an orphan (one in a sporadic series)

From time to time, ideas come to me...lines, snippets of dialogue, even whole scenes...that have nothing to do with whatever I'm working on at the time. Sometimes these random writings are incorporated into full-blown pieces...and sometimes they remain as orphans, tantalizing teasers from the fickle muse that have no home.

This then is one of the orphans which has been languishing in a file since it was born. This one is the opening of a story that was going to be(or perhaps still will be) called Opaque.

*****

My name is Harrison Browne. I am almost 50 years old and almost 25 years married. I am the father of four and the grandfather of three. My parents are still alive but my only sister is not. I have a number of acquaintances and a small handful of people I consider friends. I have a job I don’t like but am very good at nevertheless and I have dreams that I have long since learned to completely ignore.

My name is Harrison Browne. And I am an opaque man. I say this without rancor…well, at least without much rancor…or recrimination. It is, quite simply, a proven fact. I am here…fat, black, and occasionally happy…in the world and yet the world, and almost all of those residing (in times gone and times to be) in it, seems completely oblivious to who I really am. This is, obviously, a happenstance of my own doing. Though, for the life of me, I don’t completely understand why or how.

I see people around me with relative clarity…at least so they tell me…and find it strange that they cannot…or will not…see me with anything even remotely close to the same measure of clarity. It is a paradox I find most passing strange…and disheartening.

People project, as is our habit, their images onto my reality and imagine that what they’ve chosen to see is what there is. Inevitably they react…with disappointment, puzzlement, even sadness and anger…when their image and my reality come into conflict (as they are inevitably destined to do.) I seem to leave rage and recrimination, heartbreak and heartache, disappointment and disillusionment in my wake when all I thought I was doing was living my life as well as I could.

©2004 neverending rainbow enterprises, ltd. All rights reserved.