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I was thinking the other night about all of the things that slip through my life that are real but seem so unreal.  Things that I’ve seen with my own eyes, yet even at the moment of seeing them, begin immediately to surround themselves with doubts and questions.  Things that slip by so quickly, that even knowing they were real, I am left wondering because of the briefness I was exposed.

One time long ago, when Imaginary Keith was just a boy, he found himself sledding with his brother and a friend on a snowy hillside in Iowa.  A sunny, bright day.  A day after a storm, where the only thing showing against the blue sky is the intermittent cloud of your own breath and a handful of large, fluffy white clouds tumbling slowly along in the storm’s wake.

And on that day, now so long ago, Imaginary Keith had felt the need to look up into that sky.  Something pulled at his attention, and he remembers, even to this day, the pressure and bulk of his coat and many layers of clothing as he leaned back his head so that his eyes could reach whatever it was that called for his attention.  He remembers breathing slowly, so that the mist from his breathing wouldn’t be in the way.  He remembers a thick, gray, wool mitten coming up to shield his eyes from the sun as his eyes made the adjustment, going from the blinding snow white of the hillside to the deep, warm blue of the sky.

And on that long ago day, standing there on the top of that small hill, Imaginary Keith’s eyes found themselves resting on what appeared to be the front end of a large airliner, poking out from the clouds.  A large rounded shape, silvery white, sticking out slightly from behind a group of the large, puffy white clouds that hung low in the sky just over their heads.  Imaginary Keith sat and stared at the object, thinking that it looked like the nose of an airliner, but realizing at the same time that it didn’t move.

First in a low voice, and then louder and louder, Imaginary Keith called out to his brother and the friend, telling them to look up.  Something is up there, he said, knowing that they would look up and they would all see it.  Imaginary Keith took his eyes off of the object once, to see why his brother and the friend did not respond or say anything.  Only five or six feet away, surely they had heard him.  Surely they would want to look up and see whatever it was he was yelling about.  But when Imaginary Keith looked over at his brother and the friend, they were just standing there, silently staring straight ahead.  Imaginary Keith, looking straight at the two, told them to look up.  He pointed and motioned with his head.  He repeated himself, but the two boys just stood there, staring blankly at him.  They didn’t talk, they didn’t move, and they didn’t look up.

Imaginary Keith looked back up and the object was still there, poking out from behind the cloud even a bit more then before.  He watched it sitting there, wondering what it could be, knowing all along what it was.  He stared at it for maybe thirty, forty seconds, and then the object, silently and smoothly, slid behind the cloud in one quick motion and was gone.

And just as quickly as the object was gone, Imaginary Keith’s brother and the friend came back to life.  Suddenly they were talking and laughing and moving around, getting ready to head back down the hill.

Why didn’t you look up, Imaginary Keith asked them.  Why didn’t you say anything, he asked.

And the two boys just looked at Imaginary Keith like he was crazy.  What are you talking about, they said, then jumped on their sleds and disappeared down the hill, leaving Imaginary Keith to stand there all alone, thinking about what had just happened. 

But while a boy standing all alone on a hill might know what he has seen, he really has no idea just how hard it will become to separate real from unreal later in life.  He has no way of knowing that this is just the first of many things that will appear before his eyes and then disappear, leaving him to stand there wondering.  He has no way of knowing if he is better off for having seen the object, and now believing it, or whether it would have been better to be one of the other boys, staring blankly into nothing.

If Imaginary Keith ever becomes historically significant, there are going to be certain questions that will pop up.  People will demand answers, because people, let’s admit it, are funny that way.  They want to know things that matter very little.

Like Spalding Gray.  Imaginary Keith sees people talking all about Spalding Gray, but realizes that he knows nothing about this man.  But he knows that he wrote and was in some movies and went floating in a river.

Maybe people will ask: Hey!  Imaginary Keith!  What about Spalding Gray?  And Imaginary Keith will turn and look faraway and dreamy, like he’s thinking of something that happened long ago, maybe something that he hadn’t thought about in a long time, and just now has resurfaced in his memory because of the curiosity of the people.  Imaginary Keith’s head may move slightly, up and down, just like curious people’s heads move when they too remember something from long ago.  And Imaginary Keith will stand there silently looking back at the curious people, giving them enough time for their own thoughts to drift a bit.  It will be a long enough silence that the curious people will begin to grow just a little bit uncomfortable.

Curious people, you might know, are uncomfortable with silence.

And then, finally, Imaginary Keith will say something.  Something like, “I just don’t know what happened to Spalding Gray.”

And because of the faraway look, and the dreamy eyes, and the slightly nodding head and the almost too long uncomfortable silence, the curious people will decide that Imaginary Keith has thought long and hard about the life and death of Spalding Gray.  They will think that there is great mystery here.  They will think that Imaginary Keith has clung to the hope that Spalding Gray will somehow survive floating in a river for two months.  That somehow he will turn up alive and well and kicking.  They will think so many things.  Their imaginations will run wild in that moment of silence as they try to fill something that is so unbearably uncomfortable.

So Imaginary Keith will answer the curious people’s questions by saying nothing.  Inside he will smile, thinking it is odd that silence can be mistaken so easily for reflection and knowledge.

And people, because they’re funny this way, will answer all of their own questions.  They will talk and talk and talk until they are sure they’ve said enough, making everything up as they go along.

No mortal should be this busy today.  I wish I lived in a city that had Free Pie stands every six blocks.  I’d still be busy, but life would seem sweeter.

