i thought i saw an ent
2003-12-04

tonight i was riding my bike home from work in the dark and the rain and the wind and i thought i saw a giant. tall legs and a thick torso, a giant standing at the bus stop. as i came closer the trees became trees again, separated by ten feet, backlit by a storefront. not a giant.

i was talking to my friend the other day about how we used to scare ourselves as kids. he used to sneak into an abandoned barn and play there with his friends, hiding from parents and hurting themselves on brambles and shards of glass. i used to visit a decrepit house in the woods, no roof and beercans in the broken falling fireplace. there was a hole in the floor leading to the basement, which was filled with dead leaves. one day a friend and i found a long stick and dragged it into the hole. we poked around and were dissatisfied, but when we tried to remove the stick it felt like something had grabbed it. we could not make it budge and we pulled and pulled and freaked out and finally it came unstuck, as though someone or something just let go. needless to say, i was totally freaked, but i would still walk past the house - you could see it from the street, especially in the winter, and it stood in the woods on a hill, quiet and sullen - no roof, no door, and something living in the basement.

there was more to my childhood paranoia, partly to blame is the game perfection, and other timer-based toys, which stressed me to no end. i remember hearing planes going overhead, waiting for a minute or two to hear the crash, the crisp sound of an explosion or the whistle of a dead plane spiraling to the earth.

i am scared of a lot of things. i am scared of my brain, of the things that my body does that i do not understand. i am scared of dark alleys and loneliness. mostly, though, i am scared of things that live in holes.