Steppenwolf Dreaming

Late one night stuck as I was to go on with my own writings I picked up my old friend Steppenwolf and soon was once again delightfully absorbed in Harry Haller's laments. Quite all of a sudden I heard noises issuing forth from my darkened library denoting the fall of heavy objects.

Investigating the source of this noise I found an old man (though I couldn't really say he was exactly old but looked more as like life had tugged at him with an intensity greater than is its wont to do others aging him before his time) pulling books from my shelves one by one as if he were looking for something in particular and upon not finding it tossing the book unceremoniously over his left shoulder where a good sized pile had now accumulated along with other books strewn haphazardly about the room after obviously bouncing off the pile.

Protesting against this desecration to my treasured books my spirit urged me to confront the old man but my feet seemed buried in sand and my mouth failed to form the words my heart was screaming and all I could do is stand there and watch as he finally emptied my shelves of books one by one and turned to confront me with a terrible gleam in his eyes and wildly unkept hair all affright. He puffed the stunted end of a cheap cigar and winked at me. He seemed hauntingly familiar to me, somehow, as though I'd known him at one time or another but though I wracked my mind I just couldn't place the mad old fellow.

Why do you trash my books? I entreated him, finally discovering my voice.

They are not your books, he informed me with another conspiratorial wink. Have you no books from your own heart? He spoke with a thick German accent not easily understood and I found it took my full attention to understand his utterances. The accent bade me to sigh (it too seemed hauntingly familiar) and reaching down I picked up Das Glasperlenspiel which lay like a dying butterfly with its wings broken against the foot of a reading chair.

I want to write, I told the old man. But when I pick up books like this I see how truly juvenile my
writings are compared to someone like Hesse and I cannot go on. The old man grabbed the book from my clutching hands and hurled it to my dismay towards the open window where it made an arc as if to fall but suddenly the cover opened and the book took flight of its own accord and sailed out the window and across the night sky until I could see it far in the distance flapping its bookish wings under a setting full moon large and orange.

Suddenly gleeful and no longer terrible at all the old man (though in his glee his age seemed much younger now) ran about the room kicking the books that lay scattered throughout and as he did each took flight and soon the room was filled with a fluttering of books and I had to duck down quickly to keep from being brained by a renegade copy of The Critique of Pure Reason which missing me crashed into my sitting Buddha and sent it tumbling off the shelf onto the floor where it broke into a thousand tiny shards which the old man kicked too sending them into a tinkling twirling cloud, the noise of which sounded like the old man speaking to me through rain or falling leaves perhaps and I listened hard to hear what the shards/he said: read the books then set them free again laughed the old man and his shards as they played. My stories are old and outdated now and in shards. Write your own heart and make the old new again, he said, with a puff of cheap cigar smoke.

Your stories? I said. What do you mean, your stories?

With that I woke with a start in my chair at my desk with Steppenwolf spilled open on my chest. Walking to the dark library I flipped on the lights and found everything just as it should be, books in place and no broken Buddha and chuckled to myself that my own mind should play such magnificent trickery on me. Then I saw the blunt end of an old cheap cigar snuffed out in the ashtray.