If you like to dream about the lives of others, and would like a little help today, then go over to Burningbird and read her essay on Emily Dickinson, Me and Emily: Sweet Whispers of the Betrayer.  The only disappointment is that it ends.

Not so long ago, I was thinking of Emily myself.  I was thinking of a lot of things actually, as I sat in front of a warm fire and tried to chase away the particular mood that seemed to have settled in that day.  And I remember writing a letter to a friend . . .

I am having a hard time beginning this letter tonight.  It has nothing to do with imaginary worlds or the imaginary people waiting their turn to be born.  I’m not even sure what it’s about, which must be the reason for the slow beginning.  It is a melancholy night, which would seem to produce a melancholy letter.  We will see.  I have lit a strong, warm fire whose sole job is to warm my cold toes.  But if my spirits are also warmed in the process, so much the better.

I will tell you that I am enjoying my time spent here doing nothing more then thinking thoughts about things nonexistent.  If nothing else, that makes me happy.  And my oldest friend, the idea of writing, is with me still, keeping me company in spite of my mood.  A steadfast friend, to stick with me this many years.

This morning I found myself imagining the concept of writing (and I guess I refer to fiction) to be a little bit like the concept of law.  An incorporeal thing that you imagine and try to get your hands around.  Good writing like good law, in that when you see it, and feel it, and experience it, you know when it’s right.  Good writing, like good law, that you can embrace and hope that it works.  This is the kind of writing that I hope to accomplish, so I will suffer the consequences when my own words fall short, and change them when I can.  It is the beauty of having an idea as a friend.

But I like that I have stumbled onto the word incorporeal tonight.  It’s a good word.  There certainly seems nothing tangible about writing, just as there seems nothing tangible about law.  They are ideas embraced, nothing more, their difference seeming to rest in the fact that while one is clear and demanding, the other is vague and full of suggestion.  But don’t ask me which one is which, because I would be hard pressed to know the answer.  Instead, ask me what I do each day, and I will know that I climb out of bed and can think of nothing else but wrapping my fingers around an incorporeal ladder of imagination.  I climb and I climb.  I keep my eyes and my ears closed tightly, so that I don’t have to see the stack of bills on my desk or the sound of the phone ringing endlessly.  I climb because it is a feeling like no other, a dizzying feeling to reach such heights of thought and find yourself hanging onto nothing.  Because words are nothing, and yet we’re forced to hang everything on their meaning.

Maybe that’s why I am melancholy tonight.  Not because I’m having trouble starting a letter, but because I climb an impossible ladder.  Not because I search for words, but because I find too many.  Maybe I’ve caught a glimpse of my own self, standing there at the base of the ladder, dreaming.

But what am I dreaming about, standing there, looking around at nothing?  I know that last night I found myself thinking about Emily Dickinson, wondering about her and her life.  What could it have possibly been like, to be her?  What did she see when she looked around, so intense but so alone?  I couldn’t help but wonder how much of her anyone really knew.  I imagined her moving about a room, exchanging pleasantries and offering only the smallest bits of herself.  I imagined a woman who could write over 1700 poems, yet see only seven of them published.  I imagined the lifetime of thoughts that moved through her head turning into words but shared so little.  And I imagined her sitting down, as she often did, to write a letter.  Much the same way I sit here and write to you tonight.

Emily Dickinson, if you didn’t know, wrote hundreds of letters in her lifetime.  You could read them yourself and decide what she was writing about, but I like to imagine that she wrote her letters because she searched for something.  In my imagination, Emily looked for someone who could open their eyes and see life the way she saw it.  I’m most likely wrong, but enjoy the thought.  She once wrote to a man at the Atlantic Monthly named Thomas Wentworth Higginson.  The two kept in contact for years, exchanging letters and meeting upon occasion.  Once, when he asked her what she looked like, Emily Dickinsons wrote back

I . . . am small, like the wren; and my hair is bold, like the chestnut burr; and my eyes, like the sherry in the glass that the guest leaves.

I wonder what Higginson thought, getting such a letter.  How could he not be intrigued?  When Dickinson and Higginson finally met for the first time one night at her father’s home, it would be only after having shared years of exchanging letters.  Following the meeting, Higginson would later write:

I never was with any one who drained my nerve power so much.  Without touching her, she drew from me.  I am glad not to live near her.

What was it about Emily Dickinson that proved so draining to Higginson?  I can only imagine that the years of letter writing between the two had led Emily to believe that she could show a bit of her true self to the visiting Higginson.  I imagine she felt safe and more open then usual.  I imagine that the meeting, to her, was like a letter coming to life, words falling into place, a poem unfolding.  I imagine she thought she would meet Higginson and share with him a glimpse of her world. 

The only shame here is that Higginson, given such an opportunity, was not up to the task.  Can you imagine the world all around Dickinson, drawn into her hungry eyes, distilled of its perceptions and dressings, then offered back to those who dared?  Her own friend, Higginson, even after years of letter exchanges with Emily, had no stomach for the life that Dickinson saw.  Maybe there was simply not enough life within him to withstand her?  Who knows.  What I do know is that he is not the first person to avoid facing such a vision of life.  Nor will he be the last.

And thinking that, I began to wonder if there were any Emily Dickinson’s alive today.  Would I ever meet one, and if I did, would I even know?  Would I be able to look into those eyes and know her for who she is?  Would I be able to meet such a gaze?  What would such a person draw from me?  I do know that, unlike Thomas Wentworth Higginson, I would have loved to live near such a person.