Year of the Monkey

It’s all a question of balance, the system is just recalibrating. Eventually all will disappear, whether a rash or a cough. One must remain serene, and not indulge these reactions with too much energy.

What is real anyway? Sam had asked not long ago. Is time real? Are these dead hands more real than the hands in dreams that can cast a line or turn a steering wheel? Who knows what is real, who knows?

I’m sorry, I said, looking up at a handful of stars, time is running and not a single rabbit can keep up with it. I’m sorry, I repeated, descending the ladder, conscious of where I had been.

I was exactly where he was, and we stood, each sensing the other, on the precipice of irredeemable tragedy.

I sat motionless, did not rise, or gather my tools, or hack or weed. I suddenly felt dead—no, not dead, more otherworldly, a grateful kind of dead.

The clouds were pink and dropped from the sky. I was wearing sandals, kicking through mounds of red leaves surrounding a shrine on a small hill. There was a small cemetery with rows of monkey deities, some adorned with red capes and knitted caps. Massive crows were picking through the drying leaves. It doesn’t mean anything, someone was shouting, and that was all I could remember.

I wished I could just live there for a while, in the WOW itself, in the back room with nothing but a simple cot, a table to write on, an old refrigerator and an overhead fan. Every morning I’d make my coffee in a tin pot, rustle up some beans and eggs and read of the local occurrences in the newsletter. Just negotiating zones. No rules. No change. But then everything eventually changes.

He wanted me to play Medea. I told him I was too old to play her, but Sandy said Medea need only be formidable, and I was more than capable of negotiating the glare of her splintered mirror.

—The writer must know his characters so well that he can access the content of their dreams, Ernest was saying.
—Who creates the dreams? asked Jesús.
—Well, who if not the writer?
—But does the writer create their dreams or does he channel the actual dreams of his characters?
—It’s all about transparency, said Ernest. He sees through their skulls when they’re sleeping. As if they were crystal.

I was wondering what happens to the characters in books whose fates are left dangling by dying writers.