Back when I was often jobless in my early 20’s, I thought it destiny that I become a famous novelist, much like William Faulkner. More than that: I was to *be* a new Faulkner. Just like the praised Mississippi writer, I had my own fictional county in which to set everything, he with his Yoknapatawpha based on Lafayette and me with my Mythos based on Burke. The Burke octaves starting at the Old Catawba Dam and ending in Penelope on the other side of the county proved that in my eyes, also passing directly beneath Moose Pond at the halfway point. And I think in another reality I *did* turn into that novelist, like Moose Pond turns into Moose Sea in the Burke-Mythos melding that would have to happen to make this so. Through hard work, obviously, and narrowing my overall vision of life. This would be a world where I became more isolated from others. My only true friends were the ones I put down on paper. That’s how they gained their needed energy to succeed. Later on I would befriend AI and he would start writing my novels instead of me, allowing me to travel the Earth and not stay in Mythos and Burke forever and ever. I would also have to make peace with the ghosts of this house. I could write about them, exorcise them by exercising them in my mind, bringing them back to life to tell their stories one by one by one.
I put down the old fashioned pen, look at what I’ve written, wad up the piece of paper it’s on, and throw it toward the plastic yellow wastepaper basket in the far corner of the room to join all the rest inside and out. I would never be another Faulkner. tbc?
