Eclipse

From the novel I'm working on...



What if the mystery that I was trying to solve about 9/11 wasn’t what I thought it was? What if by trying to crack open a worldwide conspiracy, that may or may not have been perpetrated by Bush/Cheney, The Masons, The Illuminati, Big Brother or The Matrix, I had instead discovered the arc of another story altogether—one buried in the piles of dust and debris and sadness of that day—a story which only existed in its telling...like the Decameron or the Canterbury tales...a story which was one and the same with the path I was traveling right now... Could it be? Did I dare believe I’d discovered something of the scale that would make the whodunit details of 9/11 irrelevant? Could I hold on to it—the crazy feeling I sometimes had--of having hit upon something...of having finally "found the vein" as my old writing professor used to say? If it was real at all it was more than just a great book idea...the vein I'd tapped was an artery that criss-crossed the world...Those strange flashes of insight—of random realizations when I was zoning out with the TV on…the wild weather that brings rainbows and bright patches of sunlight to dance across the Manhattan streets.

Whatever it was--whatever I was trying to be told or shown--I felt compelled to go and meet it. All I can do is walk forward, like I did on that Tuesday morning, putting one foot in front of the other until I came to the immense pile of smoldering steel that was larger and more horrific than anything I could have imagined--the sum of all our fears and Hollywood wish fulfillment--only this time there will be no one who will be able to tell me to go back because there's nothing I can do.