Hitchhiker's Guide to Albania Part 4: The End

Author's note: All stories and other nonsense herein are meant as homage to both Albania and to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  I adore them both.  However, I offer my apologies in advance to the former for being a smartass, and to the latter for being a shamelessly inferior exploitation of a classic.  The sections in italics are asides representing (mostly fictional) reference articles from "The Hitchhker's Guide to Albania".  British accents are encouraged.

Author's note: All stories and other nonsense herein are meant as homage to those who can relate.  I adore you all.  I will no longer apologize for being a smartass, and no longer pretend to imitate any classic literature.  The sections in italics make no sense, nor does the rest of it.


The End

Endings, from a storytelling perspective, are complex.  Writers often remain paralyzed for ages attempting to provide a suitable closure for their creations.  Real life, however, has found an elegant way to bypass this literary problem: it simply changes, or demands that we do.  Its character arcs are flawed, and don't do justice to the time readers have invested in them.  Many people vanish from the story altogether, though their last scene gave no such indication or foreshadowing.  Loose ends, far from being tied up, are left in tatters on the desks of the unlucky editors of the subconscious.  Chekhov's gun remains above the mantle, new dilemmas replace the falling action, and the plot moves like a fever dream into uncanny terrain.  

Writers do not live in the real world*, however, and therefore suffer from a compulsion of point-making.  When their points are inevitably contradictory, they bail themselves out by citing terms like "irony," or by quoting Walt Whitman.  This need for meaning is acute, and must be found even where it does not exist.  Or rather, especially where it does not exist.

To this end, our author sends his apologies to both of his audience.  Through his convoluted logic, he has convinced himself that he will find meaning in his crisis of writer's block by succumbing to it.  Part four of his mildly exalted "Hitchhiker's Guide to Albania" has therefore been cancelled, despite the misleading title of this post.  You might be thinking, "Didn't he leave Albania over a year ago?" and if so, kudos, but kindly direct your valid criticism toward someone more relevant**.  

As his editor, I disputed this inaction tenaciously, but being reminded that I am merely an unappreciated shade of a duressed mind, I conceded.  The research team assures me that he is "doing well" in his Ukrainian quarantine, and that as a history teacher can find inspiration by imagining his apartment is a gulag for some well-to-do dissenter of yore.  Also, Netflix.  

*an imaginary place

**George RR Martin, that beautiful, non-writing son-of-a-bitch

*******************************************

The Beginning

(oh gods, what a labored literary device)

Hey, everyone.  Mom.  Someone else, probably.  So, my last boss was a psychopath.  And I'm in Ukraine now.  And there's Covid.  There is literally no way to bridge all of that, so please accept the ramblings of the pesky editor of my subconscious (or so it calls itself) and let's move on.  I introduce you to:

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Confines of 1000 Square Feet"

no...

"I Wanted To Develop Hobbies, but I Just Got Fat"

don't take this out on sourdough...

"Russian Is Really Difficult on the Phone"

true but hardly relatable...

"Staying Sane During Interstellar Travel"

somehow your only decent suggestion...

Okay, it's a work in progress.  If the Washington Football Team can do it to make you forget decades of unforgivable racism, give me a few minutes to figure this out.  Catch you soon.

And some ends

I’m not sad, 

I tell everyone.

And it’s mostly true.

I’m whatever I’ve 

always been, but

now my mask lies 

broken at my feet 

in sweet-smelling chunks 

of fiction.

I’m too tired to fix it,

though everyone

can see now 

how little I’ve kept.

Just some odds.

And some ends. 

But who can smile 

like before?

Before what, it

doesn’t matter.  

Before him, or her, or them,

and all their

counterfeit futures;

before the carnage

of understanding that

most crimes are simply

endured. Before

the after.

No, I’m not sad, 

I tell everyone.

I’m spare;

a collection of only 

the most dangerous hopes, 

waiting.

The Curator

In the hollow
of who I was,
carved from what
was lost
or incidental,
I curate my collection
of misfit dreams.

Delicately,
hopefully,
I weigh each one
against the jetsam,
knowing that this
has cost me
everything.

Unbroken

I would be yours,
and you could be mine,
unbroken across
a thousand promises
to the eager horizons
of tomorrow, and tomorrow.
But let's not call it
forever, and
let's not say it's
the same thing. 

The Woods of What's Left

I can no longer tell

what love is and isn’t,

and anyhow

I’d only do something silly

if I could,

like trying to hold it,

until I rip

once more along that

old fault line of hope

and fear.

I think I’d rather let

the question dissolve

in the warmth between

our hands, and just keep

walking through these
patchwork woods
of what’s left of you, and

what’s left of me.  

Where it Grows

How deeply
will my roots grow
in this new soil?
Will it finally
be time to
call something
home?
Is the only difference
between
a weed
and a wildflower
where it grows?

A Trick of the Light

Parsecs away
from your pull,
love's event horizon
now looms;
the edge
of the black hole
we instead
fall out of.

It waits,
ready to annihilate
our fairy tale;
a flash,
a trick of the light,
and our treasured moments
will be revealed
as ordinary.

Already,
you are a word
too often repeated,
warped and
stretched thin
across these failing
memories, leaving
only who you are,
but nothing of who you were
to me.