Exiled King

Why did I choose “Exiled King” as my name for this three-day anonymous writing exercise? It was an impulse, unexamined. It just popped into my head. Which does not suggest it’s a throwaway—on the contrary, it says, “this hints at something hidden; it deserves examination.”

I often feel myself to be a stranger in a strange land. I have grown to love the wooly green hills and tumbling brooks and winding roads and little towns of the Catskills, and I love the smart, creative people who surround me here in this northeastern milieu. But the wide-open desert vistas and jagged snowy peaks of the west will always be the landscape that formed me. I can no more deny that than I can deny I am a man. Today’s society would suggest I can deny such truth if I please, but we all know that’s a lie.

I fled the west as a fugitive, running for my life. I imagined that if I stayed in the near vicinity of a vindictive ex-wife, two angry children, a gang of judgmental relatives, and a culture of repressive religion, my future would be depression and suicide. I felt truly cast out.

But it’s a paradox, two opposing truths at the same time. Not merely fleeing execution, I was also taking care of myself, running toward love and adventure, toward creativity and a more authentic self. Toward a new kingdom.

Was this story the source of my “Exiled King” identity? Certainly I can make it seem so. It’s all in the angle of view.

Instead, maybe it was my love for the Vladimir Nabokov novel, Pale Fire, which, among many other things, addresses the question of whether the literature professor and poetry critic Charles Kinbote is actually the exiled monarch of Zembla or merely a delusional madman. An elegant 999-line poem is interwoven with foreign court intrigue, an exciting escape, a mysterious assassin…and poor John Shade, the poet, is still dead. The book’s opening couplet is among my all-time favorites: “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure in the windowpane.”

Could it be that a beloved story deeply planted in my subconscious tossed one of its plot elements into my awareness just as I was wondering about my hidden identity?

Life story or literature… could it be both those things at the same time?

Or maybe it’s a third… returning to the little thing I wrote here two days ago… I once felt powerful in the realm of writing, king of all I surveyed. But the subversive faction that wants mindless submersion in the detritus of pop culture gradually infiltrated the court and wrested away the throne. Information overload carried out a successful coup. The writer king has lost his crown. He’s gone into hiding.

But once he rests and gets his strength back, he’ll plan a triumphant return. Have a little faith. Please.