrigue a roomful of breathing bodies...and whose death inspired a ghost admirer to leave him birthday presents every year upon his grave...one man! one man with a hell of an imagination, and the blessed curse of a wrist's flick-with-a-pen.
what i wouldn't give to be able to have an hour conversation with poe. with so many! emerson, my ralph waldo...the man who, in high school, took my consistent daydreaming-as-i-wander-through-life to another phase. emerson, and thoreau, and so many who had the courage to publicly turn themselves inside out! regardless!
so many people who have faces and names who so quickly vanish with the drying out of their bodies as they still forever. their stories forgotten...or worse yet, never known!, as their bones become ash. how much lonelier can one get? to exist with a life that's so easily forgotten that no one ever bothered to try to remember in the first place? ah!
is this what continuously feeds my desire for others' stories? is this the magic that brings history and histories to sudden luscious fruit before my eyes? is loneliness the nagging ghost who fiddles with my hunger so that it will never be satiated? do i desire to run away from the loneliness...or towards recording others' stories so everyone may have a mark in this life, no matter how thin the scratch may appear? is it fear of the lonely or the hunger to KNOW that dulls my sense of danger? an hour of listening about poe, and i take the ill-lit streets home, window down and eerie music taunting the shadows...i dare you! i know you have stories! who will win?
look at what poe has done to me. shall i ever meet another who does not intrigue me?
...
you know the answer.
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