THREE DAYS AFTER HE WAS MURDERED, RICHARD PRATT BEGAN TO FEEL MUCH BETTER...
A seemingly random act of violence propels Professor Richard Pratt into The Hereafter. It is a strange, muted, netherworld of the dead-a world in which he is forced to bear...
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Can I write my way out of this grief? Is there a pattern of ink on paper than will give meaning to this unhealed wound?
In quiet moments now I imagine myself alone— graying in a trailer park outside Boise, with dogs barking and a sad tune playing on a distant radio.
Or, often, I dream of rolling lost through some dead city, all the other dreamers and seekers raptured to heaven, or long ago stepped through into another dimension.
And I, with my faithful cat companion, roll over weeds undeterred by pavement, finding my secret door into the last surviving library.
Through the skylight, the smoky canopy of this ruined planet provides just enough light to work my way through Dickens— fumble my way through Ulysses, romp through Shakespeare.
There are no ghosts here. Just silence, and the flutter of a beloved bird, long trapped in the stacks, who has somehow survived, and spends his days seeking release and singing a mournful cry.
In my fantasies, there is insight to be gained through this lonely life. But in reality I know I'd likely sicken or starve, all those books unread, the bird left alone.
For it is not simply solitude that I crave. It's the paring down of my grief to whatever essence lies within. An idle dream, for one too lazy to do the work.
I expect to depart this world more confused than I entered it. I don't hold out hope for some brilliant flash of illumination or mystical transcendence.
No, my salvation is more likely to be found in my new love's embrace than from freeing that trapped bird. It's more likely to be found in his tattooed arms than in the endless desert.
In the end, if I find peace, it may be in accepting that the answers lie beyond my meager ability to track down a mis-shelved book.
It lies in the touch of a man as wounded as I, who sometimes cries on my chest when he thinks I'm sleeping.
And perhaps that small insight, if truly felt, and humbly accepted, may be enough to set the bird free.
—Excerpt from "Song 57," as it appears in "Apocalyptica: One Hundred Laments for Salt Lake City" by Keith Woo, page 193.
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